The Passing of the Comte de Canardelle‑Montmorin d’Aubespine‑de‑Mallard
From “A Gentleman’s Gentlemen”, 1922
The Comte is dead. He managed, for nearly a century and a half, what most moralists have failed to achieve in a single afternoon: the effortless preservation of grace. I was informed of his death through a note folded into a former account of garden fountains at Versailles—a fittingly aquatic epistle, from one who in life concerned himself with ducks both melodic and hydraulic.
The Comte Séraphin de Canardelle‑Montmorin d’Aubespine‑de‑Mallard, Compositeur du Roi, Intendant des Plaisirs Harmoniques et des Jardins Aquatiques de Versailles, ceased performing publicly after the first and only appearance of his Concerto de la Grâce des Canards in 1785. He retired—with triumph’s weary smile—to a lake suitably penetrated by statues of Leda. His obituary, perhaps, ought to begin two centuries earlier, since that is where his art remains obstinately waterlogged.
Madame de Polignac wrote in her diary—or something calling itself a diary—“His concerto contains no theme but the reflection of the sky. It may be repeated endlessly without consequence.” Scholars claim this was meant as satire. I suspect it was accidental theology.
I have consulted two accounts of the night in question, both incompatible and therefore, I believe, simultaneously true.
The Gazette Musicale de la Cour (issue of 9 July 1785) insists the orchestra employed live ducks, trained to rise at the cadenza.
The Feuille des Modes Philosophiques describes not ducks but gentle hydraulic devices sculpted as cherubs whose mouths emitted tones “of feathery persuasion.”
The truth, like all grace, lies in rehearsal. Witnesses claim the King applauded for three unbroken minutes, which in that century was an eternity and in this one is merely a cigarette.
At any rate, the Comte withdrew thereafter into what has been generously termed retirement. He lived, apparently, surrounded by clocks which chimed at imperfect intervals, composing nothing but correspondences concerning ornamental ponds. When asked, late in life, why he never wrote again, he reportedly murmured, “Perfection does not repeat.” I might have believed him, had he not written it in four drafts.
In preparing our notice, I sought official confirmation of the Comte’s existence from the Archives Nationales. The clerk, a spectral young man smelling of sealing wax and tobacco substitutes, informed me that there had never been such a title, nor a post of Intendant des Jardins Aquatiques, nor indeed any Concerto de la Grâce des Canards.
Nevertheless, the record shelf to his left contained three volumes bound in water‑stained vellum marked “Canardelle.” When opened, they proved to contain recipes for preserving citrus in brandy and instructions for the cleaning of musical reeds. I wrote “confirmed” at the foot of the inquiry and departed, feeling every inch the moral detective.
It is said—invariably by persons with something to sell—that he was preserved in a musical sense through his “school,” though no two pupils ever agreed upon his method. One, a Madame Duret‑Loing, declared that he taught her “to listen to marble.” Another recalled that his principal exercise was to make them sit still for one hour, observing ripples. Even his detractors found it difficult to remain indifferent.
The musician Paul de La Grive, whose successes in 1893 were surpassed only by his debts, claimed that the Concerto contained “no melody, but a perpetual decision to remember one.” The remark was printed, ignored, and resurrected last week by a critic of Le Figaro des Arts, who, misreading the century, called it “the first Impressionist opera.”
Thus history arranges itself in concentric absurdities. The Comte, who heard only the ornamental splashing of his birds, becomes an ancestor of Debussy; the pond becomes a cathedral; France becomes her reflection. We applaud what leaks.
I never met him—not properly. Once, in 1897, a letter arrived at my grandfather’s house in the Marais, addressed, curiously, to “My future biographer, whoever you are.” It contained nothing but a pressed water-lily and an unsigned statement: “Truth is a pond; disturbance is destiny.” I have, of course, spent most of my life misunderstanding it.
He was spotted sometimes at the Bois, wearing an eighteenth‑century hat too fine for the century that adopted him. Rumour claimed he still composed, not on paper but directly upon the surface of a silver bowl. A diplomat’s wife maintained that when he dipped his finger into his wineglass, invisible notes rose from it like swans. She was not considered reliable. Neither, alas, am I.
In 1794, when heads rolled and music faltered, the Comte—retired to his estate at Mallard‑sur‑Loire—continued to float upon his personal revolution: a leisurely pursuit of decorative misprision. He missed the Republic, the Empire, the Restoration, and nearly the nineteenth century entire, as others might miss a train. When he re‑emerged, very briefly, under the Directory to petition for the return of some fountains, the clerk wrote “Dead according to record, inconveniently alive in person.”
Le Moniteur later published an unsigned squib: “The Comte de Canardelle lives as the only Frenchman who retired from history before it began.” It was, I think, meant kindly.
Now he is dead—officially this time—having outlasted the furniture that outlasted the monarchy. His final address was a pension in the Rue des Martyrs, where a servant reports that each morning he requested the newspaper to confirm that revolutions remained in fashion.
His only visitor was a music student who mistook him for a relative of Rameau.
The body, when discovered, lay surrounded by small glass cups filled with rainwater, in each of which a candle still burned. The police inventory described them as “probable devotional apparatuses.” I prefer to call them rehearsals.
The funeral, if held, remains undated. In Paris this week, fashion houses have unveiled a new shade of grey—a sort of vapoured silver—which, according to La Mode du Soir, is to be marketed as gris Canardelle. Thus the Comte returns, through commerce, to the only eternity that ever truly existed: the flattering glare of taste.
Re‑examining my notes, I recognise several chronological impossibilities. The Comte’s correspondence, I now realise, predates the postal system. Versailles did not employ an Intendant des Jardins Aquatiques until 1798. And yet, none of this strikes me as disproof. On the contrary, falsity here serves verification, as mirrors serve movement.
Even his Concerto—if it ever sounded at all—may well have been a silence misconstrued as melody. I prefer this version. It requires the least violence to the heart and the most generosity to error. The perfection of an arrangement, after all, lies not in its truth but in its tone.
The Comte, who built music out of water, has evaporated neatly. Paris, for once, applauds with genuine brevity. And I, a mere gentleman among his gentlemen, offer this correction to the record:
History, like the duck, leaves no footprints in deep water.
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