Here I am once more at one of those critical moments in my life in which it is difficult to confine myself to a narrative because it is almost impossible that even the narrative will not carry some hint of censure or apology. I will try, however, to convey how and with what motives I acted, without adding any praise or blame.
On that day I was dressed in my usual careless style, with a rough beard and an ill-combed wig. Considering my unkempt state an act of courage, I entered the theatre where the King, the Queen, the Royal Family, and the whole Court were shortly due to arrive. I then went and took my seat in the box to which M. Cury conducted me, which was his own; it was a large stage-box opposite a smaller and higher one where the King sat with Mme de Pompadour. Surrounded by ladies and being the only man in the front of the box, I could not doubt that I had been placed there purposely to be seen. When the theatre was lighted up, and I saw myself dressed like that in the middle of such an overdressed crowd, I began to feel ill at ease. I asked myself whether I was in my right place, and whether I was suitably attired, and after some uncomfortable minutes I answered ‘Yes’ with a boldness which, perhaps, proceeded rather from the impossibility of drawing back than from the strength of my conviction. ‘I am in my proper place’, I told myself, ‘since I have come to see my piece performed, and since I have been invited, and since I only wrote it for this purpose, and since no one can possibly have a better right than I to enjoy the fruit of my work and my talents. I am dressed in my ordinary way, neither better nor worse. If I begin to pander to opinion over one matter, I shall pretty soon be doing so over everything. To be consistent with myself, I must not blush, wherever I may be, at being dressed according to the position in life I have chosen. My outward appearance is simple and careless, but not dirty or slovenly. Nor is a beard so in itself, since it is a gift of Nature and, depending on the time and the fashion, is sometimes considered an ornament. I shall be considered ridiculous, offensive. Well, what is that to me? I must know how to bear ridicule and censure, provided they are undeserved.’ After this little soliloquy I felt so fortified that I should have behaved with boldness if that had been necessary. But, whether because of the Master’s presence or of the natural kindness of his courtiers, I saw nothing uncivil or ill-bred about the curiosity of which I was the object. This so affected me that I began to be uneasy once more about myself and the reception of my play. I was afraid that I might disappoint these people who seemed so predisposed in my favour and so anxious to applaud. I was armed against jeering; but their unexpected attitude of kindness so overcame me that I trembled like a child when the thing began.
I had soon reason to feel reassured. The piece was very badly acted, but the singing was good and the music well played. From the first scene, which is really touching in its simplicity, I heard a murmur of surprise and applause, hitherto unknown at plays of this sort, rising from the boxes. The mounting excitement soon reached such a pitch that it was noticeable right through the audience and, to use an expression of Montesquieu’s, began to increase its effect by its effect. There is no clapping when the King is present; for that reason every note was heard, to the great advantage of the piece and its author. Around me I heard a whispering of women who seemed to me as lovely as angels, and who said to one another under their breath: ‘That is charming. That is delightful. There is not a note that does not speak straight to the heart.’ The pleasure of affecting so many pleasant people moved even me to tears, which I could not restrain during the first duet, when I noticed that I was not the only one who wept. I was thrown back on myself for a moment when I remembered M. de Treytorens’s concert. This recollection made me feel like the slave who held the crown over the head of the Roman general in the triumph. But it was short and I soon surrendered myself, completely and unreservedly, to the pleasure of savouring my glory. And yet I am sure that sexual passion counted for more at that moment than the vanity of an author; if there had only been men present I am positive that I should not have been devoured, as I continuously was, by the desire to catch with my lips the delicious tears I had evoked. I have seen plays excite more lively transports of admiration, but I have never known so complete, so sweet, and so touching an enthusiasm pervade a whole theatre, especially at a first performance before the Court. Anyone who was present should remember it, for the effect was unique.
That same evening the Duke d’Aumont sent me word to present myself at the Château next day at eleven. M. Cury, who brought the message, added that it was believed I was to receive a pension, which the King would announce to me himself.
Would anyone believe that the night following so brilliant a day was a night of anguish and perplexity to me? My first thought, after that of the presentation, was of my frequent need to retire which had caused me much suffering on that evening in the theatre, and which might afflict me next day when I was in the gallery or the King’s apartment, among all those great people, waiting for His Majesty to pass. This ailment was the principal cause that kept me away from society and prevented me from staying in a room with ladies when the doors were closed. The mere thought of the situation into which my need might put me was capable of producing such an attack of it that I would either faint or make a scene – and I would rather have died than that. Only people who know this state can understand my horror of running the risk of it.
I pictured myself next in the King’s presence and presented to His Majesty, who condescended to stop and speak to me. To answer would require judgement and presence of mind. Would my confounded shyness, which afflicts me in the company of the least stranger, have left me in the presence of the King of France, or would it have allowed me to choose the proper answers on the spur of the moment? I wished, without abandoning the severe air and tone I had adopted, to show myself sensible of the honour paid me by so great a monarch. It was necessary to clothe some great and useful truth in the form of a choice and well-deserved eulogy. If I were to prepare a timely answer beforehand I should have to foresee exactly what he might say to me; even then, when in his presence, I certainly should not remember a single word of what I had thought out. What would become of me at that moment, beneath the eyes of the whole Court, if in my confusion one of my usual inanities were to escape my lips? This danger alarmed me, terrified me, and made me tremble so violently that I decided, come what might, not to expose myself to it.
I was losing, it is true, the pension which had been, in a way, offered to me; but at the same time I was freeing myself from the dependence it would have imposed upon me. Farewell truth, liberty, and courage! How should I be able ever to speak again of independence and disinterestedness? So long as I took that pension I should have to flatter or be silent. Besides, what assurance had I that it would be paid? What steps should I have to take to obtain it? How many people should I have to petition? It would cost me more trouble, and far more unpleasant trouble, to keep it than to do without it. I concluded, therefore, that by refusing it I was taking an action highly consonant with my principles and was sacrificing the illusion for the reality. I told Grimm my decision and he said nothing against it. To the rest I made the excuse of my health, and left that same morning.
My departure created some stir, and was generally criticized. My reasons could not be understood by the world at large: it was far easier to accuse me of a stupid pride, and this more easily satisfied the jealousy of such as felt in their hearts that they would not have acted in the same way. The next day Jelyotte wrote me a note, giving me an account of my play’s success, and of the great fancy the King himself had taken for it. ‘All day long’, he informed me, ‘His Majesty cannot stop singing in the vilest voice in his whole Kingdom: “I have lost my serving man; all my joy has gone from me.”’ He added that in a fortnight’s time there was to be a second performance of the Soothsayer which would confirm in the eyes of the whole public the complete success of the first.
Two days later, at nine in the evening, just as I was going into Mme d’Épinay’s door to take supper with her, a coach pass
ed me and someone inside beckoned me to get in. I did so, and it was Diderot, who spoke to me about that pension with a warmth that I should not have expected of a philosopher on such a subject. He did not consider that I had committed an offence in refusing to be presented to the King, but he regarded my indifference towards the pension as a crime. I might be disinterested on my own account, he told me, but I had no right to be so on behalf of Mme Le Vasseur and her daughter. I owed it to them, he said, to neglect no possible honest means of providing for their subsistence. But as I could not be said after all to have refused the pension, and since they had apparently been disposed to offer it to me, he held I ought to petition for it, and obtain it at whatever cost. Although I was touched by his anxiety I could not appreciate his principles, and we had a very lively argument on the point, the first I ever had with him. We never had any subsequent dispute that did not follow this pattern, he laying down what he considered I ought to do and I defending myself because I thought differently.
It was late before we parted. I wanted to take him in to supper with Mme d’Épinay, but he declined; and whatever efforts I made at one time or another to persuade him to meet her, out of my usual desire to bring the people I love together – I even went so far as to bring her to his door, which he kept resolutely shut – he always refused my suggestions, and never spoke of her except in the most slighting terms. It was not till after my quarrel with her and with him that they came together and he began to speak of her with respect.
From that time Diderot and Grimm seemed to make it their business to set the bosses against me by informing them that if they were not more comfortably off it was all my fault, and that they would never get anything through me. Those two gentlemen tried to persuade them to leave me, in fact, by promising to get them a salt licence, a tobacco shop, and I do not know what else through Mme d’Épinay’s influence. They tried to drag d’Holbach and even Duclos into alliance with them; but the latter always refused. I had some idea of all their intrigues at the time; but I did not learn the exact details until long afterwards. I have often had reason to deplore the blind and clumsy zeal of my friends who, when endeavouring to consign me, in my sick state, to the most melancholy solitude, always imagined that they were working for my happiness, though the means they employed were those best calculated to make me miserable.
1753 During the following carnival, of 1753, the Soothsayer was played in Paris, and I had an opportunity, in the meantime to write the overture and interlude. This interlude, in its printed form, ought to have been played as one continuous action on a single subject, for, in my opinion, it contained some very pleasant tableaux. But when I proposed this idea at the Opera, not only did they not listen to me, but I was obliged to cobble together songs and dances in the ordinary way. As a result, though full of charming ideas which do not spoil the effect of the scenes, this interlude had a very moderate success. I removed Jelyotte’s recitative and restored my own as I had originally written it and as it was in the printed score; and this recitative, though somewhat frenchified, I admit – that is to say drawled by the actors – far from shocking anyone, has been as much of a success as the airs, and has seemed even to the public quite as well composed. I dedicated the play to M. Duclos, who had given it his protection, and I declared that this would be my only dedication. I made a second one, however, with his consent; but he must have felt still more honoured by this exception than if I had never made one at all.
I have a number of anecdotes about this piece, but matters moŕe deserving of mention prevent my expatiating on them here. Perhaps I shall return to them one day in my supplement. One, however, I cannot possibly omit, for it may well be relevant to all that follows. One day I was looking through Baron d’Holbach’s music in his study when, after having turned over some compositions of various kinds, he showed me a collection of pieces for the clavichord. ‘Here are some things that have been written especially for me,’ he said. ‘They are very tasteful. Nobody knows them, and no one will ever see them except myself. You might pick one of them and put it into your interlude.’ Having far more ideas in my head for airs and orchestral pieces than I could possibly use, I was not much interested in his. However he was so pressing that, to oblige him, I chose a pastorale, which I shortened and turned into a trio for the entry of Colette’s companions. Some months afterwards, whilst the Soothsayer was running, I went to Grimm’s one day and found some people around his clavichord, from which he hastily got up as I came in. Looking automatically at his music-stand I saw this same collection of Baron d’Holbach’s open precisely at the piece which he had so pressed me to take, with the assurance that it would never leave his hands. Some time later I saw this same collection again open on M. d’Épinay’s clavichord, one day when there was a concert at his house. Neither Grimm nor anyone else ever spoke of this air, and I only mention it myself because a short-lived rumour got around some time later that I was not the author of The Village Soothsayer. As I was never a great performer I am certain that if it had not been for my Dictionary of Music they would have ended up by saying that I knew nothing about the subject.*
Some time before The Village Soothsayer was performed there arrived in Paris some Italian comic opera singers who were put on at the Opera. No one foresaw the effect they were to have. Although they were execrable and the orchestra – at that time a most ignorant lot – performed wilful murder on the pieces they played, the Italians did not fail to do irreparable harm to French opera. The comparison between the two idioms, which could be heard on the same day and in the same theatre, opened French ears; absolutely no one could endure their drawling music after the lively and incisive singing of the Italians. Once these had finished everyone walked out, and they had to change the order of playing and put them at the end. They put on Églé, Pygmalion, The Sylph: nothing would do. Only The Village Soothsayer could stand the comparison and still pleased when played after even La serva padrona.† When I composed my entertainment my head was full of these pieces; it was they that gave me the idea for it, but I was far from foreseeing that one day it and they would be judged side by side. If I had been a plagiarist how many thefts would then have been revealed, and what pains would have been taken to point them out! But not at all. Try though they might, they could not find the slightest reminiscence in my music of any other; and all my songs, when compared to their alleged models, proved as new as the style of music I had created. If Mondonville or Rameau had been subjected to such a test, they would have emerged in tatters.
The Italian players gained some very ardent partisans for their music. All Paris divided into two camps, whose excitement was greater than if they had differed over politics or religion. The more powerful and more numerous party, made up of the great, the rich, and the ladies, supported French music; the other, which was more active, more distinguished, and more enthusiastic, was made up of true music lovers, talented people, and men of genius. This little band gathered at the Opera beneath the Queen’s box. The other party filled all the rest of the pit and the house; but its principal meeting-place was beneath the King’s box. That is the origin of the party names famous at that time, the ‘King’s corner’ and the ‘Queen’s corner’. As the dispute became livelier, it gave rise to pamphlets. If the King’s corner tried to be witty, it was ridiculed by the Little Prophet; if it resorted to argument, it was crushed by the Letter on French Music. These two little essays, one by Grimm and the other by myself, are the only ones that have survived the dispute; all the rest are dead already.
But The Little Prophet, which despite my denials, was for some time persistently attributed to me, was generally taken as a joke, and did not involve its author in the slightest trouble; whereas the Letter on Music was treated seriously and raised the whole nation against me, for this attack on its music was taken as an insult. A description of the incredible effect of this pamphlet would be worthy of the pen of Tacitus. It was the time of the great quarrel between the courts* and the clergy. The courts had just been disso
lved; the excitement was at its height; there was every danger of an approaching revolt. My pamphlet appeared, and immediately all other quarrels were forgotten; no one could think of anything except the threat to French music. The only revolt now was against me, and such was the outburst that the nation has never quite recovered from it. At Court they were merely deciding between the Bastille and banishment; and the warrant of arrest would certainly have been signed if M. de Voyer had not shown how ridiculous it all was. Whoever reads that this pamphlet probably prevented a revolution in France will think that he is dreaming. Yet it is an actual fact, which all Paris can still bear witness to, for it is less than fifteen years since that singular incident.
Although no attempt was made on my liberty, I was certainly not spared from insult; even my life was in danger. The Opera orchestra entered into a solemn plot to assassinate me as I left the theatre. I was warned of this, but attended the performances even more assiduously; and I did not know till long afterwards that M. Ancelet, a Musketeer officer who felt friendly towards me, had defeated the object of the plot by providing me with an escort, unknown to myself, as I left after the performance. The city had recently taken over the control of the Opera, and the Mayor’s first exploit was to deprive me of my free pass, and that in the most insulting manner possible: that is to say by having me publicly refused admission, so that I was obliged to take an amphitheatre ticket to save myself the indignity of being turned away that day. The injustice was all the more flagrant because the only price I had asked for my play when I gave them the rights of it, was a free pass for life. For although this was the privilege of all authors and I had a double claim to it, I nevertheless expressly stipulated for it in the presence of M. Duclos. It is true that they sent me, by the Opera cashier, a fee of fifty louis that I had not asked for. This fifty louis, however, was far less than the sum due to me by the regulations; nor had it anything to do with the free pass which I had stipulated for, and which was entirely independent of it. There was such a combination of injustice and savagery about this behaviour that the public, although at the height of its animosity against me, exclaimed loudly in the theatre next morning that it was a shame to take away an author’s pass like that, when he had richly earned it, and was even entitled to demand free seats for two, which proves the truth of the Italian proverb: ognun’ ama la giustizia in casa d’altrui*