第38章 CHAPTER XV(1)

THE remainder of the year '49 has left me nothing to tell.

For me, it was the inane life of that draff of Society - the young man-about-town: the tailor's, the haberdasher's, the bootmaker's, and trinket-maker's, young man; the dancing and 'hell'-frequenting young man; the young man of the 'Cider Cellars' and Piccadilly saloons; the valiant dove-slayer, the park-lounger, the young lady's young man - who puts his hat into mourning, and turns up his trousers because - because the other young man does ditto, ditto.

I had a share in the Guards' omnibus box at Covent Garden, with the privilege attached of going behind the scenes. Ah! that was a real pleasure. To listen night after night to Grisi and Mario, Alboni and Lablache, Viardot and Ronconi, Persiani and Tamburini, - and Jenny Lind too, though she was at the other house. And what an orchestra was Costa's - with Sainton leader, and Lindley and old Dragonetti, who together but alone, accompanied the RECITATIVE with their harmonious chords on 'cello and double-bass. Is singing a lost art? Or is that but a TEMPORIS ACTI question? We who heard those now silent voices fancy there are none to match them nowadays.

Certainly there are no dancers like Taglioni, and Cerito, and Fanny Elsler, and Carlotta Grisi.

After the opera and the ball, one finished the night at Vauxhall or Ranelagh; then as gay, and exactly the same, as they were when Miss Becky Sharpe and fat Jos supped there only five-and-thirty years before.

Except at the Opera, and the Philharmonic, and Exeter Hall, one rarely heard good music. Monsieur Jullien, that prince of musical mountebanks - the 'Prince of Waterloo,' as John Ella called him, was the first to popularise classical music at his promenade concerts, by tentatively introducing a single movement of a symphony here and there in the programme of his quadrilles and waltzes and music-hall songs.

Mr. Ella, too, furthered the movement with his Musical Union and quartett parties at Willis's Rooms, where Sainton and Cooper led alternately, and the incomparable Piatti and Hill made up the four. Here Ernst, Sivori, Vieuxtemps, and Bottesini, and Mesdames Schumann, Dulcken, Arabella Goddard, and all the famous virtuosi played their solos.

Great was the stimulus thus given by Ella's energy and enthusiasm. As a proof of what he had to contend with, and what he triumphed over, Halle's 'Life' may be quoted, where it says: 'When Mr. Ella asked me [this was in 1848] what I wished to play, and heard that it was one of Beethoven's pianoforte sonatas, he exclaimed "Impossible!" and endeavoured to demonstrate that they were not works to be played in public.' What seven-league boots the world has stridden in within the memory of living men!

John Ella himself led the second violins in Costa's band, and had begun life (so I have been told) as a pastry-cook. I knew both him and the wonderful little Frenchman 'at home.'

According to both, in their different ways, Beethoven and Mozart would have been lost to fame but for their heroic efforts to save them.