An Opera and Lady Grasmere/Book 1/Chapter 6

E have just accompanied young Harvey Merceron through as varied an entertainment as any that London affords the enterprising bachelor within so short a space of time; twelve hours, is not that the exact period which has elapsed between Hutchinson's breezy entry and the discovery of Isabella's providential exit?

We have seen Merceron blink, as the sailor drove him forth into the sunlight; we have seen him shake off lethargy and inaction, and run such riot as man too seldom enjoys. We have, all of us, looked on with envy; some few, even, have had courage to openly express approval of an example so successfully and consistently lawless. And, at the end, we have followed the prodigal home and listened with sceptic smile to his own impassioned version of events that, duly considered, are but the commonplaces of every-day experience—every-day experience properly footing it through an accustomed world.

And now, having heard him declaim, our smile relaxes. Some of us, indeed, are wisely shaking prudent heads, as they watch this youth, wrapped in a college blazer, devise an unlimited paradise upon so slender a foundation: quite undeterred is he by any thought of Providence; of Providence, that upright merchant, steadfastly exacting a fair and lawful price for even the least of his wares. No such inevitable payment does young Harvey Merceron contemplate.

Instead, has he not raised violent hands, nor are his eyes lowered in humility; instead, does he not wish to burn his ships, leave himself no refuge should his quest, his conjurations, have proved futile. No lap wherein to hide his face should he return empty-handed does he reserve, not even such solace as might have afforded him Isabella.

Let us hear more of Isabella; for is she not a something vital, a strip, several strips, a reach, upon her master's pathway? Were not she and Horatio Sopwith sole diversions of the hermit Merceron—the Merceron of yesterday?

Six years had passed since Harvey left his school and went up to Oxford. As a youth he was remarkable for the largeness of his ambitions. Even when newly arrived at the University which was to give him his musical degree, the sad history of Isabella and Lorenzo had attracted him as a fitting subject for his first enterprise. The story contained all the elements of grand opera, seemed manifestly designed to furnish a music-drama of the highest order. He resolved upon attacking it so soon as he should be done with examiners, as leisure and serious working days lay before him. Meanwhile, he was content to discuss his plans with Sopwith. He had sometimes hesitated between Isabella and Francesca of Rimini. They were both subjects eminently suitable: Wagner would most certainly have treated both of them had he not been otherwise employed; and what was good enough for Wagner was assuredly of sufficient importance to merit the attention of that master's admiring student, Harvey Merceron to wit. Sopwith had been intelligently sympathetic, had listened, keenly interested in either undertaking.

Sopwith and Harvey were the only men of their year reading for a musical degree at their particular college, and thus, a common programme had thrown them together from the outset. Later, they had worked together, had joined the same clubs, attended the same lectures, grinned at the same tobacconist's daughter, played the same games, and, finally, had been examined side by side and had received their degrees upon the same morning. Sopwith, a smart enough youth, with gifts more receptive than imaginative, was glad to profit by this constant intercourse with a man of such rare instinctive faculty and innate vocation; for he had speedily recognised in Merceron certain generous though undisciplined forces which no don or professional teacher lavished in equal measure. Harvey was to Sopwith a chronic source of infection; and he, for his part, was pleased at having found so willing a listener, was gratified by the other's implied acceptance of himself as leader in their joint undertakings; admitted, too, Sopwith's practical outlook and good sense, and their value as a corrective to his own more fiery temperament. The two men, thus admirably assorted, were constantly together; and, later on, when they both resettled themselves in London, this friendship, begun up at the 'Varsity, prospered and grew venerable.

Even at their earliest meetings had Merceron and Sopwith discussed the merits of Isabella and Francesca of Rimini. The themes, they had agreed, were nearly identical; and Merceron, enlarging on this point, had roundly asserted that "You've only got to alter your libretto, and one score would almost do for the pair of them—especially in the second act, and it's the second act that takes the most doing," he had sagely added. Harvey, at that time, conceived all his operas in three acts, with the climax, amorous for the most part, in the middle one.

"Both deal with clandestine love, clandestine meetings, and violent death—look here, Sopwith, you take one, and I'll do the other?" he had remarked upon another and similar occasion.

"But mustn't we begin at the beginning?—and an opera's rather in the middle," replied the soberer Sopwith.

"The beginning is where one begins, and, if we begin in the middle, it's all right," retorted Merceron, logical for once. "How would King Lear or The Cenci suit you?" he proposed after an interval.

"I think I'll get that degree first, if you don't mind," from Sopwith.

This made Harvey laugh.

On going down from Oxford and moving into the Down Street Chambers, he had definitely decided upon handling the story of the unfortunate Isabella. It was simpler than any of the others, and the second act gave him a like opportunity; which, after all, was the main consideration.

Sopwith, who had taken an even better degree than Merceron, set up for himself in one of a deserted-looking row of houses that formed part of a cul-de-sac which bewildered the straggler into Bloomsbury. He had but a small allowance, just sufficent [sic] to manage upon if carefully expended, and rooms in this loose end of a thoroughfare were cheap and spacious, their tenants unrestricted.

Merceron, thus safely installed, had at once proceeded to shut himself up with Isabella. His libretto he attended to in person; he had some literary ability, and the notion of any outsider interposing between himself and his beloved work hardly appealed to him. Sopwith, he thought, would prove a sufficient check to any extravagance, and was, besides, a familiar worker in the same field.

Months passed, and Merceron remained deep in his labours, with an occasional visit from his brother-musician or a run down to Hertfordshire to see his people for sole distractions. He lost touch with his other Oxford friends; and as the work grew, and he became more and more immersed, the last social links, rites, and observances were dropped, and Merceron, happily absorbed, stood alone in London with only Isabella, the near Park, and Sopwith left to him—the world forgetting, by the world forgot.

Sopwith, who came in regularly to compare notes and see how Isabella was progressing, was always a welcome visitor. He would listen with an unfailing patience while Merceron ran over the latest additions to the pile of manuscript, or explained how these results had been obtained, or, as was often the case, had not been obtained. Sopwith's constancy had its reward; for, was not the outcome of all this eager experiment and labour entirely at his service? He meanwhile, though an interested spectator, was content with a less soaring ambition, devoted, indeed, a certain portion of his time and talents to the composition of settings for the metrical effusions of wealthy amateurs. Such patrons paid him well for his trouble, and insisted that their names should appear in large type on the cover of songs, the cost of whose publication they also defrayed. This arrangement Sopwith not only countenanced, but courted into the bargain. He also went much to other people's houses, urging Merceron to do the same.

"How do you think you are going to get Isabella put on, if you don't know people?" Sopwith would exclaim when Merceron ignored these precepts. He expounded further, "It's all interest. Merit be blowed; you 've got to know people first, you 've got to get somebody influential to take you up and make people talk about you. Look at So-and-so and So-and-so," and here he would rattle off half-a-dozen names well known in the musical world.

"But I'm not So-and-so and So-and-so," Merceron would reply unmoved.

Sopwith, however, only shook his head. "You 've got to get yourself talked about," he insisted, "so that everybody knows who you are, and then when anybody wants any music they come to you, even if they've never heard a bar of your work. They 've heard your name, and that's all they want. In England, people don't know much about these things, and music is just like soap or patent medicine."

"But we 're going to change all that," said Harvey.

"Not just now, old chap. And just now people are buying the brand they see and hear most—about and I'm taking precious care they hear a deal about Horatio Sopwith!"

The author of these remarks was in so far right, that when Isabella neared completion Merceron's was a name unknown, while Horatio Sopwith's songs were in evidence at all the principal music-sellers—so much so, that their composer was enabled to occupy and furnish a cosy flat situate in Bayswater. Occasionally, one of these compositions would catch Merceron's eye as he passed a shop-window, and once or twice he had entered and purchased, run rapidly over the setting and marvelled at Sopwith's lack of courage. A reminiscence, always a reminiscence, some sort of a borrowing or another, were these trifles. He had chaffed Sopwith about these variations on the familiar, but the latter had only shrugged his shoulders.

"What am I to do?" he would explain. "I'm not independent like you are, so I can't afford to refuse the things; and besides, nobody knows the difference."

Merceron looked reproval—this was indeed degeneracy.

"My dear boy," returned Sopwith, "I can't afford to waste time doing original drawing-room songs and comic-opera inlays for the idiots. You wait till I 've a chance of choosing my own work, and then I 'll astonish you; but now" and the speaker, perfectly dressed in the latest of late fashions, correct even to the pearl-headed pins that kept his necktie in position, would proceed to deplore his lugubrious circumstances and the straitened resources which condemned him to such a present state of unworthy drudgery.

And so through these three years the pair of them had progressed, each in his own way; Merceron going deeper and ever deeper into his work, discovering technical and tone secrets which no Oxford or other don has yet imparted, learning day for day in that most personal and thorough of all universities—Experience. So that when first he appears in these pages, with Isabella well behind him, he might really have begun to compose something noways discreditable. Doubt came to him and fear, often and often again, as he went on thus blindly with his task, caring little, dreaming little of all that lay beyond; but doubt and fear were courageously swept aside or smiled over; and when Sopwith paid his weekly call and sat listening with unconcealed admiration to these new pages, the reward was sufficing and Merceron dared continue.

Isabella drew towards its close, and now Sopwith's visits grew scarcer.

"The opera season is on," he explained, "and I'm going to make hay." He had met the impresario, was trying hard to arouse that worthy's interest; and he mentioned also the name of a great lady, one who reigned supreme in the musical world, and whom he fancied he had quite won over to his side. His chance had come at last; he would turn out no more songs and waltzes and here the pair of them shuddered—polkas! Not only might he engage in something lofty, but he would stand a fair chance of getting his work produced, and that without delay.

And now the impresario figured constantly in his conversation, partnered by that great lady who was able to move mountains—Sopwith had evidently become a shadow stalking this all-important functionary and his exerciser from bed to board and backwards. He now spoke seriously of beginning his magnum opus.

"Why don't you start now?" cried Harvey, delighted at the change, "now—and do take one of our subjects, the ones we used to talk over at Oxford, Francesca or King Lear or The Cenci—why not Francesca? The second act is just like mine, you know, and it 'll be such fun to compare, and I can help you a bit—you see, I 've nearly got mine behind me!"

And then and there it was agreed that Sopwith was "to tackle Francesca."

It was about this time that the finale of Isabella was set down, under these conditions, in this utter quiet. Upon it had followed three weeks of helpless idling, during which Merceron had tossed anchorless, restless and yet without definite pursuit or object, till there arose that hot July afternoon which saw Hutchinson enter his chambers, drag him out of doors, plunge with him into that larger world which he had half forgotten—to the foundering of all his plans and philosophies.