USA > New York > Onondaga County > Syracuse > Sixty-odd, a personal history > Part 19
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We took a long walk that afternoon, and absorbed the atmos- phere of the typical German festival-holiday. We saw das Volk at its best, alive with color and self-abandonment, nationalism forgotten; the spirit of the joyous child. All Dresden was thrown open to a mov- ing mass with color, light and rhythm, no harsh or cheap sounds but always a strain of music in the distance; behind it all the celebration of an event of deep significance. The performances of Faust which were held on the two successive nights were interesting but gro- tesque, because the astounding perfection of detail in the scenery overpowered one's emotional response to the poetry.
The week passed rapidly. We visited the Gallery daily. I was systematic in my study of the different schools. One Dutch land- scape, Ruysdael's Sandy Road on a Summer Day, was a reminder of Hadley by-ways, and I visited it every day for a moment before leav-
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ing. There were pleasant social contacts also: garden-parties, steam- er-excursions on the Elbe, and one delightful dinner-party given by the American wife of a German general.
I returned to the routine of study mentally refreshed. Already the German language was becoming fluent and familiar. The jour- ney back to Leipzig took us through lovely country, with the new- sown fields in their fresh green and symmetrical lines, in compari- son with which our American agriculture seemed rough and un- tidy.
Archie's letters had not been communicative. His first one, answering my account of the sea-voyage, was studiously matter-of- fact. I had re-read it many times, trying to wring out some evidence of sentiment. He had said:
You must have had a glorious time on the voyage over, with all the novelties of an ocean journey and its attractions on board ship, which include, I presume, the young Englishmen, the officers, the naval knight, etc. I hope you didn't flirt too desperately with them:
The mild sarcasm was disquieting. Had my vaunted conquests suggested the application of that dismal fallacy, so frequently ac- cepted by young women, that the way to hold a man's affections is to keep him jealous? While there might be nothing to hope for, I could hardly wish to destroy what was hitherto so natural and spon- taneous, so in answering a long and far less reserved epistle which was waiting on my return from Dresden, I refrained from any similar allusions. One's correspondence was selective and a trifle complicated anyway. Different people wanted to hear about differ- ent things. To one's parents one described churches and concerts and fine landscapes and lessons and impressions; young women heard of social contacts, and handsome officers and operas and cele- brated buildings; the man of one's heart would be glad to know what constituted one's chief happiness, and have just a little assur- ance that . . . . well, one must be careful not to take too much for granted, of course, but one need not keep one's own heart and its promptings under lock and key exactly, even though one might
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not carry it on one's sleeve! I sighed over the heavy responsibility and now and then tore up a too-sentimental passage.
In a letter to my brother, I had written of a military parade, and in contrast to the disturbing effect of those witnessed on Bos- ton Common, I found myself enthusiastic over brass bands. The glamour of the uniform, the helmet and the sword had no connec- tion with slaughter in the peaceful Germany of 1881, and the official march of the Leipzig regiments was the Carmen Toreador, which evoked happy recollections of the night when Archie and I had gone to the opera in Boston.
In May Richard sailed for America, his year of study over. The Poetsch family, to whom he had endeared himself greatly, children and all, parted from him in tears, and the great mastiff, Pluto, re- fused to leave his kennel for twenty-four hours.
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July had hardly come in when a public tragedy shattered the composure of the American colony. On the morning of the third, the consul wakened me with a terrifying knock and called:
"Bad news from America! President Garfield shot; this world is too wicked to go on any longer. Listen"-and he read a telegram just received from Washington. It was a severe shock to everyone; dispatches poured in all day at the Consulate, reporters besieged house and office, the American flag hung at half mast; a mist of doubt brooded over the foreign community. A grand Independence Day dinner was in preparation, and as Mr. Montgomery was espe- cially happy in presiding at functions of the sort, we were hoping it might take place after all and be turned into a sort of consolation- gathering; but Mr. White telegraphed from Berlin that all festiv- ities must be called off.
Just as my spirits seemed to reach their lowest point, however, Dr. Zakrzewska wrote that she had arrived in Dresden. It was pre- cisely the moment for a reassuring figure to appear on my horizon. I went to Dresden immediately.
When we were alone she asked "Are you amused?"
"Very much."
"Are you in love? I forgot to ask that last year."
"Not with anyone in Germany."
"I see," the keen eyes softened. "Is he patient?"
"He must be. But need I stay three whole years?"
"Let me count. You were to teach when you go home, were you not? I think we might say till a year from next May; that will have given you two and a half seasons."
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"I've learned one thing and another already," I volunteered. "You were right about music. It's no escape from the vicissitudes of life; it's woven into life, through and through. It's the rhythm of all growth; religion, science. The study of it has to do with the mak- ing of character and steadying of one's emotions, not running away from them. I realized that. You don't get terribly excited about it, over here, you just go in for it. I can't express it, but you'll under- stand. I never thought that digging at piano-technique would be ac- tually a creative thing, but it is."
"Certainly it is. You gain power, too, by thoroughness; and that is something you can learn in Germany. And power means self- control, or ought to. Go on drudging, and keep yourself well."
In those two and a half seasons that followed, my studies were interrupted first by a trip to Thuringia in the capacity of chaperon for Mrs. Montgomery's thirteen year old niece, Annie Dexter. I was, to be sure, rather young for that role, so I made my costume as duenna-like as possible, but I do not think I should have deceived the Germans we visited, even if my young charge had not given me away in a confidential moment. In any case, it was a delightful expe- rience, and after I met American friends in Weimar, I joined Arria in Switzerland, and went to the Bernese Oberland for a month. From there, I traveled with three students. We were a hilarious group and I realize with mortification that our disregard of public opinion, or public convenience, for that matter, must have made a horrible impression on the beholder. At Frankfurt I embarked for Leipzig, but not to the Plagwitz villa, for the Poetsch family had moved into small city quarters; the consul and his wife to a hotel.
The right kind of German family, however, had been found through the ministrations of Miss Doris and an astounding adver- tisement which she had published in the Tageblatt, mentioning her pupil as a höchstgebildete Amerikanerin! In less than a week I set- tled in the old stone house which belonged to Herr Pastor Valen- tiner, the Archdeacon of the Thomas Church, with the Bachschule and its green-capped family of boys opposite, the great tower next door, and the short alley leading to the military fortress, the Pleis -. senburg, whence a glittering regiment emerged triumphantly.
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Once or twice a week the tread of marching feet sounded in the Burggasse at sunrise, and a band trumpeted the Carmen Torea- dor. Looking down from my window I saw serried ranks of hel- meted men moving as one, without even the suggestion of a break in their strenuous lines or a single bayonet out of place.
I settled down to a steady routine, continuing my lessons with Fräulein Herrnsdorf, and at the Conservatory of which I had be- come a member. Coccius was my teacher of piano, and Dr. Rust of harmony and counterpoint. On Wednesdays I went with my fellow students to the last rehearsal of the Gewandhaus concert, and every afternoon I studied until tea-time, when Minna the maid would announce that the Frau Pastor was serving tea. Fresh Zwie- back, or sweet cakes were served on a plate with a twisted border, like the plate Cousin Sarah Phelps had used for her caraway cookies in our childhood. To the children who sometimes came, I told fairy tales. Or if there were a real afternoon party, or Kaffee-Klatsch, I was prim and proper, being anxious to learn the rules of German eti- quette that I might be considered a well-brought-up Mädchen at the more formal dinner parties where the American girl's idea of en- tertaining her partner was considered bad form by German ma- trons. More than once that was curbed by means of a reproving glance from the opposite side of the table.
On Sundays the Archdeacon came out in his full black gown, and marched to the Thomaskirche, where he made an impressive figure in the pulpit. At the jovial Sunday noon gathering, wine was served instead of beer. In the afternoon, the women got out their embroidery, and although I was accustomed to the easy ways of our Forty Acres Sundays, an illogical conscience bothered me. I wrote to the Bishop, thinking it might amuse him to justify this breach of the Fourth Commandment in the Archdeacon's house, and he answered that I could safely join in the occupations of the family if I sewed something useful for others' benefit. Oddly enough, I curled feathers to decorate the hats of the Valentiner family! I had learned to do it at home, so I went to work with a silver knife, curl- ing up the ostrich plumes which the Leipzig climate flattened, and thus dismissed conscience from sentinel duty.
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During those autumn weeks, however, a sobering piece of news from home made me feel inwardly solitary. It came first in an affectionate, but short letter from my brother James. He had made a momentous decision; he was leaving home and his work in Syra- cuse to join, or practically found, a monastic order, living in the slums of New York and devoting his life henceforth to poverty, celi- bacy and labor among the people of the tenement regions. It meant not only a party which I knew would be agonizing to his father, but a change to the extreme Anglican position, and a reversion to primitive forms of doctrine and sacramental practice. I knew his intense interest in the Oxford movement and its fruits. Sometimes I had thought it would be the Church of Rome to which he would turn, and had wondered whether that was destined to be the next move in the religious history of the family. But I felt sure that his sweetness of spirit would make the disclosure as gentle as possible, and that there would be no break in the harmony of the household. Father's letter, and one from my older brother, full of affection and solicitude, were reassuring. We had lost him, in one sense- his bodily presence would be terribly missed in the household- but it was to be expected that a son would sometime leave his father's house for a new field of labor and a greater independence, and the Bishop's sympathy with that move would be ready. The sisters knew none the less that to his mind the revival of a monastic system meant return to outworn medieval practices and mystical beliefs. He would be somewhat in the position of his old Unitarian friends at Harvard, when he left them to go into the Episcopal Church. Yet not quite that; lis confidence in his son was too strong to leave room for doubts that the change would bring an oppor- tunity for greater usefulness. He wrote:
How could I hold him back-knowing his heart, seeing what he has done for me, and fully believing with him that the Church sorely needs both a standard of holy living in the Ministry and a leaven of evange- lization supplementing our miserable, halting, half-secular parochial system. . ... They live in poverty, chastity and obedience-with bare floors, no tablecloths, scanty furniture, plain food, and seem content.
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I went and celebrated with them one morning, slept there in a cot, and we consecrated the different rooms with prayers. . ... Pray for them.
A Way to Life. That was what they were trying for, before all else. More life, and fuller. What matter if doctrines differed? The Bishop's daughter thought of Luther, battling against pernicious practices, holding his own as witness to the Faith before the judg- ment-seat of an emperor and a crowd of judges, praying in the soli- tude of his cell in the Wartburg, bravely defying evil, yet breaking in the end over a dispute regarding the nature of a sacrament. Music, learning, fighting, expounding, the founding of a great church. His life a warrior's combat. But St. Francis, the saint of all others who most appealed to her in his choice of the Way-our brother had followed him in holy poverty. This was the transition of the third successive generation. Archie was in the fourth. I won- dered how his quest-the search nearest to my heart-was coming on. And I was confident, with the hopefulness of youth, that what- ever faith he came to embrace, were it that of the oriental or the Catholic or the man of science ever groping and analysing, there would be no shadow between our souls. I attacked the history of monastic orders, in my late evening hours, and also began Ekke- hart. The contribution of the monks to literature, to agriculture, to art, hitherto only dreamily comprehended, took hold of my im- agination for the time, and with my old impulsive habit, I centred my attention upon past conditions, gloating over the fact that my very dwelling made an appropriate setting for the picture.
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Friendship, however-the one thing needed to give reality and interpretation to the experiences of that remarkable winter, was coming into the pattern. I cannot remember just how the power of social gravitation drew six of us into one another's company and held us united during the rest of our stay in Germany. I believe three of us met at a tea given by the Fräuleins Bohm, to whom I had been introduced by letter. The other two were brother and sister, James and Annie Muirhead.
Jim was a lanky Scotchman, with auburn hair, a much more approachable personality than many of the Britons we had met, and evidence of a culture that plainly fitted him for his position as compiler of a German Baedeker, the indispensable guide-book of foreigners. It required constant and up-to-date research to keep abreast of changing conditions, as well as a cosmopolitan outlook and a thorough knowledge of business, banks and exchanges, so he was in permanent residence at Leipzig for most of the year, and was more socially stabilized than any other Ausländer. His sister Annie was the genuine Scotch lassie, demure but with a sparkle of fun and a clever brain; they kept house together in a small apart- ment. We were very good friends, going to classes and concerts together. We even undertook to read aloud an English book now and then in short sessions, when two New Englanders, accompanied by their mother, arrived in Leipzig. The three were members of the Cabot family of Boston, on their father's side; their mother was a cousin of my grandmother Sargent. They fraternized with the Scotch couple, and the four fitted admirably.
The Bostonians I shall call Peter and Nora and the sixth, Felix.
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Felix had a knack of getting on with difficult people, particularly Germans. He was medical, not musical, but said very little about his profession; he had been brought up among Philadelphia Quakers, and absorbed something of their shrewdness. He and the Cabots had mutual friends, and it was through them that he be- came attached to our group.
We fell into the habit of doing things together a good deal; going to concerts or operas in twos or threes, or all six at once, men and girls separately or in a mixed company, often including other acquaintances, and if transient visitors needed to be entertained, taking them about or getting up parties for the theatre or lunching at the Café Francais, or going for supper to Bonorand's-the pop- ular beer garden in the Rosenthal Park, where there was always lovely music. We ordered favorite German dishes which we had learned to like: Häringsalat, Schmierkäse, Sauerkraut, Rehbraten, Saxon coffee, of which one could drink any amount without dis- turbance, since, as Dr. Erb observed, it was loaded with chicory. We drank beer or red wine. The men smoked pipes if they smoked at all; we were enveloped at any rate in clouds of tobacco. (A Weber Overture always makes me smell cigar-smoke and taste Wurst.)
James Muirhead, as a permanent resident, knew all the ropes- and ran a set of dances those two winters, getting hold of new ar- rivals from London or America, hunting up obscure students with a social bent, and introducing some German officers who were al- ways available for the gayeties of foreigners. Those dances in the winter of 1881-2, usually ended with a cotillion for which the girls made up figures and favors. Peter Cabot or the tall Scotchman led the cotillion usually, and we all became inured to the queer twirl- ing waltz step of the Germans, which was somewhat dizzying. They had indefatigable legs and were never tired; the uninitated were always ready to drop after the first round.
After a Tuesday night dance we used to stumble over to the Gewandhaus more dead than alive in the dark next morning, and talk it over as we ate our Brödchen in the concert-seats. The con- certs themselves were always a fresh surprise. Some of the great
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musicians of the world came; Sarasate with his Spanish violin and his passionate, tense features and graceful bowing. He was young then and achieved a far greater sensation in Leipzig than he after- ward did in this country; Moskowski and Scharwenka made great "hits." Rubinstein as conductor and soloist, came leading his Ocean Symphony with such éclat that the whole orchestra broke out in- continently, playing every instrument at once with wild shrieks and thumping of drums, and Reinecke embraced him in public, so to speak, while the audience shouted bravos and encores.
There was much excitement when Hans Von Bulow appeared in the Gewandhaus with his Saxe-Meiningen orchestra, the Grand Duke's favorite art-trophy. The musicians wore a uniform of red- and-silver, and brought their own equipment of seats and pulte to match, not to mention the most superior of instruments. Bulow was himself in a nervous condition at that period. Fifteen years be- fore he had taken heroically the elopement of his wife Cosima, daughter of Liszt and Madame d'Agoult, with Wagner, and kept the sincere friendship of her father, who deplored the match. But it had been a terrific strain on his sensibilities, had left him a neu- rotic, and on occasions he betrayed sharp irritability. One climax during the rehearsal-concert of the Meiningen orchestra made a lasting impression on the Leipzig gathering. The first movement of a Beethoven symphony-the fifth I think-was under way with the audience holding its breath in wonder, when three or four unlucky late-comers somehow got into the hall and were trying to find their seats. Bülow heard the slight stir, turned his head, caught a glimpse of them and struck his baton sharply against metal; the players stopped in the middle of a bar, with the finality of a lightning-flash. The scared interrupters, their faces as white as the leader's stum- bled into the midst of the waiting audience, his glance piercing their souls, no doubt, with its malignity. The horrible moment lasted until they had dropped into place, and then in another flash he turned, raised his baton, and the instruments took up instantly the beat at which they had paused, and continued the symphony in triumph. It was a feat so amazing that a storm of applause fol- lowed. Many ventured an opinion that the whole thing was done to
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show off his power over the players; but whether or not, Bülow earned preeminence as an interpreter of Beethoven through the achievements of the Meiningen orchestra, and no one who can re- member his conducting will ever be able to satisfy himself com- pletely by listening to the conductors of today; the subtle rendering of tone-values, the reserve, the stateliness, which the music demands, was brought to its peak in that era, and I believe has never reached such perfection since.
Clara Schumann came to play Mendelssohn's G Minor concerto, with the orchestra, and a Beethoven sonata, Les Adieux, Opus 81A at the Gewandhaus concert, and take the piano part in her hus- band's quintette at the chamber music on Saturday night. Nora Cabot and I were on the scent, the day after her arrival in town. Nora had a forenoon practice-hour in the conservatory building; the old janitor was susceptible to small attentions and promised his aid. He was sure Madame Schumann would come to try the piano. About eleven o'clock he appeared in the practice-room, and laid one finger aside of his nose, pointing with the other in the di- rection of the Concert-room. "Angekommen!" he whispered.
We slipped out of the door, up the mysterious little staircase which came out into the gallery just above the stage. We crawled on hands and knees, afraid to let our heads be seen above the seat-backs. A furtive peep showed us two figures in front of the piano; a white- haired old lady of sixty-three and her daughter, a fine-looking, dark-haired woman. There was a little discussion over chairs; it was hard to find one of the right height, among the orchestra-seats. Finally when a satisfactory one was discovered, Madame Schumann said:
"Now, how shall I know which this is, at the concert? I must be able to find it. We'll mark it; was?"
"Oh yes, I know. See: this way." The daughter produced from her silk knitting-bag a ball of red yarn, and broke off a long piece. "So; 'rum und 'rum;" she wound it about one of the rungs of the chair-back and made it fast. "Now you will be able to pick it out." Then her mother sat upon it and began to practice the sonata.
The musician struck the piano, played a part of the lovely slow
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movement of the concerto. There was one passage, a descending scale, that did not please her. She played it over and over-it must have been at least fifty times; just that one bit. By and by she went back to the beginning and played the whole movement, letting the difficult run take its place naturally. And just before the very last bars, at the end, something made her look up and catch sight of the two girls' faces, and she gave us a smile all for ourselves, which sent shivers of delight down our spines. We hardly dared breathe till she had left the hall. All the rest of the day was spent in telling of our adventure.
Of course Madame Schumann played even more beautifully at the concert itself, and the Leipzigers applauded almost hysteri- cally. On Saturday evening some old friends, members of the Kränzchen of her young days but now dear old ladies in caps and soft shawls, sat with her on the stage, their knitting in their hands. She looked younger than any of them; there was a freshness of youth about her, for all her silver hair. When she rose to take her place at the piano and walked past the row, each one grasped her hand in turn, with a smile of encouragement, as if to assure her that she would acquit herself successfully. And when the Quintette was finished, she consented to play some of the Davidsbündler, and then the Warum? with a wistful,lingering touch and a tender recollec- tion, one could feel, of her husband and lover. I ventured to go and see her next day, taking a photograph under which she wrote her name.
By this time, Fräulein Doris and I were reading Faust. It had been promised me that I should begin it when my understanding of the German language had reached the requisite point, so the sweetness of reward was added to the zest of literary adventure. And by good luck, that winter was productive of all varieties of Faust- music. There was the Gounod opera of course. The Liszt Faust Symphony was played two winters, and stood out from some less worthy productions of the great composer. The Schumann Faust- music was one of the most beautiful performances of the winter, and was given on the same programme as the Ninth Symphony; a stupendous event in my experience.
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After the Christmas holiday with its trees and chorales and carols and typical German celebrations, in the pastor's family, I returned to the special pattern of recreation which the six of us had developed. Three of us actually gave a ball, and invited all the young English-speaking residents, and a few Germans, mostly officers, to give color to the occasion. Jim Muirhead and Peter Cabot were Masters of Ceremony, and helped us to carry out our deter- mination that everyone should have an equal amount of attention, and every dancer be kept moving. It was most certainly a success, but no hint of the ball was ever given in letters to my parents. Perhaps the fatal "weakness for admiration" which the Bishop had noted after a visit to Cornell, might have accounted for the failure to record this important occasion. My letters were, in any case, de- cidedly selective.
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