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A BOOK OF BURLESQUES
by
H. L. MENCKEN
[Illustration]
Published at the Borzoi · New York · by
Alfred · A · Knopf
Copyright, 1916, 1920, by
Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
Printed in the United States of America
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. DEATH: A PHILOSOPHICAL DISCUSSION 11
II. FROM THE PROGRAMME OF A CONCERT 27
III. THE WEDDING: A STAGE DIRECTION 51
IV. THE VISIONARY 71
V. THE ARTIST: A DRAMA WITHOUT WORDS 83
VI. SEEING THE WORLD 105
VII. FROM THE MEMOIRS OF THE DEVIL 135
VIII. LITANIES FOR THE OVERLOOKED 149
IX. ASEPSIS: A DEDUCTION IN _SCHERZO_ FORM 159
X. TALES OF THE MORAL AND PATHOLOGICAL 183
XI. THE JAZZ WEBSTER 201
XII. THE OLD SUBJECT 213
XIII. PANORAMAS OF PEOPLE 223
XIV. HOMEOPATHICS 231
XV. VERS LIBRE 237
The present edition includes some epigrams from "A Little Book in C
Major," now out of print. To make room for them several of the smaller
sketches in the first edition have been omitted. Nearly the whole
contents of the book appeared originally in _The Smart Set_. The
references to a Europe not yet devastated by war and an America not yet
polluted by Prohibition show that some of the pieces first saw print in
far better days than these.
H. L. M.
February 1, 1920.
_I.--DEATH_
_I.--Death. A Philosophical Discussion_
_The back parlor of any average American home. The blinds are drawn and
a single gas-jet burns feebly. A dim suggestion of festivity: strange
chairs, the table pushed back, a decanter and glasses. A heavy,
suffocating, discordant scent of flowers--roses, carnations, lilies,
gardenias. A general stuffiness and mugginess, as if it were raining
outside, which it isn't._
_A door leads into the front parlor. It is open, and through it the
flowers may be seen. They are banked about a long black box with huge
nickel handles, resting upon two folding horses. Now and then a man
comes into the front room from the street door, his shoes squeaking
hideously. Sometimes there is a woman, usually in deep mourning. Each
visitor approaches the long black box, looks into it with ill-concealed
repugnance, snuffles softly, and then backs of toward the door. A clock
on the mantel-piece ticks loudly. From the street come the usual
noises--a wagon rattling, the clang of a trolley car's gong, the shrill
cry of a child._
_In the back parlor six pallbearers sit upon chairs, all of them bolt
upright, with their hands on their knees. They are in their Sunday
clothes, with stiff white shirts. Their hats are on the floor beside
their chairs. Each wears upon his lapel the gilt badge of a fraternal
order, with a crêpe rosette. In the gloom they are indistinguishable;
all of them talk in the same strained, throaty whisper. Between their
remarks they pause, clear their throats, blow their noses, and shuffle
in their chairs. They are intensely uncomfortable. Tempo: Adagio
lamentoso, with occasionally a rise to andante maesto. So:_
FIRST PALLBEARER
Who woulda thought that _he_ woulda been the next?
SECOND PALLBEARER
Yes; you never can tell.
THIRD PALLBEARER
(_An oldish voice, oracularly._) We're here to-day and gone to-morrow.
FOURTH PALLBEARER
I seen him no longer ago than Chewsday. He never looked no better.
Nobody would have----
FIFTH PALLBEARER
I seen him Wednesday. We had a glass of beer together in the Huffbrow
Kaif. He was laughing and cutting up like he always done.
SIXTH PALLBEARER
You never know who it's gonna hit next. Him and me was pallbearers
together for Hen Jackson no more than a month ago, or say five weeks.
FIRST PALLBEARER
Well, a man is lucky if he goes off quick. If I had _my_ way I wouldn't
want no better way.
SECOND PALLBEARER
My brother John went thataway. He dropped like a stone, settin' there at
the supper table. They had to take his knife out of his hand.
THIRD PALLBEARER
I had an uncle to do the same thing, but without the knife. He had what
they call appleplexy. It runs in my family.
FOURTH PALLBEARER
They say it's in _his'n_, too.
FIFTH PALLBEARER
But he never looked it.
SIXTH PALLBEARER
No. Nobody woulda thought _he_ woulda been the next.
FIRST PALLBEARER
Them are the things you never can tell anything about.
SECOND PALLBEARER
Ain't it true!
THIRD PALLBEARER
We're here to-day and gone to-morrow.
(_A pause. Feet are shuffled. Somewhere a door bangs._)
FOURTH PALLBEARER
(_Brightly._) He looks elegant. I hear he never suffered none.
FIFTH PALLBEARER
No; he went too quick. One minute he was alive and the next minute he
was dead.
SIXTH PALLBEARER
Think of it: dead so quick!
FIRST PALLBEARER
Gone!
SECOND PALLBEARER
Passed away!
THIRD PALLBEARER
Well, we all have to go _some_ time.
FOURTH PALLBEARER
Yes; a man never knows but what his turn'll come next.
FIFTH PALLBEARER
You can't tell nothing by looks. Them sickly fellows generally lives to
be old.
SIXTH PALLBEARER
Yes; the doctors say it's the big stout person that goes off the
soonest. They say typhord never kills none but the healthy.
FIRST PALLBEARER
So I have heered it said. My wife's youngest brother weighed 240 pounds.
He was as strong as a mule. He could lift a sugar-barrel, and then some.
Once I seen him drink damn near a whole keg of beer. Yet it finished him
in less'n three weeks--and _he_ had it mild.
SECOND PALLBEARER
It seems that there's a lot of it this fall.
THIRD PALLBEARER
Yes; I hear of people taken with it every day. Some say it's the water.
My brother Sam's oldest is down with it.
FOURTH PALLBEARER
I had it myself once. I was out of my head for four weeks.
FIFTH PALLBEARER
That's a good sign.
SIXTH PALLBEARER
Yes; you don't die as long as you're out of your head.
FIRST PALLBEARER
It seems to me that there is a lot of sickness around this year.
SECOND PALLBEARER
I been to five funerals in six weeks.
THIRD PALLBEARER
I beat you. I been to six in five weeks, not counting this one.
FOURTH PALLBEARER
A body don't hardly know what to think of it scarcely.
FIFTH PALLBEARER
That's what _I_ always say: you can't tell who'll be next.
SIXTH PALLBEARER
Ain't it true! Just think of _him_.
FIRST PALLBEARER
Yes; nobody woulda picked _him_ out.
SECOND PALLBEARER
Nor my brother John, neither.
THIRD PALLBEARER
Well, what _must_ be _must_ be.
FOURTH PALLBEARER
Yes; it don't do no good to kick. When a man's time comes he's got to
go.
FIFTH PALLBEARER
We're lucky if it ain't us.
SIXTH PALLBEARER
So I always say. We ought to be thankful.
FIRST PALLBEARER
That's the way _I_ always feel about it.
SECOND PALLBEARER
It wouldn't do _him_ no good, no matter _what_ we done.
THIRD PALLBEARER
We're here to-day and gone to-morrow.
FOURTH PALLBEARER
But it's hard all the same.
FIFTH PALLBEARER
It's hard on _her_.
SIXTH PALLBEARER
Yes, it is. Why should _he_ go?
FIRST PALLBEARER
It's a question nobody ain't ever answered.
SECOND PALLBEARER
Nor never won't.
THIRD PALLBEARER
You're right there. I talked to a preacher about it once, and even _he_
couldn't give no answer to it.
FOURTH PALLBEARER
The more you think about it the less you can make it out.
FIFTH PALLBEARER
When I seen him last Wednesday he had no more ideer of it than what you
had.
SIXTH PALLBEARER
Well, if I had _my_ choice, that's the way I would always want to die.
FIRST PALLBEARER
Yes; that's what _I_ say. I am with you there.
SECOND PALLBEARER
Yes; you're right, both of you. It don't do no good to lay sick for
months, with doctors' bills eatin' you up, and then have to go anyhow.
THIRD PALLBEARER
No; when a thing has to be done, the best thing to do is to get it done
and over with.
FOURTH PALLBEARER
That's just what I said to my wife when I heerd.
FIFTH PALLBEARER
But nobody hardly thought that _he_ woulda been the next.
SIXTH PALLBEARER
No; but that's one of them things you can't tell.
FIRST PALLBEARER
You never know _who'll_ be the next.
SECOND PALLBEARER
It's lucky you don't.
THIRD PALLBEARER
I guess you're right.
FOURTH PALLBEARER
That's what my grandfather used to say: you never know what is coming.
FIFTH PALLBEARER
Yes; that's the way it goes.
SIXTH PALLBEARER
First one, and then somebody else.
FIRST PALLBEARER
Who it'll be you can't say.
SECOND PALLBEARER
_I_ always say the same: we're here to-day----
THIRD PALLBEARER
(_Cutting in jealousy and humorously._) And to-morrow we ain't here.
(_A subdued and sinister snicker. It is followed by sudden silence.
There is a shuffling of feet in the front room, and whispers. Necks are
craned. The pallbearers straighten their backs, hitch their coat collars
and pull on their black gloves. The clergyman has arrived. From above
comes the sound of weeping._)
_II.--FROM THE PROGRAMME OF A CONCERT_
_II.--From The Programme of a Concert_
_"Ruhm und Ewigkeit" (Fame and Eternity), a symphonic poem in B
flat minor, Opus 48, by Johann Sigismund Timotheus Albert Wolfgang
Kraus (1872-)._
Kraus, like his eminent compatriot, Dr. Richard Strauss, has gone to
Friedrich Nietzsche, the laureate of the modern German tone-art, for his
inspiration in this gigantic work. His text is to be found in
Nietzsche's _Ecce Homo_, which was not published until after the poet's
death, but the composition really belongs to _Also sprach Zarathustra_,
as a glance will show:
I
_Wie lange sitzest du schon
auf deinem Missgeschick?
Gieb Acht! Du brütest mir noch
ein Ei,
ein Basilisken-Ei,
aus deinem langen Jammer aus._
II
_Was schleicht Zarathustra entlang dem Berge?--_
III
_Misstrauisch, geschwürig, düster,
ein langer Lauerer,--
aber plötzlich, ein Blitz,
hell, furchtbar, ein Schlag
gen Himmel aus dem Abgrund:
--dem Berge selber schüttelt sich
das Eingeweide...._
IV
_Wo Hass und Blitzstrahl
Eins ward, ein Fluch,--
auf den Bergen haust jetzt Zarathustra's Zorn,
eine Wetterwolke schleicht er seines Wegs._
V
_Verkrieche sich, wer eine letzte Decke hat!
In's Bett mit euch, ihr Zärtlinge!
Nun rollen Donner über die Gewölbe,
nun zittert, was Gebälk und Mauer ist,
nun zucken Blitze und schwefelgelbe Wahrheiten--
Zarathustra flucht ...!_
For the following faithful and graceful translation the present
commentator is indebted to Mr. Louis Untermeyer:
I
How long brood you now
On thy disaster?
Give heed! You hatch me soon
An egg,
From your long lamentation out of.
II
Why prowls Zarathustra among the mountains?
III
Distrustful, ulcerated, dismal,
A long waiter--
But suddenly a flash,
Brilliant, fearful. A lightning stroke
Leaps to heaven from the abyss:
--The mountains shake themselves and
Their intestines....
IV
As hate and lightning-flash
Are united, a _curse_!
On the mountains rages now Zarathustra's wrath,
Like a thunder cloud rolls it on its way.
V
Crawl away, ye who have a roof remaining!
To bed with you, ye tenderlings!
Now thunder rolls over the great arches,
Now tremble the bastions and battlements,
Now flashes palpitate and sulphur-yellow truths--
Zarathustra swears ...!
The composition is scored for three flutes, one piccolo, one bass
piccolo, seven oboes, one English horn, three clarinets in D flat, one
clarinet in G flat, one corno de bassetto, three bassoons, one
contra-bassoon, eleven horns, three trumpets, eight cornets in B, four
trombones, two alto trombones, one viol da gamba, one mandolin, two
guitars, one banjo, two tubas, glockenspiel, bell, triangle, fife,
bass-drum, cymbals, timpani, celesta, four harps, piano, harmonium,
pianola, phonograph, and the usual strings.
At the opening a long B flat is sounded by the cornets, clarinets and
bassoons in unison, with soft strokes upon a kettle-drum tuned to G
sharp. After eighteen measures of this, _singhiozzando_, the strings
enter _pizzicato_ with a figure based upon one of the scales of the
ancient Persians--B flat, C flat, D, E sharp, G and A flat--which starts
high among the first violins, and then proceeds downward, through the
second violins, violas and cellos, until it is lost in solemn and
indistinct mutterings in the double-basses. Then, the atmosphere of doom
having been established, and the conductor having found his place in
the score, there is heard the motive of brooding, or as the German
commentators call it, the _Quälerei Motiv_:
[Illustration: Musical Score]
The opening chord of the eleventh is sounded by six horns, and the
chords of the ninth, which follow, are given to the woodwind. The rapid
figure in the second measure is for solo violin, heard softly against
the sustained interval of the diminished ninth, but the final G natural
is snapped out by the whole orchestra _sforzando_. There follows a
rapid and daring development of the theme, with the flutes and
violoncellos leading, first harmonized with chords of the eleventh, then
with chords of the thirteenth, and finally with chords of the fifteenth.
Meanwhile, the tonality has moved into D minor, then into A flat major,
and then into G sharp minor, and the little arpeggio for the solo violin
has been augmented to seven, to eleven, and in the end to twenty-three
notes. Here the influence of Claude Debussy shows itself; the chords of
the ninth proceed by the same chromatic semitones that one finds in the
_Chansons de Bilitis_. But Kraus goes much further than Debussy, for the
tones of his chords are constantly altered in a strange and extremely
beautiful manner, and, as has been noted, he adds the eleventh,
thirteenth and fifteenth. At the end of this incomparable passage there
is a sudden drop to C major, followed by the first statement of the
_Missgeschick Motiv_, or motive of disaster (misfortune, evil destiny,
untoward fate):
[Illustration: Musical Score]
This graceful and ingratiating theme will give no concern to the student
of Ravel and Schoenberg. It is, in fact, a quite elemental succession of
intervals of the second, all produced by adding the ninth to the common
chord--thus: C, G, C, D, E--with certain enharmonic changes. Its
simplicity gives it, at a first hearing, a placid, pastoral aspect,
somewhat disconcerting to the literalist, but the discerning will not
fail to note the mutterings beneath the surface. It is first sounded by
two violas and the viol da gamba, and then drops without change to the
bass, where it is repeated _fortissimo_ by two bassoons and the
contra-bassoon. The tempo then quickens and the two themes so far heard
are worked up into a brief but tempestuous fugue. A brief extract will
suffice to show its enormously complex nature:
[Illustration: Musical Score]
A pedal point on B flat is heard at the end of this fugue, sounded
_fortissimo_ by all the brass in unison, and then follows a grand pause,
twelve and a half measures in length. Then, in the strings, is heard the
motive of warning:
[Illustration: Musical Score]
Out of this motive comes the harmonic material for much of what remains
of the composition. At each repetition of the theme, the chord in the
fourth measure is augmented by the addition of another interval, until
in the end it includes every tone of the chromatic scale save C sharp.
This omission is significant of Kraus' artistry. If C sharp were
included the tonality would at once become vague, but without it the
dependence of the whole gorgeous edifice upon C major is kept plain. At
the end, indeed, the tonic chord of C major is clearly sounded by the
wood-wind, against curious triplets, made up of F sharp, A flat and B
flat in various combinations, in the strings; and from it a sudden
modulation is made to C minor, and then to A flat major. This opens the
way for the entrance of the motive of lamentation, or, as the German
commentators call it, the _Schreierei Motiv_:
[Illustration: Musical Score]
This simple and lovely theme is first sounded, not by any of the usual
instruments of the grand orchestra, but by a phonograph in B flat, with
the accompaniment of a solitary trombone. When the composition was
first played at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig the innovation caused a
sensation, and there were loud cries of sacrilege and even proposals of
police action. One indignant classicist, in token of his ire, hung a
wreath of _Knackwürste_ around the neck of the bust of Johann Sebastian
Bach in the Thomaskirche, and appended to it a card bearing the legend,
_Schweinehund_! But the exquisite beauty of the effect soon won
acceptance for the means employed to attain it, and the phonograph has
so far made its way with German composers that Prof. Ludwig
Grossetrommel, of Göttingen, has even proposed its employment in opera
in place of singers.
This motive of lamentation is worked out on a grand scale, and in
intimate association with the motives of brooding and of warning. Kraus
is not content with the ordinary materials of composition. His creative
force is always impelling him to break through the fetters of the
diatonic scale, and to find utterance for his ideas in archaic and
extremely exotic tonalities. The pentatonic scale is a favorite with
him; he employs it as boldly as Wagner did in _Das Rheingold_. But it is
not enough, for he proceeds from it into the Dorian mode of the ancient
Greeks, and then into the Phrygian, and then into two of the plagal
modes. Moreover, he constantly combines both unrelated scales and
antagonistic motives, and invests the combinations in astounding
orchestral colors, so that the hearer, unaccustomed to such bold
experimentations, is quite lost in the maze. Here, for example, is a
characteristic passage for solo French horn and bass piccolo:
[Illustration: Musical Score]
The dotted half notes for the horn obviously come from the motive
of brooding, in augmentation, but the bass piccolo part is new. It
soon appears, however, in various fresh aspects, and in the end it
enters into the famous quadruple motive of "sulphur-yellow
truth"--_schwefelgelbe Wahrheit_, as we shall presently see. Its first
combination is with a jaunty figure in A minor, and the two together
form what most of the commentators agree upon denominating the
Zarathustra motive:
[Illustration: Musical Score]
I call this the Zarathustra motive, following the weight of critical
opinion, but various influential critics dissent. Thus, Dr. Ferdinand
Bierfisch, of the Hochschule für Musik at Dresden, insists that it is
the theme of "the elevated mood produced by the spiritual isolation and
low barometric pressure of the mountains," while Prof. B. Moll, of
Frankfurt a/M., calls it the motive of prowling. Kraus himself, when
asked by Dr. Fritz Bratsche, of the Berlin _Volkszeitung_, shrugged his
shoulders and answered in his native Hamburg dialect, "_So gehts im
Leben! 'S giebt gar kein Use_"--Such is life; it gives hardly any use
(to inquire?). In much the same way Schubert made reply to one who asked
the meaning of the opening subject of the slow movement of his C major
symphony: "_Halt's Maul, du verfluchter Narr!_"--Don't ask such
question, my dear sir!
But whatever the truth, the novelty and originality of the theme cannot
be denied, for it is in two distinct keys, D major and A minor, and they
preserve their identity whenever it appears. The handling of two such
diverse tonalities at one time would present insuperable difficulties to
a composer less ingenious than Kraus, but he manages it quite simply by
founding his whole harmonic scheme upon the tonic triad of D major,
with the seventh and ninth added. He thus achieves a chord which also
contains the tonic triad of A minor. The same thing is now done with the
dominant triads, and half the battle is won. Moreover, the
instrumentation shows the same boldness, for the double theme is first
given to three solo violins, and they are muted in a novel and effective
manner by stopping their F holes. The directions in the score say _mit
Glaserkitt_ (that is, with glazier's putty), but the Konzertmeister at
the Gewandhaus, Herr F. Dur, substituted ordinary pumpernickel with
excellent results. It is, in fact, now commonly used in the German
orchestras in place of putty, for it does less injury to the varnish of
the violins, and, besides, it is edible after use. It produces a thick,
oily, mysterious, far-away effect.
At the start, as I have just said, the double theme of Zarathustra
appears in D major and A minor, but there is quick modulation to B flat
major and C sharp minor, and then to C major and F sharp minor.
Meanwhile the tempo gradually accelerates, and the polyphonic texture is
helped out by reminiscences of the themes of brooding and of
lamentation. A sudden hush and the motive of warning is heard high in
the wood-wind, in C flat major, against a double organ-point--C natural
and C sharp--in the lower strings. There follows a cadenza of no less
than eighty-four measures for four harps, tympani and a single tuba, and
then the motive of waiting is given out by the whole orchestra in
unison:
[Illustration: Musical Score]
This stately motive is repeated in F major, after which some passage
work for the piano and pianola, the former tuned a quarter tone lower
than the latter and played by three performers, leads directly into the
quadruple theme of the sulphur-yellow truth, mentioned above. It is
first given out by two oboes divided, a single English horn, two
bassoons in unison, and four trombones in unison. It is an
extraordinarily long motive, running to twenty-seven measures on its
first appearance; the four opening measures are given on the next page.
[Illustration: Musical Score]
With an exception yet to be noted, all of the composer's thematic
material is now set forth, and what follows is a stupendous development
of it, so complex that no written description could even faintly
indicate its character. The quadruple theme of the sulphur-yellow truth
is sung almost uninterruptedly, first by the wood-wind, then by the
strings and then by the full brass choir, with the glockenspiel and
cymbals added. Into it are woven all of the other themes in inextricable
whirls and whorls of sound, and in most amazing combinations and
permutations of tonalities. Moreover, there is a constantly rising
complexity of rhythm, and on one page of the score the time signature is
changed no less than eighteen times. Several times it is 5-8 and 7-4;
once it is 11-2; in one place the composer, following Koechlin and Erik
Satie, abandons bar-lines altogether for half a page of the score. And
these diverse rhythms are not always merely successive; sometimes they
are heard together. For example, the motive of disaster, augmented to
5-8 time, is sounded clearly by the clarinets against the motive of
lamentation in 3-4 time, and through it all one hears the steady beat of
the motive of waiting in 4-4!
This gigantic development of materials is carried to a thrilling climax,
with the whole orchestra proclaiming the Zarathustra motive
_fortissimo_. Then follows a series of arpeggios for the harps, made of
the motive of warning, and out of them there gradually steals the tonic
triad of D minor, sung by three oboes. This chord constitutes the
backbone of all that follows. The three oboes are presently joined by a
fourth. Against this curtain of tone the flutes and piccolos repeat the
theme of brooding in F major, and then join the oboes in the D minor
chord. The horns and bassoons follow with the motive of disaster and
then do likewise. Now come the violins with the motive of lamentation,
but instead of ending with the D minor tonic triad, they sound a chord
of the seventh erected on C sharp as seventh of D minor. Every tone of
the scale of D minor is now being sounded, and as instrument after
instrument joins in the effect is indescribably sonorous and imposing.
Meanwhile, there is a steady _crescendo_, ending after three minutes of
truly tremendous music with ten sharp blasts of the double chord. A
moment of silence and a single trombone gives out a theme hitherto not
heard. It is the theme of tenderness, or, as the German commentators
call it, the _Biermad'l Motiv_: Thus:
[Illustration: Musical Score]
Again silence. Then a single piccolo plays the closing cadence of the
composition:
[Illustration: Musical Score]
_Ruhm und Ewigkeit_ presents enormous difficulties to the performers,
and taxes the generalship of the most skillful conductor. When it was in
preparation at the Gewandhaus the first performance was postponed twelve
times in order to extend the rehearsals. It was reported in the German
papers at the time that ten members of the orchestra, including the
first flutist, Ewald Löwenhals, resigned during the rehearsals, and that
the intervention of the King of Saxony was necessary to make them
reconsider their resignations. One of the second violins, Hugo
Zehndaumen, resorted to stimulants in anticipation of the opening
performance, and while on his way to the hall was run over by a taxicab.
The conductor was Nikisch. A performance at Munich followed, and on May
1, 1913, the work reached Berlin. At the public rehearsal there was a
riot led by members of the Bach Gesellschaft, and the hall was stormed
by the mounted police. Many arrests were made, and five of the rioters
were taken to hospital with serious injuries. The work was put into
rehearsal by the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1914. The rehearsals have
been proceeding ever since. A piano transcription for sixteen hands has
been published.
Kraus was born at Hamburg on January 14, 1872. At the age of three he
performed creditably on the zither, cornet and trombone, and by 1877 he
had already appeared in concert at Danzig. His family was very poor, and
his early years were full of difficulties. It is said that, at the age
of nine, he copied the whole score of Wagner's _Ring_, the scores of the
nine Beethoven symphonies and the complete works of Mozart. His regular
teacher, in those days, was Stadtpfeifer Schmidt, who instructed him in
piano and thorough-bass. In 1884, desiring to have lessons in
counterpoint from Prof. Kalbsbraten, of Mainz, he walked to that city
from Hamburg once a week--a distance for the round trip of 316 miles. In
1887 he went to Berlin and became fourth cornetist of the Philharmonic
Orchestra and valet to Dr. Schweinsrippen, the conductor. In Berlin he
studied violin and second violin under the Polish virtuoso,
Pbyschbrweski, and also had lessons in composition from Wilhelm
Geigenheimer, formerly third triangle and assistant librarian at
Bayreuth.
His first composition, a march for cornet, violin and piano, was
performed on July 18, 1888, at the annual ball of the Arbeiter
Liedertafel in Berlin. It attracted little attention, but six months
later the young composer made musical Berlin talk about him by producing
a composition called _Adenoids_, for twelve tenors, _a cappella_, to
words by Otto Julius Bierbaum. This was first heard at an open air
concert given in the Tiergarten by the Sozialist Liederkranz. It was
soon after repeated by the choir of the Gottesgelehrheitsakademie, and
Kraus found himself a famous young man. His string quartet in G sharp
minor, first played early in 1889 by the quartet led by Prof. Rudolph
Wurst, added to his growing celebrity, and when his first tone poem for
orchestra, _Fuchs, Du Hast die Gans Gestohlen_, was done by the
Philharmonic in the autumn of 1889, under Dr. Lachschinken, it was
hailed with acclaim.
Kraus has since written twelve symphonies (two choral), nine tone-poems,
a suite for brass and tympani, a trio for harp, tuba and glockenspiel,
ten string quartettes, a serenade for flute and contra-bassoon, four
concert overtures, a cornet concerto, and many songs and piano pieces.
His best-known work, perhaps, is his symphony in F flat major, in eight
movements. But Kraus himself is said to regard this huge work as
trivial. His own favorite, according to his biographer, Dr. Linsensuppe,
is _Ruhm und Ewigkeit_, though he is also fond of the tone-poem which
immediately preceded it, _Rinderbrust und Meerrettig_. He has written a
choral for sixty trombones, dedicated to Field Marshal von Hindenburg,
and is said to be at work on a military mass for four orchestras, seven
brass bands and ten choirs, with the usual soloists and clergy. Among
his principal works are _Der Ewigen Wiederkunft_ (a ten part fugue for
full orchestra), _Biergemütlichkeit_, his _Oberkellner_ and
_Uebermensch_ concert overtures, and his setting (for mixed chorus) of
the old German hymn:
Saufst--stirbst!
Saufst net--stirbst a!
Also, saufst!
Kraus is now a resident of Munich, where he conducts the orchestra at
the Löwenbräuhaus. He has been married eight times and is at present the
fifth husband of Tilly Heintz, the opera singer. He has been decorated
by the Kaiser, by the King of Sweden and by the Sultan of Turkey, and is
a member of the German Odd Fellows.
_III.--THE WEDDING_
_III.--The Wedding. A Stage Direction_
_The scene is a church in an American city of about half a million
population, and the time is about eleven o'clock of a fine morning in
early spring. The neighborhood is well-to-do, but not quite fashionable.
That is to say, most of the families of the vicinage keep two servants
(alas, more or less intermittently!), and eat dinner at half-past six,
and about one in every four boasts a colored butler (who attends to the
fires, washes windows and helps with the sweeping), and a last year's
automobile. The heads of these families are merchandise brokers; jobbers
in notions, hardware and drugs; manufacturers of candy, hats, badges,
office furniture, blank books, picture frames, wire goods and patent
medicines; managers of steamboat lines; district agents of insurance
companies; owners of commercial printing offices, and other such
business men of substance--and the prosperous lawyers and popular family
doctors who keep them out of trouble. In one block live a Congressman
and two college professors, one of whom has written an unimportant
textbook and got himself into "Who's Who in America." In the block above
lives a man who once ran for Mayor of the city, and came near being
elected.
The wives of these householders wear good clothes and have a liking for
a reasonable gayety, but very few of them can pretend to what is vaguely
called social standing, and, to do them justice, not many of them waste
any time lamenting it. They have, taking one with another, about three
children apiece, and are good mothers. A few of them belong to women's
clubs or flirt with the suffragettes, but the majority can get all of
the intellectual stimulation they crave in the Ladies' Home Journal and
the Saturday Evening Post, with Vogue added for its fashions. Most of
them, deep down in their hearts, suspect their husbands of secret
frivolity, and about ten per cent. have the proofs, but it is rare for
them to make rows about it, and the divorce rate among them is thus very
low. Themselves indifferent cooks, they are unable to teach their
servants the art, and so the food they set before their husbands and
children is often such as would make a Frenchman cut his throat. But
they are diligent housewives otherwise; they see to it that the windows
are washed, that no one tracks mud into the hall, that the servants do
not waste coal, sugar, soap and gas, and that the family buttons are
always sewed on. In religion these estimable wives are pious in habit
but somewhat nebulous in faith. That is to say, they regard any person
who specifically refuses to go to church as a heathen, but they
themselves are by no means regular in attendance, and not one in ten of
them could tell you whether transubstantiation is a Roman Catholic or a
Dunkard doctrine. About two per cent. have dallied more or less gingerly
with Christian Science, their average period of belief being one year.
The church we are in is like the neighborhood and its people: well-to-do
but not fashionable. It is Protestant in faith and probably
Episcopalian. The pews are of thick, yellow-brown oak, severe in pattern
and hideous in color. In each there is a long, removable cushion of a
dark, purplish, dirty hue, with here and there some of its hair stuffing
showing. The stained-glass windows, which were all bought ready-made and
depict scenes from the New Testament, commemorate the virtues of
departed worthies of the neighborhood, whose names appear, in illegible
black letters, in the lower panels. The floor is covered with a carpet
of some tough, fibrous material, apparently a sort of grass, and along
the center aisle it is much worn. The normal smell of the place is
rather less unpleasant than that of most other halls, for on the one day
when it is regularly crowded practically all of the persons gathered
together have been very recently bathed.
On this fine morning, however, it is full of heavy, mortuary perfumes,
for a couple of florist's men have just finished decorating the chancel
with flowers and potted palms. Just behind the chancel rail, facing the
center aisle, there is a prie-dieu, and to either side of it are great
banks of lilies, carnations, gardenias and roses. Three or four feet
behind the prie-dieu and completely concealing the high altar, there is
a dense jungle of palms. Those in the front rank are authentically
growing in pots, but behind them the florist's men have artfully placed
some more durable, and hence more profitable, sophistications. Anon the
rev. clergyman, emerging from the vestry-room to the right, will pass
along the front of this jungle to the prie-dieu, and so, framed in
flowers, face the congregation with his saponaceous smile.
The florist's men, having completed their labors, are preparing to
depart. The older of the two, a man in the fifties, shows the ease of an
experienced hand by taking out a large plug of tobacco and gnawing off a
substantial chew. The desire to spit seizing him shortly, he proceeds to
gratify it by a trick long practised by gasfitters, musicians, caterer's
helpers, piano movers and other such alien invaders of the domestic
hearth. That is to say, he hunts for a place where the carpet is loose
along the chancel rail, finds it where two lengths join, deftly turns up
a flap, spits upon the bare floor, and then lets the flap fall back,
finally giving it a pat with the sole of his foot. This done, he and his
assistant leave the church to the sexton, who has been sweeping the
vestibule, and, after passing the time of day with the two men who are
putting up a striped awning from the door to the curb, disappear into a
nearby speak-easy, there to wait and refresh themselves until the
wedding is over, and it is time to take away their lilies, their
carnations and their synthetic palms.
It is now a quarter past eleven, and two flappers of the neighborhood,
giggling and arm-in-arm, approach the sexton and inquire of him if they
may enter. He asks them if they have tickets and when they say they
haven't, he tells them that he ain't got no right to let them in, and
don't know nothing about what the rule is going to be. At some weddings,
he goes on, hardly nobody ain't allowed in, but then again, sometimes
they don't scarcely look at the tickets at all. The two flappers retire
abashed, and as the sexton finishes his sweeping, there enters the
organist.
The organist is a tall, thin man of melancholy, uræmic aspect, wearing a
black slouch hat with a wide brim and a yellow overcoat that barely
reaches to his knees. A pupil, in his youth, of a man who had once
studied (irregularly and briefly) with Charles-Marie Widor, he acquired
thereby the artistic temperament, and with it a vast fondness for malt
liquor. His mood this morning is acidulous and depressed, for he spent
yesterday evening in a Pilsner ausschank with two former members of the
Boston Symphony Orchestra, and it was 3 A. M. before they finally agreed
that Johann Sebastian Bach, all things considered, was a greater man
than Beethoven, and so parted amicably. Sourness is the precise
sensation that wells within him. He feels vinegary; his blood runs cold;
he wishes he could immerse himself in bicarbonate of soda. But the call
of his art is more potent than the protest of his poisoned and quaking
liver, and so he manfully climbs the spiral stairway to his organ-loft.
Once there, he takes off his hat and overcoat, stoops down to blow the
dust off the organ keys, throws the electrical switch which sets the
bellows going, and then proceeds to take off his shoes. This done, he
takes his seat, reaches for the pedals with his stockinged feet, tries
an experimental 32-foot CCC, and then wanders gently into a Bach
toccata. It is his limbering-up piece: he always plays it as a prelude
to a wedding job. It thus goes very smoothly and even brilliantly, but
when he comes to the end of it and tackles the ensuing fugue he is
quickly in difficulties, and after four or five stumbling repetitions of
the subject he hurriedly improvises a crude coda and has done. Peering
down into the church to see if his flounderings have had an audience, he
sees two old maids enter, the one very tall and thin and the other
somewhat brisk and bunchy.
They constitute the vanguard of the nuptial throng, and as they proceed
hesitatingly up the center aisle, eager for good seats but afraid to go
too far, the organist wipes his palms upon his trousers legs, squares
his shoulders, and plunges into the program that he has played at all
weddings for fifteen years past. It begins with Mendelssohn's Spring
Song, pianissimo. Then comes Rubinstein's Melody in F, with a touch of
forte toward the close, and then Nevin's "Oh, That We Two Were Maying"
and then the Chopin waltz in A flat, Opus 69, No. 1, and then the Spring
Song again, and then a free fantasia upon "The Rosary" and then a
Moszkowski mazurka, and then the Dvorák Humoresque (with its
heart-rending cry in the middle), and then some vague and turbulent
thing (apparently the disjecta membra of another fugue), and then
Tschaikowsky's "Autumn," and then Elgar's "Salut d'Amour," and then the
Spring Song a third time, and then something or other from one of the
Peer Gynt suites, and then an hurrah or two from the Hallelujah chorus,
and then Chopin again, and Nevin, and Elgar, and----
But meanwhile, there is a growing activity below. First comes a closed
automobile bearing the six ushers and soon after it another automobile
bearing the bridegroom and his best man. The bridegroom and the best man
disembark before the side entrance of the church and make their way into
the vestry room, where they remove their hats and coats, and proceed to
struggle with their cravats and collars before a mirror which hangs on
the wall. The room is very dingy. A baize-covered table is in the center
of it, and around the table stand six or eight chairs of assorted
designs. One wall is completely covered by a bookcase, through the glass
doors of which one may discern piles of cheap Bibles, hymn-books and
back numbers of the parish magazine. In one corner is a small washstand.
The best man takes a flat flask of whiskey from his pocket, looks about
him for a glass, finds it on the washstand, rinses it at the tap, fills
it with a policeman's drink, and hands it to the bridegroom. The latter
downs it at a gulp. Then the best man pours out one for himself.
The ushers, reaching the vestibule of the church, have handed their silk
hats to the sexton, and entered the sacred edifice. There was a
rehearsal of the wedding last night, but after it was over the bride
ordered certain incomprehensible changes in the plan, and the ushers are
now completely at sea. All they know clearly is that the relatives of
the bride are to be seated on one side and the relatives of the
bridegroom on the other. But which side for one and which for the other?
They discuss it heatedly for three minutes and then find that they stand
three for putting the bride's relatives on the left side and three for
putting them on the right side. The debate, though instructive, is
interrupted by the sudden entrance of seven women in a group. They are
headed by a truculent old battleship, possibly an aunt or something of
the sort, who fixes the nearest usher with a knowing, suspicious glance,
and motions to him to show her the way.
He offers her his right arm and they start up the center aisle, with the
six other women following in irregular order, and the five other ushers
scattered among the women. The leading usher is tortured damnably by
doubts as to where the party should go. If they are aunts, to which
house do they belong, and on which side are the members of that house to
be seated? What if they are not aunts, but merely neighbors? Or perhaps
an association of former cooks, parlor maids, nurse girls? Or strangers?
The sufferings of the usher are relieved by the battleship, who halts
majestically about twenty feet from the altar, and motions her followers
into a pew to the left. They file in silently and she seats herself next
the aisle. All seven settle back and wriggle for room. It is a tight
fit.
(Who, in point of fact, are these ladies? Don't ask the question! The
ushers never find out. No one ever finds out. They remain a joint
mystery for all time. In the end they become a sort of tradition, and
years hence, when two of the ushers meet, they will cackle over old
dreadnaught and her six cruisers. The bride, grown old and fat, will
tell the tale to her daughter, and then to her granddaughter. It will
grow more and more strange, marvelous, incredible. Variorum versions
will spring up. It will be adapted to other weddings. The dreadnaught
will become an apparition, a witch, the Devil in skirts. And as the
years pass, the date of the episode will be pushed back. By 2017 it will
be dated 1150. By 2475 it will take on a sort of sacred character, and
there will be a footnote referring to it in the latest Revised Version
of the New Testament.)
It is now a quarter to twelve, and of a sudden the vestibule fills with
wedding guests. Nine-tenths of them, perhaps even nineteen-twentieths,
are women, and most of them are beyond thirty-five. Scattered among
them, hanging on to their skirts, are about a dozen little girls--one of
them a youngster of eight or thereabout, with spindle shanks and shining
morning face, entranced by her first wedding. Here and there lurks a
man. Usually he wears a hurried, unwilling, protesting look. He has
been dragged from his office on a busy morning, forced to rush home and
get into his cut-away coat, and then marched to the church by his wife.
One of these men, much hustled, has forgotten to have his shoes shined.
He is intensely conscious of them, and tries to hide them behind his
wife's skirt as they walk up the aisle. Accidentally he steps upon it,
and gets a look over the shoulder which lifts his diaphragm an inch and
turns his liver to water. This man will be courtmartialed when he
reaches home, and he knows it. He wishes that some foreign power would
invade the United States and burn down all the churches in the country,
and that the bride, the bridegroom and all the other persons interested
in the present wedding were dead and in hell.
The ushers do their best to seat these wedding guests in some sort of
order, but after a few minutes the crowd at the doors becomes so large
that they have to give it up, and thereafter all they can do is to hold
out their right arms ingratiatingly and trust to luck. One of them steps
on a fat woman's skirt, tearing it very badly, and she has to be helped
back to the vestibule. There she seeks refuge in a corner, under a
stairway leading up to the steeple, and essays to repair the damage
with pins produced from various nooks and crevices of her person.
Meanwhile the guilty usher stands in front of her, mumbling apologies
and trying to look helpful. When she finishes her work and emerges from
her improvised dry-dock, he again offers her his arm, but she sweeps
past him without noticing him, and proceeds grandly to a seat far
forward. She is a cousin to the bride's mother, and will make a report
to every branch of the family that all six ushers disgraced the ceremony
by appearing at it far gone in liquor.
Fifteen minutes are consumed by such episodes and divertisements. By the
time the clock in the steeple strikes twelve the church is well filled.
The music of the organist, who has now reached Mendelssohn's Spring Song
for the third and last time, is accompanied by a huge buzz of whispers,
and there is much craning of necks and long-distance nodding and
smiling. Here and there an unusually gorgeous hat is the target of many
converging glances, and of as many more or less satirical criticisms. To
the damp funeral smell of the flowers at the altar, there has been added
the cacodorous scents of forty or fifty different brands of talcum and
rice powder. It begins to grow warm in the church, and a number of
women open their vanity bags and duck down for stealthy dabs at their
noses. Others, more reverent, suffer the agony of augmenting shines.
One, a trickster, has concealed powder in her pocket handkerchief, and
applies it dexterously while pretending to blow her nose.
The bridegroom in the vestry-room, entering upon the second year (or is
it the third?) of his long and ghastly wait, grows increasingly nervous,
and when he hears the organist pass from the Spring Song into some more
sonorous and stately thing he mistakes it for the wedding march from
"Lohengrin," and is hot for marching upon the altar at once. The best
man, an old hand, restrains him gently, and administers another sedative
from the bottle. The bridegroom's thoughts turn to gloomy things. He
remembers sadly that he will never be able to laugh at benedicts again;
that his days of low, rabelaisian wit and care-free scoffing are over;
that he is now the very thing he mocked so gaily but yesteryear. Like a
drowning man, he passes his whole life in review--not, however, that
part which is past, but that part which is to come. Odd fancies throng
upon him. He wonders what his honeymoon will cost him, what there will
be to drink at the wedding breakfast, what a certain girl in Chicago
will say when she hears of his marriage. Will there be any children? He
rather hopes not, for all those he knows appear so greasy and noisy, but
he decides that he might conceivably compromise on a boy. But how is he
going to make sure that it will not be a girl? The thing, as yet, is a
medical impossibility--but medicine is making rapid strides. Why not
wait until the secret is discovered? This sapient compromise pleases the
bridegroom, and he proceeds to a consideration of various problems of
finance. And then, of a sudden, the organist swings unmistakably into
"Lohengrin" and the best man grabs him by the arm.
There is now great excitement in the church. The bride's mother, two
sisters, three brothers and three sisters-in-law have just marched up
the center aisle and taken seats in the front pew, and all the women in
the place are craning their necks toward the door. The usual electrical
delay ensues. There is something the matter with the bride's train, and
the two bridesmaids have a deuce of a time fixing it. Meanwhile the
bride's father, in tight pantaloons and tighter gloves, fidgets and
fumes in the vestibule, the six ushers crowd about him inanely, and the
sexton rushes to and fro like a rat in a trap. Finally, all being ready,
with the ushers formed two abreast, the sexton pushes a button, a small
buzzer sounds in the organ loft, and the organist, as has been said,
plunges magnificently into the fanfare of the "Lohengrin" march.
Simultaneously the sexton opens the door at the bottom of the main
aisle, and the wedding procession gets under weigh.