Rubinstein was more than satisfied with her; paid little or no attention to any eccentricity of exterior or manner, and was ready and glad to do all in his power to advance her. After some years of hard work and occasional public appearances, it was agreed that she should spend a season at St. Petersburg.
Everybody was disposed to receive her with open arms and lift her to a permanent and glorious pedestal. But good-natured and art-loving Russian princesses and countesses had calculated without their host. This young lady had no desire to be patronised or helped. People might come to her concerts or to her as pupils, and they might stay away: it mattered little to her which they did. In either case she was pretty sure to regard them as idiots, and if they came to her they would have the advantage of hearing it,—that was the difference, which made it easier for them to stay away, as not only the Russian princesses and countesses found out, but also the princes and counts. They might invite her to their entertainments, but it was a wise precaution on their part not to feel too sure of her presence—as for expecting an answer to a polite letter or message, or civil treatment upon a morning call or at a lesson, well, all this lay without the range of probabilities for the most sanguine.
Her peculiarities were incredible. Rubinstein’s name and influence opened every door to her, and the results were unique. She appeared at one Grand Duchess’s in evening dress with woollen gloves, to the dumb amazement of distinguished guests, one sprightly duchess wondering why she had omitted to come in waterproof and goloshes. When introduced to an ambassador, and informed of his passion for music, she coolly surveyed him from the top of his bald head to the edge of his white gold-striped trousers, and said to her host: “I do not want to be introduced to him. A fellow in gold can know nothing about music.”
Her pupils she treated even worse. One young countess who was studying Chopin with her sent her a rich plum cake. The Natzelhuber, as she was called, was smoking a cigarette when the servant entered with the countess’s letter, followed by a powdered footman who presented her the cake with a stately bow.
“Does your mistress fancy I am starving?” roared the artist, throwing away her cigarette and seizing the cake in both hands. “What do I want with her trumpery cakes? Tell her that is the reception it met with from Photini Natzelhuber.”
She opened the door, rolled the unfortunate cake down the stairs, flung the gracious note after it, and upon them the frightened footman, who, not foreseeing what was coming, was easily knocked off his balance by her powerful little wrists. Of course the countess discontinued her studies of Chopin, and the Natzelhuber can hardly be said to have been the gainer in the transaction. These were the stupid blunders that left her soon without a friend or a well-wisher. Incapable of a mean or an ungenerous act; incapable of uttering a spiteful word behind an enemy’s back, she was equally incapable of uttering a gracious one to the face of a friend. The habit of recklessly indulging in vile language which she acquired in the streets of Athens never left her, and ambassadors, noblemen, artists and friends who momentarily offended her were never less than “pigs, asses,” and other such gentle and inoffensive beings. She could not help this failing any more than her bad temper and her passion for brandy and sensual pleasures of every kind.
“I know I am only a street vagabond mistakenly an artist, but I cannot help it, nor do I desire to be otherwise,” she would say, in her clearer moments. “I am mad too, and that I cannot help either.”
Deeply tragic assertions both, but not more deeply tragic than the wasted life and abilities of the woman who made them. The irritable creature, sick to death of Russia, sick of the perpetual and humiliating contrast between her condition and that of those around her,—a humiliation she scorned in the majesty of artistic pride to admit to herself, but smarted from in that vague, unrecognised way all feelings outside music and the grosser sensations stirred within her,—left St. Petersburg without even sending her P. P. C. cards.
She appeared next in Munich, now twenty-seven, at the height of artistic fame, only second to her master, able to command the best audiences and prices, with a European reputation for a startling perfection of technique, a grandeur of inspiration and a simplicity of interpretation that only goes with absolute mastery. Rubinstein and others had dedicated several works to her, and for ten years she traversed the musical world a splendid enigma, a blight, a shame and a sorrow. The possession of certain irregular passions might have found ample apology in her genius, but the Natzelhuber so degraded her art that it quite sank into abeyance in the presence of her iniquities. The wonder was soon, not that such an artist should be so gross, but that such a soulless creature should possess the power of thrilling her hearers with every delicate perception of sense and harmony. As the years gathered over her, a curious slowness, almost a dignity of movement was noticeable in her. She began to awaken to the consciousness that the Natzelhuber was a kind of sovereign in her way, and should attract the eye and silence frivolous tongues by her manner of entering a room. She was stouter now, but carried her bulk well, holding her head erect and looking calmly at each speaker with those strange yellow eyes of hers, so luminous under the boyish, feathery curls. But the light in them shone from no spirit or soul,—sensuously attractive were they, like those of a Circe.