There is one other advantage in being possessed with a deaf-and-dumb devil, which, now that I am on the subject of compensation, I may as well mention. You are left out of the arena of fierce discussion and debate. You do not enter upon the lists wherefrom you would be sure to come off discomfited.
Of all reputations, a musical reputation seems the most shifting and uncertain; and of all rivalries, musical rivalries are the most prolific of heart-burnings and discomfort. Now, if I should sing or play, I should wish to sing and play well.
But what is well? Nancie in the village "singing-seats" stands head and shoulders above the rest, and wears her honors tranquilly, an authority at all rehearsals and serenades. But Anabella comes up from the town to spend Thanksgiving, and, without the least mitigation or remorse of voice, absolutely drowns out poor Nancie, who goes under, giving many signs. Yet she dies not unavenged, for Harriette sweeps down from the city, and immediately suspends the victorious Anabella from her aduncate nose, and carries all before her. Mysterious is the arrangement of the world. The last round of the ladder is not yet reached. To Madame Morlot, Harriette is a savage, une bete, without cultivation. "Oh, the dismal little fright! a thousand years of study would be useless; go, scour the floors;she has positively no voice." No voice, Madame Morlot?
Harriette, no voice,--who burst every ear-drum in the room last night with her howling and hooting, and made the stoutest heart tremble with fearful forebodings of what might come next? But Madame Morlot is not infallible, for Herr Driesbach sits shivering at the dreadful noises which Madame Morlot extorts from his sensitive and suffering piano, and at the necessity which lies upon him to go and congratulate her upon her performance. Ah! if his tortured conscience might but congratulate her and himself upon its close! And so the scale ascends. Hills on hills and Alps on Alps arise, and who shall mount the ultimate peak till all the world shall say, "Here reigns the Excellence"? I listen with pleasure to untutored Nancie till Anabella takes all the wind from her sails. Ithink the force of music can no further go than Madame Morlot, and, behold, Herr Driesbach has knocked out that underpinning.
I am bewildered, and I say, helplessly, "What shall I admire and be a la mode?" But if it is so disheartening to me, who am only a passive listener, what must be the agonies of the dramatis personae? "Hang it!" says Charles Lamb, "how I like to be liked, and what I do to be liked!" And do Nancie, Harriette, and Herr Driesbach like it any less? What shall avenge them for their spretae injuria formae? What can repay the hapless performer, who has performed her very best, for learning by terrible, indisputable indirections that her cherished and boasted Cremona is but a very second fiddle?
So, standing on the high ground of certain immunity from criticism and hostile judgment, I do not so much console myself as I do not stand in need of consolation. I rather give thanks for my mute and necessarily unoffending lips, and I shall go in great good-humor to Camilla's concert.
There are many different ways of going to a concert. You can be one of a party of fashionable people to whom music is a diversion, a pastime, an agreeable change from the assembly or the theatre. They applaud, they condemn, they criticise. They know all about it. Into such company as this, even I, whose poor old head is always getting itself wedged in where it has no business to be, have chanced to be thrown. This is torture.
My cue is to turn into the Irishman's echo, which always returned for his "How d'ye do?" a "Pretty well, thank you."I cling to the skirts of that member of the party who is agreed to have the best taste and echo his responses an octave higher.
If he sighs at the end of a song, I bring out my pocket-handkerchief. If he says "charming," I murmur "delicious." If he thinks it "exquisite," I pronounce it "enchanting." Where he is rapt in admiration, I go into a trance, and so shamble through the performances, miserable impostor that I am, and ten to one nobody finds out that I am a dunce, fit for treason, stratagem, and spoils. It is a great strain upon the mental powers, but it is wonderful to see how much may be accomplished, and what skill may be attained, by long practice.
Also one may go to a concert as a conductor with a single musical friend. By conductor I do not mean escort, but a magnetic conductor, rapture conductor, a fit medium through which to convey away his delight, so that he shall not become surcharged and explode. He does not take you for your pleasure, nor for his own, but for use. He desires some one to whom he can from time to time express his opinions and his enthusiasm, sure of an attentive listener,--since nothing is so pleasant as to see one's views welcomed. Now you cannot pretend that in such a case your listening is thoroughly honest. You are receptive of theories, criticisms, and reminiscences; but you would not like to be obliged to pass an examination on them afterwards. You do, it must be confessed, sometimes, in the midst of eloquent dissertations, strike out into little flowery by-paths of your own, quite foreign to the grand paved-ways along which your friend supposes he is so kind as to be leading you. But however digressive your mind may be, do not suffer your eyes to digress. Whatever may be the intensity of your ennui, endeavor to preserve an animated expression, and your success is complete. This is all that is necessary. You will never be called upon for notes or comments. Your little escapades will never be detected. It is not your opinions that were sought, nor your education that was to be furthered. You were only an escape-pipe, and your mission ceased when the soul of song fled and the gas was turned off. This, too, is all that can justly be demanded.
