USA > New York > Onondaga County > Syracuse > Sixty-odd, a personal history > Part 18
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I mapped out a definite division of work. Each morning at eight came a walk through the great Johanna-Park, a short cut to the Nürnbergerstrasse, where Fräulein Doris awaited me three days in the week; then on the other two days to Herr Coccius's house for a lesson. He began at once to give me finger-exercises, for the construction of which I took notes, beginning with very simple ones played chromatically in all the keys. Coccius was called the Apostle of the fourth finger, and his methods included the develop- ment of that particular digit by putting extra tasks upon it and building up its efficiency. I was started on a Beethoven sonata, some variations of Schubert and a bit of Bach. The task seemed too heavy for one week's work, but there was no help for it; my hours lengthened and drudgery began. The teacher cared not a whit for sentimental interpretation or shading; in fact he scorned anything of the sort. A smooth, firm, mechanical rendering of the notes, a dead level of correctness only broken by the variations of phrasing were the objectives, and most necessary discipline it was. The days were leaden-gray; I braced myself upon the stiff piano-stool and followed the black notes with desperate persistence but not a ray of hope. Those were my first reactions, and they were gloomy ones.
With the language-lessons it was different; they were festivals. I climbed the stiff staircase to Fräulein Doris's apartment with an
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elastic tread, even after a long walk. The teacher had always some surprise ready. With her secret divining-rod she had learned that her pupil would respond to a dramatization of the task laid out for her, and pursue it all the more heartily for the sake of offsetting the more mechanical drill at the piano. She made a rapid review of the exercises I had written, picking out from their imperfections my special weak points, and this she followed with pronunciation exercises which I even practised, to the curiosity of passers-by, on iny way home.
There were rewards for assidnity. By the second week, the ac- cumulation of a vocabulary was under way, and it was in late Feb- ruary, when there were hints of spring in soft afternoon light, in moist earth and in the appearance of potted daffodils and tulips at windows, that the brown-clad oracle in the Nürnbergerstrasse pro- duced a bit of poetry as a special treat, to be read and memorized. The sight of that precious possession, copied into my faded old red blankbook in the stiff, slowly-executed German writing of a tense pen, brings the day to mind with luminous clarity. It was the Lob des Frühlings of Ludwig Uhland, and I dare not attempt to translate it into English verse:
Saatin-grün, Veilchen-duft, Lerchenwirbel, Amselschlag, Sonnenregen, linde Luft! Wenn ich solche Worte singe Braucht es dann noch grösser Dinge Dich zu preisen, Frühlingstag?
It was dictated, first, so that as one wrote the words their meaning might possibly begin to penetrate. Somehow I caught the soft moist breath, the misty sky left after winter's withdrawal, and felt my consciousness melt into tender emotion with a quick reminder of the happy past, of spring's "first flutes and drums," of the twi- light orchestra of frogs in the meadows at Forty Acres, of Cole- ridge's "dilating soul, enrapt, transfused," at dawn. A strange tongue had intimated a bit of eternal truth and a finite mind had
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grasped it. I could understand, could understand! The rapturous discovery of childish days was renewed; it did itself.
After that day each lesson provided a poem for memorizing and repeating in the park. I find copied in the old blank-book Lenau's Schilflieder, Heine's Fichtenbaum steht einsam, Rückert's Aus Der Jugendzeit, Uhland's Schäfer's Sonntagslied-all short, descriptive bits which gave distinct pictures to the imagination, and were easily memorized. The German script, labored and tensely correct at first, grows more pliable later on, as longer poems like Geibel's Freundschaft und Liebe, which fitted in with accesses of exuber- ant sentimentality, and his Minnelied, were undertaken, and Goethe's Mailied, and more Heine. Love-songs appealed to one mightily.
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On the first day of March, the Consul came in with an account of the royal wedding in Berlin on February 27th, to which our min- ister, Mr. Andrew White, had been bidden. We heard that the sedate young girl of the Channel trip was now the bride of a poten- tial emperor, the erratic and physically handicapped Prince Wil- liam. It had been a very gorgeous affair, but not nearly such a mag- nificent and impressive demonstration as that of his father and mother, for a cold indifference on the part of Bismarck and the military clique was evident.
We heard much gossip concerning strained relations of the Crown Princess, who was now in rather an equivocal position, with the old Emperor still in power and the young princes, her sons, in the hands of an element which was working to nullify her influ- ence over them, under Bismarck's dictatorship. One of the stories which Doris Herrnsdorf imparted to her American pupil has never appeared, so far as I know, in any biography published, and may have been merely a malicious fiction, but it was whispered that in trying to keep her boys' education in her own hands the Crown Princess had followed the example of her mother Queen Victoria, who had succeeded in getting the Prince of Wales out of the clutches of the English army and direct military dominion. William was des- tined by German sanction to be reared a soldier, and the younger son, Henry, was claimed for the navy and sent on a long cruise at Bis- marck's orders in spite of her frantic plea that such a little fellow, only thirteen, should not be taken from his devoted mother. After he had actually been carried off, and the steamer had docked for diplomatic reasons at a port in the Orient, the captain, it was said,
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received a telegram ordering that Prince Henry be sent back to Germany at once by special transport, signed by Crown Prince Frederick; a command which could not be disobeyed. The infer- ence that his wife had really sent it, and used his name was of course to be deduced from this tale. It was also reported that in conse- quence of her insubordination the Crown Princess was known to have made a stay of several months in Switzerland-a species of exile. Naturally there was no way of verifying the report, but for- eigners believed it and trusted in the benign influence of Anglo- German marriages. These unpleasant aspects were probably not serious, I concluded. But the story of the Schleswig-Holstein-Den- mark usurpations as told by my teacher, who was of an independent mind and had no sympathy with the Austro-Prussian combination and its repercussions, gave me doubts and conflicts of a mild nature, which when talked over with the consul, and my new acquaint- ance, Richard, produced a nationalistic manifestation from the former, who detested the German government and all its works.
With the young man it was different. He had been frequenting, to improve his German, the already mentioned Kneipe, or beer- room where a small group, to which Herr Poetsch, our landlord, belonged, met every evening. The discussions there were conducted in a vernacular different from that of the University lecture-halls, naturally, and were rather difficult for a foreigner to understand. But he found them exciting enough and vehement enough to make him suspect that the men represented a revolutionary group, and he had even picked up hints of impending disaster, although it was only through facial distortions, oaths and sinkings of voice that this could be recognized. We had all discussed it, and Colonel Montgomery had warned the young man that he might get into some unpleasant complications if the police learned of the place and its associates, but had not succeeded in frightening him.
We two young people had had little to do with one another during our first fortnight under one roof, for I was altogether too much occupied with my lessons to have time for any more social contacts than an occasional half hour upstairs in the consul's flat. But it was presently suggested by the long-legged Richard that as he
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was due in classes every morning it would be pleasant to join forces with his next-room neighbor on her walk to town, instead of going alone over the long Plagwitzerchaussee. I was not pleased to have my solitude interrupted, but he proved quite adjustable, as I wrote my friend Lucy, and tramped along silently, smoking a short brown pipe, while I declaimed German poetry and gurgled, now quite easily, the ra re ro. One morning toward the middle of March, we encountered a curiously changed condition of things. The avenues in the Park, usually empty at that hour, held a stream of moving droschken, small one-horse carriages crowded with men who were to all appearances fugitives bound for the country districts. They were an unshaven, rather wild-looking crowd, most of them; there was something terrifying about the procession and the type of humanity it represented. The two Americans spoke of it and won- dered what had occasioned the stampede. We parted at the gates of the Park and I walked on toward the Nürnbergerstrasse with a somewhat uneasy, though vague sense of disturbance. I met no women; usually early marketers with baskets were to be seen, but few female laborers. The pavements were deserted, only here and there a small crowd stood in front of some drug-store or newspaper- stand, trying to decipher a printed statement on a small sheet which had been pasted to its window.
I reached my destination, and climbed the stairs. Fraulein Doris was standing in the hallway, looking white and frightened.
"Was ist los, Fräulein?" she cried. "They are calling extras in the street. Something terrible must have occurred; that only hap- pens when the Reichstag opens, or some great battle is fought. I am afraid for Bismarck, for the Kaiser; there are many nihilists in Leipzig!"
I could not tell her, but volunteered to try to find out some- thing. I descended to the street, and joined the crowd in front of a nearby pharmacy. The Emperor of Russia, Alexander the Sec- ond had been murdered by a bomb, thrown at his carriage in the street, not far from the Palace, as he returned from some sort of mil- itary gathering. A nihilist plot was suspected. He had not regained consciousness before he died a few hours after.
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It was frightful, frightful, said Fräulein Doris. This tragedy was of enormous significance to Germany as well as Russia. Maybe Bismarck would go next, or the Kaiser. The Social Democrats, it was true, were strongly intrenched, and nihilism did not exist within their ranks, but it was a menace, an incalculable sort of thing. The police would undoubtedly act. It threw out our lesson, for Fräulein Doris became voluble and spent the rest of the time explaining what had led up to this turn of events, beginning in purely feminine fashion with family history. As the tale unfolded it appeared that Alexander II had endeavored to do justice to his mistress the Princess by marrying her in an indecently short time after his wife's death and bestowing upon her a high rank and a new name, Princess Youriewski, to which restitution his two legitimate children were said to have agreed. He was, in fact, we learned afterward, about to sign a species of will giving her ample means of support in the event of his death. One could not show any defi- nite reason for the terrorists' attack at that particular point, for he was returning peaceably from a military review.
I had known so little of contemporary Russian history that this tragedy stood out against a vague background. But my teacher en- lightened me. And at the end of the lesson, an hour-and-a-half, we came upon Goethe's Wanderer's Nachtlied, I remember, after Fräulein had quieted down. The words gave one the sense of majesty in mountain-summits and blessed stillness in tree-tops, and I was grateful for its calming influence on that disturbing day.
On our way back to Plagwitz, however, the pressure of mass-ex- citement and fear was still perceptible in the atmosphere. The sinister line of droschken with threatening passengers was still out- ward-bound across the Johanna-Park; it was as if all the under- ground dens of criminality had disgorged their inhabitants. I had never seen human beings with so menacing an aspect. It was a re- lief to get back to the Poetsch villa with its calm garden-shade. The consul was very late that night and arrived in much excitement. A small mob had torn down the flag outside the consulate. Leipzig was declared to be in a state of siege, with the army in command; the police, acting under it, had notified our landlord to collect the
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passports of his American lodgers and deposit them at once at the Central Bureau, or Amt, since every foreign resident was in effect under arrest, unable to leave the city without permission. Hence the prompt exodus of many suspicious characters that morning. Richard, going that evening to the Kneipe, found it completely de- serted, and the host more reserved than usual. Herr Poetsch also had discreetly remained at home.
There was apparently a political house-cleaning carried on for a number of weeks. Crowds of emigrants from all directions arrived at the railroad stations, especially by Bavarian trains, and crossed to another depot whence those heading for America would be dis- patched to Hamburg or Bremen. Even Plagwitz, a small country vil- lage where peasants were accustomed to dance of an evening on the green in front of a peaceful little inn, had its quota of fleeing fam- ilies. The nihilist ranks had been temporarily diminished, but there were disturbing elements in the population which must be sup- pressed, it appeared. Somehow one did not feel altogether safe, and even the courageous consul admitted that foreigners, official or not, were kept very much in the dark about governmental activities.
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Music and musical opportunities were as rich as ever. The two young people at No. 5 Lindenauerstrasse, Leipzig, were making all kinds of discoveries in one another's company. I joined the choir of the English chapel in the old Bachschule in the Thomasplatz in order to be clear of any suspicion of narrowness. Colonel Mont- gomery was an ardent churchman from his point of view-a wholly American one, however, and virulently opposed to the English Prayerbook.
The choir itself was unpromising. The English girls were shy and stiff and their weekly rehearsals, followed by tea and biscuit at one of the boarding-houses, were not yet productive of any friend- ships. But we two young people at the Poetsch villa went together on Saturday noons to hear the Bach Motetten sung in the Thomas- kirche, the grand old church where Johann Sebastian Bach had been organist and choirmaster. From the building of his old school near by, undernourished lads in faded green caps came across the cobblestone pavement of the square and sang like young larks from the upper gallery, rendering the dignified anthems and chorales. The bells of the Thomaskirche came to be part and power of my Leipzig life. As the English chimes had expressed a sort of slogan of continuity and security, so these German bells grew-while I worked next door to them for two years-to stimulate a rhythm in my daily habit and study.
I went by myself, one day soon after my arrival in Leipzig, to ex- plore the tall belfry, towering above the little square and its sur- rounding houses. Entering through a low door at the foot of the tower, there came a long climb up winding stairs past the huge
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festival bell which could be rung only at Christmas, Easter or Pfingsten by four men standing on a hinged platform like a see-saw. At the top of the staircase three children's faces looked down at me through a trap-door-the family who lived like birds in the sum- mit of the tower, with a father, a man long since retired from the world because of a terrible scar on his face, and a mother who cooked and washed, let down baskets for bread and coal, and received the many tourists who climbed to look at the view. All five became my warm friends. In their company I explored the rough- boarded space above the organ loft and learned how to reach that sanctum by descending some sort of ladder leading to various galleries and corners. I was introduced to Bach's own organ and al- lowed to play a chorale on its yellow keys, with little Hermann serv- ing manfully as blower and Clara Elizabeth and Olga Martha dan- gling their thin legs from either end of the bench, while their father grinned contentedly, a bunch of dusty rags in hand. The royal pew, an arched niche perched on high, commanding a view of the whole interior, was hung with faded emblems and worn banners, and the family offered to smuggle me into it when the Hohe Messe was sung, or the Passion-music.
Evidently they regarded themselves as leading performers, with their command of the bellows; and why not, I thought. In that ca- pacity one had the joy of being organist, chorus, and cantor; every- thing depended on one's brawn. Music as an element of life, I said to myself, is the interpreter of revelation, a winged ministry like that of the angels. I came down the winding stairs that day with a deeper respect for the old faith of Martin Luther and its perpetuity, and for the family life which could plainly keep its integrity and unity even in the restriction of the gloomy old tower, far above the rabble in the narrow square below. The children's content, the parents' pride, brought a new peace into my soul.
There was other music. We heard many operas at that last end of the season. One went at six o'clock, after a cup of tea or other light refreshment, and returned for a late supper at nine or there- abouts. The first opera of the Leipzig experience was Fidelio, the great favorite of the people. Merely to see the audience thrill, weep,
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utter bravos, recall the singers, was more than satisfaction. And the second was Gluck's Alceste which introduced me to old-time ballet and rather ludicrous attempts at classic effects but wonderful orchestral achievements. After that the Barber of Seville struck a popular note, and then when Mozart's Magic Flute came on, the opera reached its highest point for me.
Richard, my housemate, made a very good escort on these oc- casions, and sometimes an attractive Boston man joined us. I found that going to the opera with two inen was not especially thrilling, for I took it as the Germans did. It was a genuine rest, I concluded, to find oneself out of an atmosphere where every young man one met was regarded as a potential husband. Our trio, very congenial, came and went quite freely, each too much interested in his own pursuits to think of other people except as incidental participants.
We were all anxious to hear Tristan und Isolde when that came, and the young men had been studying the motives and text enthu- siastically. I myself was merely curious. I was still musically con- servative, intolerantly retentive of first impressions, determined to stand out against the "sensuality" of the music, and impatient with the long-drawn out passages in the love-scenes. I could not resist the cry of the Walküre, however, nor the dash of the horses across the stage, not to mention the mechanical splashing of the Rhine maidens against blue gauze billows. And as for the "hoots and squeals," as I would then have called them, inside the Venusberg, they were most intriguing when offset by the address to the Evening Star and the exuberance of the Tannhäuser March. It was not my fault if a thirst for heroic harmony and flowing melody had been created in me, as in most nineteenth century music lovers, and in truth those first months in Germany brought me enough enchant- ment to endanger my deeper purposes, had it not been for the pledge that lay behind them. There was rich reaping in the harvest of that year's musical production. Two great Masses were sung: the Hohe Messe of Bach, and the Missa Solemnis of Beethoven; either one of these enough in itself for a whole season's glory. I had never dreamed that a Miserere could be written through which one might listen to the cry of a world of sinners, not merely a pious congrega-
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tion; had never felt the solemnity and massed authority of a Credo; had never been swept up into the heights by a Resurrexit like Bach's. More irresistible waves of conviction swept over me, and lifted me beyond mere assent, beyond the stated truth of my re- ligious experience, and the acknowledgment of belief.
GERMAN EASTER
On the great day of Holy Week, Good Friday, the singing of the Bach Passion-music was truly a national event, and nowhere more devotional and significant than in the Leipzig Thomaskirche. First came the rehearsal, on the night of Maundy Thursday. The old church was so flooded with moonlight that a few groups of people slipped quietly in and felt their way into the pews; only dim lights shone in the organ-gallery over our heads, where the members of the Bach-Verein, a chorus which ran back in the history of its membership to the Master's time, was assembled. The effect was solemn, hallowed; yet that does not express the spirit which moved through the music. One of the most moving of the arias was Ach, Golgotha! unsel'ge Golgotha! At the very end, there was a sense of peace. Then slowly, one by one, the listeners stole away. Lights were put out, the doors closed, and the old church left in its moonlit. solitude.
One take Good Friday morning with a sense of world maga Through the long totendon there was quist at the button alleen. even the battalions of soldiers who usually marched to gay music, refrained. Before two o'clock people began to come to the Thomas- kirche, first by twos and threes, then in crowds. For an hour the throng poured in; they filled the long auditorium, the galleries, the canopied balconies where royalty had sat in state. All ages, all races: the clergy, the city officials, the helmeted soldiers, merchants, servants, a crowd like that at the foot of the Cross on Calvary. I can- not remember whether a great bell tolled, although memory sug- gests it, but I do know that neither of the two young Americans who found place in the assemblage had ever seen so universal a spirit of
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reverence and mourning. That first Good Friday was a revelation of the power and intensity of the Lutheran faith. I looked upon the scene of the Crucifixion with the inner eye, and heard with the ear something as truly a voice from among the voices which are neither speech nor language. I came out in the awed and silent procession, and was grateful that my companion, also, remained speechless and left me to my own thoughts as we walked out across the long stretch of highway to Plagwitz.
There was work to be done before and after supper, for I had made plans to go to Dresden by the morning train. I had also to con- sult with Mr. and Mrs. Montgomery for Richard had asked that he be allowed to make the trip also.
"I don't see why I can't," he maintained, "when I go about with you here every day. If I'm sailing for home next month, I must see Dresden before I leave Germany.
"Well, we'll ask the consul," I said rather grudgingly. "It would be nice, but I don't know what he'll think."
To our amazement, both elders agreed at once that there was no harm whatever in his going, and admitted that they would feel far easier to have him "along" for the trip. So next morning we two made the two-hour journey quite peacefully.
In Dresden we proceeded to the attractive pension kept by Fräulein von Germar, a lady of aristocratic birth whose German had been recommended as perfect. She was a woman of dignity, and welcomed us into her beautiful apartment, filled with treasures of furniture and painting. She gave a keen glance at Richard as he put down my bags in the pleasant room assigned me.
"And where do you go, young man?" she inquired.
He smiled, "To the hotel, I suppose. I am the Fräulein's fellow- boarder in Leipzig, but she won't let me stay in this house."
"Why"-in energetic German, "if you live in the same house in Leipzig, can you not do so here? Am I not a chaperon? I assure you I'm very strict!"
He looked at his companion. "If you say you think it's all right," he began, "I might -. "
"I don't dare impugn Fräulein von Germar's efficiency," I
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laughed. "Make your bargain with her; she's letting her rooms, not I."
So he stayed without further ado, and the question of propriety was dropped.
We went to the theatre, to the great Gallery, to the environs of Dresden by way of the Elbe pleasure-boats. Easter was a gloriously bright day, and we were wakened before sunrise by the heavy boom- ing of cannon, a ceremony which symbolized the rolling of the stone from the Saviour's tomb. There was one tremendous report, and in the silence which followed it began the soft twitter of waking birds. Then came detachments of soldiers, the blue Hussars of the Royal Guard first, in bright festival-uniforms marching through the streets to bands playing chorales and joyful hymns. The two com- rades went to early service at the beautiful English . Church and heard our own familiar carols, with full ritual-Easter would not have been complete without that, we both agreed. The young man had presented me with a bunch of violets that made me think of Archie and wonder what kind of an Easter Day he was having; just how much the significance of the Festival would mean to him in America. His photograph, in a small velvet frame, had been taken from the top of my piano in Leipzig and was set up on Fräulein von Germar's little dressing-table.
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