Where Memory Becomes Music: Debussy on the English Shore

In this essay, Emre Aracı explores the intertwining of music, memory, and place through Debussy’s "La Mer" and Jocelyn Brooke’s Sandgate reveries. From Folkestone’s sea breezes to Eastbourne’s Grand Hotel, from Debussy’s letters to Emma Bardac’s legacy, Aracı weaves a richly atmospheric meditation on lost paradises, mirrored interiors, and the haunting persistence of beloved sounds. A tribute not only to Debussy and Brooke, but also to the enduring power of artistic memory, this is a quiet celebration of music’s ability to recover the past and make it more real than the present.

"Thus I cannot (for instance), to this day, hear Debussy’s First Arabesque without visualizing our Sandgate drawing-room on an afternoon in summer: an impression of outdoor heat and of coolness within, the room bathed in a greenish, aquabeous twilight, the sea-breeze stirring the potted plants and flapping the green sun-blinds which shaded the verandah … The drawing-room fascinated me, at that age, probably because my visits to it were comparatively infrequent, and because, when they occurred, I acquired the honours—status of a grown-up, and was expected to behave like one. I developed an almost religious awe for certain of my mother’s treasures—in particular, for a gilt Empire mirror which hung over the long-tailed, rosewood piano. In its depths appeared a rounded, concentrated duplicate of the room, more ‘real’, it seemed to me, than the reality", (Jocelyn Brooke, The Orchid Trilogy, Penguin, 1981, p. 365).

Jocelyn Brooke lived in Sandgate near Folkestone in Kent (© Emre ARACI)

One afternoon in May 2024, when the Mediterranean sun had deigned to visit the skies above Folkestone, I sat by the sea with a picnic and read these Proustian lines from The Goose Cathedral, the final volume of English writer Jocelyn Brooke’s The Orchid Trilogy. To walk past that childhood house in Sandgate—dating from the early 1900s, now adorned with a blue heritage plaque bearing the writer’s name—and to hear Debussy’s First Arabesque in the gentle breeze drifting in from the sea, was to find the memory of a beloved place still very much alive, like the ghost of a lost friend, sustained and sanctified by the twin powers of music and literature. It was, beyond doubt, one of art’s most wondrous miracles. The rosewood piano and the Empire mirror had long since vanished, no doubt, but the vision imbued with Debussy’s music seemed still to live on, in that abandoned street, as if more ‘real’ than the reality of today.

"When the Mediterranean sun had deigned to visit the skies above Folkestone" (photo © Emre ARACI)

Fleeing the rushing torrents of the world’s realities, Brooke took up his pen in pursuit of a reality of his own making, and in the same book made this disarming confession: 

"I developed, in fact, a cult of nostalgia—that easiest of all escapes from a hostile environment. Not that this, for me, was anything new: I had always, I suppose, been in love with the past—even in my childhood".

And he went on to write: "But now my nostalgia became deliberate and self-conscious: I had not read my Proust for nothing, and I excused what I sometimes felt to be a weakness by telling myself that les seuls vrais paradis sont les paradis qu’on a perdus. One day I was going to write a Proustian masterpiece of my own; I owed it to myself, therefore, to keep (so to speak) my sense of the past in working-order. And if the lost paradise of the past was the only true one, I felt, also, that nowhere but in the past could I escape from my chronic bovarysme, and encounter once again my ‘real’ self—so, at least, I liked to think; in fact, I was rather sceptical about this ‘real’ self lurking beneath the successive layers of my assumed personae", (Jocelyn Brooke, The Orchid Trilogy, Penguin, 1981, p. 344). 

Accompanied by these words and that remembered scene, Debussy’s First Arabesque played on, deep in my consciousness, all day long. Indeed, Debussy himself—three years before Brooke was even born—had gazed dreamily out at the very same stretch of coastline. In July 1905, the composer was staying at the Grand Hotel in the town of Eastbourne, some 45 miles west of Sandgate, working on revisions to La Mer, which he had completed the previous month. In a letter dated 26 July 1905, written from the Grand Hotel and addressed to his publisher Jacques Durand, Debussy not only promised to send the score within a week, but also offered this vivid portrait of his surroundings:

"Here I am and more or less settled in. It’s a charming, peaceful spot. The sea unfurls itself with an utterly British correctness. In the foreground is a well-groomed lawn on which little chips off important, imperialist blocks are rushing around. What a place for working in . . . ! No noise, no pianos, or only delightful mechanical ones, no musicians talking about painting and no painters talking about music . . In fact, a splendid place for cultivating egoism. What’s more, so far I’ve only seen one pauper, and he looked comfortable . . . It can’t be true, they must hide them away during the season", (François Lesure and Roger Nichols, eds., Debussy Letters, Harvard University Press, 1987, p. 153).

"Eastbourne inevitably reminds me of Folkestone and its Grand Hotel where I live"

From time to time, I too find myself passing through Eastbourne; it inevitably reminds me of the Grand Hotel in Folkestone, where I live. That same green lawn stretching along the promenade, and beyond it the sea commanding the cliffs—the real landscape that so naturally evokes Debussy’s La Mer; the breeze that stirred Jocelyn Brooke’s green shutters; the dialogue between wind and sea, and the enchantment of music.

Yet it would be a mistake to imagine that Debussy composed La Mer merely by gazing upon that sea. His inspiration sprang not so much from any particular view as from the image of the sea as it had blossomed in his imagination. What moved him were the impressions gathered from the nature and atmosphere of the sea—personal rather than geographical. Indeed, Debussy began work on La Mer in Burgundy, deep in the heart of France and far from the coast, drawing upon a vivid mental image of the sea, imprinted on his consciousness since childhood. Through rich harmonies, vibrant orchestral colours, and layers of suggestion, he gave musical voice to the waves as they might be rendered by a painter’s brush.

Debussy’s deep admiration for the English artist J. M. W. Turner is well documented—Turner, who himself travelled to these very shores to capture the seascapes of Folkestone on canvas. It is no coincidence, then, that the first edition of La Mer, published by A. Durand & Fils in 1905, bore on its cover, at Debussy’s own request, Katsushika Hokusai’s The Great Wave off Kanagawa (1831). Nor should we forget that a print of Hokusai’s famous image once hung in Debussy’s flat on the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne in Paris.

In fact, during the period when Debussy was preparing La Mer for publication in Eastbourne, the turbulence of his personal life was no less formidable than the mighty waves depicted in Hokusai’s woodblock print. And the seemingly quiet life he had anticipated in Eastbourne soon gave way to disappointment. The tone of his letter from the Grand Hotel, written to Louis Laloy on 28 August 1905, differs markedly from that of the letter he had written to Jacques Durand just a month earlier. 

"I left Paris without seeing you", he begins, "which would have been unpardonable had my departure not resembled an escape". 

Debussy goes on: "An escape from all these stupid, depressing goings-on, an escape from a self who was not permitted to think except by legal decree! I’ve been here a month now. It’s a little English seaside town, as ridiculous as these sorts of places always are . . . too many draughts and too much music, both of which I try and avoid but I don’t really know where to go!", (Debussy Letters, p. 156).

One cannot help but wonder whether this is the fate of all creative artists. Yes, in the chromatic descents of La Mer’s final movement, Debussy gave voice to the wind’s dialogue with the sea—but now he was fleeing from both. He had, in fact, come to Eastbourne as a means of fleeing Paris—he was escaping a major scandal. In 1899 he had married his first wife, Lilly Texier, but five years later he abandoned her and set off for Eastbourne with his new companion, Emma Bardac. Shortly before this, Lilly—unable to bear the shock of being cast aside—had attempted suicide. She had made her way to Paris’s famed Place de la Concorde, and there, turning a pistol on herself, pulled the trigger. Though gravely wounded, she survived. The incident caused a considerable stir in the public sphere, and criticism of Debussy intensified. In the wake of this tragedy, Gabriel Fauré went so far as to sever all ties with him.

Emma Bardac, the wife of a Parisian banker, was an intelligent and cultivated woman, and an accomplished amateur singer. Before meeting Debussy in 1903, she had been intimately connected with Fauré, who had dedicated his La Bonne Chanson, Op. 61, to her and composed the Dolly Suite for her daughter, Regina-Hélène—known affectionately as “Dolly.” As such, Emma Bardac was already a well-known figure in Parisian musical circles. Her life would, in fact, become the subject of a documentary film directed by Thomas Mowrey in 1990, entitled The Loves of Emma Bardac, in which the Labèque sisters portrayed the central roles.

Emma Bardac by Léon Bonnat

Amid all this turbulence, La Mer received its world première in Paris on 15 October 1905. The critics, however, were disappointed. Pierre Lalo, writing for Le Temps, remarked, “I hear no sea, I see no sea, I smell no sea,” while Louis Schneider observed, “The audience seemed rather let down: they had expected the ocean, something vast and elemental—what they got was water swirling in a saucer”. In truth, the critics were behaving precisely as one might have expected of them; but history, as always, would have the final word. La Mer would go on to take its rightful place among Debussy’s greatest works.

By 1908, he had married Emma Bardac, and published the Children’s Corner Suite, dedicated to their daughter Claude-Emma, who had been born in Paris just a fortnight after the première of La Mer. Emma Bardac had now become Emma Debussy, and their marriage would last for the remaining ten years of the composer’s life, until his death in 1918.

Emma Debussy's letter dated 10 September 1924 (© Emre ARACI)

Emma Claude Debussy—I know that signature well, for on my desk lies an original letter she wrote on 10 September 1924 from the Golf Hotel in Saint-Jean-de-Luz, a seaside retreat near the Spanish border that recalls, in its elegance and coastal charm, Eastbourne’s Grand Hotel. To touch that letter is, for me, almost to conjure the past. Its ink, unfaded after a century, still bears the presence of a hand that once held Debussy’s, and as I read it while listening to the murmur of the sea breeze mingling with the sound of the waves in Folkestone, it is as though the memory of La Mer is quietly revived.

Golf Hotel in Saint-Jean-de-Luz  (© Emre ARACI)

The letter begins simply: “Monsieur,” and continues, “I have learnt from my friends that you intend to stage Pelléas et Mélisande this season.” Emma expresses the wish that the role of Golaud be entrusted to the distinguished bass-baritone Vanni Marcoux, whom she had personally witnessed embodying the part to perfection, and who had, she notes, been greatly esteemed by her late husband, le Maître très cher. She concludes the letter with warm thanks and a poignant sentiment: 

“You would make me happy, even from afar—and if he were still among us, such news would have brought joy to the Master as well”.

"Such news would have brought joy to the Master as well” (© Emre ARACI)

Can one, I wonder, still bring joy to departed souls even a century later? Surely every performance of a composer’s work is, in its way, a form of gratitude—a quiet source of joy for the spirit that once conceived it. It was with such thoughts that I found myself attending a private recital at Harley House, the very building where Sir Thomas Beecham once lived in London—of which I wrote about in Issue 208 of Andante magazine.

"I found myself attending a private recital at Harley House in London" (© Emre ARACI)

We are listening to Tchaikovsky’s Souvenir d’un lieu cher, Op. 42, for violin and piano. Emre Engin is at the violin, accompanied by pianist Erdem Mısırlıoğlu. It is quite impossible not to be struck by the depth and integrity of their musicianship, as it is by the inspiring opportunities Canan Maxton's charity for young musicians, Talent Unlimited  has, for many years, offered to countless gifted artists. Tchaikovsky composed Souvenir d’un lieu cher—literally, “Memory of a Beloved Place”—in memory of the days he spent in 1878 at Madame von Meck’s estate in Brailov. 

How curious, then, to recall that the young Debussy, too, was part of Madame von Meck’s household, serving as a pianist during the summer months of 1880 to 1882.

Just as the tender strains of the Mélodie began, my gaze fell upon the gilt Empire-style mirror suspended above the grand piano. Reflected in its depths was a rounded and concentrated replica of the room itself—a vision that seemed, if anything, more ‘real’ than reality. The sea, the coast, and the passing of the century lay far behind us—miles away in every sense—but even so, it was as though the souvenir d’un lieu cher, the memory of a beloved place, like the memory of a long-lost beloved friend, had turned to smile at us gently from across the distance, becoming for a moment part of the truth of our own universe.

Emre Aracı's article was originally published in Turkish under the title ‘Sevilen bir Yerin Hatırası’ in the July 2024 issue (No. 213) of Andante.

Link to the original article in Turkish

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