The Complete Works. GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
writer, she grumbled that he was risking his income by treating his pupils so cavalierly. It was his custom to meet her remonstrances, even when he acted on them, with oaths and abuse. This evening he let her say what she wished, meanwhile arranging his table to write at. His patience was so far from appeasing her that she at last ventured to say that she would not write his letters and turn good money away.
“You will do as you are told,” he said; “for the devils also believe and tremble.” And with that explanation, he bade her make him some coffee, and put her out of the room.
Whilst Mary was being driven home from the park, she was for some time afraid that she must succumb publicly to a fit of hysterics. But after a few painful minutes, her throat relaxed; a feeling of oppression at her chest ceased; and when the cab stopped at Mr Phipson’s house she was able to offer the fare composedly to the driver, who refused it, saying that the gentleman had paid it in advance. She then went upstairs to her own room to weep. When she arrived there, however, she found that she had no more tears to shed. She went to the mirror, and stood motionless before it. It shewed her a face expressing deep grief. She looked pityingly at it; and it looked back at her with intensified dolor. This lasted for more than a minute, during which she conveyed such a profundity of sadness into her face that she had no attention to spare for the lightening of her heart which was proceeding rapidly meanwhile. Then her nostrils gave a sudden twitch; she burst out laughing, and the self-reproach which followed this outrage on sentiment did not prevent her from immediately laughing all the more.
“After all,” she said, seizing a jug of cold water and emptying it with a splash into a basin, “it is not more ridiculous to laugh at nothing than to look miserable about it.” So she washed away the traces of her tears and went down to dinner as gaily as usual.
A fortnight elapsed, during which she heard nothing of Jack, and sometimes thought that she had done better when she had cried at his declaration, than when she had laughed at her own emotion. Then, one evening, Mr Phipson announced that the Antient Orpheus Society were about to make an important acquisition— “one, said he, looking at Mary, “that will specially interest you.”
“Something by old Jack?” said Charlie, who was dining there that day.
“A masterpiece by him, I hope,” said Mr. Phipson. “He has written to say that he has composed music to the Prometheus Unbound of Shelley: four scenes with chorus, a dialogue of Prometheus with the earth, an antiphony of the earth and moon, an overture, and a race of the hours.”
“Shelley!” exclaimed Mary incredulously.
“I should have thought that Dr. Johnson was the proper poet for Jack,” said Charlie.
“It is a magnificent subject,” continued Mr Phipson; “and if he has done justice to it, the work will be the crowning musical achievement of this century. I have no doubt whatever that he has succeeded; for he says himself that his music is the complement of the poetry, and fully worthy of it. He would never venture so say so if he were not conscious of having done something almost stupendous.”
“Modesty never was one of his failings,” remarked Charlie.
“I feel convinced that the music will be — will be—” said Mr. Phipson, waving his hand, and seeking an expressive word, “will be something apocalyptic, if I may use the term. We have agreed to offer him five hundred pounds for the copyright, with the exclusive privilege of performance in the British Isles; and we have reason to believe that he will accept this offer. Considering that the music will doubtless be very difficult, and will involve the expense of a chorus and an enlarged band, with several rehearsals, it is a fairly liberal offer. Maclagan objected, of course; and some of the others suggested three hundred and fifty; but I insisted on five hundred. We could not decently offer less. Besides, the Modern Orpheus will try to snatch the work from us. The overture is actually in the hand the copyist, and the rest will be complete in a month at latest.”
“Certainly you must have more money than you know what to do with, if you to pay five hundred pounds for a thing you have never seen,” said Mrs Phipson.
“We shall pay it without the least mistrust,” said Mr Phipson, pompously “Jack is a great composer; one whose rugged exterior conceals a wonderful gift, as pearl is protected by an oyster shell.
“But he cannot possibly have composed the whole work in a fortnight.” said Mary.
“Of course not. What makes you suggest a fortnight?
“Nothing,” said Mary. “At least I heard that he had given no lessons during the past fortnight.
“He has been planning it for a long time, you may depend upon it. Still, there are instances of extraordinary expedition in musical composition. The Messiah was completed by Handel in twenty-one days; and Mozart—”
Mr Phipson went on to relate anecdotes of overtures and and whole acts added to operas in a single night. He was a diligent concert-goer and always read the analytical programs carefully, so he had a fund of such tales, more or less authentic, to relate. Mary, who had heard most of them before, looked attentive and let her thoughts wander.
Some days later, however, when Mary asked for further news of Prometheus Unbound, she found his tone changed. On being pressed he admitted that he had induced the Antient Orpheus Society to make a doubtful bargain. The overture and two of the scenes had been completed and delivered to the society by Jack; and no one, said Mr Phipson, had been able to contradict Maclagan’s verdict that “the music, most fortunately, was inexecutable.” A letter had been carefully drawn up to inform Jack as gently as possible of the fate of his work. “So prodigious,” it said, “were the technical difficulties of the work; so large and expensive the forces required to present it adequately; and so doubtful the prospect of its acceptance by a miscellaneous audience in the existing condition of public taste, that the Committee were obliged to confess, with deep regret, that they dared not make arrangements for its early production. If Mr. Jack had by him any more practicable composition, however short it might fall of the Prometheus in point of vastness of design, they would be willing to permit of its being substituted without prejudice to those conditions in their agreement which had been inserted in the interest of the composer.”
To this Jack had replied that they should have Prometheus or nothing; that there was not a note in the score which was not practicable with a reasonable degree of trouble; that he could find no precedents on which to base the slightest regard for the sagacity of the Society; that he cared not one demi-semi-quaver whether they held to their bargain or not, as he would find no difficulty in disposing of his work; and that he insisted on their either returning the score at once, or paying the first installment of five hundred pounds for it, as agreed upon. He added in a postscript that if they accepted the work, he should require strict fulfillment of the clause binding the Society to one public performance of it in London. The Society, which was old enough to have shelved certain works purchased from Beethoven for similar reasons those given to Jack, hesitated, quarreled internally, and at last resolved to hold a private rehearsal of the overture before deciding. Manlius made earnest efforts to comprehend and like this section of the work, which was to occupy half an hour in performance, and was, in fact, a symphony. He only partially succeeded, and he found the task of conducting the rehearsal unusually disagreeable. The players, confident and willing, did wonders in the estimation of Maclagan, but the first repetition broke down twice, and those who who were at fault lost temper and cursed mutinously within hearing of Manlius, who was himself confused and angry. When it was over at last, a dubious murmur rose from the stalls Where the Committee sat in judgment, and a few of the older members protested against a second trial. They were overruled, and the overture was repeated, this time without any stoppage.
“Certainly,” said Mr Phipson, describing his sensations to Mary, “It contained grand traits. But these were only glimpses in the midst of chaos, I had to give in to Maclagan, acknowledging that the most favorable account I could give of it was that it impressed me as might the aberrations of a demented giant. He was quite frantic about it, and fairly talked us down with examples of false relations and incorrect progressions from every bar of the score. Old Brailsford, who is one of the old committee, turned up for the first time in years expressly