Page:Rolland - A musical tour through the land of the past.djvu/60

48 The urge to create was so tyrannical that it ended by isolating him from the rest of the world. "He never allowed himself to be interrupted by any futile visit" says Hawkins, "and his impatience to be delivered of the ideas which continually flooded his mind kept him almost always shut up." His brain was never idle; and whatever he might be doing, he was no longer conscious of his surroundings. He had a habit of speaking so loudly that everybody learned what he was thinking. And what exaltation, what tears, as he wrote! He sobbed aloud when he was composing the aria He was despised.—"I have heard it said" reports Shield, "that when his servant took him his chocolate in the morning he was often surprised to see him weeping and wetting with his tears the paper on which he was writing."—With regard to the Hallelujah chorus of the Messiah he himself cited the words of St. Paul: "Whether I was in my body or out of my body as I wrote it I know not. God knows."

This huge mass of flesh was shaken by fits of fury. He swore almost with every phrase. In the orchestra, "when his great white periwig was seen to quiver the musicians trembled." When his choirs were inattentive he had a way of shouting Chorus! at them in a terrible voice that made the public jump. Even at the rehearsals of his oratorios at Carlton House, before the Prince of Wales, if the Prince and Princess did not appear punctually he took no trouble to conceal his anger;