Eisenach. Gotha. Erfurt. Andernach. Weimar. Tausig.
BERLIN, _August 15, 1871_.
Well, here I am back in smelly old Berlin! I really hated to leave
Heidelberg, it was such a paradisiacal spot, but we saw so much that was
beautiful afterwards, that my impression of it has become a little
dimmed. From Heidelberg we went to Eisenach, its rival in a different
way, for here we went over the Wartburg--the Castle famous for having
been the dwelling of the holy St. Elizabeth, and where Luther translated
the Bible and spent ten months of his life disguised as a knight. I saw
his room, a bare and comfortless hole, but with a splendid view from the
windows. The Castle is in good repair, and is a noble pile. I suppose
the Duke of Weimar spends some time there every summer, as it looks as
if it were lived in. It is endlessly interesting. There is a lovely
little chapel in it where Luther used to preach, with everything left in
just as it was in his time--a little gem. The Wartburg is on a very high
hill, and the views from it are superb. Among other things to be seen
from it is the Venusberg, which is the mountain Wagner has introduced in
his famous opera of Tannhäuser. He was so carried away by the Wartburg
when he concealed himself near it, as he was being pursued by the
government to be arrested as a revolutionary, twenty years ago, that he
never rested until he had united the legends of St. Elizabeth and of the
Venusberg in his opera. Liszt, also, wrote an oratorio on St. Elizabeth
as _his_ tribute to the Wartburg.
From Eisenach we went to Gotha, a lovely place, all shaded with trees,
and surmounted by a very imposing castle, with two immense towers. It is
an enormous edifice, and is surrounded by a magnificent park, through
which goes the slowly winding river. I believe that Gotha belongs to the
Duke of Saxe-Coburg, brother of the Queen of England, or something. At
all events, in the middle of this river is an island where the ducal
family is buried, and it is so thickly planted with trees whose boughs
hang over the water, that their graves are quite shrouded from the
vulgar eye. Pretty idea! The river laps lazily against the grassy slope
which covers the princely ones, and the wind rushing through the trees,
sings their dirge.
From Gotha we went to Erfurt, where we only spent one night, in order to
see the Cathedral. Erfurt is an Undine of a place, full of running
streams and bridges and mills roaring all about you. I saw one street
with a brook rippling down the very middle of it at a most rattling
pace, and at every little distance two or three stepping stones by which
to cross it. Just think how fascinating for children! I longed to stay
and have a good play there myself. The Erfurt Cathedral is much smaller
than those of Spire and Cologne, but the exterior is wonderfully
beautiful. The transept is a masterpiece, and has fifteen enormous
windows of rich old stained glass going round it. The nave did not
please me so well, because in addition to its not being very rich, the
side aisles were of equal height with the main body of the Cathedral,
and were not sufficiently marked off from it to prevent the roof's
looking like a ceiling. I believe the side aisles were of equal height
with the main aisle in the Cologne Cathedral, but the archways and
pillars cut them off more, so that it had a different effect.--I am more
interested in cathedrals than anything else, and should like to travel
all over Europe and see all the different ones. There is a lovely old
church at Andernach, Roman Catholic, as most of the churches on the
Rhine are. I went there to church one Sunday morning, and stayed through
the service. They had the most powerful church music I've ever heard.
There was an excellent boy choir which sang in unison and led the
congregation, _every person_ of which joined in. The organ was fine, as
was also the organist, and the singing was so universal that the old
church walls rang again. The priest preached an excellent sermon,
too--the best I have heard in Germany.
* * *
BERLIN, _August 31, 1871_.
Germany is a most lovely country, and perfectly delicious to travel
through. I believe I have described all the places we went to excepting
Weimar. Weimar is delightful, and so interesting, because Goethe and
Schiller, Wieland and Herder lived there, and everything is connected
with them, and especially with the first two. There are many fine
statues in the little city, and a delicious great park along the river
which was laid out under Goethe's superintendence.--One group of Goethe
and Schiller standing together in front of the theatre is magnificent.
One hardly knows which to admire the most, Goethe, with his courtly mein
and commanding features, or Schiller, with his extreme ideality and his
head a little thrown back as if to take in inspiration direct from the
sky. It is a most striking conception.
The palace of the Grand Duke of Weimar is the principal "show" of the
place. It is filled with the richest works of art, and is beautifully
frescoed in rooms devoted each to a particular author, and representing
his most celebrated works. There is the Goethe room, and the Wieland
room, etc. The Wieland room is the most charming thing. The frescoes on
the walls are all illustrative of his "Oberon," which is his most
celebrated work, and one picture represents what happened when Oberon
blew his horn. You must know that when Oberon blows his horn everybody
is obliged to dance. So in this picture he is represented blowing it in
a convent, and all the fat friars and nuns are dancing away like mad.
They look so serious, and as if they didn't want to do it at all, but
their feet _will_ fly up in the air in spite of them. The nuns' slippers
scarcely stick on, and it looks so absurd! I was as highly amused at it
as the mischievous Oberon himself must have been, so delicately has the
artist touched it off. There was another design representing a band of
nymphs dancing in the sky, hand in hand in the twilight, and it was the
most graceful thing!--Their delicate little bare feet with every pretty
turn a foot could have, their clothes and hair streaming in the breeze,
and every attitude so airy. It was _lovely_! The Goethe frescoes were by
another painter, and not so fine, but I prefer pictures to frescoes.
Only one suite of the ducal rooms was frescoed. The others had superb
pictures by the old masters, many of them originals.
The Duke is an artist himself, and designs a great many pretty things.
For instance, he designed the large candelabra which stood on each side
of one of the doorways,--Cupid peeping through a wreath of thistles and
nettles. He was kneeling on one knee, and pushing them aside with each
hand. It was all done in gilt metal and made a very dainty conceit,
beside being a good illustration of the pains of love! I think the Duke
probably designed some of the picture frames, for they were peculiarly
rich and artistic; for instance, the frames of the original cartoons of
Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper were entirely composed of the leaves and
flowers of the calla lily. The leaves lapped one over the other, and
here and there a lily was laid between. The flowers were done in a
different coloured gilding from the leaves. They were _very_ beautiful.
The pictures were not all hung together, so as to confuse your eye, but
here a gem and there a gem--and O, I saw the most bewitching little
statue there that ever I saw in my life! The subject was "Little Red
Riding Hood," and it stood in the corner of one of the great salons. It
was about two feet high, and represented the most fascinating little
girl you can imagine, clothed in the wolf's skin, which hung down behind
and had formed the little hood. The child herself was quite
indescribable--the daintiest little creature, with the most captivating
expression of innocence and roguishness. If she looked like that I
should have followed the wolf's example and eaten her up! It was really
a perfect little _pearl_ of a statue. I would give anything to possess
it. In short, I wish the Duke of Weimar were my intimate friend, for he
must be a man worth knowing. Now, if I could only play like Liszt!--I
don't wonder Liszt spends so much of his time in Weimar. I am getting
perfectly crazy to hear him, by the way, for everybody says there is
nobody in the world like him, and that he is the only artist who
combines _everything_. He does not play in public any more, but
Weitzmann says that he is amiability itself, and that it would probably
not be difficult for me to get an opportunity to hear him in private.
In the palace I also saw the little boudoir of the Duchess. It was all
panelled in white satin, and the furniture was of the richest white
brocaded silk. The window frames were of malachite, and one looked out
through the single great plate of glass on to the beautiful park, and
the winding river spanned by a bridge which suggests immediately to your
mind, "Walk over me into the Garden of Paradise, for I was made for your
express benefit!" The park lies on each side of this little river Ilm,
and Goethe's exquisite taste has given it more a look of nature than of
art. It seems as if you were walking in a delicious meadow, the trees
being sometimes grouped together, sometimes growing thickly along the
water's edge. You go in and out of sunshine and shadow, and here and
there are dusky little retreats, and, to borrow Goldsmith's elegant
style,--"the winding walks assume a natural sylvage." Some distance up
the river, on the side of a gentle hill, was a small house in the woods
where Goethe used to live in summer. Here he slept sometimes, and
farther up the hill was a summer house where he took his coffee after
dinner. To the left of this summer house he had had made a long
alley-way or vista of trees whose tops met overhead and formed a leafy
ceiling. It was like a cloister, and here he could pace up and down and
muse. It was a delightful idea. To the right of the summer house was a
small garden, and beyond that was a path which wound through the wood
down to the path below. In one of the rocks there Goethe had had a
little poem cut. I was sorry afterward that I hadn't copied it, it was
so pretty.--But it was such a charming place to read and study, and it
seemed to give me a better impression of him than anything else.
I saw a piano in the Duke's palace upon which Beethoven had played. It
was a funny little instrument of about five octaves, but it was so
wheezy with age that there wasn't much tone to be got out of it. After
we had finished looking at the palace, we went over to see the ducal
library. Here I saw a superb bust of Goethe as a young man. It was so
handsome that it spurns description. He must have been a perfect Apollo.
I also saw a likeness of him painted upon a cup by some great artist,
for which he sat thirty-four times! The old librarian, who had known
Goethe, said that it was _exactly_ like him, and the miniature painting
was so wonderful that when you looked at it with a magnifying glass it
was only finer and _more_ accurate instead of less so! There was also a
most noble bust of the composer Glück. The face was all scarred with
small-pox, so that the cast must have been moulded from his features
after death, but I never saw such a living, animated, likeness in
marble. It looked as if it were going to speak to you. There was a funny
toy there, nearly three hundred years old. It was a drummer boy, with a
little baby strapped on his back. The librarian wound him up, and then
he beat his drum lustily, rolled his eyes from side to side, and wagged
his head, while the baby on his back hopped up and down. Whenever little
children see it, it scares them, and they begin to cry. It had on a red
flannel coat, and hasn't had a new one since it was made.--"Nearly three
hundred years old, and never had a new coat," is worse than when C. P.
bought himself a trunk, and went round the house saying, "Twenty-seven
years old, and been in twenty-three states of the Union, and _never_ had
a new trunk before!"
Goethe's house is not exhibited, which I think highly inexcusable in the
Goethe family, but Schiller's is. So we saw that, and what a contrast it
was to the ducal palace!--You go to a small yellow house on one of the
principal streets, enter a little hall by a little door, go up two
flights of a little stair-case, and in the very low-ceilinged third
story was Schiller's home--"home" I say, and the _whole_ of it, so
please take it in! The first room you enter is a sort of ante-room where
photographs are now sold. The next room was the parlour, and of late
years it has been comfortably furnished by the ladies of Weimar in the
usual cheap German taste. The third room was Schiller's study, with an
infinitesimal fourth room, or large closet, opening from it, which was
his sleeping apartment. The study is precisely as he left it, and
nothing could be more bald and bare. No carpet on the floor, the three
windows slightly festooned at the top with a single breadth of Turkey
red, his own portrait and a few wretched prints on the walls--in short,
such a sordid habitation for such a soaring nature as seemed almost
incredible! His writing table, with a globe, inkstand, and pens upon it,
stands at one window, and his wife's tiny little piano with her guitar
on top, is against the wall. There are two or three chairs, and a
wash-stand with a minute washing apparatus. In one corner is the tiny
unpainted wooden bedstead on which he died; a bed not meant to stretch
out in, but to lie, as Germans do, half reclining, and so low, narrow,
plain and mean that I never saw anything like it. In it and hanging on
the wall over it are wreaths which leading German actresses have brought
there as votive offerings to their great national dramatist, their white
satin ribbons yellowing by time. At the foot of the stair-case as you go
out, you see the little walled-up garden at the back of the house where
the poet loved to sit.
After getting through with the abodes of the living, we visited the
ducal vault where Goethe and Schiller are buried. It is the crypt of a
sort of temple built in the old secluded cemetery in Weimar, and in it
all the coffins are laid in rows on supporters. Goethe and Schiller lie
apart from the others, side by side, near the foot of the stair-case
leading down into the crypt. Their coffins, especially Schiller's, are
covered with wreaths and bouquets brought by strangers and laid there.
Schiller's had on it a garland of silver leaves presented by the women
of Hamburg, and another of leaves of green gauze or crape, on every one
of which was worked in gold thread the name of one of his plays. A great
actress had made it herself as her tribute to his genius. From all I
observe, I should judge that the German people love Schiller much more
than they do Goethe. The dukes and duchesses lie farther back in the
vault in their red velvet coffins, quite unnoticed. So much better is
genius than rank! Hummel is buried also in the cemetery, which is the
most beautiful I ever saw--not stiff and "arranged" like ours, but so
natural! with over-grown foot-paths, and with much fewer and simpler
grave-stones and monuments, and many more vines and flowers and roses
creeping over the graves. We went to Hummel's grave, and had I been
Goethe and Schiller I should much rather have been buried out of doors
like him, amid this sweet half-wild, half-gentle nature, than in that
dismal vault.
Speaking of Hummel reminds me of Tausig's death. Was it not terrible
that he should have died so young! Such an enormous artist as he was! I
cannot get reconciled to it at all, and he played only twice in Berlin
last winter.
He was a strange little soul--a perfect misanthrope. Nobody knew him
intimately. He lived all the last part of his life in the strictest
retirement, a prey to deep melancholy. He was taken ill at Leipsic,
whither he had gone to meet Liszt. Until the ninth day they had hopes of
his recovery, but in the night he had a relapse, and died the tenth day,
very easily at the last. His remains were brought to Berlin and he was
buried here. Everything was done to save him, and he had the most
celebrated physicians, but it was useless. So my last hope of lessons
from him again is at an end, you see! I never expect to hear such
piano-playing again. It was as impossible for him to strike one false
note as it is for other people to strike right ones. He was absolutely
infallible. The papers all tell a story about his playing a piece one
time before his friends, from the notes. The music fell upon the keys,
but Tausig didn't allow himself to be at all disturbed, and went on
playing through the paper, his fingers piercing it and grasping the
proper chords, until some one rushed to his aid and set the notes up
again. Oh, he was a wonder, and it is a tragic loss to Art that he is
dead. He was such a _true_ artist, his standard was so immeasurably
high, and he had such a proud contempt for anything approaching
clap-trap, or what he called _Spectakel_. I have seen him execute the
most gigantic difficulties without permitting himself a sign of effort
beyond an almost imperceptible compression of one corner of his
mouth.--And then his touch! Never shall I forget it!--that _rush_ of
silver over the keys. However, he entirely overstrained himself, and his
whole nervous system was completely shattered long before his illness.
He said last winter that the very idea of playing in public was
unbearable to him, and after he had announced in the papers that he
would give four concerts, he recalled the announcement on the plea of
ill health. Then he thought he would go to Italy and spend the winter.
But when he got as far as Naples, he said to himself, "_Nein, hier
bleibst du nicht_ (No, you won't stay here);" and back he came to
Berlin. He doesn't seem to have known what he wanted, himself; his was
an uneasy, tormented, capricious spirit, at enmity with the world.
Perhaps his marriage had something to do with it. His wife was a
beautiful artist, too, and they thought the world of each other, yet
they couldn't live together. But Tausig's whole life was a mystery, and
his reserve was so complete that nobody could pierce it. If I had only
been at the point in music two years ago that I am now, I could have
gone at once into his class. His scholars were most of them artists
already, or had got to that point where they had pretty well mastered
the technique. A number of them came out last winter, and the little
Timanoff played duets with Rubinstein for two pianos, at St. Petersburg.
Since my return I have gone into the first class in Kullak's
conservatory, instead of taking private lessons of him. I think it will
be of use to me to hear his best pupils play.