Deppe makes Fräulein Timm and Fräulein Steiniger his partners and associates in his ideas, and the consequence is they add all their ingenuity to impart them to others. This spares him much of the tedious technical work, and leaves him free for the higher spheres of art, as they take the beginners and prepare them for him. He has made them magnificent teachers, and they employ their gifts to further him. I don't doubt that through them his method will be perpetuated, and even if he should die it would not be lost to the world. On the other hand, he has given them something to live for.—Curious that the practicalness of this association with women doesn't strike the masculine mind oftener!
So I am going down to Hamburg to study for a time with this Fräulein Timm, as I think she will develop my hand quicker than Deppe, even. Deppe has always urged me to it, but I never would do it, as I did not know her personally, and did not wish to leave him. Now that I have tried her, however, I find he was right, as he always is! At present she is throwing her whole weight upon my wrist, which I hope will get limber under it! She has an obstinacy and a perseverance in sticking at you that drive you almost wild, but make you learn "lots" in the end. I think my grand trouble all these years has been a stiff wrist and a heavy arm. I have borne down too heavily on wrist and arm, whereas the whole weight and power must be just in the tips of the fingers, and the wrist and arm must be quite light and free, the hand turning upon the wrist as if it were a pivot.
Pyrmont is an exquisite little place, and I regret to leave it. At first I almost perished with loneliness, but now that I have a few acquaintances here I am enjoying it. It is a fashionable watering place, but chiefly visited by ladies. There are about a hundred women to one man! The first week I was here I lived at a Herr S.'s, but finding it too expensive I looked up another lodging and am now living with a jolly old maid. I like living with old maids. I think they are much neater than married women, and they make you more comfortable. As the season is now over, this one's house is quite empty, and it is exquisitely kept. I took two rooms in the third story, small but very cozy, and with a lovely view of the hills.
We have just had the loveliest illumination I ever saw. It was one Sunday evening—"Golden Sunday" they call it here, though why they should call it so, I know not. I accepted the information, however, without inquiry into first causes, and went out in the evening to promenade in the Allée with the rest. The Allée is not all on a level, but descends gradually from the springs to a fountain which is at the opposite end. Rows and rows of Japanese lanterns were festooned across the trees. As you walked down the path, you saw the festoons one below the other. The fountain was illuminated with gas jets behind the water. You could not see the water till you got close up, and at a distance only the rows of gas jets were apparent. As you neared it, however, the watery veil seemed flung over them, like the foamy tulle over a bride. It was very fascinating to look at, and I kept receding a few paces and then returning. As I receded, the watery veil would disappear, and as I approached it would again take form. It reminded me of some people's characters, of which you see the bright points from the first, and think you know them so well, but when you draw closer, even in the moments of greatest intimacy, you always feel a veil between you and them—a thin, impalpable something which you cannot annihilate, even though you may see through it.
We walked up and down the Allée a long time listening to the orchestra, which was playing. The magnificent great trees looked more beautiful than ever, with their lower boughs lit up by the lanterns, and their upper ones disappearing mysteriously into shadow. At last the tapers in the lanterns burned out one after another, the avenue was wrapped in gloom, and we finished this poetic evening in the usual prosaic manner by returning home and going to bed!
CHAPTER XXVIII.
Music in Hamburg. Studying Chamber Music. Absence
of Religion in Germany. South Americans.
Deppe once more. A Concert
Début. Postscript.
HAMBURG, February 1, 1875.
Hamburg is a lovely city, though I am having such a dreadfully dreary and stupid time here—partly because my boarding-place is so intensely disagreeable, and partly because I made up my mind when I came to make no acquaintances and to do nothing but study. I have stuck to my resolution, though I'm not sure it is not a mistake, for there is a most elegant and luxurious society in this ancestral town of ours.[J]
Life is solid and material here, however, and music is at a low ebb. The Philharmonic concerts are wretched, and nobody goes to even the few piano concerts there are. That little Laura Kahrer, now Frau Rappoldi, that I heard in Weimar at Liszt's, has been wanting to come here with her husband, who is an eminent violinist, but she has not dared to do it, because all the musicians tell her she would not make her expenses. She played at the Philharmonic, too, but since then they won't have any more piano playing at the Philharmonic. Nobody cares for it, unless Bülow or Rubinstein or Clara Schumann are the performers. I thought Frau Rappoldi played magnificently, but I was the only person who did think so. She made a dead failure here. Everybody was down on her. As to the criticism, it was about like this: "Frau Rappoldi played quite prettily and in a lady-like manner, but she had no tone, etc." Poor thing! The next day when Schubert went to see her she wept bitterly, and well she might. Schubert is one of the directors of the Philharmonic, and it was through him she got the chance of playing. He, too, felt awfully cut up at her want of success. "That is what one gets," said he to me, "by recommending people. If they don't succeed, you get all the blame for it." He felt he had burnt his fingers! I think the whole secret of Frau Rappoldi's want of success was that she did not look pretty. She was so dowdily dressed, and her hair looked like a Feejee Islander's. People laughed at her before she began. Too true!—that "dress makes the woman."[K]