But what was my astonishment at suddenly beholding three of the “orchestra wives,” who were supposed to have remained in Paris, seated in one of the boxes. I do not know to this day whether they rode on the bumpers or in one of the baggage-cars. However, they were charming ladies; and, as a married man, I could not be too angry with them or their indulgent husbands. We compromised in the matter by permitting them to continue with us for the rest of the tour, provided that they and their husbands occupied space elsewhere than that reserved for the orchestra, and that they looked out for their own passports whenever we approached the border.
As we returned to our hotel after the concert the smiling hotel manager stood in the lobby to receive us and to express his congratulations at the success of a concert merveilleux. As we entered the electric lift to go to our respective rooms, he himself shut the grating on us and pressed the button to send us slowly upward. (All French lifts move slowly.) Its almost celestial calmness irresistibly brought the Finale of Gounod’s “Faust” to my mind, when Marguerite ascends heavenward. I began to sing the melody of the “Anges radieux,” and just as we got up to the first floor we suddenly heard the voice of the hotel manager, a vibrant tenor, enthusiastically continuing the trio from below. I gazed downward and there he was, his face raised ecstatically toward us and his hand pressed to his double-breasted frock coat—perhaps a poor hotel manager but certainly an enthusiastic lover of music.
The newspapers of Bordeaux were full of praise about our concert, but one of them said: “The orchestra played with that dryness characteristic of all North Americans.” Alack and alas! Had the Eighteenth Amendment, which went into effect the previous January, already made its dreadful influence felt?
Lyons was to be the next city on our itinerary, but unfortunately the railroad strike had completely isolated it and there was no way of reaching it from Bordeaux. We were therefore very reluctantly compelled to cancel the concert. Every seat had been sold long before, and as Lyons ranked next to Paris in musical importance the cancellation was a great disappointment to us.
The next morning Engles brought me a telegram which he had just received from our general manager in Paris, to the effect that at Marseilles the hall in which we were to play had been condemned by the fire department as unsafe, and that therefore the concert would have to be given at another theatre and under different management. Engles did not like the look of things and begged me, as he could not speak French, to go with him to Marseilles and look over the ground with him. We were to have played in Marseilles under the auspices and management of the local symphonic organization, which, however, turned out to be but a small and not very influential body of musicians, most of whom were amateurs. Their secretary, who was to attend to the details of management, was a newspaper man and an amateur double-bass player, of which instrument he was very proud. When we arrived, only two days before the concert, we found that absolutely nothing had been done to advertise it. There were no posters, no advertisements, and the manager of the theatre to which we had been transferred did not even know before our arrival whether we were a jazz band of colored people from America or perhaps a troupe of wandering minstrels.
We were to give two concerts, and at first it seemed as if, under such disheartening circumstances, it were better to cancel them and proceed to Monte Carlo and Italy, where already sold-out houses awaited us. The newspaper man, who was the real delinquent, was nowhere to be found. He had gone to the country “pour se reposer” and was not expected until the following day. Luckily the theatre manager proved to be of the right sort. When he saw what our organization really stood for he would not hear of cancellation, and immediately went around to all the newspaper offices with Engles. Posters, the principal method of advertising in Europe, appeared on the street corners as if by magic; and while it was too late to attract a large audience for the first concert, he assured us that if this concert were the success which he expected, the theatre, which held about twenty-four hundred people, would be entirely sold out for the second concert on Sunday afternoon. His prophecy proved correct. There were not more than eight hundred people at the first concert, but as they were real sons of the Midi and as they had never heard a symphonic organization of such size and importance in their lives, they went mad. They applauded with their hands, with both feet, with their canes and umbrellas. They shouted in eight-part harmonies and the rafters of the theatre trembled in sympathy. After the concert they lined up at the box-office in a great crowd while the theatre manager, grinning from ear to ear, said: “Did I not tell you?”
In the meantime the delinquent local secretary-manager turned up and I was fully prepared to annihilate him for his lack of proper preliminary advertising for our concert, but as he immediately called me “Cher maître” and expressed his delight in such eloquent French at the coming of so notable an organization as ours, he completely spiked my guns and I found myself unable to get in a word edgewise, much less tell him what I really thought of him.
I have told before that he was an amateur double-bass player in the local orchestra, and this was evidently the ruling passion of his life, although I never could understand why an amateur should choose this particular instrument for his delectation. After the second concert and while the hall was still ringing with the shouts of the fiery citizens of Marseilles, he came into my dressing-room as I thought to add his tribute of praise, but, alas, all he said was: “Cher maître, I could hardly hear your double-bass players during the entire concert.” I presume that at the concerts of his orchestra he was so taken up with his own double-bass part that as he played he heard nothing of the other instruments around and about him. He became, so to speak, intoxicated with the resonance of his own instrument. At our concert, seated in the audience, he suddenly found, poor man, that the double-bass was not the only pebble on the orchestral beach, and that occasionally the violins, the wood winds, or the brasses had also something of importance to enunciate. It must have been a sad revelation to him, and I do not wonder that he refused to accept it.
In the meantime the strike fever was spreading in every direction, and there was not a trolley running through the town of Marseilles nor a boat leaving the harbor. The effect was a very curious one, as the streets were filled with great crowds restlessly moving up and down, and seemingly without work or affairs of any kind to keep them busy. In several of the streets small bands were playing in roped-off circles while thirty couples or so were dancing madly around with hundreds of others outside the ropes watching them. The huge audience who arrived for our Sunday afternoon concert must have come on foot, as there was not a wheel turning anywhere.
After we got back to the hotel the great iron doors were suddenly closed and bolted, for quite a riot started in front of it. The trolley company was trying to run a car through the city, manned by young mechanics from the School of Technology, and every once in a while a mob of strikers would rush at them, break the windows of the car, and pull off the young strike-breakers. But it was all done in rather an amiable fashion, while a crowd of men in light straw hats applauded with their hands and shouted “Bravo,” all as if it were a performance gotten up for their pleasure. Then a couple of amiable gendarmes would come along and in the same placid fashion place the young men on the car again, which would then proceed for another few yards or so. Suddenly, however, this seeming comedy took a tragic turn. The mob made a vicious lunge; they were stopped by the police who suddenly acted with great energy, and soon there were several men seriously hurt. In the meantime the strike-breakers had again connected their car with the electric wire, and although the car with its broken windows looked a perfect wreck, it moved triumphantly along the tracks and the strike was broken. Next morning every car was running again.