"Remains of Summer Waistcoats, from 3/11."
Nothing doing. Our motto is Vestigia nulla retrorsum.
UNWRITTEN LETTERS TO THE KAISER.
No. XXXVI.
(From Herr Wolfgang Offenmaul, an actor).
Most Gracious Majesty,—How strangely and uncomfortably the Fates sport with us! It is but two years ago, I remember, that it came into my head to look forward to the far-off day when I should shake off the stage and all its agitations, its triumphs, its disappointments and even its jealousies and its quarrels, and should be able to live my own life in the pleasant and happy world of reality. But I put the thought by, for much still remained to me to be endured and achieved in my profession, and I thought that some day, if matters turned out favourably, I might have the supreme glory of impersonating Hamlet or Macbeth under the very eye of your Imperial Majesty and of noting that you were not displeased with the performance of one of the most devoted of your subjects. This hope, springing up in my breast, gave me new strength and a fresh joy in the often dull round of my daily task, for in matters of the stage your Majesty, being, as we often say among ourselves, the greatest actor of us all and having from the earliest years imbibed the love of the footlights and the limelight, is an incomparable judge of the true histrionic art, and a word of praise from you is worth columns and columns in the newspapers. It is to us as when a cobbler's boots are praised by a rival cobbler.
And there is another point which then kept me from giving way any further to my dreams of retirement from the theatre. Real life, so calm for the most part and so regular, is but a dull thing to those who live a fictitious life on the boards, in the midst of excitements and honour and crimes, with murder and sudden death awaiting them, as it were, round the corner. After Hamlet has seen his mother's death, has killed Laertes and the King and has himself expired, what is it to him to come to life again and to sit down, without his royal trappings to a supper of sausage and potatoes, while his wife sits by and darns his stockings and the baby begins to cry in its cot? So thought I, and resolved to continue my career of acting, though I acknowledged that some day, perhaps, in the very distant future, retirement might have its attractions.
All this was before the War broke out. When that happened I, like the rest, was seized and thrust into a uniform and made to remember my drill and was presented with a rifle and a bayonet. Finally, with my regiment I was marched off to the Front in France, where I still linger in daily expectation of death. Dreadful things have I seen, men blown into nothingness by shells, men pierced through and through by the steel, women murdered and worse than murdered, and children crushed under fallen walls—sights I cannot bear to think of, though they force themselves upon me and murder sleep. I was, perhaps, unduly contemptuous of real life, but now I abhor it and try in vain to put it away from me. I desire with a full-hearted longing to return to that life of imagination where the most dreadful bloodshed ends at about eleven o'clock every evening, without leaving any impression on those who take part. Yes, give me again the life of the theatre and remove far away this brutal scenery of trenches and shells and bombs and quick-firers and men summoned from peace and ease to cut one another's throats because a histrion Kaiser has so willed it and none of his subjects dared to say him nay. To get away from this and never to return to it I would willingly consent to play the First Murderer in Macbeth for the remainder of my life. It would be an innocent and an honourable occupation compared with what I am forced day by day and night by night to endure.
Yours, in respectful despair, Wolfgang Offenmaul.