X. QUEM TU, MELPOMENE 175

officers, Count Maison; the four others, much younger, chanced to be at home on vacation from their convent school: and we had happy family dinner with them, and mamma and the girls and a delightful old French gentleman, Mr. Badell, played afterwards at “la toilette de Madame” with me; only I couldn’t remember whether I was the necklace or the garters; and then Clotilde and Cécile played “les Echos” and other fascinations of dancemelody,- only I couldn’t dance; and at last Elise had to take pity on me as above described. But the best, if not the largest, part of the conversation among the elders was of the recent death of Bellini,¹ the sorrow of all Paris for him, and the power with which his I Puritani was being rendered by the reigning four great singers for whom it was written.

202. It puzzles me that I have no recollection of any first sight and hearing of an opera. Not even, for that matter, of my first going to a theatre, though I was full twelve before being taken; and afterwards, it was a matter of intense rapture, of a common sort, to be taken to a pantomime. And I greatly enjoy theatre to this day-it is one of the pleasures that have least worn out; yet, while I remember Friar’s Crag at Derwentwater when I was four years old,² and the courtyard of our Paris inn at five,³ I have no memory whatever, and am a little proud to have none, of my first theatre. To be taken now at Paris to the feebly dramatic Puritani was no great joy to me; but I then heard, and it will always be a rare, and only once or twice in a century possible, thing to hear, four great musicians, all rightly to be called of genius, singing together, with sincere desire to assist each other, not eclipse; and to exhibit, not only their own power of singing, but the beauty of the music they sang.

¹ [Vincenzo Bellini, 1801-1835. I Puritani was written in 1834 for the Italian Opera in Paris, then comprising the four great singers, Grisi, Lablache, Rubini, and Tamburini.]

² [See Vol. V. p. 365; and compare Vol. II. p. 294.]

³ [See above, p. 104.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]