A delighted smile broke over the face of the kettledrum player.
“Ah, capisco, capisco,” he shouted, and immediately proceeded to put his newly won knowledge to the practical proof.
Bülow told me that at one time he had adopted the habit of jotting down any strange or incongruous names that he found on the signs of shops in the various cities of the various countries that he visited. In a small little German town he found over a greengrocery, the name of “Seidenschwanz.” This appealed to him and he tucked it away in his memory, determined to find a given name to add that would, by its very contrast, fit it. For months he cudgelled his brains, but in vain, until one night in Venice he jumped up from his bed, shouting: “I have it. Caligula Seidenschwanz!” The name of the most cruel of Roman Emperors coupled with that of the little greengrocer!
Next morning he proceeded to an engraver and had visiting cards printed bearing the mysterious name of:
Caligula Seidenschwanz.
Shortly after, whenever Doctor Hans von Bülow paid a call on any one, instead of presenting his own card, he left that of Herr Seidenschwanz, thereby completely mystifying his friends.
I told this story years after while dining at the house of my dear friends, May Callender and Caro de Forest. Lilli Lehmann was one of the guests, and when I finished she jumped up and said:
“Walter, that is a very remarkable story, but it is absolutely true, as I happen to know. I was coloratura soprano at the Berlin Royal Opera at the time when Bülow paid us a visit one night when we performed Meyerbeer’s ‘Prophète.’ He was so disgusted with the performance that he wrote one of his indignant and cynical letters to a Berlin paper, in which he compared the Royal Opera to a circus, and then added insult to injury by apologizing to Herr Renz, owner of the greatest circus in Germany, saying that he meant no insult to him, as he had always been a great admirer of the Circus Renz. This letter aroused the old intendant, Baron von Hulsen, to such fury that he forbade Bülow further entrance into the opera-house and at the same time induced the old Emperor to withdraw the title of ‘Pianist to His Majesty, the King of Prussia’ from von Bülow.”
Lilli Lehmann then continued to narrate that the morning after the performance she received a large basket of flowers in which a card had been tucked, on which was written “To the only bright spot in yesterday’s performance. In admiration, Caligula Seidenschwanz.”
Until that evening, when I explained the origin of the name, Lilli Lehmann had not known that the flowers had been sent her by von Bülow.