PHOTINI NATZELHUBER.
Many years ago a German mechanic drifted, in the spirit of adventure,
eastwards, and finding the conditions of life offered him in Athens
sufficiently attractive for a man desirous of earning his bread in the
easiest manner possible, and not contemptuously inclined towards the
midday siesta, the excellent Teuton settled down in the city we may
presume to be no longer under the special patronage of Wisdom. Not that
Jacob Natzelhuber regretted that Athens’ reign was over. The mechanic
was ignominiously indifferent to all great questions, and so long as
his employers continued to pay him his weekly wages, conscientiously
earned and conscientiously saved, the extravagances of the unfortunate
King Otho and the virtues of Queen Amelia troubled him as little as did
the glorious ruins on the Acropolis. He never went near the Acropolis.
When his glance rested on the mass of broken pillars and temples that
dominate every view of the town, he doubtless confused them with the
eccentric shapes of the adjoining hills, and if asked his opinion
of that point of classic memories, would tranquilly remove his pipe
from his lips and remark that the other hill, his own special friend,
Lycabettus, was higher. A good-humored, egoistic, phlegmatic workman,
for the rest; fond of leisurely meditation on nothing, fond of smoking
in his shirt-sleeves with the help of an occasional glass of mastia or
brandy, and convinced that the world goes very well now as it did in
olden days, and that the Greek is a composite of barbarian and child.
In a wife one naturally chooses what is most convenient, if one cannot
obtain what is most suitable. Jacob chanced upon an enormous indolent
maiden, dowered as Greek maids usually are, with a father whose house
property was prophetic of better things to come. The girl was not
handsome--nor as cleanly or learned in household matters as a German
_frau_; but some half dozen years in the makeshift of Oriental domestic
life had served to deaden Jacob’s fastidious sensibilities in this
department, and with the prospect of a little money and a couple of
houses in the neighbourhood of Lycabettus by and by, on the death of a
respectable father-in-law, he was so far demoralised as to face this
unsavory future with tolerable tranquillity. They married.
The slow and philosophic Teuton found his Athenian wife and their one
servant--a small barefooted child, in perpetual terror of her mistress,
whose reprimands generally came upon her in the shape of tin utensils,
water-jugs or stiff tugs of hair and ear--rather more noisy than a
simple woman and child should be, to his thinking. But he preferred
a quiet smoke on the balcony to interference in the kitchen, whence
the sounds of hysterical cries, very bad language indeed, and sundry
breaking articles reached him.
The lady, when not in a rage, a rare enough occurrence, was an amiable
woman so long as her innocent habits were not interfered with. Jacob
was indisposed to interfere with any one--even with his own wife.
So Kyria Photini peacefully smoked her three or four cigarettes,
and drank her small glass of cognac of an evening, chattered in
high Athenian tones with her neighbours, arrayed in a more or less
soiled white morning jacket, and any kind of a skirt, with black hair
all dishevelled, and sallow cheeks not indicative of an immoderate
preference for cold water and soap. The little maid trembled and broke
plates, went about with bare feet, short skirts and unkempt woolly
hair, meeting her mistress’s vituperations with a wooden animal look,
and lifting a protective arm to catch the threatened blow or object.
Jacob was not happy, but he was philosopher enough to know that few
people ever are, and that the highest wisdom consists in knowing how
to make the best of even the worst. He was fond of his wife in his
heavy German fashion, removed his pipe, and said, “come, come,” when
the heat unstrung her nerves and sent her from her normal condition,
bordering on hysterics, into positive madness; consoled himself by
remembering that distinguished men in all ages have agreed that woman
is incomprehensible, and hoped for some acceptable amelioration with
the birth of the expected baby.
The baby came, a small dark girl, and the baby’s mother went to heaven,
Jacob naturally supposed, and shed the customary tears of regret,
though it can hardly have been happiness or comfort that he regretted.
He engaged an Athenian woman to look after the child, and returned to
his daily work and bachelor habits, deterred by recent experiences from
making any other venture in the search of domestic bliss. The child
was called Photini, and it was greatly to be hoped that a little of the
paternal temperament would go to correct the vices of the maternal, but
there are relative stages in the path of moral development, and a lazy,
hysterical, soulless woman is not the worst thing in feminine nature.
Photini grew up pretty much as the animals do, without any but merely
natural obligations placed upon her. She ran about like a little street
arab, learned neither reading, nor writing, nor catechism, nor sewing;
swore like a small trooper, was more than a match for the barefooted,
unkempt-headed girl, who soon learned to tremble before her as she had
formerly trembled before her mother; was even too much for her quiet
father, who began to be afraid of her furious explosions, and was too
indifferent to the duties of paternity to trouble himself seriously
about her education. Yet a pretty and striking child she was, with
large topaz eyes, that in their audacity and frankness were sufficient
in themselves to arrest attention, if there were no mossy black curls
making an engaging network above and around the fine boyish brow;
with the absurdest and sauciest nose and a wide, pale mouth that had
a way of twisting itself into every imaginable grimace without losing
a certain disreputable charm of curve and expression. A face full
of precocious evil, but withal exquisitely candid--what the French
would call a _ragged_ face, warning you and yet claiming a sort of
indefinable admiration from its absolute courage and truthfulness. She
took to the streets as kindly as if she had been born in them, rolling
about in mud and dust in the full enjoyment of unfettered childhood,
dealing blows, expletives, kisses and ugly names with generous
indifference. With every one she quarrelled, not as children do, but as
savages quarrel, fiercely and murderously; but even in this innocent
age she displayed a frank preference for the male sex. Girls filled
her with unlimited contempt, and she was never really happy unless
surrounded by a group of noisy, quarrelling boys. Then her pretty teeth
would gleam in wild laughter, and she would talk more nonsense in five
minutes than any six ordinary girls in an hour.
The father saw the lamentable condition of his child, but being a
philosopher and caring only for abstract meditations and his ease, he
preferred that she should be kept out of his sight as much as possible,
than that he should be asked to mend matters. What can a man be
expected to do with a motherless baby girl? Not teach it the alphabet,
surely? Nor walk it about the barren slopes of Lycabettus of a Sunday,
nor initiate it into the mysteries of the Catechism? Clearly there was
nothing else for a hard-working and good-tempered German to do but let
nature work her will on such unpromising and unmanageable material,
and continued to smoke his pipe and drink his mastic at his favourite
coffee-house fronting Lycabettus. If nature failed, it was far from
likely that he should succeed, and it was too much to expect him to
devote his rare leisure hours to his unruly child. The neighbours did
not, however, regard it in this light; but then neighbours never are
disposed to regard the concerns of others from a reasonable point of
view. So many improvements they could bring into the management of your
family matters which they fail to bring into their own. No, no; leave a
philosopher to find the easiest road of life and to discover a way out
of all domestic responsibilities. Socrates was an admirable example in
this high path, and if he could discourse in public on the immortality
of the soul and other subjects, while his much calumniated wife and
child wanted bread at home, a more modest individual like Jacob
Natzelhuber might certainly sip his mastic in the Greek sunshine, and
cherish a poor opinion of the policy of Metternich, while his little
daughter was running about the narrow Athenian streets.
But there was one saving and remarkable grace about Photini. Not only
did she display a nascent passion for music, but even as an infant
she had shown an amazing taste for thrumming imaginary tunes on every
object with which her fingers came in contact. When not fighting with a
dozen amiable little beggars, or rolling delightedly in mud and dust,
she was always to be seen playing this imaginary music of hers, and on
the few occasions when her father took her to hear the German band on
the Patissia Road, the sight of the King and Queen on horseback was
nothing to her in comparison with the joy of sound.
This growing passion was becoming too prominent and imperious to be
long overlooked; besides, Jacob had a German’s reverence for true
musical proclivities, so he purchased the cheapest piano to be had,
engaged the services of a Bavarian music master who had come to Athens
in the hope of making his fortune under his compatriot king, and
for so many hours in the day, at least, Photini was guaranteed from
mischief. Her progress was something more than astonishing, and caused
the Bavarian to give his spectacles an extra polish before announcing
gravely to Jacob that Liszt himself could not ask for a more promising
pupil. This naturally made Jacob very thoughtful, and sent his aimless
meditations into quite a new channel. It is a negative condition of
mind to feel that one has a poor opinion of Metternich, but to learn
that one has a genius in one’s daughter leads to disagreeably positive
reflections.
Now Jacob was a quiet man, we know, and the idea of an exceptional
child frightened him. It was not an enviable responsibility in his
estimation. Far from it, a distinctly painful one. An ordinary girl who
would have grown just a little better-looking than her mother, learned
to sew and housekeep in the usual way, and terminated an uneventful
girlhood by marriage into something better than mechanics, thanks to
his industry and economy--this was his ideal of a daughter’s career.
Evidently here Nature thought differently.
As soon, however, as he had given a conscientious attention to
Photini’s talent, greatly injured by the modest instrument on which she
played, he came to the conclusion that this was not a case in which
man can interfere, and that he was before a vocation claiming its
legitimate right of sovereignty and refusing to be shifted off into the
shallow byways of existence.
“I am of your opinion,” he said to the Bavarian master. “It is no
common talent, that of my girl, but for my part I would far rather she
did not know a major from a minor scale. It is not a woman’s business.
However, I can do nothing now. I leave the matter in your hands. I
am a poor man, but whatever you propose, as far as it is honourably
necessary, I will make an effort to meet your proposal,” he added,
with a slow, grave look.
“There is nothing for it but Germany, Natzelhuber,” said the Bavarian,
promptly. “I should fancy we might manage, with the help of your
father-in-law, a little influence I possess, and the girl’s own genius,
to get her three or four years’ study in Leipzig. Once that much
assured, she need only keep her head above water, and the waves will
surely carry her----”
The Bavarian flung out his hands in an attitude suggestive of infinity.
“Well, well, so long as they do not carry her into evil,” said Jacob,
shaking his head mournfully. “I am mistrustful of a public career for a
woman.”
“You cannot deny that it is better than marriage with a man of your own
class.”
“I am not so sure about that. But I am afraid Photini will turn out
one of those women who had best avoid marriage with any one. She does
not look likely to make any man happy, or herself either. A perverse,
passionate, uneducated girl, with more ugly names in her head than any
two ordinary street boys, and not a single good or amiable instinct in
her that I can see.”
Jacob, excellent man, quite forgot to take into consideration that he
himself was far from innocent of these disastrous results, and that his
paternal indifference had had far more to do with her ill condition
than any predisposition of the child’s.
“That is quite another matter and one that concerns me not at all,”
rejoined the Bavarian, indifferently. “Art, my dear sir, Art! Fraulein
Photini represents an abstract idea to me. The problem of her destiny
as a woman has no attraction for me. She may marry, or she may
not--she is not a pretty girl, but I have seen men make idiots of
themselves about uglier. It all depends on the spectacles you use. But
I am of opinion that a woman of genius has no business with marriage.
Goethe, you may remember, wisely calls it the grave of her genius.”
“Probably, but there is time enough to think of that.”
Photini’s grandfather, when consulted, was only too glad to contribute
towards the speculation of winging this hybrid fledgling from the
parent nest. The Greeks have a naïve respect for fame, of which there
was promise in Photini’s talent, so her relatives willingly abstracted
a portion from the family funds for her use.
One October morning, Photini, a stripling rather than a girl, of
fifteen, with big keen yellow eyes and soft dark curls breaking away
from the eyebrows in petulant confusion over and round her head like a
boy’s, escorted by a faintly disapproving and anxious father, left the
Piræus on an Austrian liner bound for Trieste. Not at all a pretty or
attractive girl, most people would decide; of a vulgar indefiniteness
of type and a coarseness of expression hardly excused by the charming
hair and strange eyes. But she had the virtue of extreme youth on her
side, as shown in the slender and supple frame, in the freshness and
surprise of her glance, and in the rounded olive cheek melting into a
full throat like a bird’s. And youth, God bless it, carries its own
apology anywhere; it is the time of possibilities and vague hopes. This
girl might, nay, must grow less brusque, less vulgar, less boyish with
the development of womanhood; and as her features would refine, so
would her heart, at present as safe and hard as a coral, expand and
open out its hidden buds of tremulous sensibility and delicate feeling.
Her second year in Leipzig brought her the third medal, and a decided
reputation, yet there were many complaints against her. She had
unpardonable fits of idleness broken by explosions of temper, and
language hardly less gross than what might be expected in the lowest
phase of society. These shortcomings, added to a sharpness of manner
and a coarseness of mind, terrified and astounded her masters, who,
however, were ready enough to overlook such deficiencies when under
the spell of her masterful playing. A girl of seventeen with already
an unmistakable fire of inspiration and an echo of Liszt in her touch
was not to be despised clearly, whatever her vices, and they, alas!
were many, and promised to be more. Her companions shunned her, and
her masters spoke of her as “La gamine,” no other appellation being so
justly indicative of her appearance and manners.
In the fourth year she left the Conservatoire, its acknowledged star,
and capable now of steering her own course in whatever direction
impulse or deliberate choice might push her. One of the fortunate
of this earth, standing, at twenty, apart, wrapped in the conscious
cloak of genius, a majesty, alas! she was incapable of measuring, and
which she was destined only to trail in the mire without reaping any
benefit, pecuniary or social, from its possession. It was almost as sad
a mistake on the part of Nature as if she had endowed one of the lower
animals with some glorious gift which could never be to it other than
a grotesque ornament. The girl understood nothing of responsibility,
and yet she was proud, unapproachably proud as an artist. She felt and
gloried in her superiority in a stupid senseless way; could not acquit
herself of the commonest civility towards those who were desirous of
helping her, had not the remotest idea of gratitude or the art of
gracious acceptance, and considered inconceivable rudeness to every one
who addressed her as her natural right. She ought to have been happy,
and would doubtless have been so had she known ambition, or felt a
moderate but healthy desire to please. But she was hardly conscious of
feelings of any kind, only of blind dim instincts of which she could
give no account to herself. Poor dumb, unfinished creature with but
half a soul, and that run to music. It was pitiable. As she massed
follies, proud stupidities, and degradations one upon the other, until
the thinnest thread of common sense, of merely animal self-protection
was lost to view, one could only wonder and grieve, but not excuse.
Nature seemed to have been the sinner, and the extravagant creature
her victim. And then there were lucid moments--wretched awakenings,
stupefied contemplation of the havoc that had been made of promise, of
ripe chances, and, by way of anodyne, a deeper plunge into the mire.
Her first act of independence was a concert in Leipzig which proved an
abnormal success, and then upon the advice of her director she went
to Vienna, furnished with letters for Liszt. The amiable and courtly
king of pianists received her with an exquisite cordiality, expressed
the highest satisfaction with her abilities, gave her a few finishing
instructions which she received, as was her wont, ungraciously enough;
used his influence in securing her success with his own special public,
and recommended her to Rubinstein, who was then on his way back from
England. This was the beginning of the only lasting period of lucidity
in her mad career.
She left Vienna with Liszt’s portrait and his autograph, “To the Queen
of Sound,” added to her meagre luggage, for it was not her way to
decorate her plainness of person by any unnecessary attention to her
toilet. Just as, music excepted, she was totally uneducated, illiterate
even, barely able to write a letter that would shame a peasant, in
Greek or German,--which languages she regarded as equally her native
tongues,--so her person was left rigidly unadorned. At twenty the
results of untidiness are not so deplorable as at thirty or forty, for
there is always the fresh round cheek and clear gaze as a relief, and
then the complete absence of vanity in a very young girl, constantly
before the public in a prominent position, is something so unusual that
one can afford to regard it with a smile of wonder rather than one of
disdain. The striking feature of the case was that she was fond of male
society--particularly of the admiring and love-making male. But heaven
help the innocence of the lover who expected her to put on a bow, or
brush her hair, or choose a hat with a view to please him!
Rubinstein was more than satisfied with her; paid little or no
attention to any eccentricity of exterior or manner, and was ready and
glad to do all in his power to advance her. After some years of hard
work and occasional public appearances, it was agreed that she should
spend a season at St. Petersburg.
Everybody was disposed to receive her with open arms and lift her to
a permanent and glorious pedestal. But good-natured and art-loving
Russian princesses and countesses had calculated without their host.
This young lady had no desire to be patronised or helped. People might
come to her concerts or to her as pupils, and they might stay away: it
mattered little to her which they did. In either case she was pretty
sure to regard them as idiots, and if they came to her they would have
the advantage of hearing it,--that was the difference, which made it
easier for them to stay away, as not only the Russian princesses and
countesses found out, but also the princes and counts. They might
invite her to their entertainments, but it was a wise precaution on
their part not to feel too sure of her presence--as for expecting
an answer to a polite letter or message, or civil treatment upon a
morning call or at a lesson, well, all this lay without the range of
probabilities for the most sanguine.
Her peculiarities were incredible. Rubinstein’s name and influence
opened every door to her, and the results were unique. She appeared at
one Grand Duchess’s in evening dress with woollen gloves, to the dumb
amazement of distinguished guests, one sprightly duchess wondering why
she had omitted to come in waterproof and goloshes. When introduced
to an ambassador, and informed of his passion for music, she coolly
surveyed him from the top of his bald head to the edge of his white
gold-striped trousers, and said to her host: “I do not want to be
introduced to him. A fellow in gold can know nothing about music.”
Her pupils she treated even worse. One young countess who was studying
Chopin with her sent her a rich plum cake. The Natzelhuber, as she
was called, was smoking a cigarette when the servant entered with the
countess’s letter, followed by a powdered footman who presented her the
cake with a stately bow.
“Does your mistress fancy I am starving?” roared the artist, throwing
away her cigarette and seizing the cake in both hands. “What do I want
with her trumpery cakes? Tell her that is the reception it met with
from Photini Natzelhuber.”
She opened the door, rolled the unfortunate cake down the stairs, flung
the gracious note after it, and upon them the frightened footman, who,
not foreseeing what was coming, was easily knocked off his balance by
her powerful little wrists. Of course the countess discontinued her
studies of Chopin, and the Natzelhuber can hardly be said to have been
the gainer in the transaction. These were the stupid blunders that left
her soon without a friend or a well-wisher. Incapable of a mean or an
ungenerous act; incapable of uttering a spiteful word behind an enemy’s
back, she was equally incapable of uttering a gracious one to the face
of a friend. The habit of recklessly indulging in vile language which
she acquired in the streets of Athens never left her, and ambassadors,
noblemen, artists and friends who momentarily offended her were never
less than “pigs, asses,” and other such gentle and inoffensive beings.
She could not help this failing any more than her bad temper and her
passion for brandy and sensual pleasures of every kind.
“I know I am only a street vagabond mistakenly an artist, but I cannot
help it, nor do I desire to be otherwise,” she would say, in her
clearer moments. “I am mad too, and that I cannot help either.”
Deeply tragic assertions both, but not more deeply tragic than the
wasted life and abilities of the woman who made them. The irritable
creature, sick to death of Russia, sick of the perpetual and
humiliating contrast between her condition and that of those around
her,--a humiliation she scorned in the majesty of artistic pride to
admit to herself, but smarted from in that vague, unrecognised way
all feelings outside music and the grosser sensations stirred within
her,--left St. Petersburg without even sending her P. P. C. cards.
She appeared next in Munich, now twenty-seven, at the height of
artistic fame, only second to her master, able to command the best
audiences and prices, with a European reputation for a startling
perfection of _technique_, a grandeur of inspiration and a simplicity
of interpretation that only goes with absolute mastery. Rubinstein
and others had dedicated several works to her, and for ten years she
traversed the musical world a splendid enigma, a blight, a shame and
a sorrow. The possession of certain irregular passions might have
found ample apology in her genius, but the Natzelhuber so degraded
her art that it quite sank into abeyance in the presence of her
iniquities. The wonder was soon, not that such an artist should be
so gross, but that such a soulless creature should possess the power
of thrilling her hearers with every delicate perception of sense and
harmony. As the years gathered over her, a curious slowness, almost a
dignity of movement was noticeable in her. She began to awaken to the
consciousness that the Natzelhuber was a kind of sovereign in her way,
and should attract the eye and silence frivolous tongues by her manner
of entering a room. She was stouter now, but carried her bulk well,
holding her head erect and looking calmly at each speaker with those
strange yellow eyes of hers, so luminous under the boyish, feathery
curls. But the light in them shone from no spirit or soul,--sensuously
attractive were they, like those of a Circe.
Thus life found her at thirty-five, alone and friendless, though the
Viennese were well disposed towards her upon her reappearance in their
midst. But she was too embittered and cross-grained to care greatly for
their applause, and accepted the love Agiropoulos offered her renown
rather than her wretched self, as a kind of feeble protection from
her own society. Her princely disdain for money and the making of it
left her very naturally in constant debt, and this state of things was
hardly calculated to improve her temper.
About this time young Ehrenstein came to Vienna in search of that
distraction we are all agreed to prescribe in the first stage of
bereavement. He knew Liszt, and from him procured a letter of
introduction to Photini. Determined to make a good impression, he
ordered expensive tailoring, and went forth to subdue in the amiable
superiority of sex and social elegance. The door was opened to him by
an extraordinary woman, who held a cigarette in her hand, and glared
furiously upon the timid Cæsar who had come to see and conquer.
“What do you want with me, young man? I do not know you, and
furthermore, I do not wish to know you. I am not at home.”
Not a reception calculated to justify a young man’s innocent and
kindly estimate of his own value. Rudolph’s heart was in his mouth,
and the mildest form of expostulation was checked by fright and
amazement. Meeting Agiropoulos, he disclosed his hurt, upon which that
good-natured individual hastened to remonstrate with his irascible
friend.
“Why on earth did you treat poor Ehrenstein so badly?” he asked,
surveying her with a look of impertinent amusement. “Do you know,
Photini, you often provoke a fellow into wishing you were a man that he
might relieve his feelings by a good open fight. But now to quarrel or
reason with a woman like you! Ouf! You are impossible!”
“There is the door, if you are tired of me. If not, stay and hold your
tongue,” was the contemptuous retort, between two puffs of a cigarette.
Agiropoulos had a certain sense of humor and a keen appreciation of
originality in any form. He laughed, and proceeded to roll a cigarette
in a very comfortable attitude.
“But really, my dear Photini, you were wrong to behave as you did to
the lad. He is a very fair dilettante. He has just come from Pesth,
where he saw Liszt, who gave him a letter for you. He is wildly
desirous of hearing you play.”
“It is possible. He should have said so. How was I to know that Franz
Liszt would send me a yellow-headed girl in trousers?”
“But you did not give him time to say anything. You never do.”
“Nobody ever has anything to say that is worth listening to. Poh, Poh,
Poh! The silliness of men and the weariness of life! Tell the fool he
can come to-morrow, and I’ll undertake not to eat him.”
“He will be delighted to receive such satisfactory, and, on the whole,
rather necessary reassurance. His nature is so knightly that upon no
consideration, even the fear of offering himself as a meal, would he
dream of refusing to obey a lady’s mandate. And after his adventure
of yesterday, it is natural to suppose that he would view compliance
to-morrow with considerable trepidation of the possible results. By the
way, Photini, I am going to Athens in the morning.”
He looked at her tranquilly, quite prepared for an explosion. She flung
away her cigarette, glanced at him just as serenely, and said:--
“So! Then I will follow you.”
“That is kinder than anything I had dared to hope from you, Photini,”
said Agiropoulos, gracefully. “Then you care for me enough to disturb
yourself on my account.”
The Natzelhuber lighted another cigarette, puffed silently awhile, and
fixed her lover with her steady imperturbable gaze.
“Don’t flatter yourself, my dear fellow! I never disturb myself for any
one, but I am sick of Vienna.”
“It strikes me, my excellent friend, you are sick of most places in
an incredibly short space of time,” said Agiropoulos, sarcastically,
nettled by the coolness, of which he wanted a monopoly.
“Possibly.”
“I hope you will be civil to Ehrenstein to-morrow. Play him the
‘Mélodiés Hongroises.’ His mother was a Hungarian, and he adored her.
The ‘Mélodiés’ will send him into Paradise.”
“I am not conscious of a desire to procure him that happiness. What the
devil do I care about his mother or himself? Either the fellow knows
music or he doesn’t.”
Agiropoulos was speeding on his way to Athens while Rudolph was sitting
in the Natzelhuber’s undecorated parlor, listening to the magic
“Mélodiés Hongroises,” wherein enchanting dance and melody spring
exultingly out of subtle waves of variation, their impetuous joy
broken suddenly by sharp notes of pathos and vague yearning. Music so
gloriously rendered thrilled him into instantaneous love, and his soul
was lost irretrievably in exquisite sound.