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Instead of finding material, like Wagner, in the excitement of that time for impassioned compositions, he worked at L'Enfance du Christ. He affected absolute indifference he who was so little made for indifference. He owed to these revolutions, to these democratic storms, to these human tempests, the best of all his genius and he disowned it all. This musician of a new era took refuge in the past.
Cécile one day to conduct his L'Enfance du Christ which he had just written or rather La Fuite en Egypt which was the only part of the work that was in existence then. He composed the rest of it afterwards. I remember perfectly the performances which the great man directed. They were lively and spirited rather than careful, but somewhat slower than what Edouard Colonne has accustomed us to.
Baudelaire, of course, meant God and Heaven, instead of "genius" when he said, "Le genie n'est que l'enfance retrouvee a volonte...." And so when I write to you, I find myself again within the garden of our childhood, that English garden where our love shared all the light and fragrance and flowers of the world together.
The evil influence of bad surroundings is well exemplified by an instance recorded by Viscount D'Haussonville in his work "L'Enfance a Paris": "Some years ago a band of criminals were brought before the jury of the Seine charged with a terrible crime, the assassination of an aged widow, with details of ferocity which the pen refuses to describe.
For Berlioz's colossal force is at the service of a forlorn and tender heart; he has nothing of the heroism of Beethoven, or Händel, or Gluck, or even Schubert. He has all the charm of an Umbrian painter, as is shown in L'Enfance du Christ, as well as sweetness and inward sadness, the gift of tears, and an elegiac passion.
The Procession des Rogations is often quoted from the Mémoires; and some of his poetical text, particularly that in L'Enfance du Christ and in Les Troyens, is written in beautiful language and with a fine sense of rhythm. His Mémoires as a whole is one of the most delightful books ever written by an artist. Wagner was a greater poet, but as a prose writer Berlioz is infinitely superior.
Next deserves a passing allusion the Historia Nostri Temporis, by the once famous writer Emmius, whose posthumous book suffered at the hands of George Albert, Prince of East Frisia. The Parlement of Toulouse condemned Reboulet's Histoire des Filles de la Congrégation de l'Enfance for accusing Madame de Moudonville, the founder of that convent, of publishing libels against the king.
M. Saint-Saëns tells us that "the past did not exist for him; he did not understand the old composers, as his knowledge of them was limited to what he had read about them." He did not know Bach. Happy ignorance! He was able to write oratorios like L'Enfance du Christ without being worried by memories and traditions of the German masters of oratorio.
What could be more exquisitely tender than many of his songs and romances, and various of the airs and choral pieces from "Beatrice et Benedict," from "Nuits d'Été," "Irlande," and from "L'Enfance du Christ"? Berlioz in his entirety, as man and composer, was a most extraordinary being, to whom the ordinary scale of measure can hardly be applied.
Here is a short original story, quoted by the French psychologist, Queyrat, in his "Jeux de l'Enfance," written by a child of five: "One day I went to sea in a life-boat all at once I saw an enormous whale, and I jumped out of the boat to catch him, but he was so big that I climbed on his back and rode astride, and all the little fishes laughed to see."
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