Yesterday I took my fourth lesson of Kullak. He plays much more to me than Tausig did, and I am surprised to see how much I have got on in four weeks. Tausig didn't deign to do more than play occasional passages, and we had only one piano in the room where he taught. But at Kullak's there are two grand pianos side by side. He sits at one and I at the other, and as he knows everything by heart which he teaches, as I told you, he keeps playing with me or before me, so that I catch it a great deal better. Sometimes he will repeat a passage over and over, and I after him, like a parrot, until I get it exactly right. He has this excessively finished and elegant fantasia style of playing, like Thalberg or De Meyer. He has great fame as a teacher, and is perhaps more celebrated in this respect than Tausig, but I was with Tausig too short a time to judge personally which teaches the best.
This war is perfectly awful. The men are simply being slaughtered like cattle. New regiments are all the time being sent on. The Prussians have taken over two hundred thousand prisoners, to say nothing of the killed and wounded. But they lose fearful numbers themselves also. It is expected in a few days that Metz will surrender. It is a tremendous stronghold, and contains an army of fifty thousand men. But isn't it extraordinary how disastrous the war has been to the French? They had an immense army of several hundred thousand men. And then they had all the advantages of position. The Prussians have had to fight their way through all these strong defences one after another. They will soon bombard Paris. As Herr S. says, this war is a disgrace to the governments. He says that they ought to have united against it (America included), and to have said that on such an unjust pretext they would not permit it. I read the other day a most touching letter that was found on the dead body of a common soldier from his old peasant father. He said, "What have we poor people done that the lieber Gott visits us with such fearful judgments? When I got thy letter, my dear son, saying that thou art safe come out of the last battle with thy brother, I fell on my knees and thanked God for His goodness." Then he goes on to describe the joy of his mother and sister and sweetheart, and how he read his letter to all the neighbours, "who rejoiced much at thy safety," and his hope and confidence that his son would return alive to his old father. But in a few days his son fell in another battle, desperately wounded. He was carried to the house of a lady who did all she could for him, but he died, and she sent this letter to the paper. Do you get many of the anecdotes in the American papers? Such as that of the three hundred and two horses which, at the usual signal after the battle that called the regiments together, came back riderless? I think that was very touching in the poor things.[C] Or have you heard of the Frenchman who, when informed that the Emperor was taken prisoner, coolly replied: "Moi aussi!" But these are already old stories, and you have doubtless heard them. I think one of the worst incidents of the war is that bomb that fell into a girls' school at Strasbourg. When one thinks of innocent young girls having their eyes torn out, and being killed and wounded, it seems too terrible.—I always pity the poor horses so much. At the surrender of Sedan, the French forgot to detach them from the cannon, and to give them food and drink. Finally, frantic with thirst, they broke themselves loose and rushed wildly through the streets. It was said that any body could have a horse for the trouble of catching him.
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BERLIN, November 25, 1870.
I went last week to hear Joachim, who lives here, and is giving his annual series of quartette soirees. Oh! he is a wonderful genius, and the sublimest artist I have yet heard. I am amazed afresh every time I hear him. He draws the most extraordinary tone from his violin, and such a powerful one that it seems sometimes as if several were playing. Then his expression is so marvellous that he holds complete sway over his audience from the moment he begins till he ceases. He possesses magnetic power to the highest degree.
On Saturday night I went to a superb concert given for the benefit of the wounded. The royal orchestra played, and as it was in the Sing-Akademie, where the acoustic is very remarkable, the orchestral performance seemed phenomenal. Generally, this orchestra plays in the opera house, which is so much larger that the effect is not so great. The last thing they played was the "Ritt der Walküren," by Wagner. It was the first time it was given in Berlin, and it is a wonderful composition. It represents the ride of the Walküre-maidens into Valhalla, and when you hear it it seems as if you could really see the spectral horses with their ghostly riders. It produces the most unearthly effect at the end, and one feels as if one had suddenly stepped into Pandemonium. I was perfectly enchanted with it, and everybody was excited. The "bravos" resounded all over the house. Tausig played Chopin's E minor concerto in his own glorious style. He did his very best, and when he got through not only the whole orchestra was applauding him, but even the conductor was rapping his desk with his bâton like mad. I thought to myself it was a proud position where a man could excite enthusiasm in the hearts of these old and tried musicians. As a specimen of his virtuosity, what do you say to the little feat of playing the running passage at the end, two pages long, and which was written for both hands in unison, in octaves instead of single notes?—Gigantic! [Later Kullak gave this great concerto to my sister to study, and as she was struggling with its difficulties he said: "Ah yes, Fräulein, when I think of the time and labour I spent over that concerto in my youth, I could weep tears of blood!">[—ED.
Yesterday evening I went to a party at the house of a relative of the M.'s. Madame de Stael was right in saying that etiquette is terribly severe in Germany. It is downright law, and everybody is obliged to submit to it. What other people in the world, for example, would insist on your coming at eight and remaining until nearly four in the morning, when the party consists of a dozen or twenty people, almost all of them married and middle-aged, or elderly? I nearly expire of fatigue and ennui, but they would all take it so ill if I didn't go, that there is no escape. Last night I came home with such a dreadful nervous headache from sheer exhaustion, that I could scarcely see. You know in a dancing party the excitement keeps one up, and one doesn't feel the fatigue until afterward. But to sit three mortal hours before supper, and keep up a conversation with a lot of people much older than yourself in whom you have not the slightest interest, and in a foreign language, when you wouldn't be brilliant in your own, and then another long three hours at the supper table, and then still an hour or so afterwards, to an American mind is terrible! I always groan in spirit when I think how comfortably I used to jump into the carriage at nine o'clock, in Cambridge, go to the party, and come home at half-past eleven or twelve. These long parties are what the Germans call being "gemüthlig (sociable and friendly)." The French would call them "assommant," and they would be entirely in the right.
CHAPTER VIII.
Concerts. Joachim again. The Siege of Paris. Peace
Declared. Wagner. A Woman's Symphony.
Ovation to Wagner in Berlin.
BERLIN, December 11, 1870.