STUTTGART, NUREMBERG, AND BAYREUTH
We had planned to go to Stuttgart next, but as we were nearing the town,
Bee pushed up her veil and said:
"I don't see why we are going to Stuttgart. I never heard of it except
in connection with men who 'studied' in Stuttgart. What's there, Jimmie?
An Academy?"
"I should say," said Jimmie, waking up. "The Academy where Schiller
studied."
"That's very interesting," I broke in, "but it's hardly enough to keep
_me_ there very long. Are there any queer little places--"
"Any concert-gardens?" asked Bee.
"Are the hotels good?" asked his wife.
"There is one hotel called Hotel Billfinger, which I'd like to try,
because Mark Twain's guide in 'Innocents Abroad' was named Billfinger.
Remember?"
"He afterwards called him Ferguson, which I think is against the name
and against the hotel," I said. "Why do we stop except to break the
journey?"
"Well, the real reason," said Jimmie, with that timid air of his, "is
because Baedeker says that in the Royal Library there are 7,200 Bibles
in more than one hundred languages, and I thought if you stayed by them
long enough you might get enough religion so that you would be less
wearing on my nerves as a travelling companion. It wouldn't take you
long to master them. While you are studying, the rest of us will refresh
ourselves in the Stadt-Garten, where Bee will find a band, where I shall
find a restaurant, and where my wife can ponder over Baedeker's choice
information of the places where it is not proper to take a lady."
Nobody pays any attention to Jimmie, so we all stared out of the windows
to see that the town was beautifully situated, almost upon the Neckar,
and surrounded by such vine-clad hills and green wooded heights as to
make it seem like a painting.
But Bee was still unconvinced.
"It is the capital of Nuremberg and used to be the favourite residence
of the Dukes of Nuremberg," said Mrs. Jimmie, as we drove up to the
hotel, not the Billfinger, let me remark in passing.
We found a band for Bee, and in the course of our stay in Stuttgart we
heard any number of men's choruses, students' singing and the like.
There was, too, the Museum of Art, and a fine one. There was also a
lovely view, from the Eugen-Platz, of the city which lies below it. But
after all, the Schloss-Garten and concerts to the contrary
notwithstanding, there is an atmosphere about the law schools, museums,
and collections of Stuttgart, which led frivolous pleasure-seekers like
us to depart on the second day, for Nuremberg.
Jimmie has a curious way of selecting hotels. As the train neared that
quaintest of old cities, toward which my heart warms anew as I think of
it, he broke the silence as though we had held a long and heated
argument on the matter.
"You might as well cease this useless discussion. I have decided to go
to the Wittelsbacher Hof, Pfannenschmiedsgasse 22."
"Good heavens!" I murmured.
"There you go, _arguing!_" cried Jimmie. "But can't you see the
advantages of all those extra letters on your note-paper when you write
home?"
"Besides, it's a very good hotel, I've been told," said his wife,
affably.
It _was_ a very good hotel, and there was a lunch-room half-way up the
main flight of stairs at the right as you enter, which I remember with
peculiar pleasure. Travellers like us may well be excused for
remembering a first luncheon such as that which we had at the
Wittelsbacher Hof.
Then we all strolled out in the early summer twilight and took our first
look at Nuremberg. Tell me if you can why we went into such ecstasies
over Nuremberg and stayed there two weeks, when we could barely persuade
ourselves to remain one day in Stuttgart. But the picturesqueness of
Nuremberg is particularly enticing. The streets run "every which way,"
as the children say, and the architecture is so queer and ancient that
the houses look as if they had stepped out of old prints.
It was so hot when we arrived that we were on terms of the most distant
civility with each other. Indeed, it was dangerous to make the simplest
observation, for the other three guns were trained upon the inoffensive
speaker with such promptness and such an evident desire to fight that
for the most part we maintained a dignified but safe silence.
Mrs. Jimmie bearded Jimmie in his den long enough to ask him to see
about our opera tickets at once. Everybody said we could not get any,
but trust Jimmie! The agent of whom he bought them had embroidered a
generous romance of how he had got them of a lady who ordered them the
January before, but whose husband having just died, her feelings would
not permit her to use them, and so as a great accommodation, etc., etc.
Everybody knows these stories. Suffice it to say that Jimmie really had,
at the last moment, secured admirable seats near the middle of the
house, and everybody said it was a miracle. In looking back over the
experiences of that one opera of "Parsifal," I cannot deny that there
was something of a miracle about it. However, "Parsifal" was three days
distant, and Nuremberg was at hand.
I love to think of Nuremberg. The recollection of it comes back to me
again and again through a gentle haze of happy memories. The narrow
streets were lined with houses which leaned toward each other after the
gossipy manner of old friends whose confidence in each other is
established. The windows jutted queerly, and odd balconies looped
themselves on corners where no one expected them. They call these pretty
old houses the best examples of domestic architecture, but warn you that
the quaint peaked roofs are Gothic and the surprises are Renaissance--a
mixture of which purists do not approve. But I am a pagan. I like
mixtures. They give you little flutters of delight in your heart, and
one of the most satisfactory of experiences is not to be able to analyse
your emotions or to tell why you are pleased, but to feel at liberty to
answer art questions with "Just because!"
So Nuremberg. Its fortifications are rugged and strong. Its towers
imposing. It dates back to the Huns. Frederick Barbarossa frequently
occupied the castle which frowns down on you from the heights. Hans
Sachs, the poet, sang here. Albrecht Durer painted here. Peter Vischer
perhaps dreamed out the noble original of my beautiful King Arthur here.
From the quaint and awkward statues of saints and heroes in church and
state, to such delicate examples of sculpture as the figure of the
Virgin in the Hirschelgasse, so delicate and graceful that it was once
attributed to an Italian master, you realise how early the arts were
established here and how sedulously they were pursued. Everywhere are
works of art, from the cruder decorations over doorways and windows to
the paintings of Durer in the Germanic Museum. It is a sad reflection to
me that most of Durer's work, and all of his masterpieces, are in other
cities--Munich, Berlin, and Vienna, and that, as it is in Greece, only
their fame remains to glorify the city of his birth.
His statue, copied from a portrait painted by himself, stands in the
Albrecht-Durer Platz, and in his little house are copies of his
masterpieces and a collection of typical antique German furniture and
utensils. The exquisite art of glass-staining is the suitable occupation
of the custodian who shows you about the house.
Indeed, wood carving, glass staining, engraving of medals and
medallions, copying ancient cabinets and quaint furniture are, if not
the principal, at least the most interesting occupations pursued in
Nuremberg to-day. In searching out the little shops I also found that
table linen, superbly embroidered and decorated with drawn-work of
intricate patterns was here in a bewildering display.
Dear Nuremberg! A stroll through your lovely streets is a feast for the
eye and a whip to the imagination that no other city in the German
Empire can duplicate or approach. You abound in quaint doorways, over
which if I step, I find myself transplanted to the scenes of tapestries
and old prints, and I can easily imagine myself framed and hanging on
the wall quite comfortable and happy.
One of these tiny doorways led us, on a bright Sunday afternoon, into
one of the oddest places we ever saw. It was the
Bratwurst-Glocklein--such a restaurant as Doctor Johnson would have
deserted the Cheshire Cheese for, and revelled in the change.
It appeared to be a thousand years old. Perhaps Melanchthon expounded
the theories of the Reformation on the very benches on which we sat.
The door-sill was high, and we stepped over it on to a stone floor, the
flagging of which was sunken in many places, causing pitfalls to the
unwary. The room was small and only half lighted by infinitesimal
windows. One end of the room was given up to what appeared to be a
charcoal furnace built of bricks, over which in plain view buxom maids,
whose red cheeks were purple from the heat, were frying delicious little
sausages in strings. We squeezed ourselves into a narrow bench behind
one of the tables whose rudeness was picturesque. I have seen schoolboy
desks at Harrow and Eton worn to the smoothness of these tables here and
carved as deeply with names. There was not a vestige of a cloth or
napkins. The plates and knives and forks were rude enough to bear out
the surroundings. In fact, the clumsiness and apparent age of everything
almost transported us, in imagination, to the stone age, but the
sensation was delightful.
One of the maids brought a string of sausages sizzling hot from the pan
and deftly snipped off as many as were called for upon each of our
plates. We drank our beer from steins so heavy that each one took both
hands. A person with a mouth of the rosebud variety would have found it
exceedingly difficult to obtain any of the beer, the stein presenting
such unassailable fortifications.
It was too hot when we were there to appreciate to the full this
delicious old spot, but on a winter evening, after the theatre, which
closes about ten o'clock, think what a delightful thing it would be, O
ye Bohemian Americans, with fashionable wives who insist upon the
Waldorf or Sherry's after the theatre, to go instead to the
Bratwurst-Glocklein! There you smoke at your ease, put your elbows on
the table and dream dreams of your student days when the dinner coat
vexed not your peaceful spirit.
Owing to our late arrival and the enormous crowd of people at Bayreuth,
we found it expedient to remain in Nuremberg and go up to Bayreuth for
the opera. The day of our performance of "Parsifal" was one of the
hottest of the year. Not even Philadelphia can boast of heat more
consolidated and unswerving than that of North Germany on this
particular day.
We put on muslin dresses and carried fans and smelling salts, and Jimmie
had to use force to make us carry wraps for the return. The journey,
lovely in itself, was rendered hideous to us by the heat, but when we
arrived at Bayreuth the babel of English voices was so delightfully
homelike, American clothes on American women were so good to see, and
Bayreuth itself was so picturesque, that we forgot the heat and drove to
the opera-house full of delight.
I am sorry that it is fashionable to like Wagner, for I really should
like to explain the feelings of perfect delight which tingled in my
blood as I realised that I was in the home of German opera--in the city
where the master musician lived and wrote, and where his widow and son
still maintain their unswerving faithfulness toward his glorious music.
I am a little sensitive, too, about admitting that I like Carlyle and
Browning. I suppose this is because I have belonged to a Browning and
Carlyle club, where I have heard some of the most idiotic women it was
ever my privilege to encounter, express glib sentiments concerning these
masters, which in me lay too deep for utterance. It is something like
the occasional horror which overpowers me when I think that perhaps I am
doomed to go to heaven. If certain people here on earth upon whom I have
lavished my valuable hatred are going there, heaven is the last place I
should want to inhabit. So with Wagner.
"Parsifal!" That sacred opera which has never been performed outside of
this little hamlet. I was to see it at last!
I was prepared to be delighted with everything, and the childishness of
the little maid who took charge of our hats before we went in to the
opera charmed me. My hat was heavy and hot, and I particularly disliked
it, owing to the weight of the seagull which composed one entire side of
it, and always pulled it crooked on my head. The little maid took the
hat in both her arms, laid her round red cheek against the soft feathers
of the gull, kissed its glass bead eyes, and smilingly said in German:
"This is the finest hat that has been left in my charge to-day!"
Verily, the opera of "Parsifal" began auspiciously. Quite puffed up with
vainglorious pride over the little maiden's admiration of one of my
modest possessions, while Bee's and Mrs. Jimmie's ravishing masterpieces
had received not even a look, we met Jimmie bustling up with programmes
and opera-glasses, and went toward the main entrance. We showed our
tickets, and were sent to the side door. We went to the side door, and
were sent to the back door. At the back door, to our indignation, we
were sent up-stairs. In vain Jimmie expostulated, and said that these
seats were well in the middle of the house on the ground floor. The
doorkeepers were inexorable. On the second floor, they sent us to the
third, and on the third they would have sent us to the roof if there had
been any way of getting up there. As it was, they permitted us to stop
at the top gallery, and, to our unmitigated horror, the usher said that
our seats were there. Jimmie was furious, but I, not knowing how much he
had paid for them, endeavoured to soothe him by pointing out that all
true musicians sat in the gallery, because music rises and blends in the
rising.
"We are sure to get the best effect up here, Jimmie, and those front
rows, especially, if our seats happen to be in the middle, won't be at
all bad. Don't let's fuss any more about it, but come along like an
angel."
I will admit, however, that even my ardour was dampened when we
discovered that our seats were absolutely in the back and top row, so
that we leaned against the wall of the building, and were not even
furnished with chairs, but sat on a hard bench without relief of any
description.
And the price Jimmie hurled at us that he had paid for those tickets! I
am ashamed to tell it.
Now Jimmie hates German opera in the most picturesque fashion. He hates
in every form, colour, and key, and in all my life I was never so sorry
for any one as I was for Jimmie that day at Bayreuth. The heat was
stifling, his rage choked him and effectually prevented his going to
sleep, as otherwise he might have done in peace and quiet. He sat there
in such a steam and fury that it was truly pitiable. He went out once to
get a breath of air, and they turned the lights out before he could get
back, so that he stumbled over people, and one man kicked him. With that
Jimmie stepped on the German's other foot, and they swore at each other
in two languages and got hissed by the people around them. When he
finally got back to us, we found it expedient not to make any remarks at
all, and I was glad it was too dark for him to see our faces.
Yet, in spite of Jimmie and the heat and the ache in our backs and the
hard unyielding bench, that afternoon at "Parsifal" is one of the
experiences of a lifetime.
People tell us now that we were there on an "Off day." By that they mean
that no singers with great names took part. How like Americans to think
of that! Germans go to the opera for the music. Americans go to hear and
see the operatic stars.
Happily unvexed by my ignorance, I heard a perfect "Parsifal" without
knowing that, from an American point of view, I ought not to have been
so delighted. The orchestra was conducted by Siegfried Wagner, and
Madame Wagner sat in full view from even our eyrie.
And then--the opera! Perfection in every detail! I believed then that
not even the Passion Play could hold my spirit, so in leash with its
symbolism, its deep devotion, and its enthralling charms.
The day on which I saw "Parsifal" at Bayreuth was a day to be marked
with a white stone.