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<h2>CHAPTER XXVII</h2> <h2>MY FIRST MUSICAL ADVENTURE</h2> Music-mad, I arrived in Paris during the last weeks of the World's Fair of 1878, impelled there by a parching desire to see Franz Liszt, if not to hear him. He was then honorary director of the Austro-Hungarian section. But I could not find him, although I heard of him everywhere, of musical fêtes and the usual glittering company that had always surrounded this extraordinary son of fortune. One day I fancied I saw him. I was sadly walking the Rue de Rivoli of an October afternoon, when in a passing carriage I saw an old chap with bushy white hair, his face full of expressive warts, and in his mouth a long black cigar, which he was furiously puffing. Liszt! I gasped, and started in pursuit. It was not an easy job to keep up with the carriage. At last, because of a blocked procession, I caught up and took a long stare, the object of which composedly smiled at me, but did not truly convince me that he was Franz Liszt. You see there were so many different pictures of him; even the warts were not always the same in number. When I am in the Cambyses vein I swear I've seen Liszt. Perhaps I did. [Pg 318] Liszt or no Liszt, my ambition was fired, and at the advice of Frederick Boscovitz, a pupil of Liszt and cousin of Rafael Joseffy, I went to the Conservatoire Nationale, with a letter of introduction to the acting secretary, Emile Rety. I was told that I was too old to enter, being a few months past eighteen. I was disappointed and voiced my woes to Lucy Hamilton Hooper, then a clever writer and correspondent of several American newspapers. Her husband was Vice-Consul Robert Hooper and he kindly introduced me to General Fairchild, the consul, and after a cross-examination I was given a letter in which the United States Government testified to my good social standing (I was not a bandit, nor yet an absconder from justice) and extreme youth. Armed with this formidable document, I again besieged the gates of the great French conservatoire—whose tuition, it must be remembered, is free. I was successful, inasmuch as I was permitted to present myself at the yearly examination, which took place November 13 (ominous date). To say that I studied hard and shook in my boots is a literal statement. I lived at the time in an alley-like street off the Boulevard des Batignolles and lived luxuriously on five dollars a week, eating one satisfying meal a day (with a hot bowl of coffee in the morning) and practising on a wretched little cottage piano as long as my neighbours would stand the noise. They chucked boots or any old faggot they could [Pg 319] find at my door, and after twelve hours I was so tired of patrolling the keyboard that I was glad to stop. Then, a pillow on my stomach to keep down the pangs of a youthfully gorgeous appetite, I would lie in bed till dinner-time. O Chopin! O consommé and boiled beef! O sour blue wine at six cents the litre! At last the fatal day dawned, as the novelists say. It was nasty, chilling, foggy autumnal, but my long locks hung negligently and my velveteen coat was worn defiantly open to the wind. I reached the Conservatoire—then in the old building on the Rue du Faubourg Poissonière—at precisely nine o'clock of the morn. I was put in a large room with an indiscriminate lot of candidates, some of them so young as to be fit for the care of a nurse. Like lost sheep we huddled and as my eyes feverishly rambled I noticed a lad of about twelve with curling hair worn artist fashion; a naughty haughty boy he was, for he sneered at my lengthy legs and audibly inquired: "Is grandpa to play with us!" I knew enough French to hate that little monster with a nervous hatred. There was a tightened feeling about my throat and heart and I waited in an agitated spirit for my number. A bearded and shy young man came in from examination and was at once mocked by the incipient virtuoso in pantalettes. Another unfortunate, with a roll of music! Then the little devil was summoned. We sat up. In ten [Pg 320] minutes he returned with downcast mien, flushed face, tears in his eyes, and tried to sneak out of the room, but too late. After shaking hands all round we solemnly danced in a circle about the now sobbing and no longer sinister child. Who says youth is ever generous? "Number thirteen!" sang out a voice, and I was pushed through a narrow entry and a minute later was standing on the historic stage of the Paris Conservatoire. The lighting was dim, but I discerned a group of persons somewhere in front of me. A man asked me to sit down at the grand piano—of course, like most pianos, out of tune—and I tremblingly obeyed his polite request. At this juncture a woman's voice inquired: "How old are you, monsieur?" I told her. A feminine laugh rippled through the gloom, for I wore a fluffy little beard, was undeniably gawky, and looked conspicuously older than my years. That laugh settled me. Queer, creepy feelings seized my legs, my eyes were full of solar spectrums, my throat a furnace and my heart beat like a triphammer. I was not the first man, young or old, to be knocked out by a woman's laugh. (Later I met the lady. She was Madame Massart, and the wife of the well-known violin master, Massart, of the Conservatoire.) Again the demand, "Play something." It was a foregone conclusion that I couldn't. I began a minuetto from a Beethoven Sonata, hesitated, saw fiery snakes and a kaleidoscope of comets, then pitched into a presto by the unfortunate Beethoven, and was [Pg 321] soon stopped. A sheet of manuscript was placed before me. I could have sworn that it was upside down, so as a sight-reading test it was a failure. I was altogether a distinguished failure, and with the audible comment of the examining faculty ringing in my ears, I stumbled across the stage into welcome darkness, and without waiting to thank Secretary Rety for his amiability I got away, crossing in a hurry that celebrated courtyard in which the hideous noises made by many instruments, including the human voice, reminded me of a torture circle in Dante's Inferno. The United States had no reason to be proud of her musical—or unmusical—son that dull day in November, 1878. When I arrived in my garret I swore I was through and seriously thought of studying the xylophone. But my mood of profound discouragement was succeeded by a more hopeful one. If you can't enter the Paris Conservatoire as an active student you may have influence enough to become an "auditeur," a listener; and a listener I became and in the class of Professor Georges Mathias, a genuine pupil of Chopin. My musical readers will understand my good luck. From that spiritual master I learned many things about the Polish composer; heard from his still supple fingers much music as Chopin had interpreted it. Delicate and discriminating in style, M. Mathias had never developed into a brilliant concert pianist; sometimes he produced [Pg 322] effects on the keyboard that sounded like emotional porcelain falling from a high shelf and melodiously shattering on velvet mirrors. He also taught me that if a pianist or violinist or singer is too nervous before the public, then he or she has not a musical vocation—the case of Adolf Henselt to the contrary notwithstanding. But better would it be for me to admit that I failed because I didn't will earnestly enough to succeed. <hr style="width: 65%;" /> [Pg 323] <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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