Everybody in Belgium, however, seems to read the posters, for the demand for seats in Brussels was so great that we could have filled the little opera-house twice over. Its acoustics are marvellous, and the strings vibrate like an old Cremona violin. They had specially requested that the concert should be purely symphonic and without any soloist. I therefore gave them the lovely Mozart “Jupiter” Symphony and the César Franck D Minor. Franck had been born in Liège, and I wished to demonstrate to them our love and understanding of this noble musician. I do not think I have ever played before an audience more sensitive to the beauties of music. As a special compliment to Brussels we played an Adagio for strings by Lekeu, a modern, highly talented, young Belgian composer, who unfortunately had died at the age of twenty-four. The Adagio is a work of tender, melancholy beauty, and sounded so exquisite in this building that the players and I were intensely moved by it during the performance. This emotion was evidently communicated to the audience, so that at the close their applause could not be quieted, and I finally had to take the score of the composition from my desk and point to it in silent pantomime.
After the concert, as I was preparing to leave the theatre, two ladies came toward me with an old man who proved to be the father of Guillaume Lekeu. He tried to thank me for our playing of his son’s composition, but broke down completely as the tears poured down his face.
The following day at Antwerp I saw again to my great delight the famous old tenor, Van Dyk, with whom I had given many a Wagner opera during our engagement at the Metropolitan with the Maurice Grau Opera Company. His villa, near Antwerp, had been occupied by a German general and his staff during the four years of the war. They had drunk up his entire wine-cellar, consisting of many hundred bottles of choice vintages, and had also removed every bit of copper from his door-knobs and kitchen. Otherwise they had left his house intact, and, with imperturbable good humor and courage, Van Dyk had taken up again the work of gaining an existence for his family. Twice a week he went to Brussels, where he had an interesting class in dramatic singing at the Royal Conservatory, and besides this he was busily engaged as a director of an insurance company.
In Antwerp, as well as in Liège and Ghent, we found the same discriminating and educated audiences as in Brussels.
Hardly anywhere did we see the ravages of war, and what little there were were being quickly repaired by the industrious inhabitants.
We left Belgium on June 10, to enter Holland, playing at The Hague that evening and in Amsterdam the day after.
In Holland our American diplomatic representative, William Phillips, Minister to The Hague, had been active in assuring us a welcome. He was an old friend and had invited not only the Queen Mother, who is the only musical member of the royal household, but a distinguished party of nearly one hundred, including all the diplomatic representatives and the highest officials of the court and governments, to be his guests at the concert.
After the first part he introduced me to the Queen Mother, who proved to be very charming and much interested in music, and who also possessed that delightful royal quality of putting you “at your ease.” This consists in asking a question and then not waiting for you to answer, but answering it in all its possibilities and bearings herself. Conversation is thus made rather one-sided but agreeable, even though all the brilliant things one might have said remain unuttered.
After the concert the entire distinguished party assembled at the legation for a delicious supper, at which I met a great many charming Dutch ladies who, fortunately for me, spoke English or French.
The next day Mr. Phillips motored me to Amsterdam. There the members of the local orchestra immediately poured into the willing ears of my men dreadful stories of local jealousy of our coming, that several of the newspapers had been told to criticise us severely, and that all the adherents of the local orchestra had ostentatiously decided to absent themselves from our concert. Very little of this proved to be true. The huge hall in which we played, the Concertgebow, has a stage perched up so high that the people in the parquet literally have to strain their necks to see the performers, and the reverberation of sound is excessive. The hall seats three thousand people, and there were not more than fourteen hundred at our concert. However, they certainly made up in enthusiasm what they lacked in numbers. All previous notions of the phlegm of the Dutch people were completely dissipated. Not being a prima donna, I did not keep count of the many times I was recalled after the “Eroica” Symphony, but, as I had to march down and up a platform of about fifty steps each time, the exercise in connection with it was considerable. The newspapers next morning, in spite of all the dark rumors, were enthusiastic in our praise and generous in their comparison of our orchestra with their own splendid organization.