The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 69, July, 1863

If we take now a general view of the aspect of Europe at the close of the Carboniferous epoch, we shall see that the large island of Scandinavia is completed, while the islands of Bohemia and Belgium have approached each other by their gradual increase till they are divided only by a comparatively narrow channel. The island of Belgium, that of Bretagne, and that of the central plateau of France, form together a triangle, of which the plateau is the lowest point, while Belgium and Bretagne form the other two corners. Between the plateau and Belgium flows a channel, which we may call the Burgundian channel, since it covers old Burgundy; between the plateau and Bretagne is another channel, which from its position we may call the Bordeaux channel. The space inclosed between these three masses of land is filled by open sea. To trace the gradual closing of these channels and the filling up of the ocean by constantly increasing accumulations, as well as by upheavals, will be the object of the next article.

THE MUSICIAN

He did not move the hills and the rocks with his music, because those days are passed away,—the days when Orpheus had all Nature for his audience, when the audience would not keep its seat. In those days trees and rocks may have held less firm root in the soil: it was nearer the old Chaos-times, and they had not lost the habit of the whirling dance. The trees had not found their "continental" home, and the rocks were not yet wedded to their places: so they could each enjoy one more bachelor-dance before settling into their staid vegetable and mineral domestic happiness.

Our musician had no power, then, to move them from their place of ages: he did not stir them as much as the morning and evening breezes among the leaves, or the streams trickling down among the great rocks and wearing their way over precipices. But he moved men and women, of all natures and feelings. He could translate Bach and Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Mozart,—all the great poet-musicians that are silent now, and must be listened to through an interpreter. All the great people and all the little people came to hear him. A princess fell in love with him. She would have married him. She did everything but ask him to marry her. Indeed, some of his friends declared she did this; but that cannot be believed.

"You ought to be satisfied," said one of his friends to the musician, one day; "all the world admires you; money drops from the keys of your piano-forte; and a princess is in love with you."

"With me?" answered the musician; "with my music, perhaps. You talk nonsense, when you talk of her falling in love with me, of her marrying a poor musician. What then? To have one instrument more in her palace! Let her marry her piano-forte,—or her violin, if she objects to a quadruped!"

"You are as blind as Homer," said his friend. "Can't you see that her love is purely personal? Would she care to give a title to a pianist, if he were any other than Arnold Wulff? If you had other eyes in your head, or if there were another man inside even that same face of yours, the strains might flow out under your fingers like streams from Paradise, in vain, so far as her heart was concerned. Your voice is quite as persuasive as your music, with her."

"If so, why must she put a title in front of my name, before I am worthy of her?" asked Arnold. "She offers me some square miles of uninhabitable forest, because, as owner of them, I can wear a Von before my name. I can put it on as an actor on the stage wears a chapeau of the Quatorze time. It is one of the properties of the establishment. You may call it a livery of the palace, if you please. I may make love to her on the stage as 'My Lord.' But my own little meagre part of Arnold,—thank you, I prefer it, without my princess."

"And yet, if you have the palace, a princess is necessary. With your love of harmony, you yourself would not be pleased to see a cotton dress hanging across a damask couch, or rude manners interrupt a stately dinner. The sound of the titles clangs well as you are ushered up through the redoubled apartments. If the play is in the Quatorze time, let it be played out. A princess deserves at least a lord for a husband."

"Very well, if the question is of marriage," answered Arnold; "but in love, a woman loves a man, not a title; and if a woman marries as she loves, she marries the man, not the lordship."

"But this is a true princess," said his friend Carl.

"And a true princess," answered Arnold, "feels the peas under ever so many mattresses. She would not fall in love with a false lord, or degrade herself by marrying her scullion. But if she is a true princess, she sees what is lordly in her subject. If she loves him, already he is above her in station,—she looks up to him as her ideal. Whatever we love is above self. We pay unconscious homage to the object of our love. Already it becomes our lord or princess."

"I don't see, then," said Carl, "but that you are putting unnecessary peas in your shoes. It is this princeliness that your princess has discovered in you; and the titles she would give you are the signs of it, that she wishes you to wear before the world."

"And they never will make me lord or prince, since I am not born such," answered Arnold. "If I were born such, I would make the title grand and holy, so that men should see I was indeed prince and lord as well as man. As it is, I feel myself greater than either, and born to rule higher things. It would cramp me to put on a dignity for which I was not created. Already I am cramped by the circumstances out of which I was born. I cannot express strains of music that I hear in my highest dreams, because my powers are weak, and fail me as often the strings of my instrument fail my fingers. To put on any of the conventionalities of life, any of its honors, even the loves of life, would be to put on so many constraints the more."

"That is because you have never loved," said Carl.

"That may be," said Arnold,—"because I have never loved anything but music. Still that does not satisfy me,—it scarcely gives me joy; it gives me only longing, and oftener despair. I listen to it alone, in secret, until I am driven by a strange desire to express it to a great world. Then, for a few moments, the praise and flattery of crowds delight and exalt me,—but only to let me fall back into greater despair, into remorse that I have allowed the glorious art of music to serve me as a cup of self-exaltation."

"You, Arnold, so unmoved by applause?" said Carl.

"It is only an outside coldness," answered Arnold; "the applause heats me, excites me, till a moment when I grow to hate it. The flatteries of a princess and her imitating train turn my head, till an old choral strain, or a clutch that my good angel gives me, a welling-up of my own genius in my heart, comes to draw me back, to cool me, to taunt me as traitor, to rend me with the thought that in self I have utterly forgotten myself, my highest self."

"These are the frenzies with which one has to pay for the gift of genius," said Carl. "A cool temperament balances all that. If one enjoys coolly, one suffers as coolly. Take these fits of despair as the reverse side of your fate. She offers you by way of balance cups of joy and pleasure and success, of which we commonplace mortals scarcely taste a drop. When my peasant-maiden Rosa gives me a smile, I am at the summit of bliss; but my bliss-mountain is not so high that I fear a fall from it. If it were the princess that gladdened me so, I should expect a tumble into the ravine now and then, and would not mind the hard scramble up again, to reach the reward at the top."

"It would not be worth the pains," said Arnold; "a princess's smiles are not worth more than a peasant-girl's. I am tired of it all. I am going to find another world. I am going to England."

"You are foolish," answered Carl. "The world is no different there; there is as little heart in England as in Germany,—no more or less. You are just touching success here; do give it a good grasp."

"I am cloyed with it already," said Arnold.

"It is not that," said Carl. "You are a child crying for the moon. You would have your cake and eat it too. You want some one who shall love you, you alone,—who shall have no other thought but yours, no other dream than of you. Yet you are jealous for your music. If that is not loved as warmly, you begin to suspect your lover. It is the old proverb, 'Love me, love my dog.' But if your dog is petted too much, if we dream in last night's strains of music, forget you a moment in the world you have lifted us into,—why, then your back is turned directly; you upbraid us with following you for the sake of the music,—we have no personal love of you,—you are the violin or the fiddlestick!"

"You are right, old Carl," said Arnold. "I am all out of tune myself. I have not set my inward life into harmony with the world outside. It is true, at times I impress a great audience, make its feelings sway with mine; but, alas! it does not impress me in return. There is a little foolish joy at what you call success; but it lasts such a few minutes! I want to have the world move me; I do not care to move the world!"

"And will England move you more than Germany?" asked Carl; "will the hearts of a new place touch you more than those of home? The closer you draw to a man, the better you can read his heart, and learn that he has a heart. It is not the number of friends that gives us pleasure, but the warmth of the few."

"In music I find my real life," Arnold went on, "because in music I forget myself. Is music, then, an unreal life? In real life must self always be uppermost? It is so with me. In the world, with people, I am self-conscious. It is only in music that I am lifted above myself. When I am not living in that, I need activity, restlessness, change. This is why I must go away. Here I can easily be persuaded to become a conceited fool, a flattered hanger-on of a court."

We need scarcely tell of the musician's career in England. We are already familiar with London fashionable life. We have had life-histories, three volumes at a time, that have taken us into the very houses, told us of all the domestic quarrels, some already healed, some still pending. It is easy to imagine of whom the world was composed that crowded the concerts of the celebrated musician. The Pendennises were there, and the Newcomes, Jane Rochester with her blind husband, a young Lord St. Orville with one of the Great-Grand-Children of the Abbey, Mr. Thornton and Margaret Thornton, a number of semi-attached couples, Lady Lufton and her son, the De Joinvilles visiting the Osbornes, from France, Miss Dudleigh and Sarona, Alton Locke, on a visit home, Signor and Signora Mancini, sad-eyed Rachel Leslie with her young brother, a stately descendant of Sir Charles Grandison, the Royal Family, and all the nobility. When everybody went,—every one fortunate enough to get a ticket and a seat in the crowded hall,—it would be invidious to mention names. It was the fashion to go; and so everybody went who was in the fashion. Then of course the unfashionables went, that it might not be supposed they were of that class; and with these, all those who truly loved music were obliged to contend for a place. Fashion was on the side of music, till it got the audience fairly into the hall and in their seats; and then music had to struggle with fashion. It had to fix and melt the wandering eyes, to tug at the worldly and the stony heart. And here it was that Arnold's music won the victory. The ravishing bonnet of Madam This or That no longer distracted the attention of its envying admirers, or of its owner; the numerous flirtations that had been thought quite worth the price of the ticket, and of the crushed flounces, died away for a few moments; the dissatisfaction of the many who discovered themselves too late in inconspicuous seats was drowned in the deeper and sadder unrest that the music awakened. For the music spoke separately to each heart, roused up the secrets hidden there, fanned dying hopes or silent longings. It made the light-hearted lighter in heart, the light-minded heavy in soul. Where there was a glimpse of heaven, it opened the heavens wider; where there was already hell, it made the abysses gape deeper. For those few moments each soul communed with itself, and met with a shuddering there, or an exaltation, as the case might be.

After those few moments, outside life resumed its sway. Buzzing talk swept out the memory of the music. One song from an opera brought thought back to its usual level. Men and women looked at each other through their opera-glasses, and, bringing distant outside life close to them, fancied themselves in near communion with it. The intimacy of the opera-glass was warm enough to suit them,—so very near at one moment, comfortably distant at the next. It was an intimacy that could have no return, nor demanded it. One could study the smile on the lip of one of these neighbors, even the tear in her eye, with one's own face unmoved, an answer of sympathy impossible, not required. Nevertheless, the music had stirred, had excited; and the warmth it had awakened was often transferred to the man who had kindled it. The true lovers of music could not express their joy and were silent, while these others surrounded Arnold with their flatteries and adoration.

He was soon wearied of this.

"I am going to America, to a new world," he said to his friend; "there must be some variety there."

"Perhaps so," said Carl,—"something new, something that is neither man nor woman, since they cannot satisfy you. Still I fancy you will find nothing higher than men and women."

"A new land must develop men and women in a new way," answered Arnold.

"If you would only look at things in my microscopic way," said Carl, "and examine into one man or one woman, you would not need all this travelling. But I will go as far as New York with you."

At New York the name of the musician had already awakened the same excitement as in other places; the concert-room was crowded; there was the same rush for places; the prices paid for the tickets seemed here even more fabulous. Arnold was more of a lion than ever. His life was filled with receptions, dinners, and evening parties, or with parlor and evening concerts. His dreamy, poetic face, his distant, abstracted manner, proved as fascinating as his music.

Carl tired of the whirl, and the adoration, of which he had his share.

"I shall go back to Germany," he said. "I shall go to my Rosa, and leave you your world."

"I am tired of my world. I shall go to the Far West," said Arnold, when Carl left him.

One day he went to a matinée at one of the finest and most fashionable houses in the place. There were beautiful women elegantly dressed, very exquisite men walking up and down the magnificently furnished drawing-rooms. The air was subdued, the voices were low, the wit was quiet, the motion was full of repose, the repose breathed grace. Arnold seated himself at the Steinway, at the half-expressed request of the hostess, and partly from the suggestions of his own mood. He began with dreamy music; it was heavy with odors, at first, drugged with sense, then spiritualizing into strange, delicate fancies. Then came strength with a sonata of Beethoven's; then the strains died back again into a song singing without words.

"You would like some dance-music now," said Arnold to the beautiful Caroline, who stood by his side. "Shall I play some music that will make everybody dance?"

"Like the music in the fairy-tale," said Caroline; "oh, I should like that! I often hear such dance-music, that sets me stirring; it seems as if it ought to move old and young."

"There are no old people here," said Arnold. "I have not seen any."

"It seems to me there are no young," answered Caroline.

"There are neither young nor old," said Arnold; "that is the trouble."

But he began to play a soft, dreamy waltz. It was full of bewitching invitation. No one could resist it. It passed into a wild, stirring polka, into a maddening galop, back again to a dreamy waltz. Now it was dizzying, whirling; now it was languishing, full of repose. Now it was the burst and clangor of a full orchestra; now it was the bewitching appeal of a single voice that invited to dance. Up and down the long room, across the broad room, the dancers moved. The room, that had been so full of quiet, was swaying with motion.

Caroline seized hold of the back of a chair to stay herself.

"It whirls me on; how dizzying it is! And you, would you not like to join in the dance? I would be your partner."

"The piano is my partner," answered Arnold. "Do you not see how it whirls with me?"

"Yes, everything moves," said Caroline. "Are Cupid and Psyche coming to join us? Will my great-grand-aunt come down to the waltz in her brocade? My sober cousin, and Marie, who gave up dancing long ago,—they are all carried away. It seems to me like the strange dance of a Walpurgis night,—as though I saw ghosts, and demons too, whirling over the Brocken, across wild forests. It is no longer our gilded drawing-room, with its tapestries, its bijouterie, its sound and light both muffled: we are out in the wild tempest; there are sighing pines, dashing waterfalls. Do you know that is where your music carries me always? Whether it is grave or gay, it takes me out into whirling winds, and tosses me in tempests. They call society gay here, and dizzying,—dance and music, show, excess, following each other; but it is all sleep, Lethe, in comparison with the mad world into which your music whirls me. Oh, stop a moment, Arnold! will you not stop? It is too wild and maddening!"

The strains crashed into discord, crashed into harmony, and then there was a wonderful silence. The dancers were suddenly stilled,—looked at each other with flushed cheek,—would have greeted each other, as if they had just met in a foreign land; but they recovered themselves in time. Nothing unconventional was said or done.

"Did I dance?" Marie asked herself,—"or was I only looking on?"