How happy I am to write you that the trip southward bids fair to be realized within a short time. We have heard from friends who have landed at Naples and who hope to meet us at Milan. You can imagine how delighted we are to think of seeing some one from home, for letters at best are unsatisfactory things. I have so many questions to ask about everything and everybody that I shall be worse than the proverbial small boy.
Mütterchen and I have been down to Promenade Platz this afternoon buying trunk straps. Every time we return from a trip we find that our straps have mysteriously disappeared and no one seems to know anything about them. I fancy that those solemn-looking guards could enlighten us considerably if they chose. The weather was so delightful that after we had finished our shopping, which had led us down Maximilian-strasse, we decided to take a stroll along the Gasteig Promenade by the Isar. We found ourselves in the midst of an idly sauntering throng, for the greater part of München had turned out to luxuriate in the sunshine. Oh! my dear, how it would shock your fastidious taste to see the new Reform Kleid. All winter the women showed unpleasant symptoms of adopting this form of dress, and now that spring has come the fever has burst forth. The garments are all entirely in one piece, hanging straight downward, without shape or curve, totally ignoring the existence of a waist line. Most of them suggest nothing so strongly as robes de nuit, and some which have straps over the shoulders remind one of a feminine species of overalls. They are invariably too short in front, and as the fashion for white shoes prevails (may the gods spare you the sight of white shoes on German feet!) the effect is grotesque in the extreme. I believe the one virtue of these remarkable gowns is that they are comfortable, but so are bathrobes, sweaters, and négligés.
Even such a disturbing element as the Reform Kleid was in time forgotten, for it is very lovely down here by the Isar, that same "Isar, rolling rapidly," of which everyone has read. In place of green banks are high walls of white stone over which trails picturesque ivy from the terraces on either side. The Promenade itself stretches along the edge of the embankment, under great shady trees. So delightful was it that we wandered down to the Peace Monument and lingered there till six o'clock. The sunset was not especially brilliant, but the clouds which remained hanging low in the fast-darkening sky were wonderful indeed. They shaded from a dusky violet to deep, rich purple, and their music was that of a Chopin prelude, not one of those tempest-tossed visions, but perhaps the tender, half-melancholy one in B flat.
There is to be a Vortrags-Abend to-morrow night which marks the end of the spring term at the Conservatory. Fräulein Mikorey, a pupil of Stavenhagen's, is to play a Beethoven concerto, a student named Sieben is to play the violin, and I am to sing. Wish me luck, Liebchen!
Evening.
Just a line before I go to sleep to tell you that everything went off beautifully at the concert to-night. In one way it was an awful experience—awful, dearest of friends, in its most literal sense. This was not on account of the hall, I assure you, although it looked marvellously great and high as one stepped out of the dressing-room; nor was it because of the imposing audience, nor the crowds of pupils, who stood with critical attention around the sides of the room. Each of these factors may have its individual influence in striking terror to the heart of the timid performer, but they are all as nothing, absolutely nothing, I say, in comparison with that austere, black-coated, solemn-visaged line of professors who occupy the front row. You cannot imagine anything more terrifying than to stand on the platform and look down on this human barricade which shuts one off, as it were, from all that is friendly and encouraging. Stavenhagen sat in the centre, with arms majestically folded. On either side were the two women teachers of the school, and then to right and left stretched that line of frigid stateliness. There was a certain horrible fascination about it all, for try as I would to look over into the audience or up at the balcony, I found my glance always nervously returning to some dignified head posed at a critical angle, or some pair of hands with finger tips pressed together in judicial attitude.
The moment after I made my very quaint, very German courtesy—a ceremony insisted on by the Frau Professor—I suddenly became terribly conscious of the fact that I was an American, that all these people before me were German, and that I was about to sing to them in Italian. If I had dared, I should have smiled. It was as if Italian were a language of commerce, by means of which I was to make a communication to the audience. But, dear me! I forgot all about that and everything—yes, even the depressing effect of the front row—when once I got to singing. And when it was over I could have hugged the fellow who cried "Bravo! Amerika! Amerika!" What mattered it that it was only an unpretentious pupils' concert? I could not have felt any prouder if it had been my début in grand opera when Stavenhagen and Thuille congratulated me, and the latter said, in his kind way, "We must make that counterpoint run as easily from your pen as those tones from your lips."
When one studies singing merely for the love of it, it is all very well, but it would make your heart sick to see the number of American girls over here who are half-starving themselves in order to study for the grand opera stage. One sadly wonders how many of them will ever "arrive," but when an argument is raised or a doubt expressed as to their ultimate success, they immediately cite the case of Geraldine Farrar, the American who is at present singing leading rôles at the Berlin opera house. The brilliancy of her success blinds their eyes to hundreds of utter failures, to countless half-way successes and to the untold drudgery which lies along the road.