UNDREAM’D OF SHORES
BOOKS BY FRANK HARRIS
OSCAR WILDE 2 volumes
CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS--Volume I
CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS-- ” II
CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS-- ” III
CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS-- ” IV
THE MAN SHAKESPEARE
THE WOMEN OF SHAKESPEARE
THE BOMB
ELDER CONKLIN
UNPATH’D WATERS
MONTES THE MATADOR
UNDREAM’D OF SHORES
UNDREAM’D OF
SHORES
BY
FRANK HARRIS
[Illustration:
NUNQUAM
DORMIO]
NEW YORK
BRENTANO’S
PUBLISHERS
Copyright, 1924, by
BRENTANO’S, +Inc.+
_All rights reserved_
First Printing, May, 1924
Second Printing, July, 1924
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
CONTENTS
PAGE
A MAD LOVE 3
AKBAR: “THE MIGHTIEST” 65
A FIT OF MADNESS 93
A CHINESE STORY 101
ST. PETER’S DIFFICULTY 141
LOVE IS MY SIN 147
AS OTHERS SEE US 177
A LUNATIC? 189
IN CENTRAL AFRICA 205
THE EXTRA EIGHT DAYS 251
THE GREAT GAME 261
THE TEMPLE TO THE FORGOTTEN DEAD 309
MY LAST WORD 336
A MAD LOVE
A MAD LOVE
A little more and how much it is;
A little less and what worlds away.
+Browning+
The scene, Vienna: the time, October in the early eighteen nineties.
I had been studying at the University a couple of semesters and had
fallen in love with the gay good-humoured capital. In the Laudonstrasse
I had two rooms and a bathroom. I put an Oriental rug or two in my
sitting-room and I had to laugh when the maid-servant, the first
time she came into the room, took off her boots for fear of hurting
the carpet. It was a symbol to me of the contrasts so characteristic
of Vienna between the primitive simplicity of a peasant folk and
the stately ceremonial of the Court and extravagant luxuries of the
nobility. The many-coloured cosmopolitan life drew me from my books;
and I am afraid I was a poor student.
One day, seduced by the beauty of the afternoon, I made up my mind
to take a long walk. I went down the Prater to the river. The great
drive spread before me, tempting me on, but I had started too late;
the carriages were all returning to the city at high speed; night was
drawing down and there was a premonition of rain in the air.
I had walked perhaps a quarter of a mile beside the river when my
attention was drawn to a Schutzmann who had gone over to wake a man on
one of the benches. He stood before the huddled-up figure, speaking to
it but getting no answer. I paused to see what he would do. He said
something more; still no reply. Shrugging his shoulders he went off
unconcernedly with the easy-going good nature of the Viennese. A glance
showed me a man with a greyish beard sleeping heavily. Exchanging a
smile of comprehension with the Schutzmann, I went on my way briskly,
hoping still to get a walk before it rained.
An hour later a slight wind had arisen, and the leaves began to whirl
down from the trees and a slow drizzle set in. The gay scene of the
afternoon, with the sparkling river and the stream of carriages and
well-dressed people, had all vanished, and as I walked back the
desolation of the autumn evening grew on me.
As I neared the town I thought of the wastrel on the bench, and when I
got opposite him I was struck by the fact that he did not seem to have
moved in the meantime; he was still huddled up in the corner, with his
head on his left arm; I could just distinguish the tuft of his beard.
“He’ll get wet,” I thought to myself; “I had better wake him.”
I went over and spoke to him, grasping his shoulder. No response: the
sleep was too profound. A vague disquietude came over me. I touched
his right hand, which was lying on his knee, and started back; it was
cold. Could the man be dead? I pushed his leg and it moved with my
hand; he was not dead, but sleeping the sleep of profound exhaustion.
I shook him vigorously, and after a moment or two he turned his head
and looked at me.
“Wake up,” I said, “you’ll catch your death of cold here.”
At first he did not answer. His face struck me. The eyes looking at me
were not large, but young and unfriendly keen, a light blue that went
with his rufous hair and bronzed complexion. The beard was reddish
grey and unkempt, but at the first glance I noticed his beaked nose
and strong, bony jaws--the face of a man of character, strong and
well-balanced. A small moustache shadowed the mouth; the lips were
well-cut, sensitive but not sensual. If this man had come to grief, I
said to myself, it was not through fleshly lusts. What could be the
cause?
He was not badly dressed. His hands were clean and cared for. Why did
he not speak?
“It is too cold and wet to sleep here,” I attacked again; “wake up; you
must feel cold already.”
“What is that to you?” he said slowly. “Leave me alone!”
“I was afraid you’d catch cold,” I stammered in surprise.
“And if I want to catch an everlasting cold, what’s that to you?”
I was nonplussed--the man’s language, the extraordinary resolution in
the toneless voice--all staggered me.
“I happened to touch your hand,” I said, “and found it cold, so I was
afraid you’d get really ill sleeping here in the wet.”
“Oh, be damned!” he barked, “I was happily unconscious till you called
me back to life. What possessed you? Couldn’t you leave me alone? I had
left all the misery of living behind; now it’s all to do over again. Go
away!”
“Will you, an educated man,” I said, “allow yourself to die here of
cold like a starved dog? Come, man, have another wrestle with Fate.”
He did not move, but simply looked at me. “I don’t want another
wrestle,” he said, in the same slow, toneless voice; “I am more than
half-way through. Leave me alone!”
“You are not half-way through,” I exclaimed, feigning a laugh. “You’ll
probably get pneumonia and have a dreadful month in a hospital.”
“I am cold all through already,” he said. “I have not eaten for a week.
Death is at my heart.”
I was young and have more than a grain of obstinacy in me; I could not
leave him to die.
“If I wanted to die,” I exclaimed, “I would take the pleasantest way
out.”
He didn’t even answer; his eyes closed as if weary.
I persisted. “I’d go out like an artist, warm and happy. I’d meet Death
rose-crowned like a conqueror.”
His eyes lightened, then his eyebrows went up and he made a motion with
his hand as to say: “Have it as you will.”
A passing fiacre stopped at my lifted hand.
“Come,” I said, “I have a few gulden to spare.”
“You will have to carry me,” he replied. “I’m stiff.”
His immobility struck me. He had not moved all the time we had been
talking. I put an arm round his waist and tried to lift him. The
driver, with the ready servability of the Viennese, had nipped down
from his box and now came across and helped me; with his aid we got the
man into the fiacre and I gave the driver my address.
On the way my strange companion said nothing; with shut eyes he leant
back in the cab. When we got to my lodgings, the _Kutscher_ sprang off
the box and came to the door.
“Can I help the gentleman?”
“I wish you would,” I replied; “it is only two flights up.”
In a few minutes we had got the man into my bed-room and put him in an
easy-chair.
“Go to the restaurant at the corner,” I said to the driver, “and get me
a bowl of hot soup, will you, and some hot water? I have brandy here,
and wine.”
“Certainly, sir,” he said, and hurried off immediately.
I got out some warm winter underthings and tried to get my friend’s
coat off, but found it very difficult. I went and got him a glass of
brandy, but the moment he tried to swallow it he sputtered it all out.
“I’m sorry,” he apologised, “it’s like liquid fire.”
I made it weaker with some water and gave it to him again and he got it
down, but the real help came when the coachman returned with some hot
soup and bread. I arranged it on a little table and the first spoonful
brought life back to the half-starved man. Meanwhile the coachman
busied himself by taking off the man’s boots and putting on a pair
of thick socks I handed him, and after the soup had taken effect we
managed to undress him and pack him away in the bed.
“You are all right now,” said the coachman, rubbing his hands; “you’ll
be asleep in five minutes. I wish I had such ’tendance.”
The hint was not lost on me. When paying him I gave him a glass of
brandy, for which he thanked me by calling me “Herr Baron”! with the
instinctive desire to please of the Viennese.
When he had gone I turned to the bed.
“I am not inclined to sleep,” said my friend. “And you don’t even know
my name.”
“There is time for that,” I replied.
“It wouldn’t convey anything to you,” he said; “nobody knows me here;
but my name is Hagedorn--Emanuel Hagedorn.”
“A long sleep will do you good,” I said; “if you let yourself go, you
will soon be asleep. To-morrow is another day.”
I took his clothes and boots into my little sitting-room and
closed the door. The boots, I found, were well made; the clothes
travel-stained, but good; they only needed brushing and pressing.
Meanwhile I would have to arrange a bed for myself in the sitting-room.
I went down to see the landlady and soon got everything in order.
Suddenly I remembered that I had not eaten, so I went out and had a
meal at the Friedenhof near by, where I sometimes went when the weather
was bad. When I came back my bed was made up on the sofa and a little
wood fire was burning on the hearth.
I listened at the door but heard nothing in the bedroom save regular
quiet breathing. Reassured, I went to sleep. In the morning I was up
early, but I had scarcely moved across the floor when I heard sounds in
the other room. At almost the same moment the maid knocked, bringing
coffee and bread and Hagedorn’s clothes. I called through the door,
“Good-morning!” and went on dressing.
Half-an-hour later there was a tap at my door and Hagedorn came in
quietly--self-possessed. As I stood up he nodded to me and we were for
a moment opposite each other. I caught my breath; he was so calm and
completely master of himself, without a trace of humility; there was an
air of assured strength about him that was imposing.
I pointed to the arm-chair near me and said: “Won’t you sit down?
Please throw off ceremony.”
He took the chair at once.
“How do you feel now?” I asked.
“Perfectly well,” he said; “without a trace of cold or even cough; I
never felt better. Fasting must be good for one. My head is perfectly
clear and I am fairly strong.”
“You will be better after a good meal,” I responded. “Where would you
like to dine?”
“It is a matter of indifference to me,” he said. “I am in your hands
in more senses than one, though I must warn you again, sooner or later
you will recognise that your help and kindness have been wasted. You
see,” he went on, “it was not a sudden resolve on my part, but a slowly
ripening resolution that still holds, though I recognise the sense of
what you said, that if one must kill oneself, one should choose the
pleasantest way. Very practical, you English.”
“I am not English,” I corrected, “but Celt, and not very practical, I
fear, but I feel that whoever wishes to swim can swim.”
He laughed grimly.
“Women float almost in spite of themselves,” he said--“fat hips and
small head; they are only pulled down by their clothes--vanity. The
athlete or thinker, head and muscles, goes under unless he swims; fat
floats.”
“What age are you?” I broke in. The night before I thought he was
fifty; now he looked much younger.
“Not thirty-four,” he replied. “You are astonished. My beard turned
grey in the last three or four months (he had shaved it off, I
noticed). It is hard to make up your mind to leave life; it costs
blood!”
“I don’t want even to hear the story yet,” I said. “I want you to have
a couple of days’ rest and get quite well and strong.”
“As you will,” he replied, “but you are warned.”
Two or three days passed, and as if by mutual consent we kept off the
topic that was in both our minds. I did not go to the University, but
instead took long walks with Hagedorn. It happened to be beautiful
weather, almost like an American fall with its bright sunshine but
softer, gentler skies, and the Viennese were gay and laughter-loving as
only Viennese can be. Hagedorn did not talk much, and yet he impressed
me as a man of real power. We went to the theatre almost every night.
When I proposed the Opera he shook his head. “I call it the house of
prostitution,” he said; “hateful, for it should be a temple.”
“Is it the operatic form you dislike,” I questioned, “or music?”
“Music is only in its infancy,” he remarked contemptuously, “and opera
is a bastard form.”
“What do you mean by infancy?” I asked.
He shrugged his shoulders and didn’t answer for a moment, and then
began:
“Did it never strike you that other arts, arts of seeing, like drawing
and painting, are universal; whereas music, the art of hearing, is
merely national, or, if you will, European? As soon as our artists
saw Chinese paintings and Chinese sculpture they recognised their
greatness; Chinese pottery, too, ranks above our own. Even Japanese
colour-prints revealed to us new decorative possibilities; painting is
an art with a universal appeal. But Music! Let a Chinaman listen to a
Wagner opera or a Beethoven symphony and he just shrugs his shoulders;
it’s all to him a medly of unpleasant or, at best, meaningless noises.
Go yourself to hear Japanese music and you will find nothing in it that
appeals to you. Music as yet is in its infancy and I don’t care to
listen to the babbling.”
This was not the first time the man had surprised me with new thoughts.
As he sat there, turned sideways in indifference, his face, I thought,
had the carved outlines and colour of a Venetian bronze. Every hour he
interested me more; he had taste in food and wine, I noticed, and the
manners of a great gentleman; he was surely “someone,” as the French
say.
A few days later we went to an open-air restaurant outside the town,
and after a good meal sat talking; or, rather, I talked about writing
and writers, in doubt whether I should ever do anything worth while.
Suddenly Hagedorn broke out:
“Why put off the day of reckoning? I could not be better than I am, and
you ought to know how hopeless this rescue work of yours is. I may even
be able to do you some good, show you how foolish the whole struggle
of life is, especially for the artist.”
Full of curiosity, I acquiesced.
“Let us walk back and talk it over,” I said. And back we went to my
rooms.
He took a cigar and I lit a cigarette, and we sat opposite each other
for what I felt was going to be an interesting talk, for in this week
or so of intimacy Hagedorn had made a profound impression on me; his
casual remarks were often original, indeed curiously provocative and
stimulating. He was a few years older than I, but he had the air of
being much older, much more experienced. He had evidently drunk deep of
life; I had barely sipped the cup; yet I resented a little the sort of
authority that sat naturally upon him.
“I want to tell you the whole story,” he began, “because you’ll
understand it. I am an artist and you are training yourself to be an
artist in words. It is we artists who come to the worst grief, not
because we are weak, as the Philistines imagine, but because our burden
is intolerably heavy--heavy, I often think, in proportion to our gifts.”
“What do you mean?” I exclaimed. “The burden should surely be light if
the gifts are great.”
He shrugged his eyebrows in a way he had of indicating polite tolerance
of my ignorance.
“You will hear,” he said.
“There are to my mind two sorts of artists. The best artists are great
men first and artists afterwards. You may have noticed that I did
not agree when you spoke of Beethoven and Wagner in the conventional
way. These men are both great because they were great men, not because
they’re great musicians. Wagner would have been, in my opinion, an even
greater writer than musician, if he had given himself to literature.
His early libretti are finer than his music.
“Then you have an artist like Franz Hals, who is a born painter, or
Watteau; his very colours please you like a child’s smile; there is
joy and beauty in the mere tints. Everyone can see that Watteau is
infinitely more gifted as a painter than Rembrandt; Rembrandt carries
it because he was the greater man.”
“How are you so sure he was the greater man?” I asked. “Where do you
find the shortcoming in Watteau?”
Hagedorn paused for a moment, then began: “Do you know his
_Embarquement pour Cythère_ in the Louvre?”
I nodded, and he went on:
“You have the advantage of me. I have only seen a print; but the motive
is that couples in love are going to sail to the Isle of Venus. The
first couples are away up on a hill in the right-hand corner of the
canvas; then to the left of them other pairs, and finally, down by
the water’s edge on the lower left side, the boat. But the procession
should have started from the left-hand top corner and gone down to the
right; our eyes, probably through reading, move more easily from left
to right. Had Watteau thought over the matter he could not have made
such a blunder in construction. The brain-work in Rembrandt is far
higher.”
“Of course, of course!” I cried. “A fair illustration.”
Hagedorn went on: “I often think a great painter should be able to
paint a wonderful picture by merely putting different colours on a
canvas without any representment of reality or likeness to the actual.”
“Then you’re a painter!” I cried.
“No, no!” he said. “I’m nothing. I was a musician with an extraordinary
gift. Whether I had any greatness in me, you will be able to judge
better than most; but I came to believe that I had.
“My father was a Kapellmeister in Salzburg; pure German, I believe. My
mother was a singer who lost her voice with me, her first child. She
must have been a Jewess, I think, but I never saw a pair that loved
and lived in such unison as my father and mother. No one could have
had a happier childhood than I. When I was six or seven they found out
I had a wonderful ear, and they tried to keep me away from music. My
father had a dread of precocity and infant prodigies. He always said
that Mozart would have lived much longer and done much better work if
he had not begun so early. He used to condemn our practice of starting
racehorses at two years of age; he thought if we started them at five
or six we should have better horses. And I dare say he was right. He
had brains, my father, and my mother agreed with him in everything and
always did what he wished.
“They sent me to school, and school was easy for me. I had a quick,
retentive memory and learned without trouble. I tell you all this not
to praise myself, but to make you understand the tragedy. Then I got
to know a shoemaker who lived near us who had a violin, and I used to
go round and play with him. I don’t know how I learnt, but I did. One
day my father, who had been first violin in the orchestra at the Opera,
took out his violin and played for us, I forget what. I was about ten.
I took the violin from him and began to play. You should have seen his
surprise and my mother’s pride, and my own gratified conceit. I shall
never forget that day! But Fate hates the favourites of Fortune!
“After that they set me free. My father was delighted to teach me
instrument after instrument, and I learnt three or four, including the
’cello and the piano.”
“Do you know four instruments?” I broke in.
“I can play any instrument,” he said carelessly.
“Good God!” I exclaimed, “and you found it difficult to make a living?”
“No, no!” he cried. “I never said that. I’ve found it difficult to
live, but I never had any difficulty in making a living. It’s our
dreams kill us. It is the heaven we see before us and cannot realise,
or the Paradise we’ve been driven out of, that makes life disgusting
to us and kills us. We artists die of our dreams as of the plague.”
“I do not understand,” I said. “Go on, please.”
“Let me come to the point at once,” he said.
“I am one of the few persons born with an ear for music; there are
not three in a generation; I’ve never met another. You don’t know why
or how Bach arranged his _wohl temperirtes Clavier_, do you? [I shook
my head.] It would take too long to explain; but the piano is still
imperfect. Take C sharp and D flat. They both sound the same to you;
but C sharp is twelve vibrations faster than D flat. I can hear them;
anyone can hear the difference on the violin. The violin can give you
the true note; the piano doesn’t; that’s why a great violinist is often
out of pitch with an orchestra, and why the only good music is that of
a string quartet.”
“But you,” I cried--“can you hear all that?”
“I have absolute pitch,” he replied. “You do not know what that means.
It means that between two notes that succeed each other you hear only
an interval. I know myriads of tones between them. Our musical notation
is all imperfect.
“Now, what does this imply? The painter is able to give you an idea of
any living thing at once in three or four strokes. He can show you the
difference between a woman’s figure and a man’s; between a cow and a
buffalo; between a lion and a tiger. He can represent anything he sees.
Why can’t the musician represent anything he hears? Why isn’t he able
to give you the songs of birds, the sound of the wind in the trees,
the long withdrawn rustle of the tide ebbing on a beach? Because music
is a half-art, and the sounds of Nature are infinitely too complex for
our silly scales.”
“But did not Wagner give us a storm at sea in _Der Fliegende
Hollaender_? And what of the ‘Waldvogel’ in _Siegfried_?” I asked.
Hagedorn laughed scornfully. “Talk to me of that storm; it’s childish.
And the ‘Waldvogel’! Why not ask a painter to paint the wood-beast?
He’d ask you, ‘Which one, squirrel or bear?’ The wood-bird is just
as ridiculous. Wagner had to use a flute for his bird’s note, simply
because there is a surface likeness between a blackbird’s song and a
flute, but the violin can give the tone much better if he had only
known it. Don’t let us talk of Wagner as a musician!
“Mascagni tried to give the nightingale in _Parisina_; the song went on
for forty-five minutes and was intolerably bad; they had to cut out the
bird. I gave that opera the name it’s known by now in Italy, ‘Opera a
forbici’--the opera with the scissors. Do you remember _The Creation_,
by Haydn, and the beasts in it? Isn’t that imitation ridiculous?”
I nodded.
“But can you render the nightingale’s song?” I probed.
He bowed his head. “So that any nightingale near will answer me at
once, even in broad daylight.”
“Good God!” I cried in utter astonishment.
“I can give you the music of the wind in the trees too,” he went on,
“or of the sea in storm or calm; I can imitate whatever I hear, exactly
as a draughtsman-artist can reproduce any form or any scene at will.”
“What a gift!” I cried again.
Hagedorn shrugged his shoulders. “That’s the alphabet of my art; but
the gift made me infinitely conceited, and was one cause of my undoing.
“My parents got so proud of me that they humoured me in everything. I
began to appear at concerts and to show off. My father did all he could
to hold me back; he kept me on at school till I was about fourteen, but
I would not hear of the university. I did not go through even the top
classes in the gymnasium. Life tempted me terribly and lessons were
intolerable to one who had tasted the heady wine of applause from great
audiences. Girls sought me out like moths seek a light, and I was eager
to meet them. I got into life too early, and drank too deep with that
desperate, unquenchable thirst of youth. I took double mouthfuls, as
the French say....
“The only thing except making love and kissing I would practise was
my violin, unless, of course, I was learning some new instrument; but
that was part of my showing off. I really had only to conquer the
little technical difficulties peculiar to each instrument, and almost
at once I was master of it. I knew its weaknesses and its powers by
instinct, and soon got to the end of them. But a violin--if you get
a good one--has hardly any limitations; its virtues are yours and its
shortcomings yours----”
“I would give anything to hear you play!” I exclaimed. “We must get a
violin. But I cannot afford a Stradivarius,” I added lugubriously. “I
am quite poor.”
“A Stradivarius is not needed,” he replied. “I can find a violin as
good as any Strad, here in Vienna in a week; the best things have few
lovers.”
“What would such a violin cost?” I asked.
“Oh! anywhere from fifty to two hundred kronen; it’s a matter of
chance; I may not find one in a month.”
“I will let you have the money,” I said. “I want to hear you play so
much. But weren’t you in request everywhere; weren’t you tempted at
every moment by big offers?”
“I was in Paris playing on my own hook,” he replied, “with an apartment
on the Grand Boulevard before I was seventeen. That same summer I
played at the Albert Hall in London. I do not need to tell you what my
_nom de théâtre_ was. It’s better forgotten. Gifts don’t matter; it is
by the soul alone we count.”
“But how did you come to grief?” I asked. “You had everything: health,
strength, fine presence, extraordinary talent; eminence in an art while
still a youth. What brought you to despair?”
“Looking back,” he said, “it seems to me that a good many causes
combined over several years; but I would prefer, if you are content, to
let you find out for yourself. The forces are all there still; they
are operating now as before, but I think you ought to be convinced
first that I am not bragging or extolling my powers unduly. If you’ll
buy me a violin, you’ll always get your money back for it, and a few
days’ practice will make it easy for me to show you what I can do.”
I gave him the money that same day, and for nearly a week afterwards
scarcely saw him, except at an occasional meal; then he appeared with a
violin.
“Fortune favoured me,” he said. “I’ve got an Amatis--as good an
instrument as one could wish to have; luck has always been with me. Now
if you are going regularly to your lectures I will practise here every
morning, and you can make any arrangements you like for hearing me
play, say, on Tuesday week, and I will try to show you that you did not
help a wastrel.”
Having started as a journalist in the States, I had formed connections
with some newspapers in Vienna and got to know a good many critics.
Since meeting Hagedorn I had talked to two or three of my journalist
friends about him, and now I told them of his extraordinary powers and
got them all intensely interested. I issued invitations for the next
Tuesday afternoon, and besought all the journalists I knew to bring any
real critics with them. They all told me they would turn up, and one in
particular, the best writer on a musical weekly, declared he would have
a great surprise for us; he would bring one of the greatest artists in
the world to hear my friend. I could not help going in and reading his
cordial, and kindly letter to Hagedorn, hoping it would excite him and
nerve him to do his very best. He listened to me reading the letter and
then said:
“I am glad for you, my friend; your probation won’t be long.”
“But you don’t see!” I exclaimed. “If this great musician takes you up,
swears you are extraordinary, anything, everything may come to pass.”
He shook his head. “It is not a cancer spot you can cut out,” he said,
“or a sore to cure. But I shall be ready. You’ll see. Only do not let
them see me or meet me. Keep them in the other room.”
I was a little surprised, but I arranged chairs in my sitting-room so
as to seat about twenty-five or thirty people.
When the great afternoon came I was intensely excited. The room was
crowded--forty people instead of twenty-five, and all on tiptoe of
expectance. Suddenly the musical critic entered, bringing with him
Joachim.
“I don’t need to introduce Joachim to you,” he said, “the greatest
violin player in the world.”
Of course I insisted on his taking the seat of honour, and I could not
help sneaking into the back room to tell Hagedorn that Joachim had come
to hear him. He smiled, but his eyes were sad, and I returned a little
chilled. He had given me the outline of the programme, and it ran
something like this:
1. A young nightingale learning to sing.
2. A nightingale after he has found his love.
3. How he should sing.
4. A Comment on Life.
I announced the first three, and we all sat down to listen in strained
attention. After a little pause the nightingale’s notes began to fall
like golden beads. At the first break in the voice--extraordinarily
lifelike--I saw Joachim start, and from that moment I knew Hagedorn had
conquered. There was a hush when he stopped playing, and after a moment
quiet applause--I had almost said reverent applause--silenced almost
immediately by new notes that rang out in a song of desire and joy.
Words cannot describe such sounds; at least I have no words to describe
them. I can be excused for not attempting a task beyond Shelley’s
powers. But as the music ceased Joachim jumped to his feet and silenced
the clapping.
“No applause,” he said; “let us hear the next; it is most astonishing.”
A moment or two later the next song began--what the nightingale should
sing. It went from panting desire to throbs of joy, and from joy to
triumph, and then came broken wailing notes caught up now and then with
faint reminders of the love-ecstasy. Then--abruptly--silence. Joachim
started to his feet again.
“He is not only a great master of the violin,” he said, “but a great,
great musician. Who is he? Please let me meet him.”
I stood between him and the door and told him that my friend did not
want to be known. The surprise, the admiration of all was manifest.
Everyone declared that the performance was wonderful, epoch-making. One
after the other found new words with which to praise the unknown master.
Suddenly Hagedorn began to play again. I announced “A Comment on Life.”
In absolute silence everyone began to listen.
What was he playing? It was all light and gay and hopeful, like a
spring morning, the joy mounting rapidly to passion and delight;
higher still to rapture, and then--idiot laughter tore the air! A
phantasmagoria began of all sorts of emotions mixed together--joy and
pleasure broken by dreadful, meaningless chucklings; moanings and
imprecations shrilled to shrieks and ravings, only to die away in
ghastly mutterings. We looked at each other; plainly the musician was
depicting a madhouse. Exquisite moments of joy and sighs of pleasure,
ending in howls of rage and ear-piercing screams--appalling! Then a
heavy silence!
No one applauded. I looked up. Joachim was shaking his head.
“Dreadful! Dreadfully painful,” he said. “Art must not give itself to
pain. What a pity! A most remarkable mastery. What a pity!” and he
hurried from the room. No wish to meet Hagedorn now. The men vanished
as quickly as they had come. One alone remained--a young fellow I had
scarcely noticed, a critic on a daily paper, since famous, then just
beginning to be known.
“Great work!” he cried to me. “Let them all go. I have listened to the
greatest violinist I ever expect to hear; greater than Joachim, greater
than anyone; a great original master; I must meet him!”
“Come and dine to-night and I will see if I can bring him,” I said.
“Tell him from me,” said the young man, “that I am on my knees before
him. He is a great, great man--astounding!”
When he had gone I hurried into the next room to see Hagedorn. He had
laid his violin on the bed and was seated in the arm-chair.
“You heard,” I said.
“Everything. Your Joachim was characteristic; true to type, as I knew
he would be. The limitations pleased him; my mastery of the instrument
even. He has some greatness in him; but the moment I showed him a
little more than he was prepared for--revolt, resentment--‘Art was not
made,’ if you please, ‘to give itself to pain.’ Instead of a madhouse I
ought to have given them a Jew’s view of heaven with golden streets and
pearly gates--a childish vision of a tawdry Paradise. But I hope you
are satisfied, my friend?”
“More than satisfied,” I replied. “Satisfied that everything you have
told me about yourself and your art is true; that you are the greatest
musician I have ever heard or expect to hear. I believe you are a
great man too, and I am infinitely sorry for you. You heard what young
Neumann said. Do you expect, out of forty fools, to get more than two
to see you as you are? I think this is the only city in the world in
which you could find two enthusiastic admirers!”
He put his hands on my shoulders.
“You are a great boy,” he said, “and if anybody could help me, you
would; but it’s too late, if indeed it were ever possible.”
That night young Neumann came to dinner and Hagedorn allowed me to
introduce him as the violinist. Neumann said everything I have said
here, and said it at far greater length and better, or at least more
enthusiastically. He admitted with gay laughter that if he had only
heard the madhouse thing he would not have come back for more, but he
declared that it seasoned the nightingale’s songs and formed the most
perfect contrast to them.
“I want you to play me the thing in all music I love best,” he said to
Hagedorn. “It’s the----”
“Stop!” cried Hagedorn. “Don’t say another word; don’t tell me what it
is.” And he went into the inner room and began to play.
“He has guessed right,” said Neumann, as the strains floated through
the room. And for a wonderful quarter of an hour we listened to the
love duet in the second act of _Tristan_, marvellously rendered,
perfectly, so that expectation was surpassed, desire sated.
When he came into the room again Neumann took his hands, with tears in
his eyes, and said simply:
“I cannot thank you. Words are nothing.”
“Let us go and dine,” I said, and we went out together. But during
dinner we were all very silent. There did not seem much to say, and
when we returned to the house and Neumann left us at the door, I could
only say to Hagedorn:
“It has been a great day for me, a great day.”
He nodded and went into his bedroom without a word, but I noticed now
that his face had something Sphinx-like in it; it was as if carved in
stone to endurance.
The next morning Neumann called, just as the coffee came.
“I have been up all night,” he said, “utterly unable to sleep. I could
scarcely wait till it was eight o’clock so that I might come round and
say that I put myself at your service. Whatever I can do in Vienna I
will do. You ought to have been known ten years ago from one end of the
world to the other. Give me the chance of telling Vienna who you are
and of showing them what you can do.”
Hagedorn smiled. “It is really kind of you,” he said. “Talk it over
with my friend here and decide whatever you please.”
“We must give a series of concerts,” cried Neumann in wild excitement;
“subscription concerts, half-a-dozen or a dozen, in a large hall, but
not too large. I know the very place. We will put the price high and
every seat will be filled, and after the first concert every ticket
will be worth fifty times its weight in gold. I know Vienna. It is not
deaf to genius. I feel sure of a triumph.”
“Not a dozen concerts,” interrupted Hagedorn. “Say three, if you like.”
“I want a crescendo effect,” argued Neumann. “Please give me six
concerts and write the programmes. I am sure you can do anything
you want to. Pick the musicians you care to honour and give their
little-known pieces. Only play one or two of your own things in each
concert. Match yourself with the greatest. I tell you, man, it will be
a triumph!”
It was good to hear him. That was what I felt too. Surely, surely it
was possible to save such an extraordinary genius.
We soon found that our task was going to be an easy one. Neumann got
the hall and Hagedorn gave me the programmes for three concerts. He had
headed them: “Old Masters”; “Modern Masters”; “The Future.” Neumann
begged for more, but he shook his head.
“I want to repay my friend here,” he said. “That’s all.”
Neumann declared that with six concerts we would make fifty thousand
kronen--a sum far beyond our hopes or wishes--but he begged so hard
that at length Hagedorn consented. I did not interfere with a word.
I had already grown doubtful of my right to interfere: “_The heart
knoweth its own bitterness._”
Finally they settled on four concerts. I could scarcely wait for the
first one. At Neumann’s request Hagedorn had made the programmes
very long. He began by playing some well-known things from Bach,
and insisted on playing them on the instrument for which they were
intended--the harpsichord. In his hands the little tinkling instrument
became a wonder, and for the first time in my life a fugue of Bach
showed itself as an exquisite thing, a jewel as beautiful as a sonnet
of Wordsworth--divine music, impeccably perfect.
Then he played Beethoven’s _Sonata_ in B flat: we all had heard it
again and again. I had never realised it was so wonderful. Then Mozart,
grace and sweetness and joy incarnate.
And then Wagner; the famous passage in the _Meistersinger_ that is,
after all, the great egotist’s own trial and supreme triumph.
They were all rendered as I have never heard them rendered before or
since, and the audience was enthusiastic as only a Viennese audience
can be. For ten minutes the whole programme was interrupted while
men stood on their chairs and women clustered together like a flock
of doves in front of the platform applauding, laughing, chattering,
crying. Really, they seemed to know how great a man he was.
When the women began to crowd into the aisle Hagedorn left the stage.
He had insisted upon not even giving his name; the concert was given by
“a musician.” Only Neumann and I were on the stage, and I went out with
Hagedorn.
When the tumult subsided he came in again and began to play on the
violin. First a fugue almost like one of Bach’s. Then he gave us
imitations of various masters, almost as beautiful as the originals.
Then a pause, and he began a lark’s song. Just a lark’s song some
summer morning on a sun-bathed down or upland. What a song! The soul
of joy was in it; it was simply irresistible. When he had finished
and had bowed and walked off the stage, the audience went mad. In two
minutes they had crowded on to the stage. They must see him and speak
to him. But when I went out to get him I found he had left the theatre.
I went back and told the people that it was impossible to find him. The
afternoon papers told us that the price of the remaining seats for the
next three concerts had trebled. Neumann was more than delighted.
“Let me see him,” he cried.
“Go and find him,” I said. “You may have more influence with him than I
have. I want him encouraged.”
“Encouraged!” exclaimed Neumann. “He must need a lot of encouragement
if such appreciation is not enough for him,” and away he went.
When I got home I found Hagedorn had not yet returned. He came in
quietly, about half-past six, and we went out to dinner. I had never
known him more depressed.
“All this enthusiasm has made no difference to you?” I asked.
He shook his head, and his eyebrows went up.
“The price of the seats has trebled,” I went on.
He shrugged his shoulders.
“But why, why are you so hopeless?” I cried. “Neumann says he has never
seen such enthusiasm. The director of the Opera House has written to
him, asking for your name and address. It seems his wife and daughter
were in the audience and are wild with admiration.”
Hagedorn shook his head. “I’ve had it all before,” he said, “ten years
and more ago. Praise does not satisfy the heart, my friend. Life to me
is like an obscene monkeys’ cage: I could give you the gibberings and
scratchings, the rages and sensualities; but what good would it all
do?...
“When I was able to take life seriously, able to hope and enjoy, I
failed; the audiences never wanted the best in me, never; but the
imitations and childish things. I went on, in spite of the growing
conviction that I was born out of due time. Five hundred years hence
someone will come who will do my work, and find perhaps half-a-dozen
who know him and want him; to-day it is too soon, and I have no wish to
encourage or help men; I’m sick of them and their sordid squalor and
soulless stupidity.
“Life tests all of us to breaking-point,” he went on, after a long
silence. “I know now that the road I trod is the upward road and has
been travelled by all who grow. The higher we climb in this world’s
esteem the heavier our fall. You remember the text in the Bible, _Those
whom he loveth he chasteneth._ It is so true, that; divinely true.
Those whom he loveth he chasteneth, continually, perpetually, without
let-up, to the very limit of their endurance. To those whom He hates He
gives everything, lavishly, and then the fall is--fatal. ’Twas here in
Vienna I met my fate: you may as well hear the whole story now, though
it’s not worth the telling....
“I used to send my mother newspaper clippings of my triumphs, and for
one reason or another she was always calling me back to her, always
wanting me near her. Her mother’s heart was full of apprehension;
perfect love is one with fear. Well, I came back to her more than once
to rest and recruit. But I no longer shared their religious belief (my
mother had long before accepted my father’s Lutheranism), and that
made a coolness. Besides, the hope of the ideal always tempted me away
again, and a year or so later I would return again to see her and to
brag.
“When I was about twenty-two or three I stayed away some years--a
foolish, light love affair in Paris that ripened me--but again I
returned just before I was twenty-six with two hundred thousand gulden
in the bank. I was rich: I loved horses and drove them in the Prater
where you found me! drove them tandem, drove four-in-hand, and
generally had a pretty girl beside me on the box seat.
“When I went to the Opera I used to go behind the scenes and brag to my
heart’s content. With that charming humour of the Viennese they would
push me on the stage to play something in the middle of an opera. No
one could have been more favoured than I: and then without warning--my
fate.
“One evening I was at a loose end. I did not know what to do with
myself or where to go. I had just got rid of a girl who was plaguing me
with her love which I had tired of; it was too complete, had no limit,
no sparkle; nothing bores like meek adoration.
“I had been dining at a restaurant in the Ringstrasse when a couple of
men came up to me, one a journalist named Goldescu, and the other a
musical critic on some paper; I forget his name. They were wild to take
me to see a dancer--‘as great a dancer,’ Goldescu said, ‘as you are a
musician. She will be on to-night for half-an-hour.’
“I had nothing to do and nothing better to propose, so I went with
them. It was a little restaurant in the Rumanian quarter--a cellar
in fact, long, low and no doubt dark in the daytime. We went down a
dozen steps to it. A crowd of common people sat about drinking the
sour Rumanian wine, Dragasan. The first phrase I heard was ‘Datche me
vin’--almost pure Latin. Rumania was a Roman colony under Trajan.
“The proprietor played the Rumanian national instrument, the Kobza, a
sort of cross between the guitar and mandolin, and as I got accustomed
to the smoke I saw that there was a low stage at the far end of the
room. It might have been six or eight feet deep and perhaps a foot
high, with a green baize curtain in front of it. No pretence of
footlights except two gas-jets in the corners and one in the middle.
“I could not drink the common wine, but the proprietor began to treat
us with a good deal of politeness and soon brought me a Tokai which was
excellent--one of the great wines of the world.
“My friends talked. Goldescu was a clever fellow and interested me,
perhaps because he was of a different race, and too cynical even to
believe in virtue, much less seek it.
“After trying to eat one of their strange salads I asked when the show
was going to begin, and the proprietor told me he would bring Marie
on as soon as he could, but she did not usually appear till eleven
o’clock. There was a comic singer who bored me to extinction, and
then the proprietor came out beaming: ‘She has come and will appear
immediately.’
“I drew my chair clear of the table so as to have an uninterrupted view
down the middle of the room. The curtains were drawn aside and we saw
a small girlish figure on the stage; Goldescu had said something about
her being a Jewess; but she was not of the Jewish type, I thought.
Her nose was small and straight; true, her eyes were large and dark
and her hair black; but her lips, too, were refined and pretty;
and with a certain sense of colour contrast she had thrown yellow
veils about her. She was just pretty, I concluded; very pretty even,
but nothing more. I had seen more beautiful women, but--there was
something provocative-intense about her, besides a dainty aloofness and
self-possession.
“The music began--a sort of slow, vague theme, and Marie began to
dance; at first very slowly, gracefully; and as she danced she
discarded veil after veil. The music took on character. I began to see
that it was a sort of representation of love, such a theme as you might
witness any evening at the Opera, only there was no pirouetting here,
or fast little runs and poisings on a toe; nothing acrobatic; simply at
first lithe swayings, hesitations and refusals--reserve apparent always
and a sort of fugitive grace; then the yielding little by little, the
figure growing clearer and clearer as the veils went, till she stood
outlined before us, and reached complete abandonment by sinking down
and backward on the stage with outstretched arms while the curtains
drew together shutting her off.
“It was charming, graceful, clothed with beauty and the modesty of
art. The applause was tremendous; they called for the dance again
and again, but no one came. We called too, and applauded loudly,
insistently. At length the proprietor went behind the scenes but came
back disconsolate. Marie refused to do anything more or to come out.
She would bow to the audience when she was dressed and that was all.
“I don’t know how it was, but the simplicity of her methods grew upon
me. She was a real artist; her form more perfect even than her face.
For some reason or other, in my Uebermuth (I was very arrogant), I
thought I would bring her out, so I went over and took a violin from
one of the musicians. The proprietor, divining my intention, drew the
curtains aside and I stepped on the stage and began to play. I first
played some imitations of birds and then a love improvisation giving
the spirit of her dancing. I had never played better. Still she did not
appear. I put down the instrument and went off with my friends, content
never to see the place again or the little Rumanian girl.
“The days passed into weeks; it annoyed me to realise that I could not
forget the dancer or blot her from memory. Often I asked myself what
was the secret of her influence; why did she live with me when more
beautiful women were quickly forgotten? I could never find an answer.
Time and again I was on the point of asking Goldescu to bring about
a meeting and introduce me; but I disliked the cynical effrontery of
the fellow and hated even to think of him in connection with Marie’s
reserved beauty and charm.
“One day I met him walking with a girl. I saw the grace of her before
I recognised who it was, and from some way off I noticed how people
turned to look at her. When Goldescu introduced us she exclaimed:
“‘I hope you don’t mind my disappearing the other evening. If you had
stopped after your imitation of the lark I would have come out to meet
you. I wanted to tell you how wonderful that bird’s song was; but you
rendered the very soul of my dancing with your music and that broke me
all up. I could not come out in that _bouge_ with red eyes.’
“‘Very human, these artists,’ cried Goldescu in a comic voice, and we
both had to smile.
“‘He’s an artist,’ she said, ‘but I’m only a half-artist, an executant;
my body’s my instrument; it happens to be a good one, but if it were
a poor one I could do nothing; whereas he doesn’t depend on the
instrument at all; his art is in his soul.’
“‘Charming of you,’ I protested, ‘but unjust to yourself. You rendered
love delightfully. ’Twas like the _Cherubino_ of Mozart; a quality of
youth in it, of freshness and a hint of mature passion as well--an
entrancing mixture.’
“She flushed slightly. ‘You don’t know how good it is to be praised
by you,’ she said simply, giving me her eyes. ‘If I could be deceived
about myself your praise would do it, but--but----’
“‘What does the “but” mean?’ I asked.
“She pointed. ‘We women always want perfection; don’t praise me then.
I am curious about you. You carry one’s soul away by your playing, but
who are you, _you_? You seem too young to have climbed the heights.’
“‘Age is not a matter of years,’ I replied. ‘I’m as old as Time.’
“‘A great phrase,’ she cried delightedly, ‘and true. Oh, if only----’
“‘If you two want to make love,’ Goldescu interrupted, ‘why select the
street?’
“She shrank at that; so I raised my hat and said: ‘Please let me know
where you dance next and I’ll come.’
“I went; her eyes told me she understood that I could not bear our
feeling to be cheapened by the Jew’s appraisement.