Various - "Myths and Legends of All Nations"

Arthur J. Rees - "The Hand in the Dark"

Thomas Babington Macaulay - "The History of England from the Accession of James II, Vol. 3"

Various - "Legend Land, Vol. 1"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Volume 14

E >> Elbert Hubbard >> Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Volume 14




To be born into such a family is a great blessing. The value of the
environment is shown in that all three of the sisters became
distinguished in literature. Two of them married men of intellect,
wealth and worth, and through the collaboration of these sisters, books
were produced that did for the plain people of Poland what Harriet
Martineau's books on sociology did for the people of England. Frederic
played and practised at the Lyceum where his father taught, and the
ambition of his parents was that he should grow up and take the place of
Professor of Music in the Lyceum. Adalbert Zevyny, one of the leading
pianists in the city, became attracted to the boy and took him as a
pupil, without pay.

The teacher soon became a little boastful of his precocious pupil, and
when there came a public concert for the benefit of the poor, we find
reference made to Chopin thus, "A child not yet eight years of age
played, and connoisseurs say he promises to replace Mozart." In reality
the boy was nearer twelve than eight, but his size and looks suggested
to the management the idea of plagiarizing, in advance, our honored
countryman, Phineas T. Barnum. Hence the announcement on the programs.

But now the nobility of the neighborhood began to send carriages for the
fair-haired lad, so he could play for their invited guests. Then came
snug little honorariums that soon replaced his patched-up wardrobe for
something more fashionable.

Frederic took all the applause quite as a matter of course, and on one
occasion, after he had played divinely, he asked a proud lady this
question, "How do you like my new collar?"

He was to the manner born, and the gentle blood of his mother formed him
as a fit companion for aristocrats.

These occasional musicales at the houses of the great made money matters
easier, and Frederic began to take lessons from Joseph Elsner, who
taught him the science of composition, and introduced him into the
deeper mysteries of music-making. Elsner, it was, more than any other
man, who forced the truth upon Chopin that he must play to satisfy
himself, and in composition be his own most exacting critic. In other
words, Elsner developed and strengthened in Chopin the artistic
conscience--that impulse which causes an artist to scorn doing anything
save his best.

From little excursions to neighboring towns and country houses about
Warsaw, Chopin now ventured farther away from home, chaperoned by his
friend, Prince Radziwill. He visited Berlin, Venice, Prague, Heidelberg,
and mingled on an absolute equality with the nobility. If they had
titles, he had talents. And his talents often made their decorations
sing small.

His modesty was witching, and while in public concerts his playing was
not pronounced enough to capture the gallery, yet in small gatherings he
won all hearts, and the fact that he played his own compositions made
him an added object of enthusiasm to the elect. Chopin arrived in Paris
when he was twenty-two years of age. It was not his intention to remain
more than a few weeks, but Paris was to be his home for eighteen
years--and then Pere la Chaise.

* * * * *

A woman who beholds her thirtieth birthday in sight, and girlhood gone,
is approaching a climacteric in her career. Flaubert has named
twenty-nine as the eventful year in the life of woman, and thirty-three
for men. Every normal woman craves love and tenderness--these are her
God-given right. If they have not come to her by the time the bloom is
fading from her cheeks, there is danger of her reaching out and
clutching for them. The strongest instinct in young girls is
self-protection--they fight on the defensive. But at thirty, women have
been known to grow a trifle anxious, just as did the Sabine women who
dispatched a messenger to the Romans asking this question, "How soon
does the program begin?"

And thus are conditions reversed, for it is the youth of twenty or so
who seeks conquest with fiery soul. Alexander was only nineteen when he
sighed for more worlds to conquer. He didn't have to wait long before he
found that this one had conquered him. Youth considers itself immortal,
and its powers without limit, but as a man approaches thirty he grows
economical of his resources and parsimonious of his emotions. Men of
thirty, or so, are apt to be coy.

And so one might say that it is around thirty that for the first time
the man and the woman meet on an equality, without sham, shame or
pretense. Before that time the average woman abounds in affectation and
untruth; the man is absurdly aggressive and full of foolish flattery.

As to the question, "Should women propose?" the answer is, "Yes,
certainly, and they do when they are twenty-nine."

Aurora Dudevant saw her thirtieth birthday looming on the horizon of her
life. Nine years before she had been married to an ex-army-officer, who
dyed his whiskers purple. Aurora had been a dutiful wife, intent for the
first few years on filling her husband's heart and home with joy. She
had failed in this, and the proof of failure lay in that he much
preferred his dogs, guns and horses to her society. For days he would
absent himself on his hunting excursions, and at home he did not have
the tact to hide the fact that he was awfully bored.

Thackeray, once for all, has given us a picture of the heavy dragoon
with a soul for dogs--one to whom all music, save the bay of a
fox-hound, makes its appeal in vain. Aurore detested dogs for dogs'
sake, yet she rode horses astride with a daring that made her husband's
bloodshot eyes bulge in alarm. He didn't much care how fast and hard she
rode at the fences and over the ditches, but he was supposed to follow
her, and this he did not care to do. He had reached an age when a man is
mindful of the lime in his bones, and his 'cross-country riding was
mostly a matter of memory and imagination, and best done around the
convivial table.

Aurore was putting him to a test, that's all. She was proving to him
that she could meet him on his own preserve, give him choice of weapons,
and make him cry for mercy.

Her bent was literature, with music, science and art as side-lines. She
read Montaigne, Rochefoucald, Racine and Moliere, and a modern by the
name of Alfred de Musset, and quoted her authors at inconvenient times.
She flashed quotations and epigrams upon the doughty dragoon in a way he
could neither fend nor parry. At other times she was deeply religious
and tearfully penitent.

In fact, she was living on a skimped allowance of love, and had never
received the attention that a good woman deserves. Her chains were
galling her. She sighed for Paris--forty miles away--Paris and a career.

The epigrams were coming faster, shot in a sort of frenzy and fever. And
when she asked her liege for leave to go to Paris, he granted her
prayer, and agreed to give her ten dollars a week allowance.

She grabbed at the offer, and he bade her Godspeed and good riddance.

So leaving her two children behind, until such a time as she could
provide a home for them, with scanty luggage and light heart and purse,
she started away.

Other women have gone up to Paris from country towns, too, and the
chances are as one to ten thousand that the maelstrom will sweep them
into hades.

But Madame Dudevant was different--in two years she had won her way to
literary fame, and was commanding the jealous admiration of the best
writers of Paris. Her first work was a collaboration with Jules
Sandeau in a novel. Every woman who ever wrote well began by
collaborating with a man. Sandeau had formerly come from Nohant, and how
much he had to do with Madame Dudevant's breaking loose from her
homes-ties no one knows. Anyway, the second novel was written by the
Madame alone, and as a tribute to her friend the name "George Sand" was
placed upon the title-page as author. Jules Sandeau, all-'round
hack-writer and critic, was greatly pleased by the compliment of having
his name anglicized and printed on the title-page of "Indiana," but
later he was not so proud of it. George Sand soon proved herself to be a
bigger man than Sandeau.

She was not handsome, either in face or in form. She was inclined to be
stout--was rather short--and her complexion olive. But she lured with
her eyes--great sphinx-like eyes of hazel-brown--that looked men through
and through. Liszt has told us that "she had eyes like a cow," which is
not so bad as Thomas Carlyle's remark that George Eliot had a face like
a horse. George Sand was silent when other women talked, and her look
told in a half-proud, half-sad way that she knew all they knew, and all
she herself knew beside.

Without going into the issue as to what George Sand was not, let us
frankly admit that pain, deprivation, misunderstanding and maternity had
taught her many things not found in books, and that she looked at Fate
out of her wide-open eyes with a gaze that did not blink. She was wise
beyond the lot of women. I was just going to say she was a genius, but I
remember the remark of the De Goncourts to the effect that, "There are
no women of genius--women of genius are men." Possibly the point could
be covered by saying George Sand had a man's head and a woman's heart.

Women did not like her, yet what other woman was ever so honored by
woman as was George Sand in those two matchless sonnets addressed to her
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning?

The amazing energy of George Sand, her finely flowing sentences--all
charged with daring satire and insight into the heart of things--made
her work sought by readers and publishers. Her pen brought her all the
money she needed; and she had secured a divorce from "That Man," and now
had her two children with her in Paris. That she could do her literary
work and still attend to her manifold social duties must ever mark her
as a phenomenon. She was no mere adventuress. That she was systematic,
orderly and abstemious in her habits must go without saying, otherwise
her vitality would not have held out and allowed her to attend the
funerals of nearly all her retainers.

In throwing overboard the Grub Street Sandeau for Franz Liszt, Madame
Dudevant certainly showed discrimination; but in retaining the name of
"Sand," she paid a delicate compliment to the man who first introduced
her to the world of art. Liszt was too strong a man to remain long
captive--he refused to supply the doglike and abject devotion which
Aurore always demanded. Then came Michael de Bourges the learned
counsel, Calmatto the mezzotinter, Delacroix the artist, De Musset the
poet, and Chopin the musician.

It was in the year Eighteen Hundred Thirty-nine, that Chopin and Sand
first met at a parlor musicale, where Chopin was taken by Liszt, half
against his will, simply because George Sand was to be there.

Chopin did not want to meet her.

All Paris had rung with the story of how she and De Musset had gone
together to Venice, and then in less than a year had quarreled and
separated. Both made good copy of the "poetic interval," as George Sand
called it. Chopin was not a stickler for conventionalities, but George
Sand's history, for him, proved her to be coarse and devoid of all the
finer feeling that we prize in women.

Chopin had no fear of her--not he--only he did not care to add to his
circle of acquaintances one so lacking in inward grace and delicacy.

He played at the musicale--it was all very informal--and George Sand
pushed her way up through the throng that stood about the piano and
looked at the handsome boy as he played--she looked at him with her big,
hazel, cow eyes, steadfastly, yearningly, and he glancing up, saw the
eyes were filled with tears.

When the playing ceased, she still stood looking at the great musician,
and then she leaned over the piano and whispered, "Your playing makes me
live over again every pain that has ever wrung my heart; and every joy,
too, that I have ever known is mine again."

* * * * *

After their first meeting, when Chopin played at a musicale, George Sand
was apt to be there too--they often came together. She was five years
older than he, and looked fifteen, for his slight figure and delicate,
boyish face gave him the appearance of youth unto the very last. In
letters to Madame Mariana, George Sand often refers to Chopin as "My
Little One," and when some one spoke of him as "The Chopinetto," the
name seemed to stick.

That she was the man in the partnership is very evident. He really
needed some one to look after him, provide mustard-plasters and run for
the camphor and hot-water bottle. He was the one who did the weeping and
pouting, and had the "nerves" and made the scenes; while she, on such
occasions, would viciously roll a cigarette, swear under her breath,
console and pooh-pooh.

Liszt has told us how, on one occasion, she had gone out at night for a
storm-walk, and Chopin, being too ill, or disinclined to go, remained at
home. Upon her return she found him in a conniption, he having composed
a prelude to ward off an attack of cold feet, and was now ready to
scream through fear that something had happened to her. As she entered
the door he arose, staggered and fell before her in a fainting fit.

A whole literature has grown up around the relations of Chopin and
George Sand, and the lady in the case has, herself, set forth her brief
with painstaking detail in her "Histoire de Ma Vie." With De Musset,
George Sand had to reckon on dealing with a writing man, and his
accounts of "The Little White Blackbird" had taught her caution.
Thereafter she abjured the litterateurs, excepting when in her old age
she allowed Gustave Flaubert to come within her sacred circle--but her
friendship with Flaubert was placidly platonic, as all the world knows.
And so were her relations with Chopin, provided we accept her version as
gospel fact.

George Sand lacked the frankness of Rousseau; but I think we should be
willing to accept the lady's statements, for she was present and really
the only one in possession of the facts, excepting, of course, Chopin,
and he was not a writer. He could express himself only at the keyboard,
and the piano is no graphophone, for which let us all be duly thankful.
So we are without Chopin's side of the story. We, however, have some
vigorous writing by a man by the name of Hadow.

Mr. Hadow enters the lists panoplied with facts, and declares that the
friendship was strictly platonic, being on the woman's side of a purely
maternal order. Chopin was sick and friendless, and Madame Dudevant,
knowing his worth to the art world, succored him--nursing him as a
Sister of Charity might, sacrificing herself, and even risking her
reputation in order to restore him to life and health.

And this view of the case I am quite willing to accept. Mr. Hadow is no
joker, like that man who has recently written an appreciation of
Xantippe, showing that the wife of Socrates was one of the most patient
women who ever lived, and only at times resorted to heroic means in
order to drive her husband out into the world of thought. She willingly
sacrificed her own good name that another might have literary life.

Hadow has gotten all the facts together and then dispassionately drawn
his conclusions; and these conclusions are eminently complimentary to
all parties concerned.

It was only a few months after Chopin met George Sand that he was
attacked with a peculiar hacking cough. His friends were sure it was
consumption, and a leading physician gave it as his opinion that if the
patient spent the approaching Winter in Paris, it would be death in
March.

The facts being brought to the notice of George Sand, she had but one
thought--to save the life of this young man. He was too ill to decide
what was best to do, and was never able by temperament to take the
initiative, anyway, so this strong and capable woman, forgetful of self
and her own interests, made all the arrangements and took him to the
Isle of Majorca in the Mediterranean Sea. There she cared for him alone
as she might for a babe, for six long, weary months. They lived in the
cells of an old monastery at Valdemosa, away up on the mountainside
overlooking the sea. Here where the roses bloomed the whole year
through, surrounded by groves of orange-trees, shut in by vines and
flowers, with no society save that of the sacristan and an aged woman
servant, she nursed the death-stricken man back to life and hope.

To better encourage him she sent for and surprised him with his piano,
which had to be carried up the mountain on the backs of mules. In the
quiet cloisters she cared for him with motherly tenderness, and there he
learned again to awake the slumbering echoes with divine music. Several
of his best pieces were composed at Majorca during his convalescence,
where the soft semi-tropical breeze laved his cheek, the birds warbled
him their sweetest carols, and away down below, the sea, mother of all,
sang her ceaseless lullaby. When they returned to France the following
Spring, M. Dudevant had accommodatingly vacated the family residence at
Nohant in favor of his wife. It was here she took the convalescent
Chopin. He was charmed with the rambling old house, its walled-in
gardens with their arbors of clustering grapes, and the green meadows
stretching down to the water's edge, where the little river ran its way
to the ocean.

Back of the house was a great forest of mighty trees, beneath whose
thick shade the sun's rays never entered, and a half-mile away arose the
spire of the village church. There were no neighbors, save a cheery old
priest, and the simple villagers who made respectful obeisance as they
passed. Here it was that Matthew Arnold came to pay his tribute to
genius, also Liszt and the fair Countess d'Agoult, Delacroix, Renan,
Lamennais, Lamartine, and so many others of the great and excellent.
Chopin was enchanted with the place, and refused to go back to Paris.
Madame Dudevant insisted, and explained to him that she took him to
Majorca to spend the Winter, but she had no intention or thought of
caring for him longer than the few months that might be required to
restore him to health. But he cried and clung to her with such
half-childish fright that she had not the heart to send him away.

The summer months passed and the leaves began to turn scarlet and gold,
and he only consented to return to Paris on her agreeing to go with him.
So they returned together, and had rooms not so very far apart.

He went back sturdily to his music-teaching, with an occasional
musicale, yet gave but one public concert in the space of ten years.

The exquisite quality of Chopin's playing appealed only to the sacred
few, but his piano scores were slowly finding sale, through the
advertisement they received by being played by Liszt, Tausig and others.
Yet the critics almost uniformly condemned his work as bizarre and
erratic.

Each Summer he spent at lovely Nohant, and there found the rest and
quiet which got nerves back to the norm and allowed him to go on with
his work. So passed the years away. Of this we are very sure--no taint
exists on the record of Chopin excepting possibly his relationship with
George Sand. That he endeavored to win her full heart's love, for the
purpose of honorable marriage, Mr. Hadow is fully convinced. But when
his suit failed, after an eight years' courtship, and the lover was
discarded, he ceased to work. His heart was broken; he lingered on for
two years, and then death claimed him at the early age of forty years.

* * * * *

There is a tendency to judge a work of art by its size. Thus the
sculptor who does a "heroic figure" is the man who looms large to the
average visitor at the art-gallery.

Chopin wrote no lengthy symphonies, oratorios or operas. His music is
poetry set to exquisite sounds. Poetry is an ecstasy of the spirit, and
ecstasies in their very nature are not sustained moods.

The poetic mood is transient. A composition by Chopin is a soul-ecstasy,
like unto the singing of a lark.

No other man but Chopin should have been allowed to set the songs of
Shelley to music. With such names as Shelley, Keats, Poe and Crane must
Chopin's name be linked.

In Chopin's music there is much loose texture; there are wide-meshed
chords, daring leaps and abrupt arpeggios. These have often been pointed
out as faults, but such harmonious discords are now properly valued, and
we see that Chopin's lapses all had meaning and purpose, in that they
impart a feeling--making their appeal to souls that have suffered--souls
that know.

More of Chopin's music is sold in America every year than was sold
altogether during the lifetime of the composer. His name and fame grow
with each year. Everywhere--wherever a piano is played--on concert
platform, in studio or private parlor, there you will find the work of
Frederic Chopin. That such a widespread distribution must have a potent
and powerful effect upon the race goes without argument, although the
furthest limit of that influence no man can mark. It is registered with
Infinity alone. And thus does that modest, mild and gentle revolutionist
Frederic Chopin live again in minds made better.




[Illustration: SCHUMANN]

ROBERT SCHUMANN


Beneath these flowers I dream, a silent chord. I can not wake my
own strings to music; but under the hands of those who comprehend
me, I become an eloquent friend. Wanderer, ere thou goest, try me!
The more trouble thou takest with me, the more lovely will be the
tones with which I shall reward thee.

--_Robert Schumann_


ROBERT SCHUMANN

That any man should ever write his thoughts for other men to read, seems
the very height of egoism.

Literature never dies, and so the person who writes constitutes himself
a rival of Shakespeare and seeks to lure us from Montaigne, Milton,
Emerson and Carlyle. To write nothing better than grammatical English,
to punctuate properly, and repeat thoughts in the same sequence that
have been repeated a thousand times, is to do something icily regular,
splendidly null.

To down the demons of syntax and epithet is not enough. To compose
blameless sonatas and produce symphonies in the accepted style, is not
adding an iota to the world's worth.

The individual who tries to compose either ideas or harmonious sounds,
and hopes for success, must compose because he can not help it. He must
place the thing in a way it has never before been placed; on the subject
he must throw a new light; he must carry the standard forward, and plant
it one degree nearer the uncaptured citadel of the Ideal. And he must
remember this: the very prominence of his position will cause him to be
the target of contumely, abuse and much stupid misunderstanding. If he
complains of these things (as he probably will), he reveals a rift in
the lute and proves that he is only a half-god, after all.

Men of the highest type of culture--those of masterly talent--are not
gregarious in their nature. The "jiner" instinct goes with a man who is
a little doubtful, and so he attaches himself to this society, club or
church.

The very tendency to "jine" is an admission of weakness--it is a getting
under cover, a combining against the supposed enemy. The "jiner" is an
ameba that clings to flotsam, instead of floating free in the great
ocean of life. The lion loves his mate, but prefers to flock by himself.

The pioneer in art, as in any other field, must be willing to face
deprivations and loneliness and heart-hunger. He must find companionship
with birds and animals, and be brother to the trees and swift-flying
clouds. When men meet on the desert or in the forest wilds, how grateful
and how gracious is their hand-clasp! When love and understanding come
to those who live on the border-land of two worlds, how precious and
priceless the boon!

* * * * *

Robert Schumann was the son of a book-publisher of Zwickau. He was a
handsome lad with the flash of genius in his luminous eyes, and an
independence like that of an Alpine goat. When very young they say he
used to have tantrums. If your child has a tantrum, it is bad policy for
you to imitate him and have one, too.

A tantrum is only one of the little whirlwinds of God--it is misdirected
energy, power not yet controlled. When Robert had a tantrum, his father
would shake him violently to improve his temper, or fall upon him with a
strap that hung handy behind the kitchen-door. Then the mother, when the
father was out of the way, would take the lad and cry over him, and
coddle him, and undo the discipline.

The best treatment for tantrums is--nothing. The more you let a nervous,
impressionable child alone, the better.

When the lad was fourteen years old, we find him setting type in his
father's printery. He was working on a book called, "The World's
Celebrities," and his share of the work dealt with Jean Paul Richter. He
grew interested in the copy and stopped setting type and read ahead, as
printers sometimes will. The more he read, the more he was fascinated.
He fell under the spell of Jean Paul the Only.

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