A Frenchman in America: Recollections of Men and Things

by Max O'Rell

After lunch I paid a visit to the exhibition of Vassili Vereschagin’s pictures. What on earth could possess the talented Russian artist, whose coloring is so lovely, to expend his labor on such subjects! Pictures like those, which show the horrors of a campaign in all their hideousness, may serve a good purpose in creating a detestation of war in all who see them. Nothing short of such a motive in the artist could excuse the portrayal of such infamies. These pictures are so many nightmares which will certainly haunt my eyes and brain for days and nights to come. Battle scenes portrayed with a realism that is revolting, because, alas, only too true. The execution of nihilists in a dim, dreary, snow-covered waste. An execution of sepoys, the doomed rebels tied to the mouths of cannon about to be fired off. Scenes of torture, illustrative of the extent to which human suffering can be carried, give you cold shudders in every fiber of your body. One horrid canvas shows a deserted battlefield, the snow-covered ground littered with corpses that ravens are tearing and fighting for. But, perhaps worst of all, is a picture of a field, where, in the snow, lie the human remains of a company of Russian soldiers who have been surprised and slain by Turks. Among the bodies, outraged by horrible and nameless mutilations, walks a priest, swinging a censer. One seems to be pursued by, and impregnated with, a smell of cadaverous putrefaction. This collection of pictures is installed in a place which has been used for stabling horses in, and is reeking with stable odors and the carbolic acid that has been employed to neutralize them. Your sense of smell is in full sympathy with your horrified sense of sight: both are revolted.

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Now, behind the three large rooms devoted to the Russian artist’s works was a small one, in which hung a single picture. You little guess that that picture was no other than Jean Francois Millet’s “Angelus.” Millet’s dear little “Angelus,” that hymn of resignation and peace, alongside of all this roar and carnage of battle! The exhibitor thought, perhaps, that a sedative might be needed after the strong dose of Vassili Vereschagin, but I imagine that no one who went into that little room after the others was in a mood to listen to Millet’s message.

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March 19.

Yesterday morning I went to see the Richmond Libby Prison, a four-story, huge brick building which has been removed here from Richmond, over a distance of more than a thousand miles, across the mountains of Pennsylvania. This is, perhaps, as the circular says, an unparalleled feat in the history of the world. The prison has been converted into a museum, illustrating the Civil War and African Slavery in America. The visit proved very interesting. In the afternoon I had a drive through the beautiful parks of the city.

In the evening I went to see “Tannhäuser” at the Auditorium. Outside, the building looks more like a penitentiary than a place of amusement—a huge pile of masonry, built of great, rough, black-looking blocks of stone. Inside, it is magnificent. I do not know anything to compare with it for comfort, grandeur, and beauty. It can hold seven thousand people. The decorations are white and gold. The lighting is done by means of arc electric lights in the enormously lofty roof—lights which can be lowered at will. Mr. Peck kindly took me to see the inner workings of the stage. I should say “stages,” for there are three. The hydraulic machinery for raising and lowering them cost $200,000.

Madame Lehmann sang grandly. I imagine that she is the finest lady exponent of Wagner’s music alive. She not only sings the parts, but looks them. Built on grand lines and crowned with masses of blond hair, she seems, when she gives forth those volumes of clear tones, a Norse goddess strayed into the nineteenth century.

M. Gounod describes Wagner as an astounding prodigy, an aberration of genius, a dreamer haunted by the colossal. For years I had listened to Wagner’s music, and, like most of my compatriots, brought up on the tuneful airs of Bellini, Donizetti, Rossini, Verdi, Auber, etc., I entirely failed to appreciate the music of the future. All I could say in its favor was some variation of the sentiment once expressed by Mr. Edgar W. Nye (“Bill Nye”) who, after giving the subject his mature consideration, said he came to the conclusion that Wagner’s music was not so bad as it sounded. But I own that since I went to Bayreuth and heard and saw the operas as there given, I began not only to see that they are beautiful, but why they are beautiful.

Wagnerian opera is a poetical and musical idealization of speech.