Musical Criticisms Part 2

About Zola he writes in a letter of July, 1893:--

"Perhaps you have read 'Le Reve.' It and 'La Debacle' are the only two of Zola's longer novels that could be recommended to a lady, and even the latter with some misgiving. I cannot say that I think 'Le Reve' one of Zola's best works. I am far from sure that the French critic who said: 'Nous preferons Monsieur Zola a quatre pattes' was not in the right. Nevertheless, there are pa.s.sages in it stamped by Zola's unique greatness. With regard to its defects, I would rather say nothing at present, except one--the end strikes me as absurd, _franchement mauvais et du placage litteraire_--a recrudescence of something that we have left far behind, something dead that should have been left to bury its dead. All the same there are, I think, truly great things in the book."

Of Marie Bashkirtseff, September, 1891, he writes:--

"Concerning Marie Bashkirtseff, she seems to me to have had nearly every gift except two, namely imagination and heart. Above all, a sort of critical intuition, which prevented her from ever resting satisfied in anything second-rate. She was a typical little Russian, small of stature, dark of tint; in temperament sensitive, romantic, versatile; unlike the northern Russians, who are prevalently tall and fair and have a certain contempt for the unpractical. Nearly the whole Russian harvest of folk-songs and cognate treasure comes from the south, from Cossacks and little Russians, the true Muscovite being almost a songless bird.

Marie must have had in a high degree the incomparable grace and distinction of her countrywomen, with that wonderful animation and 'fever of life' which makes the atmosphere of Russian society the warmest and brightest in the world. As to your statement that 'some of her failings, like her love of luxury and her desire to be attended to at all costs, are pure vanity and wormwood,' I have always stuck up for this barbaric element, and believe that largely on it depends the prodigious formative power of a _free feminine influence_--that thing of such rarity as to be almost non-existent in our puritanical society. I know a man at half a glance who has ever been under it."

Referring to his correspondent's remarks that Russians seem to look at religious questions like intelligent children, he writes:--

"Did you ever hear of the Soo-re-ye-vites, the sect of which Leo Tolstoi is a member?

"Soorayeff was a peasant ignorant of reading and writing. He had read in church 'G.o.d is a Spirit, and they that wors.h.i.+p Him must wors.h.i.+p Him in spirit and in truth,' and by pure sympathy and unaided intelligence he jumped to the conclusion that Jesus Christ meant what He said. Think of the prodigious freshness of nature and the promise that this shows.

"There are the five hundred sects of Great Britain all accepting the same fundamental absurdities, and yet this simple man, never having heard of criticism, is enabled to penetrate the viewless veil, woven by the years and the churches over the face of the Son of Man, so as to understand that Christ actually meant that G.o.d was a Spirit.

"Suppose a missionary went among a savage tribe and tried to teach them what Justice is; told them he himself was a son of Justice, and that Justice was made manifest in him; lastly, that Justice is a spirit.

Suppose he came back after an absence and found the people teaching that Justice was three persons and burning alive those who did not accept this view!"

In England, unless it were in London, Johnstone seldom felt at home; in Scotland, still less. He liked to wander from one easy variegated foreign city to another, where good music and good plays are quickly accessible, and British convention is a mere figure in the comic papers.

He valued his friends in Edinburgh, but the place displeased him. He would sit on Arthur's seat and hate the modern Athens steaming there below him. Its curious old mossy layers of culture, professional and academic, could hardly satisfy him, and he quickly got through the moss to the stone. The ferment of the young "Celtic" writers and painters seemed to come to little. He did not inure himself to the occasionally inconsiderate manners of the Lowland Scotch, nor could he bring himself to repay them steadily in kind. Some of the officials with whom he dealt appeared to have been born, where they would die, in Gath. He would hardly agree with, but he could understand the unqualified remark of his old French a.s.sociate, "Il n'y a pas d'amour dans ce pays." Probably he was unjust to Edinburgh; but though his forbears were partly Scotch, he was not, like Stevenson, born Scotch, and he never really saw the native character from within. Teaching may not have been the best introduction to it. He taught well, having the right sort of delivery and insistent method. But it is disgusting to an artist to teach anything for bread, except, perhaps, his own craft. The hard work, the pull on the nerves and patience, can scarcely have strengthened Johnstone's health.

Indeed, wherever he lived he had a touch of the exile. He dwelt really in some region not of this earth at all, where the masters of music sit in their Valhalla, where the hard waste matter that makes up most of our life is eliminated, while the essence of its pain and pleasure is distilled through art and presented in sublime purity of form. The saint has his vision of personal goodness, the philosopher his of systematic truth, the reformer his of a new society. The artist--for the term must be extended to those who perceive as well as those who produce--has his ideal vision, which varies in form with his special art. It follows that the valuable part of actual life, to such a temper, is made up of such stray hours of vivid experience and intelligence as, taken together, give some notion of that other world. We had written "moments" instead of "hours," but the former word would be misleading, with the false suggestion of fleeting pa.s.sive sensation, for which Walter Pater, or rather those who misinterpret him, must answer. Every experience, in truth, whether moral, sensuous, or intellectual, that is, of real worth, contributes to the artist's dream. Johnstone posed so little and lived by this principle so naturally and unwittingly that he could not be called a doctrinaire. But few men save up their vital impressions about everything so carefully, engraving them patiently on the memory, and dismissing the vast ma.s.s of experience that tells us nothing. Hence Johnstone was never quite naturalised in any abode, though he managed to be sociable and festive when the chances came. In Edinburgh, however, for the reasons given, he stayed over long, and we may regret that he was not sooner freed from teaching school.

Practically, there was some compensation for so late an escape. The teacher's att.i.tude, as of one clearly laying down the law, remained in much of his press work, and to its advantage. The public as a whole, though it must not be told so, is like a large, impatient, grumbling, half-ignorant cla.s.s of schoolboys. Reviewing is therefore educational work. Not that the dominie-tone is wanted; for that is the worst of faults, even in school-teaching! But the teacher does not take his cla.s.s into the secret of his own doubts, hesitations, or revulsions; he gives his results, he gives what he thinks the truth. Or, if a figure from another calling be preferred, the critic _operates_, beneficently if often without anaesthetics. Further, there was something to be said for the late specialisation of Johnstone's ruling talent. His nature was rich; his articles have the style of a man who has lived, as well as one who knows his trade. No youth, though ever so clever, could have made them. He treats music as a means by which all the emotions, whether large and solemn, or light and happy, or sombre, or perverse, are transformed, often out of recognition, into their counterparts in sound; so that the kinds of joy and pain given by music, like those given by high drama but in a rarer measure, are stripped of any stinging personal reference, while unweakened in force. The hearer is thus mysteriously shown, as Rossetti says, the "road he came," and yet has no more, for the time, to do with himself, save in so far as he is one of a thousand men to whom the music interprets their experience, widely and deeply.

Therefore, to understand music, a man must have suffered. Johnstone had met and weathered some of the suffering which an intense nature, even under conditions easier than his, must absolutely meet with on this earth, and must either give in to and go under, or must get over and appropriate--there is no choice! He chose the latter way, being strong enough, and so became a better musical critic.

Besides, his bent for music was growing more marked during the last years in Edinburgh. It was clear to his friends what his profession ought to be, and his chance of adopting it came at the end of 1895. The musical critic of the _Manchester Guardian_, Mr. Fremantle, died; and it was hard to find a successor who would stamp his own mark and make the critical judgments of the paper a power, in the musical capital in the North of England. Johnstone had already written for the _Manchester Guardian_ articles of sundry kinds; a review of the translation of Nietzsche, part of which is reprinted in this book, and a notice on Tolstoi; as well as on musical matters. York Powell was foremost in commending his friend to the editor as a man of worth and high special talent. An offer was sent to Johnstone, which he weighed with even more than his usual deliberation. He felt the break with his friends in Scotland, and he had misgivings, being a slow writer and not fond of his pen, as to his power to work under journalistic conditions. As even his letters show, he composed carefully and was a master of exact expression; thus he felt some anxiety at having to work under the pressure of a time limit, and that too at a late hour. He therefore sent, without in any way jumping at the offer as an escape from usherdom, a dignified reply that gave an impression of his quality. It was not easy for his friends to make him decide with the necessary haste. In the end he accepted the proposal, much to their relief, and came to Manchester in January, 1896. There he stayed for the rest of his life.

In Manchester, Johnstone's existence and outlook were quite altered. He had not to wait until the daily chare was over before he could turn to music, which now took up his force and time for the working part of the year. He had taught well, but others could have done that. Now, for nine years, he gave himself to the work for which he was built, and which few could do so well. Certainly no one did it in quite his way. The union of temperament, knowledge, style, gave him an accent of his own. His lore and his sensibility always grew and enriched each other. He did not wholly limit himself to music, and before pa.s.sing to this his chief occupation, we may note his activity elsewhere. It was too much to hope he would have any great distracting interest. Music is enough and more for one man. But he spared some time for literature. He had a swift preference even as a boy for all that was fresh, vehement, and strange in modern drama and fiction. He was not at all like the complacent, young, up-to-date college tutor, who reads the latest exotic writers, but remains unaltered. Johnstone, if he liked a play or story at all, was seized and shaken; a kind of enthusiasm which is a better preface to a true judgment than any amount of accomplished and balanced coldness, or the pseudo-"judicial" frame of mind. He was not so fond of poetry, or so sure in his perception of it, caring too little for purely verbal in contrast with accompanied or wordless music. We have reprinted above, however, a part of his lecture on the scientific frontier between the two arts. He found time also, when the press of the season was over, for some byplay as a reviewer. He wrote in commanding style about books on conjuring, on billiards, and on cooking. He used to say that cooking was his real gift. To go to a certain cafe and quote Mr. Johnstone's name, was to ensure a respectful and an even terrified service; and the well-drilled waiter would commend a particular sauce-bottle as that which his distinguished customer had used. But he remembered, with more pleasure than banquets, having slept on shelves with the Cretan rebels in the mountains, and sharing and digesting their extremely dried fish.

He also wrote on weighty matters outside music; the chief of these were English and German plays. The companies that travelled from the Fatherland to the Germanic city of the British Empire, and acted in the Schiller-Anstalt, often played pieces involving actual dialect.

Johnstone's familiarity with German, as well as his natural sympathy with writers like Hauptmann (and Sudermann in a less degree), marked him out as the right reviewer. Plays, like concerts, have to be noticed in hot haste on the very evening; or, at best, if given on Sat.u.r.day, by the following evening; for so much expedition is the minotaur-public of a daily paper supposed to stipulate. The work done on such terms is not always the worst in substance, though only long wont can give the kind of finish or varnish that is desired. The same remark applies to musical reviewing; but Johnstone's distrust of himself was needless. The result was more in accordance with the expectation of his friends than with his own. Many of his articles were written at great speed, and as one of his colleagues said, if it had been possible for him to wait till he felt he could do justice to the subject, most of them would never have been written at all.

Before pa.s.sing to his main labours as a journalist, we may here quote, in ill.u.s.tration, part of the notice that he wrote on the _Johannisfeuer_ of Sudermann. Our reprints in this book deal almost wholly with music, and, as we have said, he thought of music as a comment, at several removes and after strange distillations, on life and experience. But the drama, which is a copy of life, not indeed a direct one, but subject to the laws of theatrical art, also engrossed him, especially when it was at once modern in form and homely and pa.s.sionate in theme.

The Bavarian peasants and their girls still jump through the dying embers of their bonfires on the eve of St. John:--

_"For the truth is Mr. Parson, a remnant of heathenism stirs in the blood of us all. It has persisted through all the centuries since ancient Germanic times, and, once a year, it blazes up with the fire of St. John's Eve. For that night the spooks of ancient heathenism are unchained. Witches ride on broomsticks, instead of being beaten with them, and pa.s.s through the air, with mocking laughter, on their way to the Blocksberg. The Wild Hunt scours over the forest and wilder desires over our hearts--all that is most frenzied and most utterly doomed to nonfulfilment. No matter what the order may be that for the time being reigns in the world, for one single heart's desire to be realised, and to give us something to live on, a thousand others must go to ruin, not only for the ever unattainable, but others, allowed to escape from a hand that held them too carelessly. Yes, those bonfires which blaze up--do you know what they are? They are the spectres of our heart's desires, the red-winged birds of paradise that we might have kept by us for life but allowed to escape, the spooks of the old order, of the heathenism that is in us. However satisfied we may be in the light of day and beneath the reign of law and order, this is St.

John's Eve in the night sacred to Midsummer Madness. I drink to your ancient heathen fires. Let them blaze high! Will no one clink gla.s.ses with me?"--(Act. iii., sc. 3.)_

"So the t.i.tle 'Johannisfeuer,' with its double meaning, literal and symbolical, must be rendered into English--according as we wish to lay stress on the former or the latter--'The Bonfires of St. John's Eve' or 'Midsummer Madness.' On seeing the remarkably fine performance of this play the non-German spectator, impressed with the general worthlessness of German drama since the Augustan age (that is, the age of Goethe and Schiller), might well wonder how it is possible for a German writer to produce such a thing--a play, simple and unpretentious in design, yet fraught through and through with poetic beauty; a play written with northern sharpness of characteristic and, at the same time, with Italian warmth, eloquence, and keenness of sympathy with the moods of nature; a play distinctly Ibsenesque in structure and largely also in style, yet, for all its sombre colouring, not haggard and aghast, like nearly all the products of the Scandinavian's demonic spirit. The scene is in a farm in East Prussia, in a neighbourhood with a mixed population of Germans, Poles, and Lithuanians. The name of the farmer's family is Vogelreuther. Marikke, a Lithuanian gipsy girl, is a foster-child in their house, having been picked up along with her mother and carried home by Mr. and Mrs. Vogelreuther in their sledge during the famine winter of 1867. In the house she is known as Heimchen (the Cricket) and in the neighbourhood as the 'famine child.' In the farm-house lives a young man named George, an orphan nephew of Vogelreuther, indebted to the famine for his upbringing. In the opening of the play George has made a good start in life, having been apprenticed to an architect in Konigsberg and done well. He is betrothed to the farmer's daughter Gertrude, but some years before there had been a love affair between him and Heimchen, who had repulsed him hastily, not because she did not care for him, but because she did not believe in the honesty of his intentions. While busying herself with preparations for her foster-sister's coming marriage, Heimchen discovers a ma.n.u.script book belonging to George and containing verses and a diary. She cannot resist the temptation to read, and she thus discovers that George had loved her deeply and seriously, despite the difference in their standing.

Heimchen's mother--a besotted and thievish old woman--haunts the neighbourhood, and has been recognised by her daughter. Heimchen has been told that her mother is dead, but knows better. Meetings with the terrible old woman re-awaken the gipsy instincts in Heimchen. George loves her still at heart, and circ.u.mstances draw the two together. The crisis is reached on the night of St. John's eve, when after an evening in which the whole neighbourhood, lit up with bonfires, is given over to punch drinking, dancing, and excitement. George is requested by the unsuspecting farmer to escort Heimchen to the railway station, she having a night train to catch to Konigsberg. The ending is intensely Ibsenesque in style. George, on the very day fixed for his wedding with Gertrude, is ready to fly with Heimchen, but, mindful of the immense obligations binding them both to the farmer's family, he insists that there shall be at least an explanation. Heimchen, instinctively grasping the difference between a man's and a woman's love, foresees the regrets that would result from the overthrow of George's plans. She changes her att.i.tude and forbids him to speak to the farmer. The St. John fires are burnt out. The midsummer madness is over. It is now for her to return to duty and dulness and the burden of a starved heart. For life she must remain satisfied with her one night of bliss on St. John's eve. So she stands alone and watches the departure of George's and Gertrude's wedding procession.

"The great scene of the play, in which Heimchen and George are left alone together, is managed with wonderful stagecraft. Till the last moment they seem to be adhering to 'good resolutions,' but a series of incidents, all absolutely natural, occur to distract attention and cause delay, till they hear the whistle of the train and know that it is too late. The bonfires, the punch-drinking, and, above all, George's speech, from which the quotation at the head of these notes is taken, have fired their blood, and Heimchen is unstrung by the painful meeting with her disreputable mother earlier in the day, when she had been obliged to buy back things that her mother had pilfered. At last she throws herself on her knees before George and says, 'Du! Kuss' mich nicht! Ich will dich kussen. Ich will alles auf mich nehmen. Meine Mutter stiehlt. Ich stehl'

auch'--and the curtain falls."

To return to the date of Johnstone's arrival at the _Guardian_ office in Manchester, where he was made welcome. He found friends upon the staff, and kept them in spite of his want of sympathy with some of the political views of the paper. On politics he never wrote, except when recording matters of fact on his mission to the Greco-Turkish war. But, not to speak of living persons, he was brought for some years into close contact with one of the best-equipped and finest-tempered journalists of our time. William Thomas Arnold, the son of Thomas, and nephew of Matthew Arnold, was one of the two or three men, senior to himself, in his personal circle, for whom Johnstone had a profound regard both as a man and as a master-craftsman. This regard was well-deserved. An authoritative scholar in the history of the early Roman Empire, a critic who cast original light on Keats and some of the Jacobean poets, at home in Dryden, in the French literature both of the great century and the romantic age, abreast also of criticism in both countries, and a sound vigorous judge of acting and the drama, Arnold made time to share the daily burdens and aid in sustaining the high uncompromising standards of a newspaper whose many foes have never questioned its consistent and iron courage during the last ten years. Arnold often stood to Johnstone in the capacity of actual editorial chief for the evening. It is hateful to be edited, even to the change of a comma, except where errors of fact or risks of libel are in question. Political contributions are another thing; a common line--the "view of the paper"--must be adhered to, and self-sacrifice in detail, within large limits, is simply necessary. That is warfare; you may resign your commission, but, if you do not, must accept instructions. But in art and letters! The mutual respect of the two men may be measured by the freedom that was left to Johnstone, and by the spirit in which he, rightly the most sensitive of men in such concerns and naturally irritable, took the occasional blue-pencillings.

His other colleagues also held Johnstone in regard, in spite of the vehemence with which he went his own way. Sometimes he would come in from the concert, like an instrument whose strings are still quivering at full pitch, and this is not the mood for rapid committee work at night. There might be one great explanation from time to time which cleared the air. It was seen that he was thinking of his subject, and not of his own vanity, and that he was immensely, indignantly, and delightfully wrapped up in that subject. On the whole it was a good training for him, and few strong men, beginning at the age of thirty-four, would have shown themselves, despite occasional rubs, so reasonably adaptive. It may also be said that few newspapers would have stood so well by a writer who, whenever he felt it his duty to do so, would promptly perturb the musical hive, careless whether drone or hornet minded. Mr. John Morley, who ought to know, has expressed some doubt as to whether journalism tends to special elevation of character.

There are cases where the doubt does not arise. When the critic, on artistic, and therefore on public, grounds, and with due store of knowledge, raises a fury by his condemnations, and when the editor, who has to think of his paper and its standing, supports the critic, believing him likely to be right, that is a good evening's work. The scope therefore granted to Johnstone as a journalist by his editor was a proof of sagacity, for he became a power in the musical community, not only of Manchester but of the larger region the _Manchester Guardian_ reaches. No doubt, though he was allowed as free a hand in expressing his opinions as any other of his craft, and a much freer one than the majority, he sometimes wearied of the necessary restrictions of a journalist's position and their deadening effect upon the mind. An outburst, expressive of a deep and recurring mood, occurs in a letter of January, 1902, written on his return to Manchester, and describing a day he had spent in London with York Powell.

"There is now no one in this neighbourhood with whom I can _converse_. I find myself permanently in the journalistic att.i.tude, regarding it as luck if I can say two per cent. of what I think about anything; so the meeting with Powell was an oasis at the end of some very sandy months."

This complaint was laid not against the paper he served, but against the spa.r.s.eness of the kind of society he liked best. To understand it some curious features of life in Manchester must be recalled. He used at times to come to a small society of friends, which lasted for eight or nine years, and met during the business year at about monthly intervals, at the members' dwellings, for free conversation. He is remembered as having there discoursed on Tolstoy's conceptions of art with his usual energy and elaboration. The stringent mad-logic of the great art-hater had once attracted, but at last disgusted him, and he saw that even Tolstoy's famed novels, with their show of G.o.dlike equity, really held the seed of his later prejudices against science, art, and s.e.xual love.

But such occasions when he could talk freely seemed to grow rarer. The fault lay somewhat, no doubt, in his own radical solitariness of mind, but also in the surrounding conditions.

Huge Manchester, almost a metropolis, is full of force, full of mental as well as commercial stir; it is not, no, it is not! a _social_ city.

If it ever learns how to amuse itself, it will really be that; it will be a metropolis. The reasons of the defect are partly physical. It has an air, a rainfall, a climate, and an aspect, that do not make for good spirits. The suburbs lie far apart in a ring round the business crater, which becomes dark and most unfestal after ten o'clock at night, and which those who cannot drive think twice of crossing. Also there is an unfused mixture of races and cla.s.ses. Apart from Greeks and Armenians, who stand apart from one another and from other nations, there are the German and other Jews on one side, and the Germans who are not Jews markedly on another side. There are the big Lancas.h.i.+re money-makers, of the soil; the shopkeepers and the vast clerkly mult.i.tude; the professional cla.s.ses, or castes; and the hand-workers, rough, but in essential breeding and wits perhaps the soundest of all. For social purposes many of these elements do not count. It is the Germans, the Jews, and the professional cla.s.ses, with many of the intelligent business men in a large way, who probably civilise Manchester, in the stricter sense of the term. It is as civilised an English city as can be found in England outside London, if the press, the libraries, the university, the theatres, and the music, be all weighed together. But its bent hardly lies towards society, in the sense of ringing, collective, intellectually disinterested talk, or towards gaiety of the more bearable kind. There is ample dining, dancing, and official entertainment, but those are not enough for salvation. The vast number of philanthropic, educational, religious, and political agencies, which fill playtime with labour for the good of mankind or party, ent.i.tle the city to be called great and progressive, but they do not precisely make it blithe. They inspire respect, and no one who has not lived there many years can realise their number or the strenuous, positive, character of the place; the southern nature seems soft and vague in comparison. But the free talk of the real capitals, and their resources for witty amus.e.m.e.nt, imply a large leisured cla.s.s, an element of _flaneurs_ in the population, which is hardly possible in a big North-English city. There is personal isolation in a curious measure--a want of rallying points for talk. The atoms repel each other and fly apart. Men go home to their families or rooms and stop there. If they go out, it is often for some "meeting" of an earnest description, not to amuse themselves; or, if they wish to do this, they go to music, which is a somewhat solitary pleasure. Talk, for the satisfaction of talking, is less common. There are exceptions; but this is the impression given by long residence in Manchester. The Germans, with their club and singing and cheerfulness, have done their best for their adopted city. But it was hard for a cosmopolitan person like Arthur Johnstone, at once deeply bent on art and beauty of all kinds, and also demanding some kind of cheerful foreign life in the intervals of work, to find his account quickly in his new abode, and the opinion of it we have recorded above is largely his own.

For some time, therefore, he felt that Manchester was admirable rather than refres.h.i.+ng. It had found for him the work of his life; he soon became a force in his own calling; he had friends, new as well as old, in the place; and he liked it better, as time pa.s.sed, and as he managed to find some of the intelligent festiveness that he wanted. Gradually he touched several quite different circles, chiefly doubtless the musical, but others also, journalistic, academic, and professional. Except with a few, Johnstone made his way somewhat slowly in society. He could be outspoken, uncompromising, and even explosive (though he never attacked unless he thought there was provocation). These characteristics and his daring line as a critic, both in talk and print, caused him to be under-estimated by some otherwise intelligent persons. He might have said, with Saint-Simon, that he was not "un sujet academique." He disliked dons as a cla.s.s; at Oxford and elsewhere they made him, of course wrongly, restive. He had not been through their mill, and they did not always care for or see his curious and original play of mind.

Their committee-trained caution of phrase was alarmed by his emphasis and heavy-shotted superlatives, which merely amused his friends. There were, of course, those among them who liked him well. In some houses he had, apart from his musical gifts, a certain name for being "clever and spiky." The latter epithet was only partially true, for he was simple-hearted and good-natured the moment that the occasion arose. "His sympathy," writes Madame de Navarro (Miss Mary Anderson), "never failed, and his unaffected love and enthusiasm for the good, the true, and the beautiful, could always be counted upon." All who had eyes saw this in Johnstone, but all had not eyes. He was interested, absorbed, whelmed in his subject, and thought instinctively more about ideas and purposes than about persons, so that he sometimes ignored persons and therefore dissatisfied them. He also said, what is true, that of the provinces, as compared with the capital, "the favourite sin is cowardice." This, and any semblance of sn.o.bbery, he openly despised. He liked to have power and weight--and was right in liking it--in order to carry out certain musical reforms. But he dismissed at once anyone who, as he put it, "may be very well-informed, yet clearly cares nothing at all for things in themselves, but simply and solely to be a person of consideration." So, except as a musical critic, his measure, for good reasons, was not invariably taken. He knew this fact, and felt it with some keenness, but not from the side of disappointed conceit. He thought it was his lot in life not to be able to talk freely and acceptably save to a very few persons. He was sorry, but convinced that thus he was built. The old Oxford sense of solitariness--and Oxford leaves dregs in the cup for these her sensitive children--does not easily let go its victim. The happiness and success of the latter years, however, were to leave him markedly easier, mellower, and more communicative. He was, indeed, fully entering on his own when he was cut down. But a larger and more various experience than ever yet, both of thought and travel, was to be his lot within the last eight years of his short life.

In April, 1897, Johnstone made his appearance in a new capacity. The dispute between Greece and Turkey over the treatment of the Christians in Crete had reached an acute stage and war was expected to break out at any moment. The _Manchester Guardian_, more than any other English newspaper, had championed the Greek cause. Naturally the proprietors wished to secure the best and fullest accounts of the operations and to have them despatched in advance of other papers. Mr. J. B. Atkins was chosen to accompany the army in the field, and Johnstone's knowledge of modern languages and acquaintance with Eastern Europe marked him out as a valuable colleague. He was posted at Athens to receive reports from the front, to arrange all the details connected with their transmission, and to review the progress of the war, work which he carried through very successfully. His gift of tongues, which once caused him to be congratulated in Germany on "speaking English so well," enabled him soon to get a working knowledge of modern Greek; he was fortunate too in finding a Greek gentleman, who, grateful for the att.i.tude of the _Manchester Guardian_, acted as his interpreter and showed him about the city. The same friend was on intimate terms with the Royal family, and introduced Johnstone to the King and the Duke of Sparta. At the close of his stay at Athens, he hesitatingly asked if there was any return he could make for the various kindnesses he had received, when this friend of royalty named so modest a fee that Johnstone was staggered; "it was the pourboire of a head-waiter," he said afterwards when describing the incident, adding that he had never realised what true democracy meant until then. Among his a.s.sociates there was the correspondent of a Viennese paper who had somehow incurred the dislike and suspicion of the war-party, but, as Johnstone thought, unjustly. At last his life was openly threatened; there was no hope for him unless he managed to leave the country at once, and even then there was a fair chance that he might never reach the s.h.i.+p alive. Johnstone, being on good terms with the patriotic party, pleaded for his life and undertook to get him away; he cycled behind him for the four miles from Athens to the Piraeus, and when they reached the harbour kept the mob off until he was safely on board an Austrian Lloyd steamer. The ride was an exciting one, for it was expected that an attempt would be made to shoot the obnoxious correspondent on the way down to the port; some shots were actually fired, but went wide of the mark. When the war was nearing the end Johnstone's services were not so necessary at Athens, and he went to join Mr. Atkins in camp; but he saw no fighting, for the day after his arrival peace was declared. His colleague returned to England, and Johnstone spent some weeks in Crete to investigate the stories of those atrocities which had been the immediate cause of the war. He went _sac au dos_ like J. K. Huysmans in 1870, but unlike him, roughed it with good humour and looked upon hards.h.i.+ps of this kind as a helpful and valuable experience. A year later when congratulating a friend, who was somewhat habit-ridden, on his marriage, he wrote, "The problem of changing one's habits is emphatically one of those to be solved '_ambulando_.' The forms of ambulation best adapted to the purpose are serving on a campaign, doing time 'with,' and getting married;"

admitting, however, that the last, though less drastic, was more permanent in its effect.

Of the stay in Crete he always spoke as the best holiday of his life. He was struck with the beauty both of the lowlands and the hills, and predicted the day when the isle would be one of the great resorts of Europe. The mountaineers redeemed for him the modern Greek race, which his experience in Athens had led him to scorn utterly. He thought that the citizen and official cla.s.s were s.h.i.+fty and mendacious, and his epithets were Juvenalian in vigour. The hillmen were of another race, in body and spirit, and he loved sharing their hardy life. It is right to add that he exempted the ordinary Greek soldier on the mainland from the condemnation which he reserved for the officers. Some considerable time he spent on the water, chartering a small steamer in order to coast up near the seat of war. Before making his way homeward he went to Constantinople, and the surface view, at any rate, of the Turk pleased him well. He returned home in unusually buoyant health and wearing a moustache, having fallen under the spell of Eastern prejudice against the clean-shaved.

At the beginning of the musical season in October, 1898, a considerable storm was raised in Manchester by the action of the guarantors of the Halle concerts, who had offered the post of conductor to Dr. Richter, instead of renewing Dr. Cowen's appointment. It fell to Johnstone to write the two leading articles on the subject which appeared in the _Manchester Guardian_ of October 4th and 17th. His clear and judicial summing up of the case left no room for questioning the right of the guarantors to act as they had done, while his special knowledge of Dr.

Richter's immense services to musical art enabled him to write with authority on the great chance now open for Manchester's acceptance. In short, the point at issue lay between sentimental considerations and the good of the community, and Johnstone very naturally declared for the latter. Our reference to this controversy is intentionally brief, but its importance at the time was considerable. Johnstone was now recognised as a leader of musical opinion in Manchester, a position and influence which became greatly extended in the years that followed.

There is no doubt as to the kind of power that he exerted. He did not touch the actual administration of music in Manchester, in the College of Music, or the Halle concerts, or elsewhere. He did not directly advise, therefore, in the choice of programmes, players, or singers. But he went to every performance of the slightest note, whether popular or not, and wrote about it incisively and heedfully, always preferring to praise and interpret, but hitting very hard when he thought it imperative to do so. He went to the prize exhibitions of the college pupils, and reviewed them (omitting names) with a sympathetic ear for promise. He lectured, often very well, at Mr. Rowley's Sunday gatherings in Ancoats, and also in the History Theatre of Owens College. As a lecturer, it may be observed, he suffered at times from having too much to say and failing to compress it perfectly. But he held an audience of unprofessional hearers with his sharply-cut and pungent style; and, in one respect he was a fortunately un-English lecturer, for his power of graphic gesture was quite noteworthy. These, however, were casual activities; presswork took almost all his strength. He did a vast amount of musical reviewing, and his room was stacked with the publications that he simply found it useless to criticise. But the notices of actual singing and playing were his main labour, as well as the pioneer articles on unknown or imperfectly appreciated works. These were of high value, and contain some of his best writing, being done at fuller leisure. As to the quality of his published utterances we may say no more; the articles we have saved for this book must speak for themselves. But, without doubt, his judgment was looked for, and welcomed or feared. He made it less easy for bad performers to come again. He was generous, preferring even a slight excess, to oncoming and unrecognised talent, or to remote and exotic kinds of talent which made the fas.h.i.+onable mult.i.tude impatient. He became the worthy and articulate voice of musical opinion in and beyond one of the English capitals of the art.

We could hardly ill.u.s.trate the kind of power that Johnstone exerted better than by quoting what Canon Gorton writes concerning his connection with the Morecambe musical festival:--

"Our festival was born in 1891. From the first it was organised entirely apart from any pecuniary object; it brought us some delightful music, as we set our own test pieces, and its aim was essentially educational. Our special correspondent from the _Manchester Guardian_ did not arrive on the scene until 1899. We had grown accustomed to unstinted praise, the judges exhausted the adjectives in the language in describing the excellence of the singing, composers told us that they had never heard their part-songs so perfectly rendered. We thought we were perfect. Then came a bomb from the critic (April 27th, 1899). He was not in touch with us or cognisant with our aim, nor did he allow for our limitations. Much of the music seemed to him unworthy; the compet.i.tive or sporting element annoyed him; he saw rocks ahead, rocks on which others had been wrecked.

He wrote: 'The array of talent is no doubt imposing, but far too much of the music is of an inferior stamp. It should not be forgotten that the end and aim of such festivals is to foster a taste for music. But the taste for inferior music needs no fostering. If, therefore, the organisers of these festivals prescribe second-rate works for the compet.i.tions, they simply destroy the _raison d'etre_ of these compet.i.tions. It is music as an art--not music as a sport or trade--that requires fostering. There is a danger that such concerts may degenerate into a vulgar pot-hunting business, and one would like to see everything done, both as regards the music prescribed and the conduct of the proceedings of the festival itself, to guard against that danger.' I do not claim to know much about music, but I recognise good English when I see it. I saw that 'our special correspondent' was a master of his craft. I replied at once in the _Manchester Guardian_ rejecting his interpretation of our motives, and still more the motives which brought choirs to our Festival. I said that 'no chastening was joyous' and urged that the critic should have patience, that we were then walking and that some day we would run, and expressed a hope that he might be there to see. I afterwards called upon him at the Reform Club, and this commenced a friends.h.i.+p, the memory of which I shall always hold as a matter of pride. He henceforth became for us 'the critic.' We not only awaited his arrival, but in choice of music Mr. Howson (the choir-master) even applied an additional test: 'This will test the choir, but will it also satisfy Mr. Arthur Johnstone's taste?' The choir were conscious ever of his presence. The judges were in the box giving their awards, but 'Mr.

Johnstone is in the grand circle, what does he think?' I heard him once appeal to his wife; 'Am I not always open to conviction?' With his first article in view, and with the knowledge of what subsequently he did for us, I could but allow that he made good his claim, for he became the most stalwart defender of our Morecambe musical festival--'a movement,'

he wrote in 1903 'that is one of the most genuine and hopeful things in the musical England of to-day.' Again he complained that 'little or nothing has been done by the teachers of music in Manchester to encourage the musical revival that for a good many years had been going on in the North of England, and more particularly in Lancas.h.i.+re.' Later, he wrote a remarkable article in reply to the strictures of Mr. J.

Spencer Curwen. Mr. Curwen had questioned whether our festivals help choral music in the long run, and proceeded to comfort us by saying that 'we were entering upon a dangerous path. The more success you have, the nearer you will approach to the state of things which exists in Wales.'

To this belated warning Mr. Johnstone replied (October 5th, 1903): 'The peculiar evils enumerated by Mr. Spencer Curwen as being fostered by compet.i.tions were observed a good many years ago by those who are organising meetings in North Lancas.h.i.+re. Indeed, one may say the observation of these evils was the point of departure in Lancas.h.i.+re, and we are, therefore, a little tired of these strictures on the choirs got up to learn certain pieces, dispersing immediately afterwards; on fragmentary performances, and the rest of the black things on Mr.

Curwen's list. It is evident that Mr. Curwen is entirely without knowledge of the best Lancas.h.i.+re choirs formed by the influence of compet.i.tion in their own neighbourhood. These choirs have as strong a principle of cohesion as any in the world. Their repertory is exceedingly wide. Their organisers show immense enterprise in unearthing the treasures of the old English and Italian madrigal writers and of the finest modern part-song writers. Let Mr. Curwen go to Morecambe next spring; his ideas on the subject of musical compet.i.tion will be pretty thoroughly revolutionised.' Yes, Mr. Johnstone was open to conviction, sought nothing less than the truth, was at infinite pains to obtain it--_O si sic omnes_. But the debt we owe to him was not merely because he was a critic keen to discern the good, not merely because he proved a fearless champion. He became a friend always ready to discuss methods of development, and to place his exact and wide knowledge at our disposal, and after we had formed our plans it was a great gain to Mr. Howson and myself to test their wisdom by his opinion. He spoke frequently of the capacity for conducting which the festival revealed, and inveighed against the star system, whether among vocalists, instrumentalists, or conductors--and of these last he had in his mind's eye several whom he maintained we ought to rely upon. It does not fall to me to speak of him as a friend, as a delightful companion, as a courteous gentleman--one whom I married and one whom, alas! I buried in the prime of his powers."

Johnstone took the position he had thus made with increasing seriousness, and worked during the Manchester musical season harder than ever. In the summer he went abroad, but not entirely for rest. He greatly expanded his knowledge, and also his musical reputation and that of his paper, by his visit to festivals at Bayreuth, at Oberammergau, at Dusseldorf, and at Vienna. Forced to choose, we have hardly been able, within these limits, to quote from the contributions he sent home.

The last of his foreign journeys was unlike all the others, which had been taken alone. The words quoted above from the letter of January, 1902, were no longer to be true, though the desired companions.h.i.+p came late. A solitary life in lodgings, and the absence of domestic ties to one of his affectionate and home-loving nature (which lay behind his gipsy habits) could not be compensated even by hosts of friends; but brighter days were in store. In June, 1902, he became engaged to Miss Lucy Morris, a Manchester lady who had won considerable distinction at Cambridge; and henceforward the most human of interests gave fresh inspiration to his life and work.

Their marriage took place two years later, on June 28th, 1904, quietly at Morecambe. The friend of both, Canon Gorton, married them, and another friend, Mr. Howson, undertook the musical part of the ceremony, which was performed by the Morecambe Madrigal Society and the church choir. There never was a wedding with better music, and for once the hackneyed description, "the service was fully choral," might have been used with a real meaning. The honeymoon was spent on the Riffel Alp: afterwards the travellers attended the Bayreuth festival, returning to Manchester at the end of August, where they went to live at Tarnhelm (named after the magic helmet of the "Ring") in Victoria Park. A few more months of happiness remained to Johnstone. On Thursday, December 8th, he was taken seriously ill, but though in considerable pain he attended a concert in the evening, and wrote a notice of the performance. The next morning his condition was worse, and on Sat.u.r.day he was operated upon for appendicitis. But relief came too late, and on Friday, December 16th, his sufferings ended. He had just completed his forty-third year: he was in the plenitude of his intellectual powers, and had entered upon the happiest and most useful period of his life.

This cruel and sudden ending to Johnstone's career, at a moment when he had reason to be reconciled to life and to forgive circ.u.mstance, when he was wider in his critical sympathies and more thoroughly master of his means of expression than ever before, and when his public influence was strong, stirred the musical society of north-western England. North and South are two different nations--neighbours that often carefully ignore and misunderstand each other. This appears to be specially the case in musical criticism. The London press said much too little. But the word "provincial" has no application to the musical energies of Manchester.

It is like one of the great German towns, Munich or Frankfurt, being wholly independent of the capital, of which it is not a colony. The mark made by Johnstone in this region was attested in a measure that he would never have foreseen. The _Manchester Guardian_, besides giving an honourable obituary notice to its critic, received far more letters in his honour, expressing sorrow at his early death and admiration of his character, than it found s.p.a.ce to print, although the most salient of them filled its columns. They were written with knowledge, not by laymen, but by persons with whom Johnstone had worked and had dealt faithfully, sometimes stringently. The remark of Canon Gorton, "I began my friends.h.i.+p with a quarrel," might be echoed more than once.

Johnstone's clean, hard literary thrust, or _punch_, free from noisy hammering violence, was a not infrequent introduction to his acquaintance. It was given with a will, but in a spirit thoroughly, and to third parties amusingly, impersonal. The letters as a whole give a clear notion of the intelligent professional view concerning him; of his honesty, catholicity, and knowledge. He had been everywhere, he counted, and when he had gone he was missed.

One of Johnstone's brothers in the craft, Mr. Ernest Newman, after referring to a dispute which had led to their friends.h.i.+p, spoke of him as "the best and strongest Englishman of our time in this line." Dr.

Adolph Brodsky, after praising in especial Johnstone's accounts of pianoforte performances, singled out his services in breaking down the popular prejudice in England against Bach. Others wrote of his musical erudition and his "laudable desire to prevent anything in the form of charlatanism from finding a place in the musical a.s.semblies of Manchester." Canon Gorton, who, as we quoted above, wrote with grat.i.tude of the high stimulus given by Johnstone to those local efforts which save music from being unduly centralised in the bigger cities, and his pertinent remarks upon the rarity and value of great musical critics claim quotation, as they bring home the public sense of loss in Johnstone's death.

"He held a high view of his office, and would make a sacrifice of self rather than a sacrifice of truth. It is difficult to calculate the extent of your loss. Musicians succeed musicians; they being dead may yet speak. But the critic's words are ephemeral; they remain in the files of the newspapers. For musicians there are schools; but what school is there for critics? In music we need guides, men with a wide horizon, a general culture, men unfettered by musical faction, with definite ideals, with command of the English tongue, of courage and of true instinct. Such an one, I take it, was Mr. Arthur Johnstone. Who will fill his place?"

Upon this precise statement of the case we could not try to improve. We can only add some words upon the nature of the man apart from his profession. In an estimate of Johnstone's character the foremost place must be a.s.signed to his love of truth in all things; this virtue was the touchstone he applied to his friends and to all artistic work. M. Vantyn happily quotes, as the most appropriate motto for him, Locke's words, "To love truth for truth's sake is the princ.i.p.al part of human perfection in this world and the seed-plot of all other virtues," adding by way of comment, "In everything, in all intercourse, upon all occasions, under all circ.u.mstances, whether in enjoyment, in work, in serious intercourse, he was a gentleman in the strictest sense of the word." Next we may place his wonderful sympathy with the oppressed in every cla.s.s. Even where there was much that roused his anger in the sinner, as in the case of Oscar Wilde, he was indignant at the merciless treatment he received, and pleaded for a minor punishment. Where his sympathy could have free play he was tender in the extreme, he would take infinite personal trouble, and give all that his modest means permitted. He was fond of animals, he disliked the idea of killing them in "sport," and was glad that most of his intimate friends shared his view. But he was not unreasonable on this point; and, to take the real test question, he was not absolutely opposed to vivisection under stringent conditions. For all his early talk of the "joy of life" he was more anxious to secure it for others than for himself. He was tolerant under his armour, and would rebuke pointless severity by saying, "Well, well, there is something wrong with almost everybody;" but he did not extend this indulgence to the cruel and pedantic. His youthful rebelliousness, apartness, and questioning of society did not all vanish, but were taken up and transformed into a more flexible temper; for they had never been the mere plant of nihilism and vanity, that a selfish nature manures in its barren private garden. Some of his friends valued, above all, his total lack of the small inquisitiveness, which he resented more than anything in others. He was deep in his work or in the minor preparations for the day, and did not trouble much about his friends' affairs. But when anything was doing, he emerged at once. When one of his old companions was in suspense over illness at home, and yet could do nothing but wait, Johnstone planned for him and personally conducted an elaborate series of distractions and amus.e.m.e.nts covering about four hours--not an easy thing to do in Manchester--each of them appearing to be improvised as it came. The trouble over, he relapsed into thought and went his ways. There were many such incidents. A picturesque and n.o.ble character of this kind, with its traits of quaintness, claims thus much record, and the more so that reticence made it less easy to discover. To the public the journalist is such a mere spectral hand and pen, writing by lamplight, without a face or form behind it, as we hear of in a certain cla.s.s of old ghost-stories.

Johnstone had become more than this to many of his readers. But they could not know him as a man. It is well, therefore, to lift so much of his privacy as may enable them partially to do so. He went through the world scornful of its common valuations, appraising for himself, watching with a certain isolation, and always preferring (if he must choose) liberty to happiness, and rightful pride to obvious advantage.