Debussy's Cat, Books & Ephemera

Specializing in 19th & 20th century literature, performing arts, art history and decorative arts; natural history and nature writing; New York City and the Hudson Valley, Paris and Bloomsbury; early to mid-century photography and film; pianists and pianism; French cultural history; and all things turn-of-the-century. ***** In her memoir, the Scottish soprano Mary Garden, the first Mélisande, tells of Debussy and his wife coming to dinner, after which she and Lily would go off to talk, while Debussy would sit at the piano and improvise. She writes, "Those hours stay like jewels in my mind. I have never heard such music in my life, such music as came from the piano at those moments. My God, how beautiful it was, and haunting, and nobody but Lily and I ever heard it! Debussy never put those improvisations down on paper; they went back to the strange place they had come from, never to return. That precious music, lost forever, was so unlike anything Debussy ever published." Debussy's Cat is named in honor of that strange place, and of the mysteries of the creative spirit (and in hopes of offering a few resulting treasures here). If Lily Debussy and Mary Garden were the only ones to hear those improvisations, what must have been heard by the composer's cat? [The image above is a detail from the bookplate designed in 1893 by Félix Vallotton for L. Joly.]