Concerts curtailed

As the years passed, Debussy's inability to find a way to ease the financial burden through purposeful composition contributed to the emotional and practical difficulties faced by Emma, in turn affecting her ability to cope with her increasingly depressed husband. Now ‘la maladie du retard’, the disease of lateness, ‘this curious need never to finish anything, which does not fit in at all with the opposite needs of my publisher’ was a growing problem acknowledged by Debussy to Gabriel Mourey on 6 January 1909. He told Édouard Colonne he had not finished the Images. He sent New Year's greetings to Jacques Durand as well as to his father, adding those of Chouchou, who greeted Durand's father ‘in a strange anglo-french dialect complicated by the “petit nègre”!’, a reference to the piano piece Debussy was composing, The little nigar, which bears the note, ‘Cake-walk = Danse nègre dite Danse du gateau’, language so unacceptable today, but at that time reflecting the popularity of cheerful American ragtime. Durand only had to wait a fortnight into the New Year before Debussy's driver, Jules, arrived at his office bearing a note from the composer asking urgently for the loan of a thousand francs until April. A debt had to be settled by the very next day. Just as with Lilly's alimony, this sum was lent on the basis of money to be earned through work in progress, and eventually had to be deducted when the contract was signed for the first book of Préludes the following year.

Now the debilitating first signs of the illness, cancer of the rectum, which would eventually lead to Debussy's death, aggravated an already depressing situation. In retrospect Raoul Bardac dated the initial stages of Debussy's cancer to January 1909, when the symptoms were deceptively benign. The doctor advised him to exercise, keep active, not sit for too long, but Debussy, determinedly sedentary, virtually ignored this. By February things had worsened to the extent that he had to take drugs constantly, which dulled his mind and only served to fuel his bad moods. Raoul's is one of the few honest accounts of Debussy's behaviour from now onwards. He says that the illness recurred in various forms between 1910 and 1913, forcing him to suspend work for weeks at a time.