Mary Westmacott - Giant's Bread

No woman ever longed for a child like I long to produce Music …

And I’m barren – sterile …

Vernon.

Dear Sebastian, –

It seems like a dream your having come and gone … Will you really do The Tale of the Rogue who outwitted Three Other Rogues , I wonder?

I’m only just beginning to recognize what a howling success you’ve made of things. I’ve at last grasped that you’re simply IT nowadays. Yes, found your National Opera House – God knows it’s time we had one – but what do you want with Opera? It’s archaic – dead ridiculous individual love affairs …

Music up to now seems to me like a child’s drawing of a house – four walls – a door, two windows and a chimney pot. There you are – and what more do you want!

At anyrate Feinberg and Prokofiev do more than that.

Do you remember how we used to jeer at the ‘Cubists’ and ‘Futurists’? At least I did – now that I come to think of it I don’t believe you agreed.

And then one day – at a cinema – I saw a view of a big city from the air. Spires turning over, buildings bending – everything behaving as one simply knew concrete and steel and iron couldn’t behave! And for the first time I got a glimmering of what old Einstein meant when he talked about relativity.

We don’t know anything about the shape of music … We don’t know anything about the shape of anything, for that matter … Because there’s always one side open to space …

Some day you’ll know what I mean … what Music can mean … what I’ve always known it meant …

What a mess that opera of mine was. All opera is a mess. Music was never intended to be representational. To take a story and write descriptive music to it is as wrong as to write a passage of music – in the abstract so to speak – and then find an instrument capable of playing it! When Stravinsky wrote a clarinet passage, you can’t even conceive of it as being played by anything else!

Music should be like mathematics – a pure science – untouched by drama, or romanticism, or any emotion other than the pure emotion which is the result of sound divorced from ideas.

I’ve always known that in my heart … Music must be Absolute.

Not, of course, that I shall realize my ideal. To create pure sound untouched by ideas is a counsel of perfection.

My music will be the music of machinery. I leave the dressing of it to you. It’s an age of choreography, and choreography will reach heights we don’t as yet dream of. I can trust you with the visual side of my masterpiece as yet unwritten – and which in all probability never will be written.

Music must be four-dimensional – timbre, pitch, relative speed and periodicity.

I don’t think even now we appreciate Schönberg enough. That clean remorseless logic that is the spirit of today. He and he alone had the courage to disregard tradition – to get down to bedrock, and discover Truth.

He’s the one man to my mind who matters. Even his scheme of score writing will have to be adopted universally. It’s absolutely necessary if scores are going to be intelligible.

The thing I have against him is his scorn of his instruments. He’s afraid of being a slave to them. He makes them serve him whether they will or no.

I’m going to glorify my instruments … I’m going to give them what they want – what they’ve always wanted …

Damn it all, Sebastian, what is this strange thing, Music ? I know less and less …

Yours,

Vernon.

I know I haven’t written. I’ve been busy. Making experiments. Means of expression for the Nameless Beast. In other words, instrument making. Metals are jolly interesting – I’m working with alloys just at present.

What a fascinating thing sound is …

Jane sends her love.

In answer to your question – No, I don’t suppose I shall ever leave Russia – not even to attend at your newly planned opera house disguised in my beard!

It’s even more barbarous and beautiful now than when you saw it! Full and flowing, the perfect temperamental Slav Beaver!

But in spite of the forest camouflage, here I am and here I stay, till I am exterminated by one of the bands of wild children.

Yours ever,

Vernon.

Telegram from Vernon Deyre to Sebastian Levinne.

‘Just heard Joe dangerously ill feared dying stranded in New York Jane and I sailing Resplendent hope see you London.’

‘Sebastian!’

Joe started up in bed then fell back weakly. She stared unbelievingly. Sebastian, big fur-coated, calm and omniscient, smiled placidly down at her.

There was no sign in his face of the sudden pang her appearance had given him. Joe – poor little Joe.

Her hair had grown – it was arranged in two short plaits one over each shoulder. Her face was horribly thin with a high hectic flush on each cheekbone. The bones of her shoulders showed through her thin nightdress.

She looked like a feverish child. There was something child-like in her surprise, in her pleasure, in her eager questioning. The nurse had left them.

Sebastian sat down by the bed and took Joe’s thin hand in his.

‘Vernon wired me. I didn’t wait for him. I caught the first boat.’

‘To come to me?’

‘Of course.’

‘Dear Sebastian!’

Tears came into her eyes. Sebastian was alarmed and went on hastily:

‘Not that I shan’t do a bit of business while I am over. I often come over on business and as a matter of fact I can do one or two good deals just now.’

‘Don’t spoil it.’

‘But it’s true,’ said Sebastian, surprised.

Joe began to laugh – but coughed instead. Sebastian watched anxiously – ready to call the nurse. He had been warned. But the fit passed.

Joe lay there contentedly, her hand creeping into Sebastian’s again.

‘Mother died this way,’ she whispered. ‘Poor Mother. I thought I was going to be so much wiser than she was, and I’ve made such a mess of things – Oh! such a mess of things …’

‘Poor old Joe.’

‘You don’t know what a mess I’ve made of things, Sebastian.’

‘I can imagine it,’ said Sebastian. ‘I always thought you would.’

Joe was silent a minute, then she said:

‘You don’t know what a comfort it is to see you, Sebastian. I have seen and known so many rotters. I didn’t like your being strong and successful and cocksure – it annoyed me – but now – Oh! it’s wonderful!’

He squeezed her hand.

‘There’s no one else in the world who would have come – as you’ve come – miles – at once. Vernon, of course, but then he’s a relation – a kind of brother. But you –’

‘I’m just as much a brother – more than a brother. Ever since Abbots Puissants I’ve been – well, ready to stand by if you wanted me …’

‘Oh, Sebastian.’ Her eyes opened wide – happily. ‘I never dreamt – that you’d feel like that still.’

He started ever so slightly. He hadn’t meant that exactly. He had meant something that he couldn’t explain – not at anyrate to Joe. It was a feeling peculiarly and exclusively Jewish. The undying gratitude of the Jew who never forgets a benefit conferred. As a child he had been an outcast and Joe had stood by him – she had been willing to defy her world. The child Sebastian had never forgotten – would never forget. He would, as he had said, have gone to the ends of the earth if she had wanted him.

She went on.

‘They moved me into this place – from that horrible ward – Was that you?’

He nodded.