by Rebecca West
‘If he could get one,’ added Oliver, ‘which is doubtful. You see, he has much against him. It is impossible to collect money for him in Switzerland or Germany or France, because his earlier compositions aroused keen controversy and were widely discussed, and were in fact quite worthless. They were cheap and nasty experiments in atonality.’
‘Tchk, tchk,’ said Miss Beevor, looking across at Mary and me, over her tea-cup. She had made the journey all the way from Mendelssohn and Massenet to Debussy and Ravel and Fauré, and even to Poulenc, under pressure from our family, but she liked sometimes to make the point that travel can take one too far, that it may land one among the head-hunters.
‘The performance of these horrors had given him the reputation of a charlatan, whom nobody was going to be anxious to maintain. Moreover,’ said Oliver, a knot of trouble appearing on his forehead, ‘he is a violent and irrational man.’
‘Oh, tchk, tchk,’ said Miss Beevor. She would have made a superb accompanist. ‘But perhaps it is part of his illness.’
‘No,’ said Oliver sadly. ‘He is just one of those people born with a taste for hurting other people. He enjoys contriving monstrous situations without issue. The last thing he did, which makes it impossible to collect money for him in Switzerland now and will make it impossible at any future time, I think, was quite bad. The wife of a rich industrialist, a Madame Kehl, who was herself quite a good musician, persuaded her husband, though he detested music, to subsidise Jasperl. But after a couple of years of this, it seemed to Jasperl that in giving him this money Kehl was showing signs of bourgeois complacency not to be borne. He also began to feel deep pity for Madame Kehl, whom he saw as tied to this bourgeois brute so insensible as to have kept him for two years, and he ended by imagining that he was in love with her. This was a pity from every point of view. He had a wife himself, and a mistress, and he had taken the mistress - and this is what makes collecting money for him anywhere in central Europe quite difficult - from a man called Pfleister who is one of the best known and best liked and most influential of German conductors.’
‘Oh, tchk, tchk, tchk,’ said Miss Beevor.
‘His next step,’ said Oliver, with increasing gloom, ‘was to write a letter to Kehl refusing to accept any further benefits from a source so degraded, and expressing in inflamed terms his passion for Madame Kehl. And the trouble is that his genius got into this letter. He is a genius, you know. That is why I want Rose to play this sonata at Barbados Hall. He is a great genius. And, as I say, some of his genius got into this letter. Kehl was not only infuriated by it, he could not help believing what was said in it. Naturally this made him anxious to believe the worst of Jasperl, and he ran round Switzerland asking various critics and musicians what this chap was really like, and they all said that he had not a scrap of talent. They were quite right in saying so, on the basis of all they’d heard of his work. For those earlier compositions, they really were jackassery.’
‘Mmm,’ purred Miss Beevor.
‘The trouble was that Kehl drew from these quite honest and reasonable opinions a totally false conclusion. He knew his wife was really musical, and he thought the only reason she could have had for getting him to support Jasperl was because she was in love with him, since every musician he asked told him that the man was a charlatan. As she had never had any personal liking for Jasperl, and had indeed come to detest him during the period when she had to hand over her husband’s cheques to him, I imagine she could not have denied the charge more strongly. But there was that letter of genius between them. Ultimately they separated.’
‘Why do you take any trouble about this horrid man?’ asked Miss Beevor.
‘Because just about this time he began to write good music. He threw overboard his nationality.’
‘Ah, he found his keys,’ exclaimed Miss Beevor in rapture; and though this is an accurate enough rendering of a return to normality it made us all laugh.
Oliver went on, ‘He wrote a symphony, a violin concerto, and an opera which proved that he was a genius beyond all doubt. I think he may be better than Bartók.’
‘Well, isn’t he all right now?’ asked Mary.
‘No,’ sighed Oliver. ‘He specialises in never being all right. His symphony is so long that it is almost impossible to play it. A watch-manufacturer finally put up the money to get it performed in Geneva, and they started it much earlier than most concerts, but all except a handful of the audience had to go home long before it was finished, I think it went on till well after midnight. But that handful went mad about it, they were so excited about it they walked about the town singing and cheering until the police ran them in.’
‘I should have enjoyed doing that,’ said Miss Beevor, her glasses shining. ‘Think of hearing a piece of music that seemed like a revelation, and being so excited that you had to walk about making a noise in the streets. I dare say some of them didn’t even go to bed. Dear me, girls, it all makes me think of your dear Mamma.’
‘I wasn’t able to go to bed for hours after I had read the score,’ said Oliver. ‘But all the same the length writes the symphony off as a way of spreading Jasperl’s name and fame. The violin concerto is also too long, that matters a lot, for it is horribly difficult. So difficult that I think few soloists would risk it even if it were normal length.’
‘And the opera?’ I asked.
‘Oh, it is too short. It also has an extremely disagreeable libretto by a German poet. The very heavy principal part is written for a little girl of ten, which in itself raises a serious musical problem. But apart from that what happens to her is enough to keep the opera out of any opera-house. She is adopted by the childless wife of a farmer in Silesia, and the farmer rapes her in a hay-loft. An idiot farm-labourer informs the wife of what is going on, and she climbs the ladder and sets fire to the hay. She and her husband and her child are burned to death, and the curtain falls on a crowd of villagers rushing in and falsely concluding that the idiot farm-labourer is guilty of the crime and lynching him.’
‘But how unnecessary!’ breathed Miss Beevor.
‘Indeed, indeed, how unnecessary,’ agreed Oliver. ‘But the orchestration of the lynching is sublime. All this, however, gets Jasperl no further. These compositions cannot be performed, as you see, and it is difficult to read the scores. They have not been printed. It will be difficult to get them published, since Jasperl has this reputation of an excessively backward member of the avant-garde. It is hard even to read them in manuscript, for he copies his work himself, very inaccurately, and often refuses to lend them to those few who are interested, on the ground that they are unworthy. So there is nothing to do but collect some money for him, some of which he can spend on publishing these works, and maintaining him in the hope that he writes some more which will be easier to perform. And that is why I am taking Rose down to Barbados Hall.’
‘Why?’ I asked. ‘Does it belong to somebody very rich?’
‘No, no. The Mortlakes have all they can do to keep the pediment and cupola over their heads, the wolf from the colonnade. But somebody rich will be there. The Mortlakes have to give this concert for some charity that is dear to royalty, I forget why. All sorts of, people who have been at Goodwood are going to it. And one of them is Lady Southways. She is an example of the connection between love and music of which we have often talked before.’
At that time a curious pattern of musical susceptibility was appearing among the women of the upper classes. In an earlier generation the most respectable peeresses and bankers’ wives played a tutelary part towards music; they were ranged in the boxes round Covent Garden opera-house as if virtue had an acoustic value. Now such a part was played by wealthy women with many lovers, who turned to music as soon as age began to take their lovers from them. It did no harm, though it was odd, after a concert to find that Beethoven and oneself had been for some members of the audience acting as surrogate for the duke who was the great lover of our day.
But it made Miss Beevor angry. ‘I call it d
isgusting. I read in the newspapers of Lady This and Lady That getting divorced again and again, and after a year or two there they are, popping up to tell Mary how wonderful her Skriabin is and telling how Stravinsky is, and what impudence and hypocrisy that is, pretending to understand always the most difficult music, when they have spent so much of their time in ways that cannot have helped on their musical education. And anyway it is all wrong. Music should be so elevating.’
‘But so is love-making,’ laughed Oliver.
It was strange to think that of the four people in the room only Oliver knew what it was like to make love.
He went on, ‘You are too hard on them, Miss Beevor. They are good old girls, only not at all vegetarian. And there is a similarity between love and music that makes them very generous in a certain direction. You must have noticed that there are really very few famous composers, compared with the number of famous authors and painters. The composers that are known to the mutt in the street are a very few - Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Handel, Haydn, Chopin, Mendelssohn, Schubert, Schumann, Wagner, Bizet, Puccini, Elgar, you have the lot. It is a short list. We know more but they don’t. And there are apparently only a few great lovers, for when I ask about the pasts of my particular old girls, I am always told the same names.’ He mentioned the active duke, and gave other men. ‘It is a short list too, and I suppose it was a great credit to add a name to it. That Armenian painter who is going round London with every edible peeress, if you know what I mean, I suppose the first woman to discover his charm feels a certain pride. I always find these women take a great pleasure in putting up money for unknown composers, and I am sure they must be fascinated by the idea of adding a new name to a short list, associated with excitement and prestige. And that is how I have got hold of Lady Southways, who has promised to give me quite a reasonable amount of money for Jasperl, if she likes his music.’
‘But does she know one note from another?’ I asked.
‘Oh, yes,’ he said, ‘I stayed with her in Scotland, when they performed my opera, The Useless Sacrifice, at Glasgow. She has a beautiful music-room, looking out on a firth, and she plays a great deal. One might say that her hands are always wandering over the keys; and really often they wander in directions which indicate some musical feeling. For example, when I was there she was constantly playing the piano score of Turandot, and all the wrong notes had the effect of making it sound more like Madam Butterfly than it actually is. Surely there is a certain sort of musical feeling there? It was, to be truthful, just that feat of transposition that gave me the idea that Rose and Martin Allen should play this sonata of Jasperl’s at Barbados Hall.’
Mary interrupted. ‘You are taking another slice of cherry cake, Oliver?’
‘Well, yes, I was,’ said Oliver.
‘But you crumble all the cake and pick out the cherries,’ said Mary. ‘That is absurd. The cake is quite good, I will go down and get Cook to give me some crystallised cherries, and you can eat as many of them as you like, without wasting the cake.’
When she had left the room, Oliver said, ‘How can it be that a sensitive woman like Mary does not see that eating crystallised cherries by themselves would not be at all the same thing as picking them out of a cake? But that is really the reason why I asked you and not Mary to play this sonata with Martin. I had better explain first why I asked Martin. This is one of the easiest of Jasperl’s compositions to understand, and dear Martin plays everything so that it sounds as if it were Brahms. The result should be something that will enchant the ears of Lady Southways. But I couldn’t trust Mary to be my accomplice in such a - well, one might call it such a light-fingered business. But you, Rose, you are a realist. You won’t object to taking part in what is really a parlour game, “In the manner of”, I think it’s called, when there’s such a good object in view. You won’t mind just for once playing the piano in the manner of Martin Allen, in order to keep Jasperl going.’
Just then Mary brought in the cherries, and he ate some out of politeness, but of course I quite saw it was not the same thing. And Kate followed Mary in to tell her so. She was quite cross. ‘I made the cake,’ she said, ‘and if anybody should mind your picking out the cherries I should, and I do not mind at all. They are quite different after they have been cooked with all the good butter and eggs and sugar. Anyway people sometimes like to push something away and say, “No, I will not have that.” When I take Miss Beevor her cup of milk when she is in her bed she always takes the skin off and says, “Ugh” and rattles her spoon on the saucer to get rid of it. But she wouldn’t like it if I took the skin off the milk before I brought it to her, she would not know where she was.’
‘Oh, I’m sure I wouldn’t mind,’ said Miss Beevor, and Kate said firmly, ‘Yes, you would, Madam.’ But Mary’s eyes widened and she laughed and exclaimed, ‘How stupid I am!’ It struck coldly through me that she was taking too much pleasure in this gloss on the process of rejection. It was as if I had suddenly seen the first signs that she was growing deaf and blind. We were not a big enough household to keep ourselves in perfect health. Kate and Miss Beevor were better than just Kate and me; but Mamma and Richard Quin should not have died, Rosamund should not have gone away.
‘How kind you always are to me, Kate!’ said Oliver. ‘You know I see through you, you are only teaching the children that they must let the little boy that has come to tea do anything he likes. I am really at fault, Mary was right, it was intolerable to crumble such a lovely cake. But forgive me, and help me: I want you and Miss Beevor to tell me what you think of this photograph of Jasperl. I took it on the sanatorium veranda. I wondered if I should send it to Lady Southways.’
Kate went behind Miss Beevor’s chair and they both peered at it.
‘Oh, not a nice face,’ said Miss Beevor. ‘Not a nice face at all.’
‘He is as cold and sharp as those snow peaks in the background,’ said Kate.
‘I do not think I would send this to Lady Southways,’ said Miss Beevor. ‘From what you say, she should be experienced in reading men’s faces, if anyone is.’ She handed the photograph back to Oliver and sat back, rubbing her glasses clean of the image they had just magnified. ‘But, you know,’ she broke out, ‘surely some of this modern music is really degrading and horrible.’
‘You forget,’ said Oliver with a smile, putting the photograph back in his wallet, ‘he has found his keys.’
‘And the man who fetches the laundry looks much the same,’ said Kate. ‘No modern music for him but he is a nasty beast.’
‘Let me see what he is like,’ I demanded. But Oliver did not seem to hear me, and said, ‘You see, Rose, to impress Lady Southways I have to rely solely on you and Martin doing your best at Barbados Hall.’ From his expression I knew what was now going to happen. Abruptly he stood up and said goodbye and left us. That was what always spoiled his visits, he suddenly got tired of us and went away.
I found our rehearsals amusing, though I felt ashamed, when I looked at Martin Allen’s good, kind, trusting face, which always, when he was playing, although he was entirely masculine, bore the expression of a woman tending domestic apparatus such as a sewing machine or a mangle. He got the sonata back into the nineteenth century all right, as he would have got the selvage seamed, the pillowcases fit for drying. But he did not approve of the enterprise, though he did not understand his own dubious aesthetic part in it.
‘What is the good of this?’ he asked Oliver, cutting in on his praise for our first finished account of the sonata. ‘You know that Jasperl will bitch everything up the first time he meets Lady Southways.’
‘Perhaps he never will see Lady Southways,’ said Oliver. ‘I doubt if she will go to Switzerland much now. She is too old for winter sports. I have thought of everything. And if she invites Jasperl to England, he will probably get into some altercation with the immigration officers and not be allowed to land. Oh, it should be possible to spin the thing along for a year, or even two years. And that will be perfect for Jasperl.’
Martin asked abruptly,. ‘Where is Madame Kehl?’
‘Living alone in a large villa in one of those little towns between Geneva and Lausanne, charming country but baked without salt.’
‘Should we not,’ said Martin, ‘be thinking out something that would be perfect for Madame Kehl?’
‘Nothing can be perfect for her now,’ said Oliver. ‘All one can do is to get some more music out of Jasperl.’
I said, ‘But how old is Madame Kehl? She does not sound as if she had come to the end of her life. She was young enough for her husband to be jealous of her, to think it possible that she might have had a love affair with Jasperl. Probably she will fall in love again, and forget both of them.’
The two men did not like me saying this. They did not take it as a simple statement of fact, and after a second laughed, as if I had made a pleasing show of spirit, a gallant feminist protest against unalterable conditions favouring the male. I thought how little I liked men, and said, not too agreeably, ‘Shall we try the sonata again? The second movement is still quite rough.’
The rehearsal had to stop a week before the charity concert, for Martin had to go off to run a music summer school. But this was in the West Country too, so we arranged that Oliver and I should go down to Barbados Hall the night before the concert, and meet Martin there, and spend the evening in a rehearsal of the Jasperl sonata. Lady Mortlake wrote all three of us letters saying she would be so glad to have us, she had admired us all for years, and although we knew she had probably not done so, she obviously had had the intention of being nice, all over four pages.
Oliver and I met on the platform at Waterloo, just about two o’clock. We had to take a very slow train, for the faster ones did not stop at the junction where we had to change to get to Barbados Hall. We arranged not to eat before we started, and I brought a luncheon-basket, with some of Kate’s special sandwiches, the ones with chopped chicken mixed with mild curry sauce, and smoked cod’s roe beaten up with lemon and a very little whipped cream, and some cherry cake, so that Oliver could eat it the way he liked. At first we talked about some records that a young American composer had sent us both, tone poems about the Great Lakes, very nice orchestration that showed he had studied in Paris, but nothing much to say, though that might come. Then we passed a wonderful nursery garden, and the train ran across Maidenhead Bridge, and we looked down on the reach where Queenie had found no houseboats, and I was too miserable to speak.