London train was to come. I never heard the garden gate click without expecting him. Nothing has happened, as I thought. A short, cold note came today from my husband, saying that, under the circumstances, it is better he should fetch me as soon as possible, and that he hopes to be here by Christmas. This is all. Not a word to intimate that his heart is softening towards me. We were just sitting down to our poor little Christmas dinner, decorated with holly in honour of our single guest, the neighbouring curate, who has dined with us since my childhood, when Harry arrived. As we had heard nothing since that first letter, we had not looked for him, and Janey and my father were quite ashamed of the poverty of our Christmas fare. "We would, at least, have had a turkey," poor Janey said, trying to improve the appearance of the table, whilst father went to the door, and received our visitor with grave ceremoniousness. I drew back trembling and weeping. He came in calmly, kissed me on the cheek, shook hands cordially with the others; then we reseated ourselves at the dinner-table, as if nothing had happened. "It is but poor fare we have to offer you, sir," my father said. "Had you apprised us of your coming, we should have killed the fatted calf for so welcome a guest." This formal speech put everything wrong, and poor Janey, in trying to improve matters, only made them worse. We got through the dreary little dinner as best we could; after that, things mended a little. When my father rose to go to his study, Harry seemed to notice for the first time how feeble and changed he was, and, with a touched expression, gave him his arm. The two talked a little, then Harry came back to me. "Lucy," he said, "I have having been hard upon you. Let us think no more of the past, but make the best we can of the present." told your father that I am sorry for He immediately began talking of his plans for the future, and said that he must return in two days' time, as our presence in London was necessary. I tried again and again to bring him to talk of ourselves, but I saw that he had steadfastly set his face against anything like an explanation. And as it did not come then, it is not likely to come at all. Ah, me! can I show in my life what Harry has never allowed me to express in words, the remorse that makes me at times feel miserable in the midst of our prosperity? Will he ever know how sorry I am for the suffering I have caused? It was very hard to leave my father and Janey. They had shared my troubles, but were to have no part in my good fortune. They are very proud, and though we have urged them to share of our abundance, they will not do so. They are too high-spirited to accept anything from the man their Lucy has wronged. This is another reason why as yet I find our new wealth rather a dreary thing. I have always in my mind's eye the picture of my old home-Janey anxiously trying to eke out the scanty income, my father growing feebler and feebler and wanting numberless comforts he cannot have. But I cannot despair of things coming right in time. My husband and I are trying our best to do what is right without thinking of ourselves; and every day the task seems easier. His old confidence in me is gradually coming back, and, with that, will not the old affection come too? As I have no longer any secrets from him, I close my diary. OFFENBACH IN LONDON. : 'ACQUES OFFENBACH, whatever be his merits or demerits, must certainly be counted among those who have helped "to increase the public stock of harmless pleasure." Few have enjoyed such a universal popularity and the "Grande Duchesse," with its tunes and situations, was perhaps the best known "thing" of art or politics in the world. Even the most piquant and sensational piece of news was scarcely known so well or travelled over such a distance. During that strange season of delusion, when emperors and sultans were crowding to Paris, certain of these august personages were said to have telegraphed on their journey for a box at the Variétés, where Schneider was reigning. Setting aside all shaking of heads and sagacious condemnation by the professors, such enormous success deserves at least recognition, and the world is the author's debtor for thus "increasing the public stock of pleasure." Rossini, introducing his last work with an affected modesty, might say that it was neither "in the style of Bach nor of Offen-bach"-hinting that the first was highest, the last lowest in the musical scale. Fétis in his great critical work might be contemptuously arrogant in his judgment of one he considered a mere musical scribbler. But still the man who could address all countries in the one tongue and find it exquisitely relished, and who has contrived hours of airy enjoyment for the world, is not to be so lightly dismissed. The Offenbachian opera represents a distinct department of human enjoyment, and is a development of a particular form of social "fun." An observer is present at a party where are wits and savants deeply skilled in knowledge of human experience and human nature, and where character is made under this treatment to exhibit itself in a natural and genuine fashion. There he finds a display of comedy. In another set he hears droll remarks, wild, spontaneous wit, strange stories and incidents, which make him roar, and is entertained with farce. But there is a third and rarer kind of merry meeting, where the performers, in boisterous spirits, become extravagant-can be content with nothing but the most far-fetched and grotesque conceits. Their most effective subjects are of the gravest and most solemn kind, whose gravity and solemnity are found tedious and oppressive in the ordinary course of things. Their aim, then, is not merely to bring down to a natural level, but to set such things as much below that level as they were once above it: and the sudden degradation produces a most ridiculous effect. Such is the aim of masqued ball costumers, where ridiculous noses and distorted uniforms express the intention in a coarse way. Such is the meaning of those mock official ceremonies on "crossing the line," on the admission of new hands in the old prisons, and other such rites. There is no logic, no coherence; boisterous spirits and gaiety are the chief essentials. This in a rude way is the foundation of the opera bouffe; and Offenbach, though supposed to be confined to his musical illustration, must be a burlesque humourist of a high order. This is shown by the class of writers he has called into existence to supply him with stories, and who felt that in him they had found an exact interpreter. This, too, is evident in his face, which has a roguish, naive, and even a Voltairean expression-a union of grave finesse and quaintness, with the farceur in ambuscade. The double eyeglass suggests a mock professional air. He was His career suggests advancement through address. born at Cologne, and is but fifty years old. He came to Paris in 1842 as a violoncello player, and though he failed in that department, succeeded in becoming leader of the orchestra at the Théâtre Français in five years. It was not long before his taste for the peculiar line of composition in which he was to become famous was developed. His first efforts were the setting of some fables of La Fontaine-which, if not very deep, were at least gay and sparkling. The very choice of such a subject shows a true relish for comedy, and the famous fables, if married to suitable music, would become at once a sort of opera bouffe. This taste developed yet more and more, and in 1855 he opened the little theatre which is at the end of the Passage Choiseul, and which he and his works have made famous as the "Bouffes Parisiens." The notion was clearly suggested by the style of music-not the music by the notion. A comic story had often been set to music; but in the opera bouffe it wore a humorous tone of mind an exaggerated burlesque that was expressed in music. Again, the musical expression aimed at giving the tone of a situation, not of a narrative. An example of this could be given in "Les Deux Aveugles," one of the earliest of his attempts, and lately presented at the Gaiety. Two blind men meet on a bridge to beg. Both being impostors, and each believing that the other is really afflicted, a most absurd situation arises, worked up after the Box and Cox fashion. Each has his musical instrument-one a trombone, the other a fiddle or guitar; and the characteristics of such rude music under such conditions are translated into real music with great art. In short, the "fun" flows from the situation as logically as a conclusion.follows the premises. Having once struck the vein, the stream of his pieces began to flow in a full and rapid current. Here is a tolerably complete list representing the work of seventeen years :-"Les Deux Aveugles," "Une Nuit Blanche," "Bataclan," "Le Violoncelliste," for the year 1855; "Trombalcazar," "Le Postillon en Cage," "La Rose de Saint Flour," "Le Financier et le Savetier," "La Bonne d'Enfant," in 1856; and "Crochefer" in 1857. In 1861 came "Orphée aux Enfers," his first important work, which took the town by storm, and, after being performed three hundred times, went the round of civilised Europe. In the same year was given "Les Trois Baisers du Diable,” "L'Apothicaire et le Perruquier," and "Le Roman Comique;" in 1862 "Monsieur et Madame Denis," and in 1864-5, "La Belle Hélène," another European success. In 1866 followed "La Barbe Bleue;" in 1867, "La Grande Duchesse," the most famous of his works; in 1868, "La Périchole," "L'Ile de Tulipatan," and "Geneviève de Brabant." In 1869 came "Les Brigands" and "La Princesse de Trébizonde." The disastrous war of 1870 was not favourable to the enjoyment of opera bouffe, but he resumed work in 1871 with "Fortunatus" and nearly half a dozen other pieces, besides supplying music to Sardou's "Le Roi Carotte." It would be difficult to enumerate all his minor trifles, such as "Le Mariage aux Lanternes" and others; but there remains the extraordinary feat of his having scored at least six great triumphs in succession, commencing with the "Belle Hélène." It is a great proof of the theory that good pieces supply good actors, that all his "hits" have been inspired by perfect successes in the way of humorous subjects. Where he has found "weak-kneed" pieces the music has not "walked,” and has proved "weak-kneed" itself. "La Belle Hélène" is perhaps the freshest and most truly humorous of all his works, and the book itself is conceived in the genuine spirit of legitimate burlesque, for it does not assume that these Greek characters were so remote and unfamiliar to us that the only method of presenting them would be under the most grotesque and impossible conditions of dress and behaviour. The true and natural method would be to assume that they were men and women like those of the present time, and fit to be ridiculed as our contemporaries could be ridiculed. The result was an interest and a far more racy description |