But they were not all athletes, and I remember one real student among them. The curtain went up on the first act of “Lohengrin” and, to my amazement as I looked up from my conductor’s stand, I saw one of these college boys, dressed in the armor and cloak of one of King Henry’s knights, calmly standing at the foot of the throne, large spectacles on his nose, busily following the action of the opera from a libretto which he held in his hand and close to his eyes.
Another time a much more terrible occurrence took place, but very much “behind the scenes.” I was in Boston with the Grau Opera Company and, at a Saturday matinée, “Carmen” was given with Madame Calvé in the title rôle. I did not conduct that opera, and happened to saunter on the stage after the third act. I found the whole company in a state of only half-suppressed merriment. While Madame A—— was singing Micaela’s air on the stage, in which she implores Don Jose to leave Carmen and return to his old mother, one of these young wretches from Harvard had crept into her dressing-room, and in order to have a triumphant souvenir to hang up in his rooms at college he had stolen her— No, not her stockings, but another important part of her wearing apparel. Madame A——, on returning to her dressing-room, had discovered the theft. Her maid had told the wardrobe mistress, the wardrobe mistress had told the stage carpenter, he had repeated it to the stage-manager, and so forth and so on, the whole company revelling in it, especially as Madame A—— was herself of New England parentage and was considered an exceptionally proper young person.
CAMILLE SAINT-SAËNS AND WALTER DAMROSCH
From a snapshot taken in Paris at the wedding reception of Gretchen Damrosch, July 17, 1920
XII
ROMANCE
“At last!” my readers will exclaim. “All these reminiscences about musicians are well enough, but it is their love-affairs that we are interested in. Think of Beethoven and the Countess Giucciardi, of Berlioz and Miss Smithson, of Liszt and the Countess d’Agoult, of Wagner and Madame Wesendonck. Musicians are so romantic, so different from ordinary men. They wear their hair longer; they affect delightful eccentricities of conduct and of clothes; the ordinary humdrum of life does not touch them, and they live only in the higher and rarer atmosphere of art and poetry.” Therefore woman, who is so much more spiritual than man, sometimes thinks in her unguarded moments that true happiness can only be found by falling in love with an artist or, better still, having him fall in love with her.
Without venturing to place myself in the same category as the great musicians mentioned above, I nevertheless propose in this chapter to give a full and detailed account of all my love-affairs—all, or at least of as many as can be crowded into the confines of a chapter. I have lived a great many years and my life, like that of other artists, has been full to the brim of all kinds of interesting and fascinating happenings, and in order that my readers may gain a true picture I shall begin at the very beginning, promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
Terrible as it may seem, I have to confess at the outset that I began my life as a gay Lothario at the tender age of eight. My family were then living in Breslau, Silesia, and the rear of the house in which our apartment was situated opened on a large courtyard, upon which several other houses faced. This courtyard naturally became the playground of all the children who lived around it. We were particularly intimate with one family, the children of which consisted of an elder brother, already in the university, who affected the appearance and manner of the great German poet, Friedrich Schiller. He was supposed to have great poetical talents, and it was darkly rumored that he had already written two tragedies. I was greatly in awe of him, but his younger brother, who was a boy of my own age, was my classmate in school—the gymnasium, as it was called. And then there was a sister, little Lorchen, seven years of age, with blue eyes and many blond curls. I had played with her and her brother for several months before I suddenly discovered that her curls were beautiful, like spun gold, and that there was something particularly ingratiating in the blue of her eyes. I had an intense desire to put my arms around her, but, strange to say, the consciousness of this filled me with such anger that instead of giving way to it I took the first opportunity to slap this darling little child most unmercifully. To this day I cannot explain my unnatural depravity, and I wish that I could now—over fifty years later—meet little Lorchen again to tell her that this slap was my only way of letting her know how much I loved her. Alas, she never knew, and as we emigrated to America soon thereafter, I never had the time nor the opportunity to overcome my shyness and to place my love at her feet in proper fashion.
I cannot remember any new passions from then on until my sixteenth year. Lorchen’s picture soon and completely faded from my memory. I was tremendously taken up, first with learning English, New York school life, my musical studies, playing marbles, flying kites, and building ships to sail on the pond in Central Park. But when I was fifteen a little Frenchman came to New York and presented himself to my father with his two little daughters, Louise and Jeanne, who were both pianist prodigies. Louise was fifteen and little Jeanne only twelve. The latter was truly remarkable, and her playing made quite a stir in New York at the time. But I was singularly drawn toward the older sister, Louise. Their mother had died when the children were very young and Louise had quite taken the mother’s place and watched over Jeanne with a maternal solicitude and tenderness truly remarkable in so young a girl. She played exquisitely herself, and I can still hear the velvety touch of her fingers in the A Flat Etude of Chopin, but in her adoration for her younger sister’s more brilliant talent she completely effaced herself, and it was only with difficulty that one could get her to play if her sister was present. They lived in a little French boarding-house and I used to love to go there in the evening, and while Jeanne would play for us in most brilliant fashion Louise would sit at a table in the centre of the room and, under the mellow light of a centre lamp, would darn stockings or deftly refashion some dress which Jeanne was to wear at her next concert. Louise had the gentlest of brown eyes, and her face and bearing breathed a tranquillity and sweetness rarely found in the agitating nervous life of to-day. She was not talkative, but when she spoke her eyes would smile and crinkle up in very ingratiating fashion.