ROYAL HUMOUR
DURING that summer Baron S—— died in Munich. This of course was a great blow to me and I did not know what I could do about my contract. I went to Berlin to see Herr Harder, who told me I must gastieren according to contract in October, but as the new Intendant was not to come into office till November, no one could really engage me, especially as a very exacting new musical director was coming from Vienna later in the season, and they would both undoubtedly want to choose their own first contralto.
However, I went and sang under trying circumstances, with a very sore throat and a sinking heart. The colleagues thought I would be engaged, but I did not see who was to do it, and as it turned out I was right—and there was no one to do it. This depressed me extremely, but I resolved to return to Berlin, and devote the year to following up my previous recital. As a matter of fact, this apparent blow turned out to be all for the best, as so often happens, for otherwise I should have been caught in Germany at the beginning of the war, and my career upset, which happened to several other girls.
The concert field is a rich one in Europe and I had made a good beginning. I booked a tour in Holland, through the kindly offices of Bos, where I was as well received as I had been in Berlin. The critics wrote such eulogies that I almost blush to read them. People quite unknown to me would go from town to town to hear me, and I would see them at Rotterdam or Utrecht smiling up at me. I have never sung to such adorable audiences. They seem to understand all languages, and a "Claire de Lune" sung in French seems to please them as much as Schubert's magnificent "Allmacht."
The "coffee pause" half way down the program, was quite a shock to me the first night, but I soon grew to look for it, and enjoyed the smell of the strong smoking coffee the waiters used to carry round on trays to the audience. It was rather disturbing, however, to have to watch the waiters finish up the contents of the pots, at the back of the hall, while I began on the second half of the program. Evidently to them the coffee, and the audience, were of first importance, and the mere singer quite secondary; all of which is point of view.
My sister and I lived at The Hague, and Holland is so delightfully small that we could nearly always return there, after the evening's concert in another town. I went back in the spring for another series of recitals and felt that I was returning to old friends. I was offered a tour to Java, and would love to have undertaken it, but could not see my way clear just then.
In December I was in Berlin for a week or two, and Harder sent me word to come and sing for Mr. Percy Pitt of Covent Garden. The two contracts I had held so far had been closed with a minimum of delay and trouble, and now I was to make the biggest one of my career in the same simple way. I was not in the best of voice when I sang for Mr. Pitt, but I sang the Siegfried Erda, and was disgusted with myself for singing so badly. He asked me if I were ready to sing the list of leading rôles which he read to me, and on my answering in the affirmative engaged me on the spot; proving, to me at least, that successful or unsuccessful Vorsingen and even Gastspiele have very little to do with most engagements. In the case of a singer of any reputation at all, the Director has usually made up his mind pretty well beforehand what he is going to do. If he wants you he takes you, even if you have sung badly that particular time, and if he does not want you, nothing that I have heard of can make him engage you.
This contract was for the following spring. We were to give the "Ring" of Wagner, three times, and Arthur Nikisch was to conduct. Also "Koenigskinder" was to be given for the first time at Covent Garden, and I was one of the few who had sung the Witch at that time. "The Flying Dutchman" completed the list of operas I was to sing in.
After closing the contract we left for Bergen, Norway, where I had a concert engagement. One great advantage of having my dear friends, the Jones, back of me, was, that I could take a big journey like this; and though it might eat up all of my profit I did not have to refuse it on that account.
We were fascinated by Scandinavia, and though I went to sing with the orchestra in one concert only, I remained in Bergen to give three recitals by myself. The trip across the Finse railway, over the snowy glaciers, I shall never forget. The line had only recently been opened, and very few passengers shared the trip with us. We saw a herd of reindeer, and I fed some of them with coarse salt at one of the stations. Bergen itself was warm and muggy and smelt of fish. Everything in the place smelt of fish, even the hotel towels. Two kindly women managers took charge of my concerts, and I felt far away from America till I saw a portrait of Miss Emma Thursby in their music shop.
The warm-hearted Norwegians were delightful to us, and we met many of Grieg's relations, and heard tales of him. One of his cousins, I think, came all the way to Berlin to study with me, but to my great regret I had no time to give her.
I was interviewed on my first day by a nice little fellow, who could hardly speak German, and no English nor French. Our conversation was conducted under difficulties, but was most enjoyable none the less. The next day I received a request for a photo from him, with a card saying: "Seit ich Ihnen sah bin ich sterblich verliebt."—This bad German means approximately, "Since I saw you I am mortally in love."
We loved our stay in Scandinavia. I remember when we first arrived in Christiania we could not make out why the streets were thronged with good looking men and women, from two o'clock till three in the afternoon, and quite empty after that. We walked through the snowy, glittering avenues, and met all these healthy red-cheeked pedestrians talking and laughing and having a wonderful social time. We then discovered their meal times are quite different from ours. You have an early cup of coffee, then a light breakfast at eleven o'clock, then dinner at three or four, preceded sometimes by this walk. Supper is served at eight-thirty or nine, and is usually laid out on a long table in the centre of the room. There are cold meats and salads; cold fish and pickled fish; queer breads; and, of course, you go first for the wonderful hors d'œuvres of countless varieties, for this is where they grow.
A Swede once told me you could always tell a German travelling in Sweden, because when the Schwedische Platte or hors d'œuvres were passed to him, he made a meal of the dainty mayonnaise and savoury morsels, instead of eating them as an appetizer, as is intended. In the beautiful station of Copenhagen, decorated in the old Norse style, with scarlet-painted wooden carved beams, we were served with all we could eat of these dainties with bread and butter, for about forty cents—and I wished I were a German!
On the way home, we were storm-bound at Copenhagen, and I at once fell in love with that city, and its wonderful blond race of big men and women. We heard stories of divorces and passionate love affairs, that made other nations pale by contrast. One delightful man told us he had had no objection to his wife having one lover, but when he found she had seven, he thought it time to get a divorce! He still quite often saw her, and said they were the best friends in the world. He liked to take her out to dinner and the theatre and tell her all about everything. He called us "The Misses Chickens Howard," and was only restrained by business engagements from following us from place to place. That was a hobby of his, he said, when he found a sympathetic artist.
We crossed back to Germany, and I sang with Nickisch for the first time, in Hamburg. His room behind the stage swarmed with ladies, in the entr'acte, and the concert master told me it was always so. A valet looked him over carefully before he went on the stage, pulled down his coat, and patted the Herr Professor's shoulders. I remembered the cuff story in Metz and watched through the crack of the door to see if it still held good—and it did!
Later I sang with Mengelberg in Frankfort. He said to me, eating apples the while: "I engaged you because friends of mine in Holland told me you could sing. Can you?" After the concert he came to me again, still eating apples, and said: "Es is wahr. Sie haben eine Prachtvolle Stimme, und koennen prachtvoll singen," and kissed my hand.
To hear Mengelberg direct "Tod und Verklaerung" of Strauss, with his own orchestra is one of the most tremendous things I have ever experienced. One is transported. A little man with a tight mouth and an aureole of fair hair, he is feared by his men, but how he is respected! That winter he spent almost every night in the train, as he conducted regularly in Holland, Germany and Russia.
I have always been able to get on with really great musicians, and have found only the second best difficile and small. The path seems suddenly smooth when in rehearsal, you feel this wealth of absolute knowledge and authority supporting, leading and inspiring you. Anxiety vanishes and one's best pours from one without effort, only with the sensation of wringing every last drop of beauty from the phrase.
We returned to Sweden to concerts with Stenhammer, and I should have crossed to Helsingfors to sing Dalila, but had to return on account of engagements in Germany.
Through our forbears, as I have said, we have many relations in Germany; and in Berlin we enjoyed immensely knowing our cousins the von M—— s. The General had just been moved back to Berlin to fill an extremely high military position, and as he was musical we, of course, had much in common. The daughters were all beautifully brought up; simple girls, frank and natural as German aristocrats are. They gave a musical, at which the General and I both sang. Their apartment was very large, but was so crowded for the concert that I felt as though the Duchess of Dalibor sat almost in my throat as I sang, and her enormous pearls distracted me in the "Sapphische Ode." I have never seen such unbelievably huge pearls. We were asked to stay to Abendessen after the concert, and it consisted chiefly of the sandwiches and refreshments left over from the party. This showed us again the absolute simplicity of the well-born German of irreproachable position.
The girls were very intimate with the Kaiser's only daughter, Princess Victoria Louise, and when her marriage to the Duke of Brunswick's son, was celebrated, Irma was one of the bride's-maids. Onkle Geo, as we called him, told us about the Kaiser, to whom he was devoted. At the dinner table, he said, His Majesty would usually talk only with the men present, ignoring completely the ladies who might be present.
When the General made his re-entry into court for the first time after receiving his high office, all the courtiers present watched to see just how he would be received by His Majesty, which would then give the keynote for his treatment by the whole court. After the general reception, General von M—— was invited to go into a more private room with several more gentlemen. This promised well, as it was in this room that the Kaiser talked more intimately with the guests of his choosing.
The General held his helmet with its Feder-busch, or crest of white feathers on his arm, and felt the eyes of all assembled on him as the Kaiser came quickly into the room, and made his way to him. Now was the critical moment that might have everlasting consequences. Onkle Geo confessed to nervousness, but His Majesty guessed the situation, and said, "Hum! You need a new helmet, that Feder-busch is shabby," in a bantering tone. The courtiers knew this was meant for friendly, humorous comment, and was intended to be laughed at, so they laughed accordingly at Onkle Geo's confusion, and the ice was broken. "And my helmet was quite new!" said Onkle Geo, half indignantly, half laughing.
The court was very simple, and we heard stories of this through other friends who had the entrée. A Graefin D——, returning one evening from a court ball given in honor of the then Regent of Bavaria, gave me a bon-bon done up in silver paper, with a little photo of the Kaiserin on it. The bon-bon was white, and the Graefin said as long as any one could remember, these had been the official souvenirs of court dinners: only the photo varied.
One charming girl we knew, a great favourite of the Empress, came back from the Palace one Christmas day, and told us what she had received from Her Majesty as a Christmas greeting—a small, old-fashioned tippet and muff of woolly white Angora, and two small, cheap Japanese vases, that some one had given the Empress the year before. The Royal magnificence one would expect gave way to—extreme simplicity let us call it.
The Kaiser took a keen interest in the opera, and gave wonderful presents to his favourite singers. We saw a spectacle at the opera house that he was supposed to have inspired, and which was carried out under his direction. It was a sort of panorama of scenes in Corfu, where he spent much time. It must have been horribly expensive, for I never saw so much scenery at any performance, and it really was exquisite to see those beautifully reproduced scenes unfold before one.
Such things, however, as painted castles and woods and flowers always seem to me excessively naïve. The Russian idea of a wonderful imaginative back-drop is infinitely more stimulating to a performance. Of course, there are places where it cannot be used. If the scene is laid in a Childs' restaurant a back-drop might perhaps be comic to a mind not yet used to making its own pictures; but I hope and believe the aim is towards simplicity in this direction; but the simplicity must be carried out by artists, and first-rate ones. Who, who has seen the leaping figures of the Russian Ballet in "Prince Igor," has felt a lack on the scenic side because the tents with their feather of smoke were suggested on a flat back-drop? Who longed for real, that is, one-side real, tents—with steam escaping from a semi-hidden pipe through the top? The luridness was suggested by colour far more skilfully than if rocks, thinly swaying and lit by red lights, had cluttered up the wings. Make the audience do the thinking, blend stimulation with simulation, and if your artist has been a true one no one will cry for flapping pillars, or crumpled leaves on a net.
"Boris Goudonow," as it used to be given at the Metropolitan, is a good example of what real artist vision can do with colour. Those who saw those figures in brilliant green, kneeling with their backs to the audience, barring off the procession scene, while the towering minaret of the cathedral carried the eye up and up at the back, will surely never forget the light and shade grouping. It has since, I am sorry to say, lost some of its skilful arrangement, which I suppose is unavoidable, but the performance is still homogeneous and a unit, as to décors, score and costumes.
It was on the Kaiser's birthday that we saw "Corfu," and afterwards we went to the newly-opened Hotel Esplanade for supper. I have never seen such a sight. All imaginable uniforms were there, on all types of officers and foreign diplomats. Some looked magnificently romantic, and some as if they had stepped from the comic opera stage. The women, as usual in Germany, though plentifully be-jewelled, looked dull and inadequate beside the men.
One summer night in Berlin, we went to Max Reinhardt's small theatre, the Kammerspiel, to see "Fruehlingserwachen." My dear friend, Oscar Saenger, was in town, and I had happened to see him in a box at the opera the evening before. He had come to see Berger, the giant baritone whom he had transformed into a tenor, in his first performance of Siegmund. I think Putnam Griswold, that splendid type of the best American singer, sang the Wanderer that night. Saenger asked us to go to the theatre with him, as we had not met in years, and by chance we chose "Fruehlingserwachen" of Wedekind. Never shall I forget that evening. The quiet, dark wooden walls of the theatre, and the comfortable box they showed us into, in which we sat, seeing but unseen in the obscurity; the lack of applause when the curtain fell, and then—the performance. German actors lead the world, in my opinion, and the intensity of those players, the skill with which they played those most unhappy children, the tremulous, inadequate mother, that dark scene with its girl-women shriek, left us breathless and dazed.
The highest possible tribute I pay to German actors, and to some of those gathered together that winter in that theatre. Such a Falstaff I never saw as we saw there in "Henry V," nor such marvellous presentations of Shakespeare. Moissy as Prince Hal in his father's deathbed scene; the Doll Tearsheet; the collection of hangers-on in the Inn Scene, the understanding of the spirit of Shakespeare—all these were priceless joys. Shakespeare does not spell bankruptcy in Germany, and the people really love it, and perhaps there is a reason why.
The next night in the same house, you might see a translation of a French drawingroom comedy. With the exception of one or two, these people were quite as at home in that as in classic drama. That I had never believed possible till I saw it proven. It had always seemed to me that the French were absolutely unrivalled in such things as "Mlle. Georgette, ma femme"; but they were even more sincerely, yet just as lightly done by Reinhardt's people. It was always such a joy in Europe to go to the theatre in London, Paris or Berlin. To see Lavallière with her inimitable gamine ways, was the most delicious of pleasures; and the polish of the older actors of the French stage, the Marquis or Marquise, or old butler or housekeeper, as the case may be, is a wonderful model for the student. French actors seem to be able to come into a room, sit down at a table and talk for half an hour, using almost no gestures, without becoming in the least boresome or monotonous. When scenes of strong passion are wanted, the Germans, I think, excel their French rivals. A Frenchman, or, for that matter, any Latin, is inclined to rant just a bit, and become unconvincing, at least to an Anglo-Saxon mind; but the German, when called upon for strength and power of passion, rises thrillingly and gloriously, and completely sweeps you away.
Even in Darmstadt we had many notable performances. That of the "Versunkene Glocke," for instance, was most memorable. We had a splendid old actor for the Well Spirit, Nickelmann, and nothing could have been wetter or more unearthly than his sloshing slowly up from the depth of the well, his webbed, greenish fingers appearing clutchingly first, and then his grating, fishy croak, "R-r-r-rautendelein! R-r-r-r-rautendelein!" The faun was also excellently done by a young fellow with marvellous faun-like agility; altogether these unpretentious people realized the fairy-tale spirit, the wood feeling of the story, in a most imaginative, subtle way. Where in America in a town of Darmstadt's size could you see such a performance?