HUMAN PASSIONS AND SMALLPOX
At the beginning of the season, the director's family was still in the
country, where they remained until the opera had been running for some
time. We met his wife and daughter for the first time at a luncheon
given by him at the hotel where we had arranged to take our two o'clock
dinner, after trying all sorts of unsuccessful ways of dining in
private. The stage manager of the drama, the first and second
Kapellmeister, the "Bureau Chef," the Heldentenor, Heldenbariton, High
Dramatic, Coloratura, my sister and myself were all invited. Just as we
were seating ourselves, the _Schauspiel Regisseur_, Herr S----, noticed
that there were thirteen at table. He turned as white as a sheet, jumped
up, and scarcely stopping to apologize, hurriedly left the room, nor
could he be prevailed upon to return, although the director followed him
into the hall to remonstrate. He protested that one of our number was
certain to die within the year as it was, and he wished to insure its
not being himself by refusing to sit down at all. Curiously enough, his
prophecy came true, for the Director's young step-daughter died very
suddenly soon after.
Herr S---- was a most unpleasant person, as I discovered later, and I
was always thankful that my identification with the _Opern-Personal_
kept me out of his way. He had a sort of spurious veneer and
ingratiating manner, which was at variance with his hard, square,
passion-scarred countenance. He pretended an enormous admiration for the
American woman, and that very day before luncheon, he showed me with
great pride a small American-made patent-leather shoe, which he took out
of the tail pocket of his frock-coat, telling me with a leer that it
belonged to a girl of _my_ country, where the women had the most
beautiful feet in the world, and that it was his talisman and never left
him! He bore a bad name among the women players in the company. One of
the little actresses, a girl of good family, in her first season, used
to tell me unpleasant tales of him in her rapid, ungrammatical French,
whenever I met her; and she always referred to him as "That beast!"
Our Heldentenor of that season was an uninteresting personage, a quite
elderly man of enormous routine and mediocre equipment, who had sung in
all sorts of opera houses and was on the last lap of a long career. He
was said to be nearly sixty, and was quite bald, but he managed to make
a surprisingly youthful appearance on the stage. He had been at it so
long that he could make an attempt at acting almost anything--even
youth. His sprightly legs in "Fra Diavolo" were quite adolescent. He
kept himself discreetly to himself, and was never seen in the cafes, nor
on the streets with his colleagues.
His greatest joy was a tiny dog, whose tricks he delighted to show off
to every one. The little thing would whine for a soprano, growl for a
bass, howl for a tenor, bark when told "The Direktor's coming," and sit
up and beg at the word _Gage_ (salary,) in a very amusing way, and his
master was intensely proud of his accomplishments.
The lyric tenor of the first season was a peasant from Swabia, with a
droll accent and a lovely voice which he forced in a most agonizing
manner. He would shake all over when he sang a high note, and yet his
natural voice ranged easily to high D sharp--I have even heard him sing
an E. His dialect and his ignorance made him the butt of the company,
but he was very goodnatured and took it all in good part. He used to
say: "Yes, I know--my wife is a French woman and she tells me to say
_Mignon_, but I'm a peasant--I say _Mischnong_." She was years older
than he and of better class. She had helped him to the little study that
he had had, and out of gratitude he had married her, but they were said
to disagree very consistently.
The Heldenbariton was quite a nice fellow, big and burly with a good
voice; he was a great favourite with the public, whom he had pleased by
marrying, out of the chorus, a townswoman who adored him.
The second Kapellmeister was a vague, weak creature, henpecked by his
vain little wife who was never happy unless she was the centre of some
one's admiration. She was inordinately proud of her small feet, and our
little friend the lyric baritone used to make her furious, by insisting
that mine were smaller! Her dream was to go on the stage too, if only to
sing pages in "Lohengrin" and "Tannhaeuser," and later her hope was
realized, I heard, when several of them went off together in April to a
"Monatsoper" on the _Russische Grenze_ (Russian Frontier). The
coloratura soprano was a Dutch woman, speaking German with more accent
than I did. She was very fair, very fat, and very lazy, and she had a
capacity for food that I have seen equalled but never surpassed. She
dined with us daily, and woe to the person who had to serve himself from
a dish that had been passed to her! Eat until you could hold no more was
a part of the creed of all my colleagues. Anything short of absolute
repletion, and the meal was considered a failure. "_Sind Sie satt?_"
They would ask each other gravely--"_Ich bin nicht satt!_" Meaning
literally, "Are you full?" "_I_ am _not_ full." And this was a grave
cause of resentment against the hotel management. I must say that most
of them reached this desirable consummation long before the coloratura
soprano, for she continued placidly as long as there was any food in
sight. She would even finish anything left on another's plate, and our
table always looked as if a horde of locusts had visited it.
Those colleagues of my first engagement are stamped upon my
memory--representing as they did so much that was new to me,--a new
nationality, a new profession, and in many cases a new social class.
Take them all together they were a pretty decent lot considering their
antecedents and surroundings. As a general rule, I think the actors are
apt to be of a somewhat higher social class than the singers, as a
remarkable voice occurs when and where it will, while a vocation for the
acting stage presupposes a certain amount of education and refinement of
surroundings, although there have been, of course, some notable
exceptions.
They wanted us to meet the officers of the different smart regiments.
The Red Dragoons in particular were supposed to be all-powerful in
deciding the success or failure of a singer, and the colleagues kindly
thought we ought all to have the advantage of this. One or two of the
women of course had affairs with them, and as Marjorie and I did not
care to meet the officers in just that society, we were sometimes hard
put to it to find a good excuse. Once my sister went to bed, though
perfectly well, for several days, to avoid a particularly pressing
invitation. Later we met these officers through letters from our
relatives, and liked some of them tremendously. Even their affairs were
the outcome of the system, and did no particular harm to any one.
The opera soubrette had one of years' standing with a tall ungainly
White Dragoon. He was a harmless idiot, and she a smart German-Polish
Jewess, a nice little thing. We each had a "Benefiz" before leaving the
Metz engagement, when we were showered with flowers and gifts from our
friends and admirers, also sharing in the box-office receipts. R----,
the soubrette, told us the day after hers, still breathless from rage,
that "_Er_"--she never called him anything but "He"--had sent her an
umbrella, bound in the middle of a huge sheaf of roses. He had not
passed it over the footlights, so that every one might see its
splendour, but had left it at her rooms. When he called on her expecting
soft thanks, she berated him soundly, and succeeded in so enraging his
usually placid self that he threw his big sabre through the window,
sending it crashing into the court below.
One handsome Red Dragoon, a notorious connoisseur of music and women,
and believed absolutely irresistible, always sat in a box at our right
from the stage. His one reputable passion was music. He had at that time
an affair with a Dutch woman, who had been handsome and distinguee--she
was pitifully his slave. Going to the theatre one evening we saw her
approaching from one direction in the big court in front of the theatre,
as he approached from another. She smiled infatuatedly at him but he
passed her without a look--perhaps his idea of a tribute to my sister
and me. I felt sorry for her as the joy left her face.
Several years after, while touring in Holland, in a charming little
place where we went to pass a free afternoon, we saw this same woman.
She had found the strength to shake off her German master, had married a
countryman and looked prosperous and happy.
Neither Marjorie nor I ever received an offensive word or look from an
officer. They used sometimes to send me postcards after a _Carmen_ or
_Amneris_ night, closely scribbled over with signatures and greetings
and phrases of admiration, all highly respectful. It always pleased me
very much to receive these cards.
The _Genossenschaft_ members of most theatres organize a _fete_ every
year for the benefit of their society, and that spring we had a fancy
dress ball. A lady is chosen at these balls by popular vote to be Rose
Queen. I was chosen that time and had to parade around the room on the
arm of a portly Major, who often sent me flowers and books of his own
poems. I wore my _Carmen_ dress of black satin, with gold flowers, and
my scarlet Spanish shawl. There was much cheap champagne drunk to the
popular toast of "General Quenousamong." This was originally "_Que nous
aimons_" (To those we love), and the "general" meant that every one was
to join in. The French touch was considered elegant, just as _Couzank_
was the polite word for cousin, and _Satank_ for satin. Balls of this
kind are highly popular and a great contrast to the usually simple lives
of these small-town people.
One form of simplicity I never adopted was the quite general one of
eating their evening supper, consisting usually of a bit of sausage, and
black bread and butter, out of bits of paper casually put down amongst
the objects on the table in their bedrooms. When you had finished, you
simply rolled up and threw away the greasy papers and the thing was
over.
Sometimes a meal may be captured free. One of our "comics" in Metz had
to fish at the back of the stage in an operetta. He was always furnished
with a salt herring by the property man, which he would suspend solemnly
out of sight of the audience for a while, then slowly draw up, and
proceed to eat. A clean picked spine was all that remained by the end of
the act, and he had had his supper.
Often the performances supplied me with welcome comic relief behind the
scenes. I learned for instance, that the text of the Anvil chorus sung
round me, as I lay on the canvas rock couch of _Azucena_, in
"Trovatore," was: "_Ich habe Dir schon laengst gesagt, die Wurst sie
schmeckt nach Seife_"--"I told you long ago, the sausage tastes of
soap." Also the soldiers in "Faust" made their rollicking return from
the wars to the words: "_He--ring und Apfel--Kartoffelnsalat._" "Herring
and apple--potato salad." _Siegmund_ grows woefully vulgar, and the
opening bars of his love song to his sister always say now to me:
"_Winter Struempfe riechen im Monat Mai._"
Once in "Tiefland" the old man in the first act was presented with a
large lump of Limburger cheese, which he had to sniff and hold
gratefully for a long time, while his rejoicing colleagues slapped their
knees with glee in the wings. Sometimes the humour was replaced by other
less agreeable emotions. For my _Benefiz_, the last year of my
engagement, I was to sing _Carmen_. I wanted a popular guest tenor from
a neighbouring _Hoftheater_ to be my _Jose_, and he finally agreed to
come. He would not come in time for rehearsal and I did not see him
until I turn my head in the first recitative and see him making his
sword chain. From then on, he directed me in lordly tones throughout the
first act. I had often sung _Carmen_ in Metz and the audience knew most
of my business and expected it; also as I had prepared the role in Paris
and spent months of study on it I did not see why all of my business
should be changed on my own festive night. Therefore in our short talk
before the second act, I told him my positions as nicely as I could, he
saying to everything, "_Aber warum? Warum?_" (But why, why?). I stood
this as long as I could and told him all the warums, till finally I said
"Because I want to!" At this he lost his temper and left the stage. I
was surprised, but supposed he was nervous. From then on, things went
from bad to worse. Everything _Carmen_ said to _Jose_, he thought Howard
was saying to him. I tried to whisper that I meant nothing by it--that
that was the way I played it, but he grew blacker and blacker. Finally
in the last act I struck him with my fan, my usual business to make
_Jose_ let _Carmen_ pass. He rushed at me and caught my wrists and
shouted, "_Was faellt Ihnen denn ein_" ("What's the matter with you?")
I was frightfully upset and nearly crying by then, but had to go on. At
the last as I lay on the floor and he stood over me, he deliberately
threw his heavy dagger in my face, and I, a corpse, had to move my head
to avoid being hurt. He rushed to his dressing room and cried and
shouted for a half hour before his wife dared to go in and calm him. I
believe it was all jealousy. He had been most popular in the town, and
could not bear to share a performance with any one. The next day I could
hardly hobble; all my bones seemed wrenched; but every one was most
sympathetic and kind.
The bells in Metz were most numerous and depressing. The cathedral near
us chimed all day an out-of-tune singsong, which the natives said was,
"_Ich bin todt und komm' nicht wieder!_" ("I am dead and shall not come
again!")
The depression of the first year culminated in a smallpox epidemic,
which broke out shortly before the theatre closed. Marjorie dreamed of
it just before it happened, and that I died of it, which, of course,
haunted her all through the outbreak. It was frightfully mismanaged by
the authorities. The suspects were called for by policemen and carried
from the houses to an open wagon, (this in February and March,) and
driven to the hospitals. The _Kaserne_ or barracks where cases
occurred, were isolated; but in our daily walks we passed them with
shudders. We were both so tired and had had so many shocks and
eye-openers as to what life really is, that this last nightmare
completely obsessed and unnerved us. Our policeman neighbour carried
suspects, and of course his uniform was never even fumigated and we knew
it.
The dear little daughter of the director's wife was taken away from home
one night, in spite of her parents' remonstrances. She was ill of
rheumatic fever, and the authorities heard of it, pronounced it
smallpox, and took her away in the open carriage. She died in a few
days, and no one ever knew whether it was smallpox or not. Her mother
never quite got over it; the child was so sweet and young.
The wagon used to stand in the street before a suspect house, with
children playing around it. The police seemed to run the whole thing,
and would carry bedding out of the houses and leave it to be burned in
the street. We were told that the very poor used to steal this bedding
at night. Of course we were vaccinated, but it did not take. The last
performances of the season were abandoned, as every one was afraid of
crowded places, and I left for Berlin on business. While there my throat
became frightfully sore, and of course I thought, "Aha! I have it!" And
of course I didn't have it. I returned worn out to Paris and rested
there.
About this time I went first to Jean de Reszke. His beautiful house,
near the _Bois_, with its little theatre, was the scene of much
nervousness and struggles to become _prime donne_. The master opened my
eyes to the beauties of style. His Wagner, better than the best
Wagnerian singer I have ever heard, his French style, the wonderfully
Italian and yet manly interpretations he gave the Puccini and Verdi
roles, were all a marvellous inspiration to me. With a pupil he
considered intelligent he would take no end of trouble, and a "_Bien_"
from him was a jewel above price. The tales de Reszke pupils sometimes
tell me of the wonderful things he told them and predicted for them have
always amused me, because in all the time I have been in his studio I
have never heard anything like it.
I was so infatuated by my work with him, and so humbled at the vista of
endless effort it opened before me, before his ideas could be carried
out in every tone one sang, that I asked him one day if I should not
spend the next winter in his studio, and leave the stage for a year. He
thought it over seriously, and advised me to go on with the stage work,
for the routine I was getting was as valuable a teacher as he was. It
would have been a great privilege to have spent an entire year with him,
and if I could have afforded it, I should have done so.