I have also had an enormous amount of fun out of play. I am a playboy, and shall never get over it. I like all kinds of games, except alley-bowling, just as I like all famous music except that by Meyerbeer. In every game I have never succeeded in rising above mediocrity; but here again I doubt if the great players—whom I nevertheless envy—have enjoyed playing football, baseball, hockey, tennis, golf, billiards, pool, duplicate whist—a better game than bridge—more than I have. If I were now given the opportunity to spend every single day for the next five hundred years in an invariable programme of work all the morning, golf all the afternoon, and social enjoyment all the evening, I should accept with alacrity, making only one stipulation—that at the end of the five hundred years I should have the privilege of renewal. And that’s that.
In cultural development, by which I mean the enrichment of the mind by Nature and by Art, I have had unspeakable delight. Yet I am neither a naturalist nor an artist. I don’t know anything about flowers, and very little about animals. I cannot draw or paint, or make anything with my hands. The only musical instrument I can play is a typewriter.
But no one loves the scenes of nature more than I. The first sunset that I remember with enjoyment occurred when I was ten years old; and how many I have seen since then! On an autumn day in 1903, I saw the sun sink into the ocean off the coast of Normandy, and, by the miracle of memory, I can see it again whenever I wish. I thought of Browning’s lines:
“Than by slow, pallid sunsets in autumn, ye watch from the shore,
At their sad level gaze o’er the ocean—a sun’s slow decline.”
I have seen the Matterhorn from the Gorner Grat, Mont Blanc from Chamonix, and the divine flush on the summit of the Jungfrau.
Forty years ago I heard for the first time the Ninth Symphony; and while I have heard it often since then, the most memorable occasion was in May 1912 when I heard it at Paris, played by a magnificent orchestra, conducted by Felix Weingartner; I have heard Die Meistersinger in Munich, conducted by Arthur Nikisch; I have heard the Emperor Concerto, with Ossip Gabrilowitsch at the piano; I have heard Tod und Verklärung with Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra; I have heard De Pachmann (in his prime) play Chopin’s B flat minor sonata, Paderewski play Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2, Josef Hofmann play Beethoven’s Sonata 111. I have heard Carmen sung by Emma Calvé, Emma Eames, Jean de Reszké and Lassalle; Tristan und Isolde sung by Jean de Reszké and Lilli Lehmann; Faust sung by Jean and Edouard de Reszké, Emma Eames, Maurel, and Scalchi; Mignon sung by Mme. Lucrezia Bori; I have repeatedly heard the three greatest bassos of modern times, Edouard de Reszké, Pol Plançon, and Chaliapin.
In the theatre I have seen Edwin Booth as Shylock, Mansfield as Richard III, Irving in The Lyons Mail, Possart as Mephistopheles, Sarah Bernhardt as La Tosca, Duse as Francesca, Salvini as Othello, and twice have I seen the Passion Play at Oberammergau. All these are memorable experiences, and for fear I may not be conscious when I am dying, I am recalling them now. But if I should attempt to recall all the glorious things I have seen in nature and in art, I should have no time for fresh experiences that await me.
As for social pleasures, one of the highest enjoyments is agreeable company and good conversation; and I especially like men, women and children.