No, I confessed to myself, I had not been to the circus for at least
three decades. Critics are tame cats away from their regular guests.
In the concert-room or at the play, armed with our little hammers, we
are as brave as plumbers; but on a roof garden, in church, at a circus,
or innocently slumbering, we are the mildest gang of pirates that
ever scuttled an American sonata or forced ambitious leading-ladies
to walk the plank. We may go alone to the theatre with impunity and
another fellow’s girl, but at the circus we need a nurse to show us the
ropes and keep us from falling under the elephants’ hoofs. A private
nurse--not necessarily old--say I, is the only safety for a critic out
of his element; otherwise a sense of the dignity of our calling is not
maintained.
Therefore, I swallowed my Chopin scheme without undue fervor and went
to the circus. No matter which one. All circuses are in an attractive
key to me. Thackeray said the same thing about the play, and said
it better. Any circus will serve as a peg for my sawdust symbolism.
Any Garden will do, so that it has a capitalized initial letter. (No
allusion to Magical Mary.) The circus! What a corrective for the
astringent Ibsen or the morbidezza of Sarmatia’s sweet singer, Chopin!
The circus. It is a revelation. One thing I regretted--that I could not
be a boy again, with dirty hands, a shining brow, and a heart brimming
over with joy. Peter Pan! Oh! to recapture that first careless rapture,
as Browning or some other writing Johnny said; surely he must have
meant the circus, which is the one spot on our muddy planet where
rapture rhymes with the sawdust ring.
“Have you ever seen Hedda Gabler?” I asked of the Finland giantess. We
were wedged in front of the long platform at the Garden, upon which
were the Missing Link, the Snake-Enchantress, the Lion-Faced Boy,
the English Fat Girl--so fat--the Human Skeleton, the Welsh Giant,
the Lilliputians, tattooed men, a man with an iron skull, dancers,
jugglers, gun-spinners, “lady” musicians, and the three-legged boy.
Eternal types at the circus. The noise was terrific, the air dense
with the aura of unwashed humanity. This aura was twin to the aura
in a monkey-house. But I enjoyed my “bath of multitude,” as Charles
Baudelaire names it, and I should not have bothered the tall creature
with such an inept question. She coldly regarded me:
“No, I haven’t seen Hedda to-day, but I remember George Tesman always
teased her with one question, ‘What do you know about that, Hed?’ Shoo!
Sardou for mine.” “Do you read George Blarney Shaw?” I persisted. “He
ought to be in a cage here. He would draw some crowds. But I’m told he
lives in Germany now on account of the beer.” I backed away quickly as
an East Side family consisting of a baker’s dozen would allow. Why had
I asked such a question of a perfect stranger? This giantess, I mused
before the rhinoceros with the double prongs, is Finnish. That’s why
she knew the name of Hedda Gabler. Why didn’t I speak of Rosmersholm?
Rebecca West had Finnish blood in her veins. Careful, careful--this
Ibsen obsession must be surmounted, else I shall be inquiring of the
giraffe if neck or nothing is the symbol of Brand. All or Nothing! of
course. How stupid of me. Among the animals I regained my equilibrium.
Their odors evoked memories. Yes, I recalled the old-time circus, with
its compact pitched canvas tent on North Broad Street, Philadelphia;
the pink lemonade, the hoarse voice of the man who entreated us to buy
tickets--there were no megaphones in those days--the crisp crackling
of the roasting peanuts, the ovens revolved by the man from Ravenna,
the man from Ascoli, and the man from Milan. They followed the circus
all the way from Point Breeze, and I swear they were to me far more
human than the policemen who gently whacked us with their clubs when we
crawled under the tent.
The sense of smell is first aid to memory. As I passed the cages
saluting our pre-Adamic relatives, bidding the time of day to the
zebu, nodding in a debonair fashion to the yak, I could not help
longing for my first circus. Again I saw myself sitting in peaceful
agony on a splintery plank; again I felt the slaps and pinches of
my tender-hearted Aunt Sue--now in Paradise, I hope; again my heart
tugged like a balloon at its moorings as the clowns jumped into the
ring, grimacing, chortling, and fascinating us with their ludicrous
inhumanity.
Other days, other ways. I sighed as I tore myself loose from the
prehensile trunk of a too friendly baby elephant and passed into the
huge auditorium where Gilmore had played. Ah! the sad, bad, glad, dear,
dead, tiresome, poverty-stricken, beautiful days when we were young
imbeciles and held hands with a fresh “ideal” every week (sometimes
two). Ah! the sentimental “jag” induced by peanut eating, and the
chaste, odoriferous apes.
It is time. We seat ourselves. I look about me. Two resplendent
gentlemen wearing evening clothes at high noon, after the daring
manner of our Gallic cousins, toll a bell. I became excited. Why those
three-and-thirty strokes? What the symbolism! Chopin, or Ibsen; again,
I groaned, and turned my attention to my neighbors, one of whom I could
feel, though did not see. I raised my voice, employing certain vocables
hardly fit to print. The effect was magical. “Johnny, take your feet
out of the gentleman’s collar. That’s a good boy.” It was the soothing
voice of a mother. Bless her clairvoyance! I sat comfortably back in my
seat. Johnny howled at the interference with his pleasure. I felt sorry
for him. Childhood is ever individualistic, even pragmatic. But I only
had one collar with me, and it was well the matter ended thus.
Hurrah! Here they come! A goodly band. The clowns! the clowns! Some
hieratic owl of wisdom has called the clown the epitome of mankind.
He certainly stands for something, this “full-fledged fool,” as good
old Tody Hamilton used to write, and “surcharged with the Roe of
Fun,” which phrase beats Delaware shad. Odds fish! There was only one
Hamilton. What a Rabelaisian list of names boast these merry clowns!
If the years have passed over the skulls of these lively rascals, the
jolly boys do not show them. The same squeaks, the identical yodling,
the funny yet sinister expression of the eyes, the cruel, red-slitted
mouths--not a day older than ten did I seem as they came tumbling in
and began their horse-play, punctuated with yelling, yahoo gestures,
ribald ejaculations, and knock-about diversions. It must all mean
something, this hooting, in the economy of the universe, else “life
is a suck and a sell,” as Walt Whitman puts it. As in a dream-mirror
I saw Solness slowly mount the fatal tower when Hilda Wangel cries
to him: “My--my Master-builder!” She sings The Maiden’s Wish, and he
hears the harps of Chopin hum in the air. I rub my ears. It is not
Hilda who is crying, but a pet pig in a baby carriage, wheeled by a
chalk-faced varlet. How difficult it is to escape the hallucinations of
the critical profession. I couldn’t forget Chopin or Ibsen, even at the
circus.
It was a relief, after more bellmanship from the man with the shiny
silk hat and spiked coat, when the elephants majestically entered.
Followed the horses. Tumblers and wire-walkers, women who stood
on their heads and smiled--as they do in life, something like the
“inverted pyramid,” as James Hinton called modern civilization--plastic
poseurs, Oriental jugglers, the show was let loose at last. Human
projectiles were launched through mid air to the tap of a drum. My
nerves forbade me to look at them, so I read a programme advertisement
of wallpaper for bathrooms. Some people like such horrible sights. I
do not. They dare not precisely formulate to themselves the wish that
“something” would happen, and if it does they shudder with sadistic
joy. I close my eyes when the Whirl of Death or any other sensational
act is staged. “Something” might happen.
The mad dancers delight our rhythmic sense as they make marvellous
arabesques. The chariot races stir the blood. The crash around curves,
the patters of gleaming metal excite so that you stand up, and,
brushing the feet of inevitable Johnny from your neck (notwithstanding
his remonstrances), you shout with woolly mouth and husky voice.
Instinctively you turn down your thumbs: “Pollice verso,” which Bayard
Taylor translated “the perverse police.” You remember the Gérôme
painting?
“This beats Ibsen,” I hilariously exclaimed to Johnny’s mother. (She
was a comely matron.) “His name is John, and when he gets home his
father will beat him,” she tartly replied. With the prevoyance of
boyhood Johnny burst into despairing howls. I at once folded up my
mind. A million things were happening in the haze of the many rings.
The New Circus is polyphonic, or naught.
Enough! Filled to the eyes with the distracting spectacle, ear-drums
fatigued by the blare and bang of the monster brass band, my collar
quite wilted by Johnny’s shoemaker, my temper in rags because of the
panting, struggling army of fellow beings, I reached the avenue in
safety, perspiring, thirsty, unhappy. Like Stendhal, after his first
and eagerly longed-for battle with love, I exclaimed: “Is that all?” In
sooth, it had been too much. The human sensorium is savagely assaulted
at the twentieth century circus. I was in pessimistic enough humor to
regret the single ring, the antique japes of a solitary clown, and
the bewitching horsemanship of Mlle. Leonie, with her gauze skirts
and perpetual rictus. As a matter of fact, we wouldn’t endure for
five minutes the old-fashioned circus and its tepid lemonade. Where
are the mullygrubs of yesteryear? But the human heart is perverse. It
always longs for the penny and the cake in company, while ineluctable
destiny separates them ever. Perhaps my editor was right. Render unto
Chopin the things that are Chopin’s; send Ibsen back to his Land of the
Midnight Whiskers. Smell the sawdust at the Garden, not forgetting
that the chilly, dry days are at hand when even Panem et Circenses
shall be taboo; when pipe and prog and grog will be banned; when these
United States shall have been renamed Puritania; when a fanatically
selfish minority shall take all the joy from life. Ergo, carpe diem! I
thank you.
XIV
CARUSO ON WHEELS
That trip was all the fault of Billy Guard, better known to the musical
world as Signor Guglielmo Guardi--though no relative of the famous
painter of Venetian waterscapes by the same name; it is even rumored
that Guardi originally hails from the “Quid Dart,” but that knotty
question will be solved, no doubt, by future historians. He is none
the less 110-percent American in the shade. However, to my story. I
was standing in the concourse of the Pennsylvania Station when Billy
interrupted my meditation on the evils of near-beer. “Are you going
with us?” he hospitably inquired. I was about to board the regular
three o’clock train to Philadelphia and I cheerfully accepted his
invitation. And then something happened. Not far from us a circle
of spectators enclosed as a focal point the natty person of Enrico
Caruso and a Red Cross girl. Evidently curiosity had ascended to the
blood-heat mark of the human thermometer. With difficulty was the mass
kept from swamping the border of safety, and, literally, embracing the
well-beloved Italian tenor. What was he doing in such a place at the
uncanny hour of 2.30 P. M.? Singers operate their throats all night
and sleep out the daylight. It was not difficult to guess that he was
going to Philadelphia on the Metropolitan Opera House Special, which
during the season leaves every Tuesday afternoon at 2.54, returning
some time after 2 o’clock the next morning. The present intermezzo
piqued my interest. I shouldered my diminutive frame through the mob,
exclaiming, “Tickets, please!” and because of this official camouflage
soon reached the centre of attraction. Attired in garb of fashionable
hue and cut, Signor Caruso held earnest converse with a pretty Red
Cross nurse, whose face beamed with joy. Something had been given which
pleased her sense of the fitness of things, and later I heard that
Caruso had enrolled the names of his two sons as members of the Red
Cross Association; both lads were then fighting in the Italian army;
Caruso is patriotic.
“Say, ain’t dat guy Caroos?” was asked of me by one of the chaps at
the news-stand. “Doesn’t he get ten thousand dollars a night?” he
further queried. “More,” I replied. “Well, he don’t look it,” came the
unexpected comment. Young America thus paid tribute to the absence
of fuss and feathers in the personality of the singer. It is true
Caruso does not look like the typical tenor of Italian opera, nor does
he behave like one. There he was, happy as a boy out on a lark, the
dingy December day not depressing him, and his spirits so high that
we expected him to waltz with that gentle nurse on the finest dancing
esplanade in the world. Nor did the young lady seem averse from the
diversion. To the disappointment of the crowd--by this time grown to
monstrous size--Caruso did not dance, contenting himself with lustily
carolling a basketful of precious high notes as he descended to his
drawing-room car. Manager Gatti-Casazza would have shuddered if he
had been present. His supreme vocal planet prodigally wasting his
golden wind in a hall bigger than the Metropolitan Opera House and
no box-office in view! Besides, it was flying in the face of nature.
Tenors always bundle up to the eyebrows; they do not speak, much less
vocalize, and usually are as cross as the proverbial bear. Caruso, who
has defied doctors and vocal hygiene since he opened his magical mouth,
is a false beacon to other singers. His care-free behavior should be
shunned by lesser men who attempt to bend the bow of this great singing
Ulysses.
But Caruso is careful about tobacco. He does not enter the compartment
where others smoke. He prefers the odor of his own choice cigarettes. I
never saw him without one, either in mouth or fingers. The despair he
is of any throat specialist. He sits in company with his old friend,
Signor Scognomillo, otherwise the Man-Mountain. Sits and smokes. He
is to sing and so he doesn’t talk, only smokes, or makes caricatures.
Returning is another tale. In hilarious mood, he orders carte-blanche
supper for the chorus. He plays pranks on his fellow passengers. Even
that most potent, grave, and bearded Signor, Manager Gatti, is forced
to smile. Caruso is irresistible. He recalls the far-away days when
he sang two operas every Sunday in the Teatro Mercadante at Naples
or the good old summer-time at Salerno, when, during entr’actes, he
would drop a string from his dressing-room window and draw up the
fond prize--sardine and cream-cheese sandwiches. He was thin in those
youthful days, and thin boys always have hollow legs that must be
filled. Prosperity has not spoiled Caruso. He is human and tolerant,
with a big heart, and he is devoid of professional megalomania. In
common with oldsters I have railed betimes at altered musical tastes
and often declared that in the days of my youth there were better
singers. I still abide by this belief. There were vocal giants in those
days; but there was not Enrico Caruso.
Since my dear old friend Italo Campanini there has been no one to
match Caruso. Italo was a greater actor, indeed more versatile. His
Lohengrin, the first I ever heard, I shall never forget. Mr. Finck is
happy in his suggestion that Caruso add Lohengrin to his long list
of operatic portraits. I have heard tenors from Brignoli to Gayarre,
from Campanini to Tamagno, Masini and Nicolini--this second husband of
Aunt Adelina Patti wasn’t such a mediocrity as represented by some
critics; he suffered only from contiguity to a blazing star of the
first magnitude--yet no one possessed a tithe of the vocal richness of
Camerado Enrico. Some have outpointed him in finesse, Bonci; Tamagno
could have outroared him; Jean de Reszke had more personal charm and
artistic subtlety; nevertheless, Caruso has a marvellous natural voice,
paved with lyric magic. It is positively torrential in its outpouring,
and with the years it grows as mellow as a French horn. Why, there
are men in this vast land of ours who would rather be Caruso than the
President of the United States of Europe. Can you blame them? In his
golden prime, happily mated, full of verve, gayety--and healthy--well,
his presence, apart from his art, consoles us for many a gray day on
this ocky little orb we inhabit.
The recognition of personality has become in my “middle-years” a
veritable obsession. With Henry James I could say that “I have found
myself, my life long, attaching values to every noted thing in respect
to a great person.” Please strike out “great” from this sentence and
substitute “any”; any person is interesting to me. Himself exquisitely
aware of the presence of others, Henry James placed his fastidious
preference amid certain castes, social and artistic. Like Walt Whitman,
I prefer the company of “powerful uneducated persons,” and nothing
inhuman or human is foreign to me. I shouldn’t be surprised to find
more interesting “stories” among the members of the chorus than in
the ranks of the “stars”; but the “stars” alone capture the curiosity
of the public, and thus it is that I speak of some of them to-day
instead of la bella ragazzina in Mr. Setti’s forces. I was bundled on
Manager Gatti’s special car and promptly paid my fare to a conductor
who suspiciously appraised my presence; to him I was neither fish nor
flesh, nor good red chorus. I should have liked very much to walk
through the chorus car, but with Otto Weil on one side and Edward
Ziegler on the other I couldn’t escape; furthermore, young Ziegler thus
admonished me: “Sir, it’s no place for an elderly inflammable person,
is that car full of pretty young song-birds; Pattis and Scalchis en
herbe.” I meekly submitted and found myself in a smoking-compartment
where a card-table was promptly installed.
A friendly game of old cat bridge-whist. Now, I play Bach inventions
every morning, but I can’t play cards. I despise card games, agreeing
with my friend J. K. Huysmans, who asserted that a monument should
be erected to the memory of the inventor of cards because “he did
something toward suppressing the free exchange of human imbecility.”
If the distinguished French pessimist and master of jewelled prose
could have been with us that day he might have revised his polite
judgment. Such gabbling. Such “kachesse,” such feminine squabbles.
No hotel piazza on the Jersey coast of an August afternoon could have
held a candle to the shrewd repartee and vivacious wrangling over a
few painted pasteboards. Antonio Scotti, drumming on the table the
rhythm of the Rataplan, would suddenly scowl, and, with Scarpia-like
intensity, demand: “Why you play that ace?” And Technical Director
Siedle would groan in reply. A flash of lightning from a blue sky. Then
Otto Weil banged down his cards and audibly expressed his opinion of
his partner’s playing. It is not fit to print. Judels never turned a
hair, and he isn’t bald. Even Scotti relaxed for a moment his ferocious
Neapolitan air. No one can “stay mad” long with Judels. Pan Ordynski
drops in, and Amato, Chalmers, or Althouse. Scotti is smoke-proof. It
is pleasant to record that this big operatic organization with its
divers nationalities is en route a happy family. Music, after all, is
the solvent, the real melting-pot of which we hear so much and see so
little in every-day life.
[Illustration:
_From a photograph by De Strelecki_
ROSINA GALLI AS THE PRINCESS IN “LE COQ D’OR”]
Caruso is not the only funmaker on the wheels of this Opera Special.
Rosina Galli of the dainty, tapering toes and woven paces is always
rollicksome. Her imitations would make her fortune in vaudeville.
Signor Gatti philosophically reposes after the fatigue of travel and
Union League Club terrapin. Scotti munches chicken, resting after
his Sergeant Sulpizio rôle, and still strums the Rataplan. Caruso
smokes. Friend Scognomillo sleeps with one eye open. Florence Easton,
wrung from her triumph as Santuzza, is there. In a compartment sits
Geraldine Farrar. She sips coffee. Her mother is with her. So are
chicken sandwiches. “Our Jerry” is bright-eyed and keyed up as might
be expected. I mention the name “Sid” Farrar, my boyhood’s idol.
The ladies become sympathetic. When I stoutly declared that I had
never fallen in love with a prima donna during four decades as a
music reporter, my “specialty” being admiration of the mothers of
singers, the air is charged with interrogation-marks. Why hasn’t some
authoritative pen been employed in behalf of the mother of the singer
who has succeeded? What a theme! What peeps into a family inferno! I
think that Mrs. Farrar could write a better book about her brilliant
daughter than did Mrs. Lou Tellegen of herself.
Another time I talk with Frieda Hempel, who is one of the rapidly
dwindling race of artists who know Mozart as well as Donizetti. What a
Marguerite she would be! On the train she is like her contemporaries.
She sits. She chats. For all I know, she may doze. Singers are very
human. To fancy them as “gloomy, grand, and peculiar” is to imagine
a vain thing. In private they behave like their butchers, bakers,
candlestick makers. If they have one weakness peculiar to their tribe,
it is never to read newspaper criticism of their performances! This
is discouraging for music-critics. But the public likes sentimental
flimflam, and the opera singer is pictured as a strange and fearful
bird of prey; when seen at close range she is in reality a domesticated
fowl. The much-advertised artistic temperament is only intermittent;
even arrant bohemians are normal at least twice every twenty-four hours.
The call is sounded. Again New York! A jumble of voices is heard in
the smoking-compartment. “If you hadn’t played that trump!”--it is
Judels speaking. “Oh!” groans Papa Siedle. Scotti is now whistling
the Rataplan. The blond Ordynski, having wished the Polish curse on
Otto Weil--“may you have hangnails and dandruff!”--dons his greatcoat.
“Addio, Hunekero!” sings Caruso. After refusing Ned Ziegler’s kind
offer of “First Aid to Flatbushers,” which means his private car, I
find myself alone on the chilly concourse. The hour of disillusionment,
three past midnight. I’ve been on and off wheels with Caruso for
twelve times sixty minutes. I ponder Flatbush and the possibilities
of getting there by dawn. The scrubwomen are at work, a new postwoman
saunters along. The luncheon-room cat rubs against me, almost coos
with joy. I slink away, being superstitious regarding cherry-colored
cats, step-ladders, and cross-eyed theatre managers. (I am writting
plays.) Then, resigned to the inevitable, I seek my trusty Glenn
Curtiss hydro-aeroplane, which is anchored in the Thirty-third Street
enclosure, and fly home to Flatbush-by-the-Sea. I’ve had a crowded and
enjoyable day.
XV
SING AND GROW VOICELESS
Sing and grow voiceless! Why not? We know of a dozen methods that
are guaranteed to ruin even a Rose Ponselle vocal equipment in
thirty lessons by mail, better known as absent treatment. We have
had over forty years’ experience in the fair land of song, a scarred
battle-field strewn with the shards and wrecks of beautiful voices
and high hopes. In no sphere of music are there so many sharks,
cormorants, swindlers, humbugs, criminals, as in the ranks of vocal
teaching--so-called. The hard-earned, carefully saved money of parents
is extorted from victims, who usually return home with health impaired,
voices gone, even worse. It is pitiful. It is cruel. What are you going
to do about it? The profession of medicine is protected. Why not music?
Malpractice is swiftly punished. Why not lock up the rascals who ruin
a voice and get money under false pretenses? No, chewing gum in public
is of far more importance to people; now a national neurosis, it will
soon be elevated to the dignity of a Fine Art. If we had our way we
should drive every one of these vocal parasites who infest the temple
of music into the swamp of public odium.
Now, having worked off my chronic bad humor, let us look at the
matter through the spectacles of the absurd. There is a comic
side to everything, from a volcano to a prohibitionist. The fake
singing-teachers are as funny as their fakery is pernicious.