Shooting Stars: Ten Historical Miniatures Read online

  Only on the afternoon of the great victory, when the slaughtering was over, does Mahomet enter the conquered city. Proud and grave, he rides his magnificent steed past scenes of plundering without averting his gaze. He is true to his word and does not disturb the soldiers who won him this victory as they go about their dreadful business. But his way takes him first not to see what he has won, for that is everything; he rides proudly to the cathedral, the radiant head of Byzantium. For more than fifty days he has looked with longing up from his tents at the shining, unapproachable dome of Hagia Sophia; now, as the victor, he may walk through its bronze doorway. But Mahomet tames his impatience once more: first he wants to thank Allah before dedicating the church to him for all time. Humbly, the Sultan dismounts from his horse and bows his head down to the ground in prayer. Then he takes a handful of earth and scatters it on his head, to remind himself that he, too, is a mortal man who must not think too highly of his triumph. And only now, after showing his humility to God, does the Sultan rise, as the first servant of Allah to enter it, and walk into Justinian’s cathedral, the church of holy wisdom, the church of Hagia Sophia.

  Moved and curious, the Sultan looks at the wonderful building, the high, vaulted roof, shimmering with marble and mosaics, the delicate arches that rise from darkness into the light. This most sublime palace of prayer, he feels, belongs not to him but to his God. He immediately sends for an imam, who climbs into the pulpit and from there recites the Mohammedan confession of faith, while the Padishah, his face turned to Mecca, offers the first prayer to Allah, ruler of the worlds, heard in this Christian cathedral. Next day workmen are told to remove all signs of the earlier faith; altars are torn down, whitewash is painted over the mosaics showing sacred scenes, and the tall cross of Hagia Sophia that has spread its arms wide for 1,000 years to embrace all the sorrow in the world falls to the floor with a hollow thud.

  The sound as it strikes the stone echoes through the church and far beyond, for the whole of the west shakes as it falls. The terrible news echoes on in Rome, in Genoa, in Venice; like menacing thunder it rolls to France, to Germany; and Europe, shuddering, recognizes that—thanks to its own unfeeling indifference—a fateful, destructive power has broken in through the fatal forgotten gate, the Kerkoporta, a power that will bind and cripple its own strength for centuries. But, in history as in human life, regret can never restore a lost moment, and 1,000 years will not buy back what was lost in a single hour.

  THE RESURRECTION OF GEORGE FRIDERIC HANDEL

  21 August 1741

  ON THE AFTERNOON of 13th April 1737 George Frideric Handel’s manservant was sitting at the ground-floor window of the house in Brook Street, very strangely occupied. He had found, to his annoyance, that his supply of tobacco had run out, and in fact he had only to go a couple of streets away to buy more at his sweetheart Dolly’s shop, but he dared not leave the house for fear of his lord and master, a hot-tempered man. George Frideric Handel had come home from rehearsal in a towering rage, his face bright red from the blood that had risen to it, the veins standing out like thick cords at his temples. He had slammed the front door of the house and now, as the servant could hear, he was marching up and down on the first floor so vigorously that the ceiling shook; it was unwise to be negligent in his service on days when he was in such a fury.

  So the servant was seeking diversion from his boredom by puffing not elegant rings of blue smoke from his short clay pipe, but soap bubbles. He had mixed a little bowl of soapsuds and was amusing himself by blowing the brightly coloured bubbles out of the window and into the street. Passers-by stopped, bursting a bubble here and there with their canes in jest, they laughed and waved, but they showed no surprise. For anything might be expected of this house in Brook Street; the harpsichord might suddenly play loud music by night, you might hear prima donnas weeping and sobbing as the choleric German, falling into a berserk rage, uttered threats against them for singing an eighth of a tone too high or too low. The neighbours in Grosvenor Square had long considered Number 25 Brook Street a madhouse.

  The servant blew his bright bubbles silently and persistently. After a while his skills visibly improved; the marbled bubbles grew ever larger and more thin-skinned, they rose higher and higher, floating more lightly through the air, and one even sailed over the low roof ridge of the house opposite. Then he suddenly gave a start of alarm, for a dull thud made the whole house shake. Glasses clinked, curtains swayed; something massive and heavy must have fallen on the floor above.

  The manservant jumped up and raced upstairs to the study. The armchair in which his master sat to work was empty, the room itself was empty, and the servant was about to hurry into the bedroom when he saw Handel lying motionless on the floor, his eyes open and staring; and now, as the servant stood stock still in his initial panic, he heard heavy, stertorous breathing. The strong man was lying on his back groaning, or rather the groans were forcing their way out of him in short and increasingly weak grunts.

  He’s dying, thought the frightened servant, and he quickly knelt down to help the semi-conscious Handel. He tried to raise him and carry him to the sofa, but the huge man’s body was too heavy, too great a burden. So he simply loosened the neckcloth constricting Handel’s throat, and the stertorous breathing at once died away.

  And now up from the floor below came Christof Schmidt, the master’s secretary and assistant, who had just been copying out some arias. He too had been alarmed by the heavy fall. The two of them raised the weight of the man—his arms dangled limp, like the arms of a dead corpse—and laid him on the sofa with his head raised. “Undress him,” Schmidt ordered the servant. “I’ll run for the doctor. And splash water on him until he comes round.”

  Christof Schmidt ran out without his coat, wasting no time, and hurried down Brook Street towards Bond Street, waving to all the coaches that trotted sedately by and took no notice at all of the stout, panting man in his shirtsleeves. At last one of them stopped. Lord Chandos’s coachman had recognized Schmidt, who flung open the carriage door, ignoring all the rules of etiquette. “Handel is dying!” he cried out to the duke, whom he knew to be a great lover of music and his beloved master’s best patron. “I must find a doctor.” The duke immediately told him to get into the coach, the horses were given a sharp taste of the whip, and they went to fetch Dr Jenkins from a room in Fleet Street where he was earnestly studying a urine sample. But he immediately drove with Schmidt to Brook Street in his light carriage. “It’s all the trouble he’s had that’s to blame,” lamented the secretary despondently as the carriage bowled along. “They’ve plagued him to death, those damned singers and castrati, the scribblers and the carping critics, the whole wretched crew. Four operas he’s written this year to save the theatre, but his rivals hide behind the women and the court, and then they’re all mad for that Italian, that accursed castrato, that affected howling monkey. Oh, what have they done to our poor Handel! He’s put all his savings into the theatre, £10,000 it was, and now they come plaguing him with their notes of what he owes, hounding him to death. Never has any man done such wonderful work, never has any man given so much of himself, but this would break a giant’s back. Oh, what a man! What a genius!” Dr Jenkins, detached and silent, listened.

  Before they entered the house he drew on his pipe once more and knocked out the ashes. “How old is he?”

  “Fifty-two,” replied Schmidt.

  “Not a good age. He’s been working like an ox. But he’s as strong as an ox too, so let’s see what can be done.”

  The servant held the basin, Christof Schmidt lifted Handel’s arm, and the doctor cut into the vein. A jet of blood spurted up, hot, bright-red blood, and next moment a sigh of relief issued from the grimly compressed lips. Handel took a deep breath and opened his eyes. They were still weary, faraway and unaware. The light in them was extinguished.

  The doctor bound up his arm. There was not much more that he could do. He was about to stand up when he noticed that Handel’s lips were moving. He cam
e closer. Very quietly, it was little more than a breath, Handel croaked: “Over… all over with me… no strength… don’t want to live without strength…” Dr Jenkins bent lower. He saw that one eye, the right eye, was staring while the other looked livelier. Experimentally, he raised Handel’s right arm. It fell back as if dead. Then he raised the left arm. The left remained in its new position. Now Dr Jenkins knew enough.

  When he had left the room Schmidt followed him to the stairs, anxious and distressed. “What is it?”

  “Apoplexy. His right side is paralysed.”

  “And will—” Schmidt hesitated—“will he get better?”

  Dr Jenkins ceremoniously took a pinch of snuff. He did not care for such questions.

  “Perhaps. Anything is possible.”

  “But will he remain paralysed?”

  “Probably, in default of a miracle.”

  But Schmidt, who was devoted to his master with every bone in his body, persisted.

  “And will he—will he at least be able to work again? He can’t live without composing.”

  Dr Jenkins was already on the stairs.

  “No, he will never work again,” he said very quietly. “We may be able to save the man, but we have lost the musician. The stroke has affected his brain.”

  Schmidt stared at him with such terrible despair in his eyes that the doctor himself felt stricken. “As I said,” he repeated, “in default of a miracle. Not that I’ve ever seen one yet.”

  George Frideric Handel lived for four months, devoid of strength, and strength was life to him. The right half of his body remained dead. He could not walk, he could not write, he could not play a single note on the keyboard with his right hand. He could not speak; his lip hung crooked from the terrible stroke that had torn through his body, and the words that issued from his mouth were only a muted babble. When friends made music for him a little light came into his eyes, and then his heavy, unwieldy body moved like that of a sick man in a dream; he wanted to beat time to the rhythm, but his limbs were frozen in a dreadful rigidity, and his sinews and muscles no longer obeyed him. The once-gigantic man felt helpless, walled up in an invisible tomb. As soon as the music was over his eyelids fell heavily, and he lay there like a corpse once more. Finally the doctor, in despair—for the maestro was obviously incurable—advised sending the patient to the hot baths at Aachen, which might perhaps effect some slight improvement.

  But under the frozen exterior, like those mysterious underground hot springs themselves, there lived an incalculable strength: Handel’s will, the primeval force of his nature, which had not been touched by the destructive stroke and would not yet allow the immortal part of him to founder in the mortal body. The huge man had not given up, he still wanted to live, to work; and against the laws of nature his will worked a miracle. The doctors in Aachen warned him sternly not to stay in the hot baths for more than three hours at a time; his heart would not survive any longer period, they said, it could kill him. But his will defied death for the sake of life and his burning desire: to recover his health. To the horror of his doctors, Handel spent nine hours a day in the hot baths, and with his will his strength too grew. After a week he could drag himself around again, after a second week he could move his arm, and in a mighty victory of will-power and confidence he tore himself free from the paralysing toils of death to embrace life once again, more warmly, more ardently than ever before, and with that unutterable joy known only to the convalescent.

  On the last day before he was to leave Aachen, fully in control of his body, Handel stopped outside the church. He had never been particularly devout, but now, as he climbed to the organ loft with the easy gait so mercifully restored to him, he felt moved by something ineffable. Experimentally, he touched the keys with his left hand. The notes sounded, rang clear and pure through the expectant room. Now he tentatively tried the right hand that had been closed and paralysed so long. And behold, the silver spring of sound leapt out beneath his right hand too. Slowly, he began to play, to improvise, and the great torrent of sound carried him away with it. The masonry of music towered miraculously up, building its way into invisible space, the airy structures of his genius climbed magnificently again, rising without a shadow, insubstantial brightness, resonant light. Down below, anonymous, the nuns and the worshippers listened. They had never heard a mortal man play like that before. And Handel, his head humbly bent, played on and on. He had recovered the language in which he spoke to God, to eternity, to mankind. He could make music, he could compose again. Only now did he feel truly cured.

  “I have come back from Hades,” said George Frideric Handel proudly, his broad chest swelling, his mighty arms outstretched, to the London doctor who could not but marvel at this medical miracle. And with all his strength, with his berserk appetite for work, the convalescent instantly and with redoubled avidity immersed himself in composition again. The battle-lust of old had returned to the fifty-three-year-old musician. We find him now writing an opera—his right hand, cured, obeys him wonderfully well—a second opera, a third, the great oratorios Saul and Israel in Egypt, he writes L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato; his creative desires well inexhaustibly up as if from a long-dammed spring. But the times are against him. The queen’s death halts theatrical performances, then the Spanish war begins, crowds assemble daily in the public squares, shouting and singing, but the theatre remains empty and debts mount up. Then comes the hard winter. Such cold falls over London that the Thames freezes over, and sleighs with bells jingling glide over the mirror surface of the ice; all the concert halls are closed at this sad time, for no angelic music dares defy such terrible frosts. Next the singers fall ill, performance after performance must be cancelled; Handel’s financial difficulties grow worse and worse. His creditors are dunning him, the critics are scathing, the public remains silent and indifferent, and gradually the desperately struggling composer loses heart. A benefit performance has just saved him from imprisonment for debt, but what a disgrace, to buy back his life as a beggar! Handel becomes more and more reclusive, his mind grows darker and darker. Was it not better to have one side of his body paralysed than his whole soul? In the year 1740 Handel feels a beaten, defeated man once more. His former fame is dust and ashes. Laboriously, he puts together fragments of earlier works, now and then he composes some small, new piece, but the great river of music has dried up; and healthy though his body is again, its primeval force is gone. For the first time that giant of a man feels weary, for the first time the great warrior feels defeated, for the first time he senses the sacred stream of creativity failing and drying up in him, a stream that has flooded a world with music for thirty-five years. Once again he has reached the end, once again. And he knows, or thinks he knows in his despair, that this is the end for ever. Why, he sighs, did God let me rise from my sickbed if men are to bury me once more? It would have been better to die than wander through this empty world in the cold, a shadow of myself. And in his rage he sometimes murmurs the words of the one who hung on the Cross: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”

  A lost, a desperate man, weary of himself, doubting his power, perhaps doubting God too, Handel wanders London by night in these months. He does not venture out of the house until late, for during the day his creditors are waiting outside the door to catch him with their notes of his debts, and in the street the glances of scornful and indifferent mankind fill him with disgust. Sometimes he wonders whether to take flight, go to Ireland where they still believe in his fame—but alas, they have no idea how broken his strength is—or to Germany, to Italy; his inner chill might thaw again there, and, touched by the sweet south wind, melody might break from the ravaged rocky landscape of his soul once more. That is the one thing he cannot bear: the inability to create, to compose. He, George Frideric Handel, cannot bear to be defeated. Sometimes he stops outside a church, but he knows that words will not comfort him. Sometimes he sits in a tavern, but a man who has known the high intoxication, the pure and blissful delights of
creation feels only repelled by crude distilled spirits. And sometimes he stares down from a bridge over the Thames at the silent river running black as night, and wonders whether it might not be better to cast off all his cares with one determined leap. If only he need no longer bear the burden of this void, the horror of loneliness, forsaken by God and man.

  One night he had been wandering in this way again. It was the 21st of August 1741, and the day had been warm and sultry. The sky had weighed down on London as hazy and hot as molten metal, and only when night fell did Handel go for a little fresh air in Green Park. He had been sitting there wearily in the impenetrable shade of the trees, where no one could see him or plague him, for his weariness weighed him down like an illness; he was tired of speaking, writing, playing music, thinking, he was tired of feeling, he was tired of life. Why and for whom should he live? He had gone home, walking like a man drunk along Pall Mall and St James’s, urged on by the one compelling idea of sleep: to sleep and know no more, to sleep his fill, for ever if he could. No one was still awake in the house in Brook Street. Slowly—oh, how tired he was, how weary they had made him in hounding him!—slowly he climbed the stairs, their wood creaking at every heavy step he took. At last he was in his study. He struck a spark and lit the candle on the desk; he did it without thinking, automatically, as he had done for years, preparing to set to work. For in the past—and a melancholy sigh involuntarily escaped his lips—he used to come home from every walk with a melody, a theme that he always hastily dashed down so as not to lose the idea in his sleep. But now the desk was empty. No music paper lay on it. The sacred mill-wheel stood still in the frozen mill-stream. There was nothing to begin, nothing to finish. The desk was bare.