CHAPTER XLVI
THE ARTISTIC TEMPERAMENT
BEFORE leaving Frankfort I hurried to Cook’s office to look after my mail. I found awaiting me a special delivery letter from a friend of Barfleur’s, a certain famous pianist, Madame A., whom I had met in London. She had told me then that she was giving a recital at Munich and Leipzig and that she was coming to Frankfort about this very time. She was scheduled to play on Wednesday, and this was Monday. She was anxious to see me. There was a long account of the town outside Berlin where she resided, her house, its management by a capable housekeeper, etc. Would I go there? I could have her room. If I did, would I wait until she could come back at the latter end of the month? It was a most hospitable letter, and, coming from such a busy woman, a most flattering one and evidently instigated by Barfleur. I debated whether to accept this charming invitation as I strolled about Frankfort.
At one corner of the shopping district I came upon a music store in the window of which were displayed a number of photographs of musical celebrities. A little to my surprise I noticed that the central place was occupied by a large photograph of Madame A. in her most attractive pose. A near-by bill-board contained full announcement of her coming. I meditated somewhat more mellowly after this and finally returned to Cook’s to leave a telegram. I would wait, I said, here at Frankfort until Wednesday.
In due time Madame A. arrived and her recital, as such things go, was a brilliant success. So far as I could judge, she had an enthusiastic following in Frankfort, quite as significant, for instance, as a woman like Carreno would have in America. An institution known as the Saalbau, containing a large auditorium, was crowded, and there were flowers in plenty for Madame A. who opened and closed the program. The latter arrangement resulted in an ovation to her, men and women crowding about her feet below the platform and suggesting one composition and another that she might play—selections, obviously, that they had heard her render before.
She looked forceful, really brilliant, and tender in a lavender silk gown and wearing a spray of an enormous bouquet of lilacs that I had sent her.
This business of dancing attendance upon a national musical favorite was a bit strange for me, although once before in my life it fell to my lot, and tempestuous business it was, too. The artistic temperament! My hair rises! Madame A. I knew, after I saw her, was expecting me to do the unexpected—to give edge as it were to her presence in Frankfort. And so strolling out before dinner I sought a florist’s, and espying a whole jardinière full of lilacs, I said to the woman florist, “How much for all those lilacs?”
“You mean all?” she asked.
“All,” I said.
“Thirty marks,” she replied.
“Isn’t that rather high?” I said, assuming that it was wise to bargain a little anywhere.
“But this is very early spring,” she said. “These are the very first we’ve had.”
“Very good,” I said, “but if I should take them all would you put a nice ribbon on them?”
“O-o-oh!” she hesitated, almost pouting, “ribbon is very dear, my good sir. Still—if you wish—it will make a wonderful bouquet.”
“Here is my card,” I said, “put that in it.” And then I gave her the address and the hour. I wrote some little nonsense on the card, about tender melodies and spring-time, and then I went back to the hotel to attend Madame.
A more bustling, aggressive little artist you would not want to find. When I called at eight-thirty—the recital was at nine—I found several musical satellites dancing attendance upon her. There was one beautiful little girl from Mayence I noticed, of the Jewish type, who followed Madame A. with positively adoring glances. There was another woman of thirty who was also caught in the toils of this woman’s personality and swept along by her quite as one planet dislocates the orbit of another and makes it into a satellite. She had come all the way from Berlin. “Oh, Madame A.,” she confided to me upon introduction, “oh, wonderful! wonderful! Such playing! It is the most wonderful thing in the world to me.”
This woman had an attractive face, sallow and hollow, with burning black eyes and rich black hair. Her body was long and thin, supple and graceful. She followed Madame A. too, with those strange, questioning eyes. Life is surely pathetic. It was interesting, though, to be in this atmosphere of intense artistic enthusiasm.
When the last touch had been added to Madame’s coiffure, a sprig of blossom of some kind inserted in her corsage, a flowing opera cloak thrown about the shoulders, she was finally ready. So busy was she, suggesting this and that to one and another of her attendants, that she scarcely saw me. “Oh, there you are,” she beamed finally. “Now, I am quite ready. Is the machine here, Marie? Oh, very good. And Herr Steiger! O-o-oh!” This last to a well-known violinist who had arrived.
It turned out that there were two machines—one for the satellites and Herr Steiger who was also to play this evening, and one for Madame A., her maid and myself. We finally debouched from the hall and elevator and fussy lobby, where German officers were strolling to and fro, into the machines and were away. Madame A. was lost in a haze of artistic contemplation with thoughts, no doubt, as to her program and her success. “Now maybe you will like my program better,” she suggested after a while. “In London it was not so goot. I haf to feel my audience iss—how do you say?—vith me. In Berlin and here and Dresden and Leipzig they like me. In England they do not know me.” She sighed and looked out of the window. “Are you happy to be with me?” she asked naïvely.
“Quite,” I replied.
When we reached the auditorium we were ushered by winding passages into a very large green-room, a salon, as it were, where the various artists awaited their call to appear. It was already occupied by a half-dozen persons, or more, the friends of Madame A., the local manager, his hair brushed aloft like a cockatoo, several musicians, the violinist Herr Steiger, Godowsky the pianist, and one or two others. They all greeted Madame A. effusively.
There was some conversation in French here and there, and now and then in English. The room was fairly babbling with temperament. It is always amusing to hear a group of artists talk. They are so fickle, make-believe, innocently treacherous, jealous, vainglorious, flattering. “Oh, yes—how splendid he was. That aria in C Major—perfect! But you know I did not care so much for his rendering of the Pastoral Symphony—very weak in the allegro ma non troppo—very. He should not attempt that. It is not in his vein—not the thing he does best”—fingers lifted very suggestively and warningly in the air.
Some artist and his wife did not agree (very surprising); the gentleman was the weaker instrument in this case.
“Oh!”—it was Madame A. talking, “now that is too-oo ridiculous. She must go places and he must go along as manager! Herr Spink wrote me from Hamburg that he would not have him around. She has told him that he affects her playing. Still he goes! It is too-oo much. They will not live together long.”
“Where is Herr Schochman?” (This being incident number three.) “Isn’t he leading to-night? But they promised me! No, I will not play then! It is always the way. I know him well! I know why he does it! It is to annoy me. He doesn’t like me and he disappoints me.”
Great business of soothing the principal performer of the evening—the manager explaining volubly, friends offering soothing comment. More talk about other artists, their wives, flirtations, successes, failures.
In the midst of this, by some miscalculation (they were to have been delivered over the footlights after the end of Madame A.’s first number) in came my flowers. They looked like a fair-sized bush being introduced.
“Oh!” exclaimed Madame A. when the card was examined and they were offered to her, “how heavenly. Good heavens! it is a whole tree. Oh—wonderful, wonderful! And these be-yutiful words! O-o-oh!”
More coquettish glances and tender sighs. I could have choked with amusement. It was all such delicious by-play—quite the thing that artists expect and must have. She threw away the sprig of jasmine she wore and drawing out a few sprigs of the lilac wore those instead. “Now I can play,” she exclaimed.
Deep breathings, sighs, ecstatic expressions.
Her turn came and, as I expected after hearing her in London, I heard delicious music. She had her following. They applauded her to the echo. Her two female satellites sat with me, and little Miss Meyer of Mayence—as I will call her—fairly groaned with happiness at times. Truly Madame A. was good to look upon, quite queenly, very assured. At the end of it all a fifteen- or twenty-minute ovation. It was beautiful, truly.
While we were in the green-room talking between sections of the program and intermediate soloists, I said to her, “You are coming with me to supper, of course.”
“Of course! What else did you expect?”
“Are there any other restaurants besides those of the Frankforter Hof?”
“I think not.”
“How will you get rid of your friends after the performance?”
“Oh, I shall send them away. You take a table anywhere you like and I will come. Make it twelve o’clock.”
We were bundled back to the hotel, flowers, wraps, maid, satellites, and I went to see about the supper. In fifteen minutes it was ready; and in twenty minutes more Madame A. came, quite rosy, all awake temperamentally, inquisitive, defensive, coquettish, eager. We are all greedy animals at best—the finer the greedier. The whole world is looking to see what life will give it to eat—from ideas, emotions, enthusiasms down to grass and potatoes. We are organized appetites, magnificent, dramatic, pathetic at times, but appetites just the same. The greater the appetite the more magnificent the spectacle. Satiety is deadly discouraging. The human stomach is the grand central organ—life in all its amazing, subtle, heavenly, pathetic ramifications has been built up around that. The most pathetic thing in life is a hungry man; the most stirringly disturbing thing, a triumphant, greedy one. Madame A. sat down to our cold chicken, salad, champagne, and coffee with beaming birdlike eyes.
“Oh, it is so good to see you again!” she declared; but her eyes were on the chicken. “I was so afraid when I wrote you from Munich that you would not get my letter. I can’t tell you how you appeal to me; we have only met twice, yet you see we are quite old friends already!”
Just as her none too subtle flattery was beginning to work, she remarked casually, “Do you know Mr. Barfleur well?”
“Oh, fairly well. Yes, I know a little something about him.”
“You like him, don’t you?”
“I am very fond of him,” I answered, my vanity deflating rapidly.
“He is so fond of you,” she assured me. “Oh, he admires you so much. What you think must have considerable weight with him, eh? Where did you first meet him?” she asked.
“In New York.”
“Now, between us: he is one of the few men in the world I deeply care for—but I don’t think he cares for me.”
“Good Lord!” I said to myself wearily, “why is it that all the charming ladies I meet either are or have been in love with Barfleur. It’s getting monotonous!” But I had to smile.
“You will visit me in Berlin?” she was saying. “I will be back by the twenty-sixth. Can’t you wait that long? Berlin is so interesting. When I come, we shall have such nice talks!”
“Yes—about Barfleur!” I thought to myself. Aloud I said vaguely, “It is charming of you; I will stop over to see you, if I possibly can.” Then I said good night and left.