The master—he was nearly seventy—seemed exceedingly shy. He did not appear to be greatly struck with the idea of giving lessons to a Mozart, even to one born in Belsize Park. He absolutely refused to name a figure as a payment for his trouble, and I had to name mine which, from an insurance broker's point of view, was cheap enough, but which evidently was a decisive factor for a starving Viennese musician.
He accepted, and the lessons began.
How can I give you an idea of old Robert Hammer? Imagine a sort of middle height peasant with a flavour of a protestant parson, the head of a Roman Emperor, Claudius, for instance; bald, but so bald, as to make believe that it was an artificial baldness, an exaggerated baldness that extended to the neck and the temples; no beard, no moustaches, no eyebrows. He was always dressed in black; his trousers were shaped like those of a British sailor, the coat ill fitting, too long and too wide, the sleeves reaching the fingertips. His collar was so narrow that it was scarcely visible, and his black tie resembled a shoe lace. As for his boots, I think it must be he who invented the fashion of the dainty things we wear in the trenches. He was always rolling a little snuff between his fingers. When he sat down to improvise on the organ or the piano, that little snuff was dexterously moved from the right to the left and back to the right and again to the left, according as the one or the other hand was in the better position to play with three fingers only. Of course, by degrees all the snuff would be lost and scattered over the keys. Then only old Hammer would do the really impossible thing, namely, juggle away the imaginary remains of the snuff into his nose.
He was at once a genius and a perfect fool, an old man and a baby; he possessed all possible refinement in his art, and was ignorant of any in life; no organist ever reached his perfection; no musician was a worse teacher.
He was a very friendly, kind man as long as his unbelievable absence of mind did not interfere with his kindness. He was one of the many types of Viennese musicians, and I do not think that you could find in the whole world one that would resemble him.
One morning, a fortnight or three weeks after my first lesson, he inquired about the life I was leading. And as I complained regarding the inconveniences of hotel life, he asked me why I should not hire a furnished room.
"I have been warned," I said, "that hotel life was still preferable to insect life."
He did not understand, and I had to explain.
"There are not insects everywhere," he answered. "You must know, of course, where to stay. There is my friend Doblana for instance, who has a very nice flat. His wife died a year ago, and he has now one room too many. Besides, his house would be the right thing for you, and you would enjoy his company. He is a musician who plays the horn in a most charming manner. You see, he is a Czech, and most Czechs have thick, fleshy lips, a peculiarity which enables them to play exceedingly well. The lips are most important when playing the horn. The oldest classics did not know that. This is the reason for their awkward writing. The first who recognized what could be achieved by the horn were Méhul and Beethoven, but Weber had to be born to invent the new perfect language of this wonderful instrument, the most sensual and the most chaste."
Mr. Doblana was forgotten, and his furnished room too. Good old Hammer was raving over the qualities of the horn, over Meyerbeer's cleverness to write for it, and over the various ways modern composers used it, especially Wagner.