Standing at the window of my hotel in Stuttgart, I watched a crowd
before the Central railway station. Evidently something important was
about to take place. What! Only the day previous all Stuttgart had
strained its neck staring at a big Zeppelin air-ship. It was the week
of the Gordon Bennett balloon race and every hotel, every
lodging-house was full. It was also the Richard Strauss festival week,
with the formal inauguration of the two magnificent opera-houses in
the Schlossgarten. So it was not difficult to guess that an important
visitor was due at the station. Hence the excitement, which increased
when the King of Wuertemberg dashed up in an open carriage, the royal
livery and all the rest making a brave picture for his loyal subjects.
I've seen several kings and kaisers, but I've never seen one that
looked "every inch a king." The German Kaiser outwardly is a
well-groomed Englishman; Franz Josef of Austria--I've not met him
since 1903, when our carriage wheels locked and he, a lovable old man,
gallantly saluted my companion--he is everything but kingly; the late
King Edward when at Marienbad was very much the portly type of
middle-aged man you meet in Wall Street at three o'clock in the
afternoon; while William II of Wuertemberg is a pleasant gentleman,
with "merchant" written over him. It is true he is an excellent man of
affairs, harder working than any of his countrymen. He is also more
democratic, and with his beloved Queen daily promenades the streets,
lifting his hat half the time in response to the bowings and scrapings
of patriotic Swabians.
The train arrived. The crowd grew denser. Zealous policemen
intercepted passers-by from coming too close to the royal equipage; an
old peasant woman carrying a market-basket was nearly guillotined by
the harsh reproaches of the officers. She stumbled, but was shunted
into the background just as the King reappeared in company with Prince
August, greeted with wild cheering. The crowd, its appetite increasing
by what it had fed on, remained. What next? Ah! The personal servants
and valets of the youthful aristocrat from Berlin emerged from the
station and entered a break. No baggage as yet. "Drat the folk!" I
exclaimed, "why don't they clear out and leave the way for
pedestrians." But it was not to be. A murmur arose when finally a
baggage-wagon decked by the royal colours appeared. Trunks were piled
on it, and only when it disappeared did the crowd melt. I thought of
Gessler's cap on the pole and William Tell. Curiosity is perhaps the
prime root of patriotism.
Finally, as too much Strauss palls, also too much Stuttgart. I first
visited the pretty city in 1896 en route to Bayreuth, and on my return
to New York I remember chiding Victor Herbert for leaving the place
where he had completed his musical education. He merely smiled. He
knew. So do I. A Residenzstadt finally ends in a half-mad desire to
escape; anywhere, anywhere, only let it be a big town where the
inhabitants don't stare at you as if you were a wild animal. Stuttgart
is full of stare-cats (as is Berlin for that matter). And those hills
that at first are so attractive--they hem in the entire city, which is
bowl-shaped, in a valley--become monotonous. They stifle you. To live
up there on the heights is another thing; then the sky is an
accomplice in your optical pleasures, but below--especially when the
days are rainy and the nights doleful, as they are in November--oh,
then you cry: Let me see once more summer-sunlit Holland and its wide
plains punctuated only by church spires and windmills!
Otherwise Stuttgart is an easy-going spot. It's cheaper than Dresden
or Munich (though it was expensive during the Strauss week); the
eating at the restaurants is about one-half the price of first-rate
establishments in New York (and not as good by a long shot); lodgings
are also cheap, and often nasty--Germany is not altogether hygienic,
notwithstanding her superiority over America in matters musical; but
the motor-cars are simply miraculous to the New Yorker accustomed to
the bullies, bandits, and swindlers who pretend to be chauffeurs in
our metropolis. For twenty-five cents you can ride nearly a half-hour
in Stuttgart in cars faultlessly conducted. A two and a half hours'
trip round the town--literally--in the hills, through the park cost
seven marks (one dollar and seventy-five cents)--and even then the
driver was distinctly apologetic when he showed his register.
Stuttgart, oddly enough, is a centre for all the engraving, etching,
and mezzotint sales. I say, oddly, because the art museum contains the
worst collection of alleged "old masters" I ever encountered off Fifth
Avenue. Hardly an original in the whole lot, and then a third-rate
specimen at that. But the engraving cabinets and the Rembrandt
original drawings are justly celebrated. And now with the two new
theatres, or opera-houses, Stuttgart ought soon to forge to the front
as an art centre in Germany. Thanks to its energetic King and
cultivated Queen.
The question with which I began this little talk--is Richard Strauss
retrograding in his art?--may be answered by a curt negative. One
broadside doesn't destroy such a record as Richard's. Like that
sublime bourgeois Rubens, like that other sublime bourgeois Victor
Hugo, like Bernini, to whose rococo marbles the music of Richard II
is akin, he has essayed every department of his art. So expressive is
he that he could set a mince-pie to music. (Why not, after that
omelette in Ariadne?) So powerful is his imagination that he can paint
the hatred of his epical Elektra or the half-mad dreams of Don
Quixote. He is easily the foremost of living composers, and after he
is dead the whirligig of fortune which has so favoured him may
pronounce him dead for ever. But I doubt it.