Camille SAINT-SAËNS / Signed Autograph Letter / Marseille / Algeria / Music

  

Saint-Saëns" to a friend Hammam R'Ihra [near Algiers, Algeria], December 18. In-4° Impressive header vignette on the first page: "Grand Hôtel des Bains de la Station Thermo-Minérale d'Hammam-R'Ihra" Watermark "Alger" with pattern Minor splits at the central fold of the first sheet and tiny splits at the margins. While passing through the thermal resort of Hammam R'Ihra, near Algiers, the composer, in a long letter with familiar tones, expresses strong praise for the city of Marseille and the Algerian landscapes. "So, because Sir is bored, I have to write to him! I got up at four in the morning, I toiled all morning to produce a wretched article, tomorrow the mail will bring me a pile of letters to which I will have to respond, I will have work for the whole day; but that doesn't matter, Sir is bored and I must write to distract him!

When I was a child, I had a book in my possession in which I read this sentence: He who says: I am bored, does not realize that he says: I am a silly and boring company to myself [Fénelon]. And so I resolved never to be bored!!! You have the Cannebière, the Bouillabaisse, the oysters, the clams, the cockles, the sea urchins, the lobsters, the women who walk around with extravagant hats, the dazzling cafés, the Marseillais with their divine accent, the sea, the ports, the tall ships, the fishing boats, the dogs barking while wagging their tails and the monumental fountains with gushing waters and marble nudes, and the colossal and superb water tower and the painting museum and the sculpture museum and the natural history museum, and the promenade of the Prado, and you are bored! I forgot the cinemas that offer you illusory shows for a few pennies which you tell me about. You shouldn't have examined, you shouldn't have analyzed, you should have believed and you would have had the illusion! As if everything were not an illusion in this world. Here we do not have a cinema, no promenade of the Prado, no natural history museum, no sculpture museum, no painting museum, no water tower, no monumental fountains, no fishing boats, no tall ships, no ports, no sea, no Marseillais named Marius, no luxurious cafés, no extravagant women with astonishing hats, no lobsters, no sea urchins, no cockles, no clams, no oysters, no bouillabaisse; we sometimes have dogs, and we have the mountains, we have the roses, we have the oranges so numerous that one wonders how the trees can bear them, we have the sun, we finally have silence, an incomparable blessing!] If you could see, what delightful landscapes, what lush vegetation, what sun during the day and what stars at night! If you could breathe this scented air in this ideal temperature! A day of crossing, a few hours of train travel, to then find paradise! In the morning, after taking our bath in the vast cellars of the establishment, we go, before going back home, to visit the gigantic kitchens and peek into the pots. After lunch, after dinner, formidable games of dominos where each, in turn, makes the other bite the dust.] And this is how we will spend our time, him running in the woods when he doesn't have the needle in hand, me sometimes writing, sometimes searching for my food in the collections of the Nouvelle revue and in the Revue des deux mondes, not to mention a collection of old plays from my childhood that are quite curious and often quite ridiculous. And now, while sending you to all the devils, I hug you while wishing you the indefinite continuation of your unalterable health!" Just returned from a long autumn tour across Europe, Saint-Saëns, invited to Heidelberg in October, had given a recital of Liszt's works during the celebrations organized for the composer’s centenary. Still in October, he performed at the Festival at the Philharmonic Society of Paris and played several of his works before dedicating himself to the rehearsals of Proserpine, presented at the Trianon-Lyrique on November 10. After a stop in Brussels, he went to Marseille on December 5. He then boarded a ship to Algeria, arriving on December 13, to finally go to the thermal station of Hammam R'Ihra and rest there before returning to Algiers on December 30. She left her husband and job in 1908. The musician continued to employ Gabriel Geslin, who therefore served him between 1892 and 1917. Tubercular and unable to withstand the cold, Saint-Saëns would spend the winter in warmer climates, staying several months in Egypt, Algeria, or the Canary Islands. Gabriel Geslin sometimes accompanied him on his holidays, as is the case here in Hammam R'Ihra, a thermal resort where he had his habits.