The Weekly News and Visitors' Chronicle for Colwyn Bay Colwyn Llandrillo Conway Deganwy and Neighbourhood

Tribute to the Late M. Jules Riviere. REV. ARTHUR MURSELL ON THE DOYEN OF CONDUCTORS. Recently, at the Victoria Pavilion, the Rev. Arthur Mursell, of London, gave an eloquent lecture on Jules Riviere," and, with the lec- turer's permission, we have now great pleasure in reproducing "an unmusical man's tribute to a musician," which charmed all who heard it. In the course of the lecture, Mr. Mursell said I hope I may reckon on the kindness of my audience to discern between audacity and impu- dence. To the first I plead guilty to the second, not. It may seem audacious when I confess to know absolutely nothing of music; to being capable of reading a note on the gamut, that I should discourse on a musician, and such a musician as Jules Riviere. But I trust it will be set down as a homage to the magnetism of his personality that an outsider should dare to hang a wreath on such an urn. The procession of pilgrims to his grave amongst these valleys by the silver sea will be appropriately led by those who were distinguished in his magic art; by the maestros and impressarios whose batons have led orchestras, and the artistes whose voices or instruments have thrilled the crowd or charmed the college. But it will be joined by simple countrymen and little children, whose wonder he has moved, and whose holiday he has brightened. I only ask a place in the rear rank of the cortege, that I may come with the young- sters who wished his coat contained a thousand button-holes, that their rose or lily might find room upon his dress, as the humblest daisy ever found it in his heart. They say he was a French- man. But he does not say so. He speaks of a little town called Nogent sur Seine. And he tells us he loves France and Frenchmen. But he tells us, too, how dear our island soil became to him, and how, without becoming a whit less French, ne became affectionately and wholly British. And we could well believe it when we saw how proudly he stood, upright, under the flowery grotto that British children had broidered in his honour, as he led his incom- parable band, and how he revelled in the storm of bon-bons and confetti which youth and beauty would shower on his head. It is not every leader who wades through roses to his rostrum, whose baton buds like Aaron's rod, or whose full-dress is supplied, not by the tailor, but the gardener, and woven by children from the Eden of their love. A man who elicits tributes such as these is more than a musician. There is nature as well as art about him. His heart, as well as his harp, was strung to concert pitch. Other leaders have kept tune with crispness and precision, and when the last note has died away the verdict has been Perfect." But it has been the perfection of the clear-cut ice, the crystal facit of technique. These artists have marked the lumps with their wands this angel beat it with his wings. The first time I saw him was as he stepped upon his orchestra at Llandudno a few years ago. There was something so un- conventional, so different from all conductors I had ever seen, that even my Bohemian attention was at once arrested. I had seen many a leader who looked like a Jack in the box, but never till now one who looked like a Jack in the Green. I looked for a Maypole, and expected to see him begin to dance round it; for he was covered with flowers. When he faced the audience and made his bow, it was like a moving conservatory, and his wand was WREATHED WITH ROSES. They soon fell off in the energy of his beat: and then it looked as if the flowers were conscious of the music, and were waking to the song. Then I heard some pretty little girls near me whisper- ing (not all little, by the way, though of course all pretty) and one said, I can see my posey," it is in the third button-hole, on the left side of his coat." And another said, I see my car- nations on the right side of the collar." A third picked out her bouquet round his neck, and a fourth detected her nosegay n,ar his feet. And when he turned to face the orchestra some more fair damsels saw their tributes in a great scarf of garlands flowing down his back. Then there was a wreath for his head which he put on to please his worshippers, fearless of earwigs, and disdainful of caterpillars. And his chair was canopied, and his platform carpeted with flowers presented by the fair. Some men would have thought about their dignity, others would have thought about their tailor; but it did not need a tailor to make Riviere dignified, and it was the coronation of devotion which crowned him as a king. If I could have had the decking of his coat, I think I could have filled all its button- holes with a special tribute. I would have given him one for his patriotism. I mean his love for his own fatherland. For he loved France, though she gave a stormy rocking to his cradle. The wing of war was spread over his cot. The allies were encamped but a few miles from his village birthplace while Napoleon sulked in the very town where he first saw the light. His grandfather, who owned the chief hotel, in which Napoleon had lodged, was murdered by the Prussians and the hotel, where his mother was born, was set aflame. After he had given me a copy of his autobiography, I used to pic- ture the contrast between his face as it smiled on his admirers, and as it had been a week before during his holiday in France, as it looked down into the well where his grandfather was hurled. For he always paid a pious pilgrimage to that sad spot. We little dream what the heart which beats nearest us is supressing under the smiles of its good nature. The tendrils of this first tribute of floral homage twine round France, and show his love to his native land as he tells of the beauty of the little town of Aix en Othe, in whose High Street he was born on Nov. 6th. 1819. But his memories of his birth-place must have been indistinct, for slow village life did not suit his mother's energy, and at three years of age he was taken to Paris, where a little sister Was born, and died in infancy, to his intense distress. His mother's_ piety brought her into Intimacy with the cure of a church, who made and learned the mastery of violin and guitar. and learned the mastery of the violin and guitar. Then he learned the piano, and tried for a v<icancy at Notre Dame, but, though the best reader, his voice had not sufficient power. TWO DRAMATIC SCENES. This same maternal -iety conceived an ambi- fron for a priestly career for the son, so he Went to a clerical seminary, and confessed him- self to a kind old priest, who gave him ready shrift for a fluently recited list of sins. It was like a Saturday tub for the conscience, where whitewash was substitued for Brown Windsor. is musical bent prevailed but as it brought hitn into contact with richer lads than himself he was fain to borrow another boy's clothes and being caught in the act of returning the bor- rowed plumage, his mother took him out for a mile on the Charenton Road, and handing him a little money, and a basket of food, sent him adrift at fourteen years of age, and left him to his luck. He was appointed by a farmer to keep watch over his cows, and, getting leave to play his violin as he watched his flock, the farmer was struck by his intelligence and taste, and promoted his return to Paris, where he cut the priesthood, and surrendered his prospects with the prophets, for a stall amongst the seraphim: Returning after a holiday in his native place to Paris he composed a set of quadrilles, and a successful programme of waltzes. The names of Musard, and of the more notorious Jullien, ann car now upon the scene. Jullien played the piccolo till he almost made it speak as well as squeak. He studied weird effects; and his energy made him almost ubiquitous. A sen- tence of exile from his own land made him for twenty years a resident in England, where his popularity was phenomenal; but on his return to France he found himself neglected and un- known, and in a fit of poverty and wounded pride he took his life. Meanwhile our hero, who had trusted, that his poor eyesight might exempt him from conscription, after passing through the camps of Verdun and Chalons he narrowly escaped service in Africa. His first marriage, which was not auspicious, terminated his residence in France, and he transferred his career to our country, where after some well- borne struggles, he became the popular leader of the band at Cremorne. He deepened his hold upon our people at the Adelphi, the Alhambra, and at Covent Garden, and honours and testi- monials were showered upon him. If we may congratulate ourselves as Englishmen on his loyalty to our land, we may congratulate him upon the proof he gave of it, by the tie he formed, and the link which joined him with our British race. He speaks of being in life's autumn when his heart succumbed to the charm of a flower in its spring. This only showed how the wisdom of maturity guided his choice. And though he is proclaimed to the world as an un- defeated man," his defeat by the graces of an English maiden was one of the realest victories of his great career. If he was not an English- man born, he was an Englishman true true to his adopted land; assimilating what is sterling in our character, and giving us in exchange much of the refinement, grace, and picturesqueness of his own. The line is then between art and aberration and the nity which our hero shows for those who glide into the latter through genius, disappointment, or both combined, is TOUCHING AND TENDER in the extreme. High tributes were paid to M. Riviere by his confreres while he was leader of the Covent Garden Band, and the graceful muse of Mon. Planchi gives expression to their ad- miration for his talent and their love for him- self. He had much pluck and self-control; and when his stock of instruments were all destroyed by fire on the King's Road, Chelsea, while con- veying them back after obliging a friend at a distance, he turned up smiling at Cremorne the same night as if nothing had occurred. Artists, as a class, are guileless and unworldly and Mons. Riviere was a striking example of this. But his rigid canons of honour and of justice towards his employers imparted a scrupulosity and exact- ness to his dealings which is missed in others of his tribe. However much he was imposed upon himself, he was sensitive to a fault in his obligations to others. It was in 1878 that his complications with the persistent, and, in many ways accomplished, Mrs. Weldon began, and the forbearing and considerate manner in which he touches this trying episode in his biography is an instance of his natural chivalry which enhances our homage and esteem. But the vision with which our narrative commenced re- turns as we close the page. We see him no longer amongst Cockney rakes at tea gardens, or in the blaze season at opera and bal masque but down by the silver sea, among the tourists and the children, supplementing the music of nature with the voices of his incomparable art. The lips of his instruments were the leaves of flowers, and the airs which he discoursed sailed on the breath of roses. The first word the tourist to Llandudno read was "Riviere," in big letters on the roof of his own concert hall, as he alighted from the train, and the magic of the name dis- pelled the ennui of the journey, and opened a prospect of festival and delight. It is not my task to trace the steps by which his way was paved from one end of the esplanade to the other. I only know he carried the homage of artists and the love of children with him, and, had he built the temple of his genius on the Orme's Head or the summit of Snowdon, the tribes would have pursued him, and the idola- tors would have come to worship. But he has climbed a higher mountain, and JOINED A NOBLER MINSTRELSY, and as fancy follows him we see the groups of winged children whom he loved awaiting the return of an old friend. There was more in him akin to heaven than earth. Some of us who plod and grovel, and to whom the scores of the seraphim are sealed books, must wait till our wings are nervous with the tension of eternity but such as he arrive at the flaming gate with wing already grown in tune with the wildest choruses of joy. Their spirts make the atmos- phere in which they live and while their sym- pathies unite with men, their genius holds them lonely and aloof. The glacier of the Rhone melts in the rays that touch the Alpine domes, and steals down the gorges till it forms into a torrent and leaps into the lake. But though its tawny touch lights on the purple lip of Teman's Lake, it will not lose itself in the catholic em- brace. The golden line lies like a highway through the blue, and the boatman knows and feels it like a friend. If he glides into its current he knows it is the river, and recognises the yellow Rhone amidst the liquid airs of Geneva as familiarly as if he were tumbling between his own green banks and pebbly reaches. Lake and river mingle, but they do not merge. Each keeps its personality. So with genius. It never spurns the general mass. It is in it, but not of it. As the skiff floats faster when it drifts into the current of the stream, so does the normal soul discern the magnetism of the spell of elevated art, and yield its powers to its charm. How generous musicians are I suppose it is possible for an artist to be mean;* but he sins against the instinct of his art. They ate. always: helping each other, or some good object. The number of lame dogs Jules Riviere has helped over a stile is legion. If they were all to bark at once we should be deafened. If they have tails to wag in heaven, there will be a wondrous wagging going on to greet him. When Alfred Bunn was manager at Covent Garden he fell into difficulties, and could not pay his staff. Sims Reeves was first tenor, and when the manager asked his troupe what he was to do, there was no Shylock from the poorest scene-shifter to the star to clamour his pound of flesh, but each baited their claim and was sorry for the manager. And when the man whose voice broke like a clarion on the crowd was told the tale, he only grasped the leader's hand and said, We'll work it round together. I will sing a month for nothing." And he did. And no one knew it. His own son did not know it till I told him. It had been such a thing of course to his great father that it had never been mentioned since his son was born. "How do I know it? I will tell you. Fifty years ago, while I was a student in Glasgow, I was intimate with a gentleman who taught, or tried to teach, me Hebrew. His name was Ben Barnet, and he was brother of John Barnet, the musician. Ben Barnet was Bunn's stage manager, and was present when the incident occurred. When I told it to Mons. Riviere, his eyes sparkled, and he said, I'm glad to have heard that; it's just like Reeves." And yet who has not heard a disappointed fellow in the gallery, when the too frequent apology was made, talk of idleness, intemperance, and a list of vices as long as his own tavern score, as being the cause of the default. Intemperance! A man like Sims Reeves could not be intem- [ perate. When I asked Mons. Riviere a question on that very subject he simply laughed, and said he was almost a martyr of sobriety, imposing abstinence upon himself almost to privation, lest he injure the voice with which he thrilled us all. And I saw our hero's eyes beam yet again when I ventured to tell him an incident I will also venture to tell you. I was a regular visitant in the later fifties to the Free Trade Hall, Manchester, and went one day with the manager of certain concerts when there had been a public outcry against Sims Reeves, who was announced to sing. A lady was in tears as we entered the little side room, but she said, Don't go, gentlemen," and seeing my sympa- thetic look she handed me a letter. Is it not too bad I don't mind their hissing him, he can soon conquer that. Hark Don't you hear the cheering?" Sims Reeves was just finishing a song, and the last note was followed by a shout that shook the building. It is these things that madden me." And I read an anonymous letter bidding her try to keep her husband sober. And Mrs. Reeves (for it was she) declared There's no gentler husband or happier home in England than mine." And the only time I saw Sims Reeves to speak to was as he stepped up to his wife and kissed her as the people were recalling him to the stage, as he mimicked the rolling and the hiccough of a drunken man, and told her to take her drunken husband home, after he had given them Tom Bowling," and My pretty Jane." But what a shame it is that scandal cannot find a toy less precious than an honest name to play at football with. I never believe a word I hear in disparagement of any public man in any walk of life. The dialogue is not long enough to cover the moral list that I have violated, according to the voice of rumour, and if a dwarf of my mean cubits is so starred with defamation, which of the giants shall 'scape whipping? But I never heard an unkind thing said of Mons. Riviere. I don't sudpose he has dodged the sleet of lies through which men have to push their way any more than his fraternity. But if we all touched his mark we should LIVE IN A SWEETER WORLD. And if, in hanging up this little outline of a gentle life and portrait of a higher character, amongst those who knew his living worth, and guard his sleeping ashes, I have avoided touch- ing rudely any wound that remains sensitive or sore with memory, or added to the pride of his associates by showing how his art, his genius, and his sweetness had a charm to soothe the savage breast of a Bohemian to whom music is a mystery, I shall be ever grateful that it was mine to stand in his own temple, and bring a poor man's tribute to the urn of Jules Riviere.