In the morning when I called at his rooms I found him punctiliously attired in his frock coat, high silk hat, and brown glacé gloves, and in answer to my evidently astonished gaze, he said: “We must not leave without paying our farewell call of ceremony on the Greek professor.” I trembled at the outcome, but a carriage with two horses and a liveried coachman was already waiting in the courtyard of the hotel to take us up the hill to the old mediæval tower of the university in which the professor lived.
We were ushered into a wonderful circular library, the books covering the entire inner wall of the tower, and while we were waiting for the professor, Bülow ran around the room like a dog on the scent, examining the titles of the various books on the shelves. Suddenly he pounced on one, pulled it out and began to turn the leaves quickly until he got to a certain page at which he held the book open just as the old professor entered, trembling from head to foot. I was rather apprehensive of the meeting between the two men, but to my astonishment, Bülow advanced, book in hand, and with a low bow handed it silently to the gentle amateur impresario, pointing to a certain place on the opened page. The professor read it, blushed, and looked with a kind of dumb apology at von Bülow, who then took up his hat and, with another low bow, left the room, followed by me, still completely mystified by this silent ceremonial, the meaning of which I could not understand.
During the drive back to the hotel, Bülow chirped up considerably. Now and then he chuckled and finally, as if the joke were too good to keep, he turned toward me and said:
“Do you know what quotation I gave to the Greek professor? It was from one of the Greek philosophers to the effect that ‘it is not wise for a man of learning to mix himself up in the practical affairs of life.’ ”
Perhaps some learned reader of this may be able to tell me who the Greek author was. Bülow never told me.
On our long walks Bülow would often reminisce about the past and would tell me enough stories to fill a book. Two of them I shall tell here.
Bülow was spending a winter in Florence and was invited to conduct a performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with the local orchestra. In those days Italy had literally no symphonic orchestras, and the players, recruited from the opera-houses, had but little routine for concert music of symphonic importance. The men were willing and eager, but even such a routined conductor as Bülow found it difficult to make them understand certain rhythmic subtleties in this most intricate of all Beethoven’s works. In the scherzo there comes a place where the kettledrum has to enter rudely with a repetition of the first bar of the main theme:
This rhythm the kettledrum player simply could not grasp, no matter how patiently Bülow endeavored to instill it. He tried it slow, he tried it fast. Bülow got more and more excited and irritable, and finally, as a last resort, he fairly shouted to him on the rhythm of this theme the Italian word for kettledrum. At the top of his voice rose the word:
“Tym—pan—y! Tym—pan—y!”