A Pleasant Morning.--What can one Say about the Passion Play?--B.
Lectures.--Unreliable Description of Ober-Ammergau.--Exaggerated
Description of its Weather.--Possibly Untruthful Account of how the
Passion Play came to be Played.--A Good Face.--The Cultured Schoolboy and
his Ignorant Relations.
I am lying in bed, or, to speak more truthfully, I am sitting up on a
green satin, lace-covered pillow, writing these notes. A green satin,
lace-covered bed is on the floor beside me. It is about eleven o'clock
in the morning. B. is sitting up in his bed a few feet off, smoking a
pipe. We have just finished a light repast of--what do you think? you
will never guess--coffee and rolls. We intend to put the week straight
by stopping in bed all day, at all events until the evening. Two English
ladies occupy the bedroom next to ours. They seem to have made up their
minds to also stay upstairs all day. We can hear them walking about
their room, muttering. They have been doing this for the last
three-quarters of an hour. They seem troubled about something.
It is very pleasant here. An overflow performance is being given in the
theatre to-day for the benefit of those people who could not gain
admittance yesterday, and, through the open windows, we can hear the
rhythmic chant of the chorus. Mellowed by the distance, the wailing
cadence of the plaintive songs, mingled with the shrill Haydnistic
strains of the orchestra, falls with a mournful sweetness on our ears.
We ourselves saw the play yesterday, and we are now discussing it. I am
explaining to B. the difficulty I experience in writing an account of it
for my diary. I tell him that I really do not know what to say about it.
He smokes for a while in silence, and then, taking the pipe from his
lips, he says:
"Does it matter very much what you say about it?"
I find much relief in that thought. It at once lifts from my shoulders
the oppressive feeling of responsibility that was weighing me down.
After all, what does it matter what I say? What does it matter what any
of us says about anything? Nobody takes much notice of it, luckily for
everybody. This reflection must be of great comfort to editors and
critics. A conscientious man who really felt that his words would carry
weight and influence with them would be almost afraid to speak at all.
It is the man who knows that it will not make an ounce of difference to
anyone what he says, that can grow eloquent and vehement and positive.
It will not make any difference to anybody or anything what I say about
the Ober-Ammergau Passion Play. So I shall just say what I want to.
But what do I want to say? What can I say that has not been said, and
said much better, already? (An author must always pretend to think that
every other author writes better than he himself does. He does not
really think so, you know, but it looks well to talk as though he did.)
What can I say that the reader does not know, or that, not knowing, he
cares to know? It is easy enough to talk about nothing, like I have been
doing in this diary hitherto. It is when one is confronted with the task
of writing about _some_thing, that one wishes one were a respectable
well-to-do sweep--a sweep with a comfortable business of his own, and a
pony--instead of an author.
B. says:
"Well, why not begin by describing Ober-Ammergau."