Chapter II: Part 2

Edgar Allan Poe wrote the most gruesome stories that have ever been told, just to prove that life is a tragedy and not worth living. But who ever lived fuller and applied himself to hard work more conscientiously in order to make his point? Poe wrote and rewrote, and changed and added and interlined and balanced it all on his actor's tongue, and read it aloud before the glass. Poe shortened his days and flung away a valuable fag-end of his life, trying to show that life is not worth living, and thus proved it is. Gray spent thirteen years writing his "Elegy," and so made clear the point that the man who does good work does not at the last lay him down and rest his head upon the lap of earth, a youth to fortune and to fame unknown. Gray secured both fame and fortune. He was so successful that he declined the Laureateship, and had the felicity to die of gout. Gray's immortality is based upon the fact that his life gave the lie to his logic. The man who thinks out what he wants to do, and then works and works hard, will win, and no others do, or ever have, or can--God will not have it so.

* * * * *

As a violinist Paganini far surpassed all other players who ever lived; and when one follows the story of his life, the fact is apparent that he succeeded because he worked.

And yet behold the paradox! The idea existed in his own day, and is abroad yet, that "the devil guided his hand," for the thought that the devil is more powerful than God has ever been held by the majority of men--more especially if a fiddle is concerned.

Such patience, such persistency, such painstaking effort as the man put forth for a score of years would have made him master at anything. The public knows nothing of these long years of labor and preparation--it sees only the result, and this result shows such consummate ease and naturalness--all done without effort--that it exclaims, "A genius--the devil guides his hand!" The remark was made of Titian and his wonderful color effects, and then again of Rembrandt with his mysterious limpid shadows--their competitors could not understand it! And so they disposed of the subject by attributing it to a supernatural agency.

Things all men can do and explain are natural; things we can not explain are "supernatural." Progress consists in taking things out of the supernatural pigeonhole and placing them in the natural. As soon as we comprehend the supernatural, we are a bit surprised to find it is perfectly natural.

But the limitations of great men are seen in that when they have acquired the skill to do a difficult thing well, and the public cries, "Genius!" why the genius humors the superstition and begins to allow the impression to get out mysteriously that he "never had a lesson in his life."

Any man who caters to the public is to a great degree spoiled by the public. Actors act off the stage as well as on, falling victims to their trade: their lives are stained by pretense and affectation, just as the dyer's hand is subdued to the medium in which it works. The man of talent who is much before the public poses because his audience wishes him to; one step more and the pose becomes natural--he can not divest himself of it. Paganini by hard work became a consummate player; and then so the dear public should receive its money's worth, he evolved into a consummate poseur--but he was still the Artist.

* * * * *

A large number of writers have described the appearance and playing of Niccolo Paganini, but none ever did the assignment with the creepy vividness of Heinrich Heine. The rest of this chapter is Heine's. I make the explanation because the passage is so well known that it would be both indiscreet and inexpedient for me to bring my literary jimmy to bear and claim it as my own--much as I would like to.

Says Heinrich Heine:

I believe that only one man has succeeded in putting Paganini's
true physiognomy upon paper--a deaf painter, Lyser by name, who, in
a frenzy full of genius, has with a few strokes of chalk so well
hit the great violinist's head that one is at the same time amused
and terrified at the truth of the drawing. "The devil guided my
hand," the deaf painter said to me, chuckling mysteriously, and
nodding his head with a good-natured irony in the way he generally
accompanied his genial witticisms. This painter was, however, a
wonderful old fellow; in spite of his deafness he was
enthusiastically fond of music, and he knew how, when near enough
to the orchestra, to read the music in the musicians' faces, and to
judge the more or less skilful execution by the movements of their
fingers; indeed, he wrote critiques on the opera for an excellent
journal at Hamburg. And yet is that peculiarly wonderful? In the
visible symbols of the performance the deaf painter could see the
sounds. There are men to whom the sounds themselves are invisible
symbols in which they hear colors and forms.

I am sorry that I no longer possess Lyser's little drawing; it
would perhaps have given you an idea of Paganini's outward
appearance. Only with black and glaring strokes could those
mysterious features be seized, features which seemed to belong more
to the sulphurous kingdom of shades than to the sunny world of
life. "Indeed, the devil guided my hand," the deaf painter assured
me, as we stood before the pavilion at Hamburg on the day when
Paganini gave his first concert there. "Yes, my friend, it is true
that he has sold himself to the devil, body and soul, in order to
become the best violinist, to fiddle millions of money, and
principally to escape the damnable galley where he had already
languished many years. For, you see, my friend, when he was
chapel-master at Lucca he fell in love with a princess of the
theater, was jealous of some little abbate, was perhaps deceived by
the faithless amata, stabbed her in approved Italian fashion, came
in the galley to Genoa, and as I said, sold himself to the devil to
escape from it, became the best violin-player, and imposed upon us
this evening a contribution of two thalers each. But, you see, all
good spirits praise God! There in the avenue he comes himself, with
his suspicious impresario."

It was Paganini himself whom I then saw for the first time. He wore
a dark gray overcoat, which reached to his heels, and made his
figure seem very tall. His long black hair fell in neglected curls
on his shoulders, and formed a dark frame round the pale,
cadaverous face, on which sorrow, genius and hell had engraved
their lines. Near him danced along a little pleasing figure,
elegantly prosaic--with rosy, wrinkled face, bright gray little
coat with steel buttons, distributing greetings on all sides in an
insupportably friendly way, leering up, nevertheless, with
apprehensive air at the gloomy figure who walked earnest and
thoughtful at his side. It reminded one of Retzsch's presentation
of "Faust" and Wagner walking before the gates of Leipzig. The deaf
painter made comments to me in his mad way, and bade me observe
especially the broad, measured walk of Paganini. "Does it not
seem," said he, "as if he had the iron cross-pole still between his
legs? He has accustomed himself to that walk forever. See, too, in
what a contemptuous, ironical way he sometimes looks at his guide
when the latter wearies him with his prosaic questions. But he can
not separate himself from him; a bloody contract binds him to that
companion, who is no other than Satan. The ignorant multitude,
indeed, believe that this guide is the writer of comedies and
anecdotes, Harris from Hanover, whom Paganini has taken with him to
manage the financial business of his concerts. But they do not know
that the devil has only borrowed Herr George Harris' form, and that
meanwhile the poor soul of this poor man is shut up with other
rubbish in a trunk at Hanover, until the devil returns its
flesh-envelope, while he perhaps will guide his master through the
world in a worthier form--namely as a black poodle."

But if Paganini seemed mysterious and strange enough when I saw him
walking in bright midday under the green trees of the Hamburg
Jungfernstieg, how his awful bizarre appearance startled me at the
concert in the evening! The Hamburg Opera House was the scene of
this concert, and the art-loving public had flocked there so
early, and in such numbers, that I only just succeeded in obtaining
a little place in the orchestra. Although it was post-day, I saw in
the first row of boxes the whole educated commercial world, a whole
Olympus of bankers and other millionaires, the gods of coffee and
sugar by the side of their fat goddesses, Junos of Wandrahm and
Aphrodites of Dreckwall. A religious silence reigned through the
assembly. Every eye was directed towards the stage. Every ear was
making ready to listen. My neighbor, an old furrier, took the dirty
cotton out of his ears in order to drink in better the costly
sounds for which he had paid his two thalers.

At last a dark figure, which seemed to have arisen from the
underworld, appeared upon the stage. It was Paganini in his black
costume--the black dress-coat and the black waistcoat of a horrible
cut, such as is prescribed by infernal etiquette at the court of
Proserpine. The black trousers hung anxiously around the thin legs.
The long arms appeared to grow still longer, as, holding the violin
in one hand and the bow in the other, he almost touched the floor
with them, while displaying to the public his unprecedented
obeisances. In the angular curves of his body there was a horrible
woodenness, and also something absurdly animal-like, that during
these bows one could not help feeling a strange desire to laugh.
But his face, that appeared still more cadaverously pale in the
glare of the orchestra lights, had about it something so imploring,
so simply humble, that a sorrowful compassion repressed one's
desire to smile. Had he learnt these complimentary bows from an
automaton, or a dog? Is that the entreating gaze of one sick unto
death, or is there lurking behind it the mockery of a crafty
miser? Is that a man brought into the arena at the moment of death,
like a dying gladiator, to delight the public with his convulsions?
Or is it one risen from the dead, a vampire with a violin, who, if
not the blood out of our hearts, at any rate sucks the gold out of
our pockets?

Such questions crossed our minds while Paganini was performing his
strange bows, but all those thoughts were at once still when the
wonderful master placed his violin under his chin and began to
play.

As for me, you already know my musical second-sight, my gift of
seeing at each tone a figure equivalent to the sound, and so
Paganini with each stroke of his bow brought visible forms and
situations before my eyes; he told me in melodious hieroglyphics
all kinds of brilliant tales; he, as it were, made a magic lantern
play its colored antics before me, he himself being chief actor. At
the first stroke of his bow the stage scenery around him had
changed; he suddenly stood with his music-desk in a cheerful room,
decorated in a gay, irregular way after the Pompadour style;
everywhere little mirrors, gilded Cupids, Chinese porcelain, a
delightful chaos of ribbons, garlands of flowers, white gloves,
torn lace, false pearls, powder-puffs, diamonds of gold-leaf and
spangles--such tinsel as one finds in the room of a prima donna.
Paganini's outward appearance had also changed, and certainly most
advantageously; he wore short breeches of lily-colored satin, a
white waistcoat embroidered with silver, and a coat of bright blue
velvet with gold buttons; the hair in little carefully curled locks
bordered his face, which was young and rosy, and gleamed with sweet
tenderness as he ogled the pretty young lady who stood near him at
the music-desk, while he played the violin.

Yes, I saw at his side a pretty young creature, dressed in antique
costume, the white satin swelled out above the waist, making the
figure still more charmingly slender; the high raised hair was
powdered and curled, and the pretty round face shone out all the
more openly with its glancing eyes, its little rouged cheeks, its
tiny beauty-patches, and the sweet, impertinent little nose. In her
hand was a roll of white paper, and by the movements of her lips as
well as by the coquettish waving to and fro of her little upper lip
she seemed to be singing; but none of her trills was audible to me,
and only from the violin with which young Paganini led the lovely
child could I discover what she sang, and what he himself during
her song felt in his soul.

Oh, what melodies were those! Like the nightingale's notes, when
the fragrance of the rose intoxicates her yearning young heart with
desire, they floated in the twilight. Oh, what melting, languid
delight was that! The sounds kissed each other, then fled away
pouting, and then, laughing, clasped each other and became one, and
died away in intoxicating harmony. Yes, the sounds carried on their
merry game like butterflies, when one, in playful provocation, will
escape from another, hide behind a flower, be overtaken at last,
and then, wantonly joying with the other, fly away into the golden
sunlight. But a spider, a spider can prepare a sudden tragical fate
for such enamored butterflies!

Did the young heart anticipate this? A melancholy sighing tone, a
sad foreboding of some slowly approaching misfortune, glided softly
through the enrapturing melodies that were streaming from
Paganini's violin. His eyes became moist. Adoringly he knelt down
before his amata. But, alas! as he bowed down to kiss her feet, he
saw under the sofa a little abbate! I do not know what he had
against the poor man, but the Genoese became pale as death. He
seized the little fellow with furious hands, drew a stiletto from
its sheath, and buried it in the young rogue's breast.

At this moment, however, a shout of "Bravo! Bravo!" broke out from
all sides. Hamburg's enthusiastic sons and daughters were paying
the tribute of their uproarious applause to the great artist, who
had just ended the first of his concert, and was now bowing with
even more angles and contortions than before. And on his face the
abject humility seems to me to have become more intense. From his
eyes stared a sorrowful anxiety like that of a poor malefactor.
"Divine!" cried my neighbor, the furrier, as he scratched his ears;
"that piece alone was worth two thalers."

When Paganini began to play again a gloom came before my eyes. The
sounds were not transformed into bright forms and colors; the
master's form was clothed in gloomy shades, out of the darkness of
which his music moaned in the most piercing tones of lamentation.

Only at times, when a little lamp that hung above cast its
sorrowful light over him, could I catch a glimpse of his pale
countenance, on which the youth was not yet extinguished. His
costume was singular, in two colors, yellow and red. Heavy chains
weighed upon his feet. Behind him moved a face whose physiognomy
indicated a lusty goat-nature. And I saw at times long, hairy hands
seize assistingly the strings of the violin on which Paganini was
playing. They often guided the hand which held the bow, and then a
bleat-laugh of applause accompanied the melody, which gushed from
the violin ever more full of sorrow and anguish. They were melodies
which were like the song of the fallen angels who had loved the
daughters of earth, and being exiled from the kingdom of the
blessed, sank into the underworld with faces red with shame. They
were melodies in whose bottomless depths glimmered neither
consolation nor hope. When the saints in heaven hear such melodies,
the praise of God dies upon their paled lips, and they cover their
heads weeping. At times when the obligate goat's laugh bleated in
among the melodious pangs, I caught a glimpse in the background of
a crowd of small women-figures who nodded their odious heads with
wicked wantonness. Then a rush of agonizing sounds came from the
violin, and a fearful groan and a sob, such as was never heard upon
earth before, nor will be perhaps heard upon earth again, unless in
the valley of Jehoshaphat, when the colossal trumpets of doom shall
ring out, and the naked corpses shall crawl forth from the grave to
abide their fate. But the agonized violinist suddenly made one
stroke of the bow, such a mad, despairing stroke, that his chains
fell rattling from him, and his mysterious assistant and the other
foul, mocking forms vanished.

At this moment my neighbor, the furrier, said, "A pity, a pity! a
string has snapped--that comes from constant pizzicato."

Had a string of the violin really snapped? I do not know. I only
observed the alternation in the sounds, and Paganini and his
surroundings seemed to me again suddenly changed. I could scarcely
recognize him in the monk's brown dress, which concealed rather
than clothed him. With savage countenance half-hid by the cowl,
waist girt with a cord, and bare feet, Paganini stood, a solitary
defiant figure, on a rocky prominence by the sea, and played his
violin. But the sea became red and redder, and the sky grew paler,
till at last the surging water looked like bright, scarlet blood,
and the sky above became of a ghastly corpse-like pallor, and the
stars came out large and threatening; and those stars were
black--black as glooming coal. But the tones of the violin grew
ever more stormy and defiant, and the eyes of the terrible player
sparkled with such a scornful lust of destruction, and his thin
lips moved with such a horrible haste, that it seemed as if he
murmured some old accursed charms to conjure the storm and loose
the evil spirits that lie imprisoned in the abysses of the sea.
Often, when he stretched his long, thin arm from the broad monk's
sleeve, and swept the air with his bow, he seemed like some
sorcerer who commands the elements with his magic wand; and then
there was a wild wailing from the depth of the sea, and the
horrible waves of blood sprang up so fiercely that they almost
besprinkled the pale sky and the black stars with their red foam.
There was a wailing and a shrieking and a crashing, as if the world
was falling into fragments, and ever more stubbornly the monk
played his violin. He seemed as if by the power of violent will he
wished to break the seven seals wherewith Solomon sealed the iron
vessels in which he had shut up the vanquished demons. The wise
king sank those vessels in the sea and I seemed to hear the voices
of the imprisoned spirits while Paganini's violin growled its most
wrathful bass.

But at last I thought I heard the jubilee of deliverance, and out
of the red billows of blood emerged the heads of the fettered
demons: monsters of legendary horror, crocodiles with bats' wings,
snakes with stags' horns, monkeys with shells on their heads, seals
with long patriarchal beards, women's faces with one eye, green
camels' heads, all staring with cold, crafty eyes, and long,
fin-like claws grasping at the fiddling monk. From the latter,
however, in the furious zeal of his conjuration, the cowl fell back
and the curly hair, fluttering in the wind, fell round his head in
ringlets, like black snakes.

So maddening was this vision that to keep my senses I closed my
ears and shut my eyes. When I again looked up the specter had
vanished, and I saw the poor Genoese in his ordinary form, making
his ordinary bows, while the public applauded in the most rapturous
manner.

"That is the famous performance upon G," remarked my neighbor. "I
myself play the violin, and I know what it is to master the
instrument." Fortunately, the pause was not considerable, or else
the musical furrier would certainly have engaged me in a long
conversation upon art. Paganini again quietly set his violin to his
chin, and with the first stroke of his bow the wonderful
transformation of melodies again began.

They no longer fashioned themselves so brightly and corporeally.
The melody gently developed itself, majestically billowing and
swelling like an organ chorale in a cathedral, and everything
around, stretching larger and higher, had extended into a colossal
space which, not the bodily eye, but only the eye of the spirit
could seize. In the midst of this space hovered a shining sphere,
upon which, gigantic and sublimely haughty, stood a man who played
the violin. Was that sphere the sun? I do not know. But in the
man's features I recognized Paganini, only ideally lovely, divinely
glorious, with a reconciling smile. His body was in the bloom of
powerful manhood, a bright blue garment enclosed his noble limbs,
his shoulders were covered by gleaming locks of black hair; and as
he stood there, sure and secure, a sublime divinity, and played the
violin, it seemed as if the whole creation obeyed his melodies. He
was the man-planet about which the universe moved with measured
solemnity and ringing out beatific rhythms. Those great lights,
which so quietly gleaming swept around, were they stars of heaven,
and that melodious harmony which arose from their movements, was it
the song of the spheres, of which poets and seers have reported so
many ravishing things? At times, when I endeavored to gaze out into
the misty distance, I thought I saw pure white garments floating
ground, in which colossal pilgrims passed muffled along with white
staves in their hands, and singular to relate, the golden knob of
each staff was even one of those great lights which I had taken for
stars. These pilgrims moved in a large orbit around the great
performer, the golden knobs of their staves shone even brighter at
the tones of the violin, and the chorale which resounded from their
lips, and which I had taken for the song of the spheres, was only
the dying echo of those violin tones. A holy, ineffable ardor dwelt
in those sounds, which often trembled scarce audibly, in mysterious
whisper on the water, then swelled out again with a shuddering
sweetness, like a bugle's notes heard by moonlight, and then
finally poured forth in unrestrained jubilee, as if a thousand
bards had struck their harps and raised their voices in a song of
victory.

* * * * *

In Seventeen Hundred Eighty-four, Niccolo Paganini was born at Genoa. His father was a street-porter who eked out the scanty exchequer by playing a violin at occasional dances or concerts. That his playing was indifferent is evident from the fact that he was very poor--his services were not in demand.

The poverty of the family and the failure of the father fired the ambition of the boy to do something worthy. When he was ten years old he could play as well as his father, and a year or so thereafter could play better. The lad was tall, slender, delicate and dreamy-eyed. But he had will plus, and his desire was to sound the possibilities of the violin. And this reminds me that Hugh Pentecost says there is no such thing as will--it is all desire: when we desire a thing strongly enough, we have the will to secure it--but no matter!

Young Niccolo Paganini practised on his father's violin for six hours a day; and now when the customers who used to hire his father to play came, they would say, "We just as lief have Niccolo."

Soon after this they said, "We prefer to have Niccolo." And a little later they said, "We must have Niccolo." Some one has written a book to show that playing second fiddle is just as worthy an office as playing first. This doubtless is true, but there are so many more men who can play second, that it behooves every player to relieve the stress by playing first if he can. Niccolo played first and then was called upon to play solos. He was making twice as much money as his father ever had, but the father took all the boy's earnings, as was his legal right. The father's pride in the success of the son, the young man always said, was because he was proving a good financial investment. It does not always pay to raise children--this time it did. It was finally decided to take the boy to the celebrated musician, Rolla, for advice as to what was best to do about his education. Rolla was sick abed at the time the boy called and could not see him; but while waiting in the entry the lad took up a violin and began to play. The invalid raised himself on one elbow and pantingly inquired who the great master was that had thus favored him with a visit.

"It's the lad who wants you to give him lessons," answered the attendant.

"Impossible! no lad could play like that--I can teach that player nothing!"

Next the musician Paer was visited, and he passed the boy along to Giretta, who gave him three lessons a week in harmony and counterpoint. The boy had abrupt mannerisms and tricks of his own in bringing out expressions, and these were such a puzzle to the teacher that he soon refused to go on.

Niccolo possessed a sort of haughty self-confidence that aggravated the master; he believed in himself and was fond of showing that he could play in a way no one else could. Adolescence had turned his desire to play into a fury of passion for his art: he practised on single passages for ten or twelve hours a day, and would often sink in a swoon from sheer exhaustion. This deep, torpor-like sleep saved him from complete collapse, just as it saved Mendelssohn, and he would arise to go on with his work.

Paganini's wisdom was shown at this early age in that he limited his work to a few compositions, and these he made the most of, just as they say Bossuet secured his reputation as the greatest preacher of his time by a single sermon that he had polished to the point of perfection.

When fifteen years old Paganini contrived to escape from his father and went to a musical festival at Lucca. He managed to get a hearing, was engaged at once as a soloist, and soon after gave a concert on his own account. In a month he had accumulated a thousand pounds in cash.

Very naturally, such a success turned the head of this lad who never before had had the handling of money. He began to gamble, and became the dupe of rogues--male and female--who plunged him into an abyss of wrong. He even gambled away the "Stradivarius" that had been presented to him, and when his money, watch and jewels were gone, his new-found friends of course decamped, and this gave the young man time to ponder on the vanities of life.

When he played again it was on a borrowed "Guarnerius," and after the rich owner, himself a violinist, had heard him play, he said, "No fingers but yours shall ever play that violin again!"

Paganini accepted the gift, and this was the violin he played for full forty years, and which, on his death, was willed to his native city of Genoa. There it can be seen in its sealed-up glass case.

Up to his thirtieth year Paganini continued his severe work of subduing the violin. By that time he had sounded its possibilities, and thereafter no one heard him play except in concert. It is told that one man, anxious to know the secrets of Paganini's power, followed him from city to city, watching him at his concerts, dogging him through the streets, spying upon him at hotels. At one inn this man of curiosity had the felicity to secure a room next to the one occupied by Paganini; and one morning as he watched through the keyhole, he was rewarded by seeing the master open the case where reposed the precious "Guarnerius." Paganini lifted the instrument, held it under his chin, took up the bow and made a few passes in the air--not a sound was heard. Then he kissed the back of the violin, muttered a prayer, and locked the instrument in its case.

At concert rehearsals he always played a mute instrument; and Harris, his manager, records that for the many years he was with Paganini he never heard him play a single note except before an audience.

I have a full-length daguerreotype of Paganini taken when he was forty years of age. No one ever asked this man, "Kind sir, are you anybody in particular?"

Paganini was tall and wofully slim. His hands and feet were large and bony, his arms long, his form bowed and lacking in all that we call symmetry. But the long face with its look of abject melancholy, the curved nose, the thin lips and the sharp, protruding chin, made a combination that Fate has never duplicated. You could easily believe that this man knew all the secrets of the Nether World, and had tasted the joys of Paradise as well. Women pitied and loved him, men feared him, and none understood him. He lived in the midst of throngs and multitudes--the loneliest man known in the history of art.

Paganini, when he had reached his height, played only his own music; he played divinely and incomprehensibly; next to his passion for music was his greed for gold. These three facts sum up all we really know about the master--the rest fades off into mist--mystery, fable and legend. We do know, however, that he composed several pieces of music so difficult that he could not play them himself, and of course no one else can. Imagination can always outrun performance. Paganini had no close friends; no confidants: he never mingled in society, and he never married.

At times he would disappear from the public gaze for several months, and not even his business associates knew where he was. On one such occasion a traveler discovered him in a monastic retreat in the Swiss Mountains, wearing a horsehair robe and a rope girdle; others saw him disguised as a mendicant; and still another tells of finding him working as a day-laborer with obscure and ignorant peasants. Then there are tales told of how he was taken captive by a titled lady of great wealth and beauty, who carried him away to her bower, where he eschewed the violin and tinkled only the guitar the livelong day.

Everywhere the report was current that Paganini had killed a man, and been sentenced to prison for life. The story ran that in prison he found an old violin, three strings of which were broken, and so he played on one string, producing such ravishing music that the keepers feared he was "possessed." They decided they must get rid of him, and so contrived to have him thrown overboard from a galley; but he swam ashore, and although he was everywhere known, no man dared place a hand on him.

A late writer in a London magazine, however, has given evidence of being a psychologist and man of sense; he says, and produces proof, that after the concert season was over Paganini withdrew to a monastery in the mountains of Switzerland, and there the monks who loved him well, guarded his retreat. There he found the rest for which his soul craved, and there he practised on his violin hour after hour, day after day. All this is better understood when we remember that after each retreat, Paganini appeared with brand-new effects which electrified his hearers--"effects taught him by the devil."

Constant appearing before vast multitudes and ceaseless travel create a depletion that demands rest. Paganini held the balance true by fleeing to the mountains; there he worked and prayed. That Paganini had a soft heart, in spite of the silent, cold and melancholy mood that usually possessed him, is shown in his treatment of his father and mother, who lived to know the greatness of their son. He wrote his mother kind and affectionate letters, some of which we have, and provided lavishly for every want of both his parents. At times he gave concerts for charity, and on these occasions vast sums were realized.

Paganini died in Eighteen Hundred Forty, aged fifty-six years. His will provided for legacies to various men and women who had befriended him, and he also gave to others with whom he had quarreled, thus proving he was not all clay.

The bulk of his fortune, equal to half a million dollars, was bequeathed to his son, Baron Achille Paganini. And as if mystery should still enshroud his memory and this, true to his nature, should be carried out in his last will, there are those who maintain that Achille Paganini was not his son at all--only a waif he had adopted. Yet Achille always stoutly maintained the distinction--but what boots it, since he could not play his father's violin?

Yet this we know--Paganini, the man of mystery and moods, once lived and produced music that, Orpheus-like, transfixed the world. We are better for his having been and this world is a nobler place in that he lived and played, for listen closely and you can hear, even now, the sweet, sad echoes of those vibrant strings, touched by the hand of him who loved them well.

And when we remember the prodigious amount of practise that Paganini schooled himself to in youth; and join this to the recently discovered record of his long monastic retreats, when for months he worked and played and prayed, we can guess the secret of his power. If you wish me to present you a recipe for doing a deathless performance, I would give you this: Work, travel, solitude, prayer, and yet again--work.

FREDERIC CHOPIN

Nature does not design like art, however realistic she may be. She
has caprices, inconsequences, probably not real, but very
mysterious. Art only rectifies these inconsequences, because it is
too limited to reproduce them. Chopin was a resume of these
inconsequences which God alone can allow Himself to create, and
which have their particular logic. He was modest on principle,
gentle by habit, but he was imperious by instinct and full of a
legitimate pride which was unconscious of itself. Hence arose
sufferings which he did not reason and which did not fix themselves
on a determined object.

--_George Sand in "The Story of My Life"_

FREDERIC CHOPIN

Maybe I am all wrong about it, yet I can not help believing that the spirit of man will live again somewhere in a better world than ours. Fenelon says, "Justice demands another life in order to make good the inequalities of this." Astronomers prophesy the existence of stars long before they can see them. They know where they ought to be, and training their telescopes in that direction they wait, knowing they will find.

Materially, no one can imagine anything more beautiful than this earth, for the simple reason that we can not imagine anything we have not seen; we may make new combinations, but the whole is all made up of parts of things with which we are familiar. This great green earth out of which we have sprung, of which we are a part, that supports our bodies, and to which our bodies must return to repay the loan, is very, very beautiful.

But the spirit of man is not fully at home here; as we grow in soul and intellect, we hear, and hear again, a voice which says, "Arise and get thee hence, for this is not thy rest." And the greater and nobler and more sublime the spirit, the more constant the discontent. Discontent may come from various causes, so it will not do to assume that the discontented are always the pure in heart, but it is a fact that the wise and excellent have all known the meaning of world-weariness. The more you study and appreciate this life, the more sure you are that this is not all. You pillow your head upon Mother Earth, listen to her heart-throb, and even as your spirit is filled with the love of her, your gladness is half-pain and there comes to you a joy that hurts.

To look upon the most exalted forms of beauty, such as a sunset at sea, the coming of a storm on the prairie, the shadowy silence of the desert, or the sublime majesty of the mountains, begets a sense of sadness, an increasing loneliness.

It is not enough to say that man encroaches on man so that we are really deprived of our freedom, that civilization is caused by a bacillus, and that from a natural condition we have gotten into a hurly-burly where rivalry is rife--all this may be true, but beyond and outside of all this there is no physical environment in way of plenty which earth can supply, that will give the tired soul peace. They are the happiest who have the least; and the fable of the stricken king and the shirtless beggar contains the germ of truth. The wise hold all earthly ties very lightly--they are stripping for eternity.

World-weariness is only a desire for a better spiritual condition. There is more to be written on this subject of world-pain--to exhaust the theme would require a book. And certain it is that I have no wish to say the final word on any topic. The gentle reader has certain rights, and among these is the privilege of summing up the case. But the fact holds that world-pain is a form of desire. All desires are just, proper and right; and their gratification is the means by which Nature supplies us that which we need. Desire not only causes us to seek that which we need, but is a form of attraction by which the good is brought to us, just as the ameba creates a swirl in the waters that brings its food within reach. Every desire in Nature has a fixed, definite purpose in the Divine Economy, and every desire has its proper gratification. If we desire the friendship of a certain person, it is because that person has certain soul-qualities that we do not possess, and which complement our own. Through desire do we come into possession of our own; by submitting to its beckonings we add cubits to our stature; and we also give out to others our own attributes, without becoming poorer, for soul is not limited.

All Nature is a symbol of spirit, so I believe that somewhere there must be a proper gratification for this mysterious nostalgia of the soul. The Eternal Unities require a condition where men and women will live to love, and not to sorrow; where the tyranny of things hated shall not ever prevail, nor that for which the heart yearns turn to ashes at our touch.

* * * * *

"I believe Stevie is not quite at home here--he'll not remain so very long," said a woman to me in Eighteen Hundred Ninety-five. Five years have gone by, and recently the cable flashed the news that Stephen Crane was dead.

Dead at twenty-nine, with ten books to his credit, two of them good, which is two good books more than most of us scribblers will ever write. Yes, Stephen Crane wrote two things that are immortal. "The Red Badge of Courage" is the strongest, most vivid work of imagination ever fished from an ink-pot by an American.

"Men who write from the imagination are helpless when in presence of the fact," said James Russell Lowell. In answer to which I'll point you "The Open Boat," the sternest, creepiest bit of realism ever penned, and Stevie was in the boat.

American critics honored Stephen Crane with more ridicule, abuse and unkind comment than was bestowed on any other writer of his time. Possibly the vagueness, and the loose, unsleeked quality of his work invited the gibes, jeers, and the loud laughter that tokens the vacant mind; yet as half-apology for the critics we might say that scathing criticism never killed good work; and this is true, but it sometimes has killed the man.

Stephen Crane never answered back, nor made explanation, but that he was stung by the continued efforts of the press to laugh him down, I am very sure.

The lack of appreciation at home caused him to shake the dust of America from his feet and take up his abode across the sea, where his genius was being recognized, and where strong men stretched out sinewy hands of welcome, and words of appreciation were heard, instead of silly, insulting parody. In passing, it is well to note that the five strongest writers of America had their passports to greatness viséed in England before they were granted recognition at home. I refer to Walt Whitman, Thoreau, Emerson, Poe and Stephen Crane.

Stevie did not know he cared for approbation, but his constant refusal to read what the newspapers said about him was proof that he did. He boycotted the tribe of Romeike, because he knew that nine clippings out of every ten would be unkind, and his sensitive soul shrank from the pin-pricks.

Contemporary estimates are usually wrong, and Crane is only another of the long list of men of genius to whom Fame brings a wreath and finds her poet dead.

Stephen Crane was a reincarnation of Frederic Chopin. Both were small in stature, slight, fair-haired, and of that sensitive, acute, receptive temperament--capable of highest joy and keyed for exquisite pain. Haunted with the prophetic vision of quick-coming death, and with the hectic desire to get their work done, they often toiled the night away and were surprised by the rays of the rising sun. Both were shrinking yet proud, shy but bold, with a tenderness and a feminine longing for love that earth could not requite. At times mad gaiety, that ill-masked a breaking heart, took the reins, and the spirits of children just out of school seemed to hold the road. At other times--and this was the prevailing mood--the manner was one of placid, patient, calm and smooth, unruffled hope; but back and behind all was a dynamo of energy, a brooding melancholy of unrest, and the crouching world-sorrow that would not down.

Chopin reached sublimity through sweet sounds; Crane attained the same heights through the sense of sight and words that symboled color, shapes and scenes. In each the distinguishing feature is the intense imagination and active sympathy. Knowledge consists in a sense of values--of distinguishing this from that, for truth lies in the mass. The delicate nuances of Chopin's music have never been equaled by another composer; every note is cryptic, every sound a symbol. And yet it is dance-music, too, but still it tells its story of baffled hope and stifled desire--the tragedy of Poland in sweet sounds.

Stephen Crane was an artist in his ability to convey the feeling by just the right word, or a word misplaced, like a lady's dress in disarray, or a hat askew. This daring quality marks everything he wrote. The recognition that language is fluid, and at best only an expedient, flavors all his work. He makes no fetish of a grammar--if grammar gets in the way, so much the worse for the grammar. All is packed with color, and charged with feeling, yet the work is usually quiet in quality and modest in manner.

Art is born of heart, not head; and so it seems to me that the work of these men whose names I have somewhat arbitrarily linked, will live. Each sowed in sorrow and reaped in grief. They were tender, kind, gentle, with a capacity for love that passes the love of woman. They were each indifferent to the proprieties, very much as children are. They lived in cloister-like retirement, hidden from the public gaze, or wandered unnoticed and unknown. They founded no schools, delivered no public addresses, and in their own day made small impress on the times. Both were sublimely indifferent to what had been said and done--the term precedent not being found within the covers of their bright lexicon of words. In the nature of each was a goodly trace of peroxide of iron that often manifested itself in the man's work.

The faults in each spring from an intense personality, uncolored by the surroundings, and such faults in such men are virtues.

They belong to that elect few who have built for the centuries. The influence of Chopin, beyond that of other composers, is alive today, and moves unconsciously, but profoundly, every music-maker; the seemingly careless style of Crane is really lapidaric, and is helping to file the fetters from every writer who has ideas plus, and thoughts that burn.

Mother Nature in giving out energy gives each man about an equal portion. But that ability to throw the weight with the blow, to concentrate the soul in a sonnet, to focus force in a single effort, is the possession of God's Chosen Few. Chopin put his affection, his patriotism, his wrath, his hope, and his heroism into his music--as if the song of all the forest birds could be secured, sealed and saved for us!

* * * * *

The father of Chopin was a Frenchman who went up to Poland seeking gain and adventure. He became a soldier under Kosciusko and arose to rank of Captain. He found such favor with the nobility by his gracious ways that he became a teacher of French in the family of Count Frederic Skarbek. In the family group was a fair young dependent of nervous temperament--slight, active, gentle and intelligent. She was descendent from a line of aristocrats, but in a country where revolutions have been known to begin and end before breakfast, titles stand for little.

Nicholas Chopin, ex-soldier, teacher of French and Deportment, married this fine young girl, and they lived in one of Count Skarbek's straw-thatched cottages at the little village of Zelazowa-Wola, twenty-nine miles from Warsaw. Here it was that Frederic Chopin was born, in Eighteen Hundred Nine--that memorable year when Destiny sent a flight of great souls to the planet Earth.

The country was bleak and battle-scarred; it had been drained of its men and treasure, and served as a dueling-ground and the place of skulls for kings and such riffraff who have polluted this fair world with their boastings of a divine power.

The struggle of Poland to free herself from the grip of the imperial succubi has generated an atmosphere of ultramarine, so we view the little land of patriots (and fanatics) through a mist of melancholy. The history of Poland is written in blood and tears.

Go ask John Sobieski, who saw his father hanged by order of Ferdinand Maximilian, and child though he was, realized that banishment was the fate of himself and mother; and then ten years after, himself, stood death-guard over this same Maximilian in Mexico, and told that tyrant the story of his life, and shook hands with him, calling it quits, ere the bandage was tied over the eyes of the ex-dictator and the sunlight shut out forever.

Go ask John Sobieski!

The woes of Poland have produced strange men. Under such rule as she has known relentless hate springs up in otherwise gracious hearts from the scattered dragons' teeth; and in other natures, where there is not quite so much of the motive temperament, a deep strain of sorrow and religious melancholy finds expression. The exquisite sensibility, delicate insight, proud reserve and brooding world-sorrow of Frederic Chopin were the inheritance of mother to son. This mother's mind was saturated with the wrongs her people had endured: she herself had suffered every contumely, for where chance had caused fact to falter, imagination had filled the void.

It is easy to say that Chopin's was an abnormal nature, and of course it was, but when disease divides this world from another only by the thinnest veil, the mind has been known to see things with a clearness and vividness never before attained. With Chopin the strands of life were often taut to the breaking-point, but ere they snapped, their vibration gave forth to us some exquisite harmonies.

Curiously enough, this power to see and do is often the possession of dying men. The life flares up in a flame before it goes out forever. The passion of the consumptive Camille, as portrayed by Dumas, is typical--no healthy woman ever loved with that same intense, eager and almost vindictive desire. It was a race with Death.

Perfect health brings unconsciousness of body, and disease that almost relieves the spirit of this weight of flesh produces the same results. Again we have the Law of Antithesis.

That such a youth as Frederic Chopin should seek in music a surcease from his world-sorrow is very natural. A stricken people turns to music; it forms a necessary part of all religious observance, and the dirge of mourners, the wail of the "keener," and the songs of the banshee evolve naturally into being wherever the heart is sore oppressed. It was the slave-songs that made slavery bearable; and in the long ago, exiles in Babylon found a solemn joy by singing the songs of Zion. Chopin drank in the songs of Poland with his mother's milk, and while yet a child began to give them voice in his own way.

In the meantime his father's fortunes had mended a bit, and the family had moved to Warsaw, where Nicholas Chopin was Professor of Languages at the Lyceum. The title of the office fills the mouth in a very satisfying way, but the emoluments attached hardly afforded such a gratification.

In Warsaw there was much misery, for the plunderer had worked conscription and seizure to its furthest limit. Want and destitution were on every hand, but still this brave people maintained their University and clung to its traditions. The family of the Professor of Languages consisted of himself, wife, three daughters and the son Frederic. Their income for several years was not over fifteen dollars a month, but still they managed to maintain an appearance of decency, and by the help of the public library, the free museum and the open-air concerts, they kept abreast of the times in literature, art and music.

There was absolute economy required, every particle of food was saved, and when cast-off dresses were sent from the home of the Count it was a godsend for the mother and girls, who measured and patched and pieced, making garments for themselves, and for Frederic as well; so while their raiment was not gaudy nor expressed in fancy, it served.

Chopin once said to George Sand, "I never can think of my mother without her knitting-needles!" And George Sand has recorded, "Frederic never had but one passion and that was his mother." Into all of her knitting this mother's flying needles worked much love. The entire household was one of mutual service, and gentle, trusting affection. The weekly letters of Chopin to his mother from Paris, and the cold sweat on his forehead at the thought of his parents knowing of his relationship with George Sand, are credit-marks to his character. There is a sweet recompense in mutual deprivation where trials and difficulties only serve to cement the affections; and who shall say how much the wondrous blending of strength and delicacy in the music of Chopin is due to the memory of those early days of toil and trial, of strength and forbearance, of hope and love?

To be born into such a family is a great blessing. The value of the environment is shown in that all three of the sisters became distinguished in literature. Two of them married men of intellect, wealth and worth, and through the collaboration of these sisters, books were produced that did for the plain people of Poland what Harriet Martineau's books on sociology did for the people of England. Frederic played and practised at the Lyceum where his father taught, and the ambition of his parents was that he should grow up and take the place of Professor of Music in the Lyceum. Adalbert Zevyny, one of the leading pianists in the city, became attracted to the boy and took him as a pupil, without pay.

The teacher soon became a little boastful of his precocious pupil, and when there came a public concert for the benefit of the poor, we find reference made to Chopin thus, "A child not yet eight years of age played, and connoisseurs say he promises to replace Mozart." In reality the boy was nearer twelve than eight, but his size and looks suggested to the management the idea of plagiarizing, in advance, our honored countryman, Phineas T. Barnum. Hence the announcement on the programs.