Paul Holmes - Debussy

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This edition 2010 Omnibus Press
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ISBN: 978-0-85712-433-3

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The modest china shop at 38 Rue au Pain in the small town of St Germain-en-Laye closed early on 22 August 1862. Although business was never very good, Manuel-Achille Debussy, the proprietor, had other problems to worry about. That day his wife Victorine had just given birth to their first child a son whom they called Achille-Claude and the babys strange double forehead seemed to hint at a hydrocephalic deformity.

Manuel-Achille Debussy

Whilst this petty bourgeois couple fretted, nearby Paris buzzed with activity. Along the fine new boulevards recently laid out by the order of their emperor, Napoleon III, carriages conveyed the fashionable to afternoon salons where virtuosi peformed Chopin, and Liszts pot-pourris on operatic themes. Later the pleasure-seekers would hear the frothy operettas of Offenbach at the Opra-Comique, or, if more seriously inclined, would visit the Paris Opra where the grand operas of Meyerbeer, Halvy, Auber, and Gounods newly acclaimed Faust, ruled the season. Wagner, whose Tannhaser had failed so disastrously the previous year at the Opra, would not cast his immense shadow over French music for some time, and music continued to veer between the frivolous and the severely classical for the remainder of the Second Empire.

Victorine Debussy

Achille-Claude Debussy did not develop hydrocephalus and, despite his parents fears, grew into a normal child, although his unusual forehead remained his most distinctive feature for the rest of his life. Two years after his birth a sister, Adle, was born and, the china shop having failed, the Debussys moved to Clichy, on the outskirts of Paris, and then to the Rue Pigalle in Paris itself. Here Manuel flitted from one job to another whilst his wife continued to fuss over his sons health. An emotional woman, she sheltered him and never allowed him to attend school but, although not a cultured person, gave him all the elementary instruction he was to receive. In this protective environment, the childs love of the exquisite developed. His sister later wrote of his love of small objects, ornaments and, especially, butterflies which he arranged in cases round the walls of his room. Her memoirs of him could not have been based on very close contact, however, for after her fifth year she and the three brothers Alfred, Emmanuel and Eugne, born after her, were entrusted to their maternal aunt, a certain Mme Rostan who preferred to affect the title Octavie de la Ferronnire. Only Achille-Claude remained for long in his parents home.

Claude Debussys birthplace, 38 Rue au Pain, St-Germain-en-Laye

Eugne died of meningitis as a baby, although the others survived. Mme Rostan was in an excellent position to help her poor relations due to the wealth of her lover, Achille-Antoine Arosa. When Achille-Claude was in his sixth year she took him from his suffocating Parisian home to spend the summer at the Arosa mansion near Cannes in the South of France. Achille-Claude later wrote of his visits:

I remember the railway that passed in front of the house and the sea that stretched as far as the horizon. Sometimes you could imagine that the railway came right out of the sea or went into it whatever you prefer. There was also the Route dAntibes with all its roses. I have never seen as many in one place in my life There was also a Norwegian carpenter who sang possibly Grieg from morning to night

Arosa was cultivated as well as rich and was especially fond of paintings which he collected enthusiastically. The young Debussy would have seen paintings by the Barbizon group, including Theodore Rousseau, Boudin and Corot in his collection. He also supported the struggling young artists later to be abused as Impressionists and Debussy may even have seen some of them enjoying Arosas hospitality. The light in the South of France is extraordinarily vivid and the colours consequently stronger than in Paris and this early exposure to colour and the techniques of Impressionism so influenced the young Debussy that he at first decided to become a painter. His father had determined that he should eventually join the Navy and to add to the confusion his aunt sent him for a few piano lessons with an Italian teacher in Cannes called Cerutti. The child was only seven, hardly an age when a future career could be definitely decided, and he continued to splash his paints and tinker at the piano in Paris and on holiday in Cannes for another two years. His father also made sure that he wore a small sailors hat.

Although the Debussy home in Paris did not encourage an artistic vocation, Debussy pre is said to have enjoyed light books, plays and operettas and, according to one account, he took his eldest son to London at this time where they heard Sullivans HMS Pinafore performed. Despite his son referring to him in later years as an old waster he seems to have been a pleasant, moderately easy-going man. Without permanent employment, he would spend time at the famous Chat Noir in Montmartre where his acquaintances included Charles de Sivry, the composer of operettas and cabaret songs, who worked as an accompanist there. No doubt in conversation he mentioned his sons interest in the piano and de Sivry decided to introduce the nine-year-old child to his mother, Mme Maut de Fleurville, a pianist who had once studied with Chopin, had known Wagner, and whose salon attracted many prominent musicians of the age. She heard the boy play, But he must become a musician! she declared and offered to give him lessons herself in preparation for the entrance examination to the Paris Conservatoire.