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Sylvain Pons
Composer and orchestra conductor from the 1847 novel Le Cousin Pons by Honoré de Balzac. The work was originally serialized in French newspaper Le Constitutionnel. He is a gourmand, bordering on glutton, and an art collector. His good friend is the musician and composer Wilhelm Schmucke.
Yet an artist our pedestrian undoubtedly was, and a grand-prize man to boot; the composer of a cantata which, first after the re-establishment of the Academie de Rome, carried off the laurel at the Institute- in short, this pedestrian was no less a man than M. Sylvain Pons! the composer of certain celebrated romances which our mothers used to warble, of two or three operas which were put upon the stage in 1815 and 1816, and of sundry unpublished scores besides. Now, in the latter autumn of his life, this worthy man was conductor of the orchestra of a boulevard theater. Thanks to his ugliness, he also held the post of music-master in several boarding schools for young ladies. His salary and fees for out-door lessons were his only sources of revenue. An out-door tutor at his time of life!
