Rameau's Nephew and First Satire (Oxford World's Classics) (9 page)

ME
: You’ve gone to a great deal of trouble to show me how highly skilled you are, but I was quite prepared to take your word for it.

HIM
: Highly skilled? Oh no! As regards my profession, I know more or less what I’m doing, which is more than what’s required. Is there any obligation, in this country, to know the subject one teaches?

ME
: No more than to know the subject one studies!

HIM
: By God that’s right, that’s exactly right. Now, Master Philosopher, place your hand on your heart and tell me honestly: wasn’t there a time when you were not as well off as you are today?

ME
: I’m still not all that well off.

HIM
: But now, in summer, you wouldn’t still go to the Luxembourg Gardens—you remember?

ME
: Let’s not talk about that; yes, I remember.

HIM
: In a shaggy grey coat.

ME
: Yes, yes.

HIM
: Worn threadbare on one side, the cuffs torn, and your stockings of black wool with the seams darned in white.

ME
: Yes, yes, whatever you say.

HIM
: So, back then, what were you doing in the Allée des Soupirs?
*

ME: Cutting a rather pathetic figure.

HIM
: And once outside the Gardens, you’d be pounding the pavement.

ME
: I agree.

HIM
: You used to give mathematics lessons.

ME
: Without knowing a thing about the subject, isn’t that what you’re getting at?

HIM
: Exactly.

ME
: I learnt by teaching others, and I turned out some good students.

HIM
: That may be, but music isn’t the same as algebra or geometry. Now you’re a big fish.

ME
: Not so very big.

HIM
: And doing very nicely, thank you.

ME
: Not all that nicely.

HIM
: You’re hiring masters to teach your daughter.

ME
: Not yet. It’s her mother who sees to her education: you have to have peace at home.

HIM
: Peace at home? My goodness, you only have peace if you’re either servant or master, and the one to be is master. I had a wife, God rest her soul, but if she occasionally got uppish with me I’d get on my high horse and thunder at her, I’d say, like God: ‘Let there be light!’ and there was light. And in all four years we didn’t raise our voices at each other so many as ten times. How old is your child?

ME
: That’s got nothing to do with it.

HIM
: How old’s your child?

ME
: Devil take it, let’s leave my child and her age out of it, and get back to the tutors she’ll be having.

HIM
: God, I’ve never met anything as pigheaded as a philosopher. In all humility, I wish to enquire of My Lord Philosopher if one might possibly ascertain the age of Mademoiselle his daughter.

ME
: Let’s say she’s eight.
*

HIM
: Eight! Then she ought to have had her fingers on the keyboard for the last four years.

ME
: But perhaps I didn’t particularly wish to include in her education a subject that takes up so much time and is of so little use.

HIM
: So what are you planning to teach her, may I ask?

ME
: If I can, to think straight—a very rare thing among men, and even more so among women.

HIM
: Let her think as illogically as she wants, as long as she’s pretty, amusing, and knows how to please.

ME
: Since nature has been so unkind to her as to give her a delicate constitution along with a sensitive soul, and to expose her to the same pain in life as if her constitution were strong and her heart made of bronze, I’ll teach her, if I can, to bear her pain courageously.

HIM
: Let her weep, suffer, simper, and complain of her nerves like all the others, as long as she’s pretty, amusing, and knows how to please. What, no dance lessons?

ME
: No more than what’s required to master curtseying, deportment, how to handle herself correctly, and how to walk well.

HIM
: No voice lessons?

ME
: No more than what’s required to learn proper pronunciation.

HIM
: No music lessons?

ME
: If I could find a good tutor for harmony, I’d be happy to have him teach her a couple of hours a day, for a year or two, but no more than that.

HIM
: And in the place of those essentials you’re eliminating?

ME
: I’ll put grammar, mythology, history, geography, a little drawing, and a great deal of ethics.

HIM
: How easily I could prove to you the uselessness of all those subjects in a world like ours; indeed, not simply the uselessness, but perhaps even the danger. But for the moment I’ll content myself with this question: won’t she need a tutor or two?

ME
: Undoubtedly.

HIM
: Now we’re back on our subject. And these tutors, you expect them to know grammar, mythology, history, geography, ethics, which they’ll teach her? Nonsense, my dear sir, nonsense. If they knew those subjects well enough to teach them, they wouldn’t be doing so.

ME
: Why not?

HIM
: Because they’d have spent their entire life learning them. You have to have completely immersed yourself in art or in science to understand its fundamental principles. The classic
texts are only interpreted well by those who’ve grown old in their perusal. It’s the middle and the end that illuminate the shadows of the beginning. Ask your friend Monsieur D’Alembert, the leading luminary of mathematical science, whether he would be too expert to teach its rudiments. It was only after thirty or forty years of study that my uncle began to see glimmers of light in the darkness of musical theory.

ME
: Oh, you king of all fools [I exclaimed], how does it come about that that no-good head of yours contains such sound ideas all scrambled together with such wildly extravagant notions?

HIM
: Who the devil knows? Chance puts them into your head, and there they remain. It therefore follows that unless you know everything, you really know nothing. You don’t know where one thing’s going; where another comes from; where this or that one should be put; which one should come first or would be better placed second. Can you teach something properly without a method? And a method, where does that originate? Listen, my philosopher friend, it strikes me that physics will always be a weakling science, a drop of water from the vast ocean caught up on the point of a needle, a grain of dust from off the Alps; and then, what about the causes of phenomena—truly, it would be better to know nothing than to know so little, so imperfectly; and that’s exactly the point I’d reached when I became a teacher of accompaniment and composition. What are you thinking about?

ME
: I’m thinking that everything you’ve just said is more specious than solid. But enough of that. You’ve taught, you say, accompaniment and composition?

HIM
: Yes.

ME
: And you knew nothing whatever about them?

HIM
: Believe me, I knew nothing; and that’s why there were some worse than me: those who believed they knew something. At least I didn’t spoil either the taste or the hands of the children. When they went from me to a good teacher, as they had learnt nothing they at least had nothing to unlearn; which meant that much money and time saved.

ME
: How did you manage?

HIM
: The way they all do. I’d arrive. I’d fling myself into an armchair … ‘What dreadful weather! The streets are so exhausting!’ I’d pass on a few bits of gossip. ‘Mademoiselle Lemierre was to play a vestal virgin in that new opera, but she’s pregnant for the second time. No one knows who’s to be her understudy. Mademoiselle Arnould’s just broken with her little count.
*
They say she’s negotiating with Bertin. However, the little count has discovered the secret of Monsieur de Montami’s porcelain. At their last concert the Friends of Music had an Italian woman who sang like an angel.
*
That Préville’s a rare bird. You really must see him in
Le Mercure galant
,
*
the bit about the enigma’s a riot. That poor Dumesnil hasn’t a clue what she’s saying or what she’s doing. Come on, Mademoiselle, get your book.’ While Mademoiselle, who’s in no hurry, hunts for her book which she’s mislaid, and a chambermaid’s summoned, and Madame scolds, I continue: ‘La Clairon is quite incomprehensible. There’s talk of a totally preposterous marriage—it’s that Mademoiselle—now whatever
is
her name—that little thing he was keeping, by whom he’s had two or three children, and who’d been kept by all those others …’ ‘Come now, Rameau, it’s not possible, you’re talking nonsense.’ ‘No, it’s not nonsense. They say it’s actually taken place. There’s a rumour that Voltaire’s dead. What good news.’ ‘Why good news?’ ‘Because that means he’s about to let loose some splendid sally. It’s his custom to die a couple of weeks beforehand. Let’s see, what else was there?’ I’d tell a few smutty anecdotes I’d heard at the houses where I’d just been, for we’re all of us great scandalmongers. I’d play the fool. They’d listen to me, they’d laugh. They’d exclaim: ‘Still such a charmer!’ Meanwhile Mademoiselle’s book would have turned up under an armchair where it had been dragged, chewed and torn by a puppy or perhaps a kitten. She’d sit down at her harpsichord. She’d begin to make a noise all by herself. Then I’d draw nearer, after nodding my approval to the mother. The mother: ‘It’s not going badly; she just needs to exert herself a
little, but exertion’s the last thing on her mind. She’d rather waste time chattering, messing with her clothes, rushing about, doing goodness knows what. The door’s barely shut behind you but the book’s closed, and isn’t reopened until you come again. And you never tell her off…’ As some action was called for, I’d take her hands and reposition them on the keyboard. I’d get cross and shout: ‘G, G, G, Mademoiselle, it’s G!’ The mother: ‘Mademoiselle, have you no ear? Even I, who am not at the instrument, and can’t see your book, I feel it’s a G that’s wanted. You’re giving Monsieur Rameau so much trouble. His patience is beyond belief. You don’t remember a thing he tells you. You’re making no progress at all …’ I’d then temper the blows somewhat and, with a nod, would say: ‘Excuse me, Madame, excuse me, things could be better, if Mademoiselle made an effort, if she studied a little, but it’s not going badly.’ The mother: ‘If I were you I’d keep her on the same piece for an entire year …’ ‘As to that, she won’t master it until she’s overcome all the difficulties; but that won’t take as long as Madame supposes …’ The mother: ‘Monsieur Rameau, you’re flattering her; you’re too kind. That’s the only thing she’ll remember from her lesson, and she’ll be sure to repeat it to me when the need arises …’ The hour would pass. My student would hand me my fee, with the graceful gesture and curtsey her dancing master taught her. I’d put it into my pocket, while the mother said: ‘Very nice, Mademoiselle; if Javillier were here, he’d applaud you.’ I’d chat a little longer out of politeness, then I’d slip away; that’s what used to be called a lesson in accompaniment.

ME
: And is it any different today?

HIM
: Lord, I think so. I arrive. I look serious. I quickly deposit my muff. I open the harpsichord. I run my fingers over the keys. I’m always in a hurry. If I’m kept waiting for a minute, I protest loudly, as though I were being robbed: ‘An hour from now I have to be at such and such a house; two hours from now the Duchess of X expects me. I’m engaged for dinner with a beautiful marquise, and when I leave there, I’m going
to a concert at Baron de Bagge’s house, in the Rue neuve des Petits-Champs.’

ME
: But you’re not really expected anywhere?

HIM
: True.

ME
: So why go in for those base little subterfuges?

HIM
: Base? Why base, may I ask? They’re standard in my calling. I’m not degrading myself by doing as everyone else does. It wasn’t I who invented them, and I’d be strange and maladroit not to use them. Of course I know quite well that if you apply to what I’ve described certain general principles of God knows what morality that people talk about all the time but never put into practice, what is white will be black, and what is black will be white. But, Master Philosopher, there exists such a thing as a universal conscience. Just as there’s a universal grammar; and then there are exceptions in every language that you experts call, I believe, well … give me a hint, will you? … you call them …

ME
: Idioms.

HIM
: Exactly. Well now, every calling has its exceptions to the universal conscience, which I’d like to call the idioms of that calling.

ME
: I understand. Fontenelle speaks well and writes well, although his style teems with French idioms.

HE
: And the sovereign, the minister, the financier, the magistrate, the soldier, the man of letters, the lawyer, the public prosecutor, the merchant, the banker, the craftsman, the singing master, the dancing master, are perfectly respectable people, although their conduct deviates in several respects from the universal conscience, and abounds in moral idioms. The more ancient an institution, the greater the number of its idioms; the worse the suffering in a particular age, the more the idioms multiply. The man is worth what his occupation is worth, and vice versa; in the final analysis, their worth is the same. So people make their own occupation seem as significant as possible.

ME
: What I’m hearing clearly through that tangle of words is that there are few honourably exercised occupations, or that there are few honourable men exercising them.