ROYAL HUMOUR
During that summer Baron S---- died in Munich. This of course was a
great blow to me and I did not know what I could do about my contract. I
went to Berlin to see Herr Harder, who told me I must _gastieren_
according to contract in October, but as the new _Intendant_ was not to
come into office till November, no one could really engage me,
especially as a very exacting new musical director was coming from
Vienna later in the season, and they would both undoubtedly want to
choose their own first contralto.
However, I went and sang under trying circumstances, with a very sore
throat and a sinking heart. The colleagues thought I would be engaged,
but I did not see who was to do it, and as it turned out I was
right--and there _was_ no one to do it. This depressed me extremely, but
I resolved to return to Berlin, and devote the year to following up my
previous recital. As a matter of fact, this apparent blow turned out to
be all for the best, as so often happens, for otherwise I should have
been caught in Germany at the beginning of the war, and my career upset,
which happened to several other girls.
The concert field is a rich one in Europe and I had made a good
beginning. I booked a tour in Holland, through the kindly offices of
Bos, where I was as well received as I had been in Berlin. The critics
wrote such eulogies that I almost blush to read them. People quite
unknown to me would go from town to town to hear me, and I would see
them at Rotterdam or Utrecht smiling up at me. I have never sung to such
adorable audiences. They seem to understand all languages, and a "Claire
de Lune" sung in French seems to please them as much as Schubert's
magnificent "Allmacht."
The "coffee pause" half way down the program, was quite a shock to me
the first night, but I soon grew to look for it, and enjoyed the smell
of the strong smoking coffee the waiters used to carry round on trays to
the audience. It was rather disturbing, however, to have to watch the
waiters finish up the contents of the pots, at the back of the hall,
while I began on the second half of the program. Evidently to them the
coffee, and the audience, were of first importance, and the mere singer
quite secondary; all of which is point of view.
My sister and I lived at The Hague, and Holland is so delightfully
small that we could nearly always return there, after the evening's
concert in another town. I went back in the spring for another series of
recitals and felt that I was returning to old friends. I was offered a
tour to Java, and would love to have undertaken it, but could not see my
way clear just then.
In December I was in Berlin for a week or two, and Harder sent me word
to come and sing for Mr. Percy Pitt of Covent Garden. The two contracts
I had held so far had been closed with a minimum of delay and trouble,
and now I was to make the biggest one of my career in the same simple
way. I was not in the best of voice when I sang for Mr. Pitt, but I sang
the Siegfried _Erda_, and was disgusted with myself for singing so
badly. He asked me if I were ready to sing the list of leading roles
which he read to me, and on my answering in the affirmative engaged me
on the spot; proving, to me at least, that successful or unsuccessful
_Vorsingen_ and even _Gastspiele_ have very little to do with most
engagements. In the case of a singer of any reputation at all, the
Director has usually made up his mind pretty well beforehand what he is
going to do. If he wants you he takes you, even if you have sung badly
that particular time, and if he does not want you, nothing that I have
heard of can make him engage you.
This contract was for the following spring. We were to give the "Ring"
of Wagner, three times, and Arthur Nikisch was to conduct. Also
"Koenigskinder" was to be given for the first time at Covent Garden, and
I was one of the few who had sung the _Witch_ at that time. "The Flying
Dutchman" completed the list of operas I was to sing in.
After closing the contract we left for Bergen, Norway, where I had a
concert engagement. One great advantage of having my dear friends, the
Jones, back of me, was, that I could take a big journey like this; and
though it might eat up all of my profit I did not have to refuse it on
that account.
We were fascinated by Scandinavia, and though I went to sing with the
orchestra in one concert only, I remained in Bergen to give three
recitals by myself. The trip across the Finse railway, over the snowy
glaciers, I shall never forget. The line had only recently been opened,
and very few passengers shared the trip with us. We saw a herd of
reindeer, and I fed some of them with coarse salt at one of the
stations. Bergen itself was warm and muggy and smelt of fish. Everything
in the place smelt of fish, even the hotel towels. Two kindly women
managers took charge of my concerts, and I felt far away from America
till I saw a portrait of Miss Emma Thursby in their music shop.
The warm-hearted Norwegians were delightful to us, and we met many of
Grieg's relations, and heard tales of him. One of his cousins, I think,
came all the way to Berlin to study with me, but to my great regret I
had no time to give her.
I was interviewed on my first day by a nice little fellow, who could
hardly speak German, and no English nor French. Our conversation was
conducted under difficulties, but was most enjoyable none the less. The
next day I received a request for a photo from him, with a card saying:
"_Seit ich Ihnen sah bin ich sterblich verliebt._"--This bad German
means approximately, "Since I saw you I am mortally in love."
We loved our stay in Scandinavia. I remember when we first arrived in
Christiania we could not make out why the streets were thronged with
good looking men and women, from two o'clock till three in the
afternoon, and quite empty after that. We walked through the snowy,
glittering avenues, and met all these healthy red-cheeked pedestrians
talking and laughing and having a wonderful social time. We then
discovered their meal times are quite different from ours. You have an
early cup of coffee, then a light breakfast at eleven o'clock, then
dinner at three or four, preceded sometimes by this walk. Supper is
served at eight-thirty or nine, and is usually laid out on a long table
in the centre of the room. There are cold meats and salads; cold fish
and pickled fish; queer breads; and, of course, you go first for the
wonderful _hors d'oeuvres_ of countless varieties, for this is where
they grow.
A Swede once told me you could always tell a German travelling in
Sweden, because when the _Schwedische Platte_ or _hors d'oeuvres_ were
passed to him, he made a meal of the dainty mayonnaise and savoury
morsels, instead of eating them as an appetizer, as is intended. In the
beautiful station of Copenhagen, decorated in the old Norse style, with
scarlet-painted wooden carved beams, we were served with all we could
eat of these dainties with bread and butter, for about forty cents--and
I wished I were a German!
On the way home, we were storm-bound at Copenhagen, and I at once fell
in love with that city, and its wonderful blond race of big men and
women. We heard stories of divorces and passionate love affairs, that
made other nations pale by contrast. One delightful man told us he had
had no objection to his wife having _one_ lover, but when he found she
had seven, he thought it time to get a divorce! He still quite often saw
her, and said they were the best friends in the world. He liked to take
her out to dinner and the theatre and tell her all about everything. He
called us "The Misses Chickens Howard," and was only restrained by
business engagements from following us from place to place. That was a
hobby of his, he said, when he found a sympathetic artist.
We crossed back to Germany, and I sang with Nickisch for the first time,
in Hamburg. His room behind the stage swarmed with ladies, in the
_entr'acte_, and the concert master told me it was always so. A valet
looked him over carefully before he went on the stage, pulled down his
coat, and patted the Herr Professor's shoulders. I remembered the cuff
story in Metz and watched through the crack of the door to see if it
still held good--and it did!
Later I sang with Mengelberg in Frankfort. He said to me, eating apples
the while: "I engaged you because friends of mine in Holland told me you
could sing. Can you?" After the concert he came to me again, still
eating apples, and said: "_Es is wahr. Sie haben eine Prachtvolle
Stimme, und koennen prachtvoll singen_," and kissed my hand.
To hear Mengelberg direct "Tod und Verklaerung" of Strauss, with his own
orchestra is one of the most tremendous things I have ever experienced.
One is transported. A little man with a tight mouth and an aureole of
fair hair, he is feared by his men, but _how_ he is respected! That
winter he spent almost every night in the train, as he conducted
regularly in Holland, Germany and Russia.
I have always been able to get on with really great musicians, and have
found only the second best _difficile_ and small. The path seems
suddenly smooth when in rehearsal, you feel this wealth of absolute
knowledge and authority supporting, leading and inspiring you. Anxiety
vanishes and one's best pours from one without effort, only with the
sensation of wringing every last drop of beauty from the phrase.
We returned to Sweden to concerts with Stenhammer, and I should have
crossed to Helsingfors to sing _Dalila_, but had to return on account of
engagements in Germany.
Through our forbears, as I have said, we have many relations in Germany;
and in Berlin we enjoyed immensely knowing our cousins the von M---- s.
The General had just been moved back to Berlin to fill an extremely high
military position, and as he was musical we, of course, had much in
common. The daughters were all beautifully brought up; simple girls,
frank and natural as German aristocrats are. They gave a musical, at
which the General and I both sang. Their apartment was very large, but
was so crowded for the concert that I felt as though the Duchess of
Dalibor sat almost in my throat as I sang, and her enormous pearls
distracted me in the "Sapphische Ode." I have never seen such
unbelievably huge pearls. We were asked to stay to _Abendessen_ after
the concert, and it consisted chiefly of the sandwiches and refreshments
left over from the party. This showed us again the absolute simplicity
of the well-born German of irreproachable position.
The girls were very intimate with the Kaiser's only daughter, Princess
Victoria Louise, and when her marriage to the Duke of Brunswick's son,
was celebrated, Irma was one of the bride's-maids. Onkle Geo, as we
called him, told us about the Kaiser, to whom he was devoted. At the
dinner table, he said, His Majesty would usually talk only with the men
present, ignoring completely the ladies who might be present.
When the General made his re-entry into court for the first time after
receiving his high office, all the courtiers present watched to see just
how he would be received by His Majesty, which would then give the
keynote for his treatment by the whole court. After the general
reception, General von M---- was invited to go into a more private room
with several more gentlemen. This promised well, as it was in this room
that the Kaiser talked more intimately with the guests of his choosing.
The General held his helmet with its _Feder-busch_, or crest of white
feathers on his arm, and felt the eyes of all assembled on him as the
Kaiser came quickly into the room, and made his way to him. Now was the
critical moment that might have everlasting consequences. Onkle Geo
confessed to nervousness, but His Majesty guessed the situation, and
said, "Hum! _You_ need a new helmet, that _Feder-busch_ is shabby," in a
bantering tone. The courtiers knew this was meant for friendly, humorous
comment, and was intended to be laughed at, so they laughed accordingly
at Onkle Geo's confusion, and the ice was broken. "And my helmet was
quite new!" said Onkle Geo, half indignantly, half laughing.
The court was very simple, and we heard stories of this through other
friends who had the _entree_. A Graefin D----, returning one evening
from a court ball given in honor of the then Regent of Bavaria, gave me
a bon-bon done up in silver paper, with a little photo of the Kaiserin
on it. The bon-bon was white, and the Graefin said as long as any one
could remember, these had been the official souvenirs of court dinners:
only the photo varied.
One charming girl we knew, a great favourite of the Empress, came back
from the Palace one Christmas day, and told us what she had received
from Her Majesty as a Christmas greeting--a small, old-fashioned tippet
and muff of woolly white Angora, and two small, cheap Japanese vases,
that some one had given the Empress the year before. The Royal
magnificence one would expect gave way to--extreme simplicity let us
call it.
The Kaiser took a keen interest in the opera, and gave wonderful
presents to his favourite singers. We saw a spectacle at the opera house
that he was supposed to have inspired, and which was carried out under
his direction. It was a sort of panorama of scenes in Corfu, where he
spent much time. It must have been horribly expensive, for I never saw
so much scenery at any performance, and it really was exquisite to see
those beautifully reproduced scenes unfold before one.
Such things, however, as painted castles and woods and flowers always
seem to me excessively naive. The Russian idea of a wonderful
imaginative back-drop is infinitely more stimulating to a performance.
Of course, there are places where it cannot be used. If the scene is
laid in a Childs' restaurant a back-drop might perhaps be comic to a
mind not yet used to making its own pictures; but I hope and believe the
aim is towards simplicity in this direction; but the simplicity must be
carried out by artists, and first-rate ones. Who, who has seen the
leaping figures of the Russian Ballet in "Prince Igor," has felt a lack
on the scenic side because the tents with their feather of smoke were
suggested on a flat back-drop? Who longed for real, that is, one-side
real, tents--with steam escaping from a semi-hidden pipe through the
top? The luridness was suggested by colour far more skilfully than if
rocks, thinly swaying and lit by red lights, had cluttered up the wings.
Make the audience do the thinking, blend stimulation with simulation,
and if your artist has been a true one no one will cry for flapping
pillars, or crumpled leaves on a net.
"Boris Goudonow," as it used to be given at the Metropolitan, is a good
example of what real artist vision can do with colour. Those who saw
those figures in brilliant green, kneeling with their backs to the
audience, barring off the procession scene, while the towering minaret
of the cathedral carried the eye up and up at the back, will surely
never forget the light and shade grouping. It has since, I am sorry to
say, lost some of its skilful arrangement, which I suppose is
unavoidable, but the performance is still homogeneous and a unit, as to
_decors,_ score and costumes.
It was on the Kaiser's birthday that we saw "Corfu," and afterwards we
went to the newly-opened Hotel Esplanade for supper. I have never seen
such a sight. All imaginable uniforms were there, on all types of
officers and foreign diplomats. Some looked magnificently romantic, and
some as if they had stepped from the comic opera stage. The women, as
usual in Germany, though plentifully be-jewelled, looked dull and
inadequate beside the men.
One summer night in Berlin, we went to Max Reinhardt's small theatre,
the Kammerspiel, to see "Fruehlingserwachen." My dear friend, Oscar
Saenger, was in town, and I had happened to see him in a box at the
opera the evening before. He had come to see Berger, the giant baritone
whom he had transformed into a tenor, in his first performance of
_Siegmund_. I think Putnam Griswold, that splendid type of the best
American singer, sang the _Wanderer_ that night. Saenger asked us to go
to the theatre with him, as we had not met in years, and by chance we
chose "Fruehlingserwachen" of Wedekind. Never shall I forget that
evening. The quiet, dark wooden walls of the theatre, and the
comfortable box they showed us into, in which we sat, seeing but unseen
in the obscurity; the lack of applause when the curtain fell, and
then--the performance. German actors lead the world, in my opinion, and
the intensity of those players, the skill with which they played those
most unhappy children, the tremulous, inadequate mother, that dark scene
with its girl-women shriek, left us breathless and dazed.
The highest possible tribute I pay to German actors, and to some of
those gathered together that winter in that theatre. Such a _Falstaff_
I never saw as we saw there in "Henry V," nor such marvellous
presentations of Shakespeare. Moissy as _Prince Hal_ in his father's
deathbed scene; the _Doll Tearsheet_; the collection of hangers-on in
the Inn Scene, the understanding of the spirit of Shakespeare--all these
were priceless joys. Shakespeare does not spell bankruptcy in Germany,
and the people really love it, and perhaps there is a reason why.
The next night in the same house, you might see a translation of a
French drawingroom comedy. With the exception of one or two, these
people were quite as at home in that as in classic drama. That I had
never believed possible till I saw it proven. It had always seemed to me
that the French were absolutely unrivalled in such things as "Mlle.
Georgette, ma femme"; but they were even more sincerely, yet just as
lightly done by Reinhardt's people. It was always such a joy in Europe
to go to the theatre in London, Paris or Berlin. To see Lavalliere with
her inimitable _gamine_ ways, was the most delicious of pleasures; and
the polish of the older actors of the French stage, the _Marquis_ or
_Marquise_, or old butler or housekeeper, as the case may be, is a
wonderful model for the student. French actors seem to be able to come
into a room, sit down at a table and talk for half an hour, using almost
no gestures, without becoming in the least boresome or monotonous. When
scenes of strong passion are wanted, the Germans, I think, excel their
French rivals. A Frenchman, or, for that matter, any Latin, is inclined
to rant just a bit, and become unconvincing, at least to an Anglo-Saxon
mind; but the German, when called upon for strength and power of
passion, rises thrillingly and gloriously, and completely sweeps you
away.
Even in Darmstadt we had many notable performances. That of the
"Versunkene Glocke," for instance, was most memorable. We had a splendid
old actor for the _Well Spirit, Nickelmann,_ and nothing could have been
wetter or more unearthly than his sloshing slowly up from the depth of
the well, his webbed, greenish fingers appearing clutchingly first, and
then his grating, fishy croak, "_R-r-r-rautendelein! R-r-r-r-rautendelein!_"
The faun was also excellently done by a young fellow with marvellous
faun-like agility; altogether these unpretentious people realized the
fairy-tale spirit, the wood feeling of the story, in a most imaginative,
subtle way. Where in America in a town of Darmstadt's size could you see
such a performance?