Music-Study in Germany Part 8

BERLIN, _August 31, 1871_.

Germany is a most lovely country, and perfectly delicious to travel through. I believe I have described all the places we went to excepting Weimar. Weimar is delightful, and so interesting, because Goethe and Schiller, Wieland and Herder lived there, and everything is connected with them, and especially with the first two. There are many fine statues in the little city, and a delicious great park along the river which was laid out under Goethe's superintendence.--One group of Goethe and Schiller standing together in front of the theatre is magnificent.

One hardly knows which to admire the most, Goethe, with his courtly mein and commanding features, or Schiller, with his extreme ideality and his head a little thrown back as if to take in inspiration direct from the sky. It is a most striking conception.

The palace of the Grand Duke of Weimar is the princ.i.p.al "show" of the place. It is filled with the richest works of art, and is beautifully frescoed in rooms devoted each to a particular author, and representing his most celebrated works. There is the Goethe room, and the Wieland room, etc. The Wieland room is the most charming thing. The frescoes on the walls are all ill.u.s.trative of his "Oberon," which is his most celebrated work, and one picture represents what happened when Oberon blew his horn. You must know that when Oberon blows his horn everybody is obliged to dance. So in this picture he is represented blowing it in a convent, and all the fat friars and nuns are dancing away like mad.

They look so serious, and as if they didn't want to do it at all, but their feet _will_ fly up in the air in spite of them. The nuns' slippers scarcely stick on, and it looks so absurd! I was as highly amused at it as the mischievous Oberon himself must have been, so delicately has the artist touched it off. There was another design representing a band of nymphs dancing in the sky, hand in hand in the twilight, and it was the most graceful thing!--Their delicate little bare feet with every pretty turn a foot could have, their clothes and hair streaming in the breeze, and every att.i.tude so airy. It was _lovely_! The Goethe frescoes were by another painter, and not so fine, but I prefer pictures to frescoes.

Only one suite of the ducal rooms was frescoed. The others had superb pictures by the old masters, many of them originals.

The Duke is an artist himself, and designs a great many pretty things.

For instance, he designed the large candelabra which stood on each side of one of the doorways,--Cupid peeping through a wreath of thistles and nettles. He was kneeling on one knee, and pushing them aside with each hand. It was all done in gilt metal and made a very dainty conceit, beside being a good ill.u.s.tration of the pains of love! I think the Duke probably designed some of the picture frames, for they were peculiarly rich and artistic; for instance, the frames of the original cartoons of Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper were entirely composed of the leaves and flowers of the calla lily. The leaves lapped one over the other, and here and there a lily was laid between. The flowers were done in a different coloured gilding from the leaves. They were _very_ beautiful.

The pictures were not all hung together, so as to confuse your eye, but here a gem and there a gem--and O, I saw the most bewitching little statue there that ever I saw in my life! The subject was "Little Red Riding Hood," and it stood in the corner of one of the great salons. It was about two feet high, and represented the most fascinating little girl you can imagine, clothed in the wolf's skin, which hung down behind and had formed the little hood. The child herself was quite indescribable--the daintiest little creature, with the most captivating expression of innocence and roguishness. If she looked like that I should have followed the wolf's example and eaten her up! It was really a perfect little _pearl_ of a statue. I would give anything to possess it. In short, I wish the Duke of Weimar were my intimate friend, for he must be a man worth knowing. Now, if I could only play like Liszt!--I don't wonder Liszt spends so much of his time in Weimar. I am getting perfectly crazy to hear him, by the way, for everybody says there is n.o.body in the world like him, and that he is the only artist who combines _everything_. He does not play in public any more, but Weitzmann says that he is amiability itself, and that it would probably not be difficult for me to get an opportunity to hear him in private.

In the palace I also saw the little boudoir of the d.u.c.h.ess. It was all panelled in white satin, and the furniture was of the richest white brocaded silk. The window frames were of malachite, and one looked out through the single great plate of gla.s.s on to the beautiful park, and the winding river spanned by a bridge which suggests immediately to your mind, "Walk over me into the Garden of Paradise, for I was made for your express benefit!" The park lies on each side of this little river Ilm, and Goethe's exquisite taste has given it more a look of nature than of art. It seems as if you were walking in a delicious meadow, the trees being sometimes grouped together, sometimes growing thickly along the water's edge. You go in and out of sunshine and shadow, and here and there are dusky little retreats, and, to borrow Goldsmith's elegant style,--"the winding walks a.s.sume a natural sylvage." Some distance up the river, on the side of a gentle hill, was a small house in the woods where Goethe used to live in summer. Here he slept sometimes, and farther up the hill was a summer house where he took his coffee after dinner. To the left of this summer house he had had made a long alley-way or vista of trees whose tops met overhead and formed a leafy ceiling. It was like a cloister, and here he could pace up and down and muse. It was a delightful idea. To the right of the summer house was a small garden, and beyond that was a path which wound through the wood down to the path below. In one of the rocks there Goethe had had a little poem cut. I was sorry afterward that I hadn't copied it, it was so pretty.--But it was such a charming place to read and study, and it seemed to give me a better impression of him than anything else.

I saw a piano in the Duke's palace upon which Beethoven had played. It was a funny little instrument of about five octaves, but it was so wheezy with age that there wasn't much tone to be got out of it. After we had finished looking at the palace, we went over to see the ducal library. Here I saw a superb bust of Goethe as a young man. It was so handsome that it spurns description. He must have been a perfect Apollo.

I also saw a likeness of him painted upon a cup by some great artist, for which he sat thirty-four times! The old librarian, who had known Goethe, said that it was _exactly_ like him, and the miniature painting was so wonderful that when you looked at it with a magnifying gla.s.s it was only finer and _more_ accurate instead of less so! There was also a most n.o.ble bust of the composer Gluck. The face was all scarred with small-pox, so that the cast must have been moulded from his features after death, but I never saw such a living, animated, likeness in marble. It looked as if it were going to speak to you. There was a funny toy there, nearly three hundred years old. It was a drummer boy, with a little baby strapped on his back. The librarian wound him up, and then he beat his drum l.u.s.tily, rolled his eyes from side to side, and wagged his head, while the baby on his back hopped up and down. Whenever little children see it, it scares them, and they begin to cry. It had on a red flannel coat, and hasn't had a new one since it was made.--"Nearly three hundred years old, and never had a new coat," is worse than when C. P.

bought himself a trunk, and went round the house saying, "Twenty-seven years old, and been in twenty-three states of the Union, and _never_ had a new trunk before!"

Goethe's house is not exhibited, which I think highly inexcusable in the Goethe family, but Schiller's is. So we saw that, and what a contrast it was to the ducal palace!--You go to a small yellow house on one of the princ.i.p.al streets, enter a little hall by a little door, go up two flights of a little stair-case, and in the very low-ceilinged third story was Schiller's home--"home" I say, and the _whole_ of it, so please take it in! The first room you enter is a sort of ante-room where photographs are now sold. The next room was the parlour, and of late years it has been comfortably furnished by the ladies of Weimar in the usual cheap German taste. The third room was Schiller's study, with an infinitesimal fourth room, or large closet, opening from it, which was his sleeping apartment. The study is precisely as he left it, and nothing could be more bald and bare. No carpet on the floor, the three windows slightly festooned at the top with a single breadth of Turkey red, his own portrait and a few wretched prints on the walls--in short, such a sordid habitation for such a soaring nature as seemed almost incredible! His writing table, with a globe, inkstand, and pens upon it, stands at one window, and his wife's tiny little piano with her guitar on top, is against the wall. There are two or three chairs, and a wash-stand with a minute washing apparatus. In one corner is the tiny unpainted wooden bedstead on which he died; a bed not meant to stretch out in, but to lie, as Germans do, half reclining, and so low, narrow, plain and mean that I never saw anything like it. In it and hanging on the wall over it are wreaths which leading German actresses have brought there as votive offerings to their great national dramatist, their white satin ribbons yellowing by time. At the foot of the stair-case as you go out, you see the little walled-up garden at the back of the house where the poet loved to sit.

After getting through with the abodes of the living, we visited the ducal vault where Goethe and Schiller are buried. It is the crypt of a sort of temple built in the old secluded cemetery in Weimar, and in it all the coffins are laid in rows on supporters. Goethe and Schiller lie apart from the others, side by side, near the foot of the stair-case leading down into the crypt. Their coffins, especially Schiller's, are covered with wreaths and bouquets brought by strangers and laid there.

Schiller's had on it a garland of silver leaves presented by the women of Hamburg, and another of leaves of green gauze or c.r.a.pe, on every one of which was worked in gold thread the name of one of his plays. A great actress had made it herself as her tribute to his genius. From all I observe, I should judge that the German people love Schiller much more than they do Goethe. The dukes and d.u.c.h.esses lie farther back in the vault in their red velvet coffins, quite unnoticed. So much better is genius than rank! Hummel is buried also in the cemetery, which is the most beautiful I ever saw--not stiff and "arranged" like ours, but so natural! with over-grown foot-paths, and with much fewer and simpler grave-stones and monuments, and many more vines and flowers and roses creeping over the graves. We went to Hummel's grave, and had I been Goethe and Schiller I should much rather have been buried out of doors like him, amid this sweet half-wild, half-gentle nature, than in that dismal vault.

Speaking of Hummel reminds me of Tausig's death. Was it not terrible that he should have died so young! Such an enormous artist as he was! I cannot get reconciled to it at all, and he played only twice in Berlin last winter.

He was a strange little soul--a perfect misanthrope. n.o.body knew him intimately. He lived all the last part of his life in the strictest retirement, a prey to deep melancholy. He was taken ill at Leipsic, whither he had gone to meet Liszt. Until the ninth day they had hopes of his recovery, but in the night he had a relapse, and died the tenth day, very easily at the last. His remains were brought to Berlin and he was buried here. Everything was done to save him, and he had the most celebrated physicians, but it was useless. So my last hope of lessons from him again is at an end, you see! I never expect to hear such piano-playing again. It was as impossible for him to strike one false note as it is for other people to strike right ones. He was absolutely infallible. The papers all tell a story about his playing a piece one time before his friends, from the notes. The music fell upon the keys, but Tausig didn't allow himself to be at all disturbed, and went on playing through the paper, his fingers piercing it and grasping the proper chords, until some one rushed to his aid and set the notes up again. Oh, he was a wonder, and it is a tragic loss to Art that he is dead. He was such a _true_ artist, his standard was so immeasurably high, and he had such a proud contempt for anything approaching clap-trap, or what he called _Spectakel_. I have seen him execute the most gigantic difficulties without permitting himself a sign of effort beyond an almost imperceptible compression of one corner of his mouth.--And then his touch! Never shall I forget it!--that _rush_ of silver over the keys. However, he entirely overstrained himself, and his whole nervous system was completely shattered long before his illness.

He said last winter that the very idea of playing in public was unbearable to him, and after he had announced in the papers that he would give four concerts, he recalled the announcement on the plea of ill health. Then he thought he would go to Italy and spend the winter.

But when he got as far as Naples, he said to himself, "_Nein, hier bleibst du nicht_ (No, you won't stay here);" and back he came to Berlin. He doesn't seem to have known what he wanted, himself; his was an uneasy, tormented, capricious spirit, at enmity with the world.

Perhaps his marriage had something to do with it. His wife was a beautiful artist, too, and they thought the world of each other, yet they couldn't live together. But Tausig's whole life was a mystery, and his reserve was so complete that n.o.body could pierce it. If I had only been at the point in music two years ago that I am now, I could have gone at once into his cla.s.s. His scholars were most of them artists already, or had got to that point where they had pretty well mastered the technique. A number of them came out last winter, and the little Timanoff played duets with Rubinstein for two pianos, at St. Petersburg.

Since my return I have gone into the first cla.s.s in Kullak's conservatory, instead of taking private lessons of him. I think it will be of use to me to hear his best pupils play.

CHAPTER XII.

Dinner-Party and Reception at Mr. Bancroft's. Auction at Tausig's House. A German Christmas. The Joachims.

BERLIN, _October 2, 1871_.

This week I have been to a dinner-party at the Bancroft's. There were several eminent Germans there, and I was taken out by Botticher, the Herr who has arranged all the casts in the Museum, and who knows everything about Art. He couldn't speak a word of English, so we _Germaned_ it. We talked about Sappho all through dinner, and he gave me several details about that young woman which I did not know before. As C. used to say, we had one of those dinners "such as you read about in the Arabian Nights," topping off with a gla.s.s of my favourite Tokay, which, I regret to say, I so prolonged the pleasure of drinking, that finally the signal was given to adjourn to the drawing-room, and I was obliged to leave my gla.s.s standing half full, to be swallowed by the waiter as soon as my back was turned. Sad, but true!

On another evening, at a Bancroft reception, I talked with a Miss R., who was charming. She is twenty-two or three, I should think, very pretty and extremely elegant, and with the most delicious way of speaking you can imagine. Such softness of manner and such a delightfully pitched voice, and then along with this perfect repose, such a vivid way of describing things! I was immensely taken with her, and was delighted to have her for a countrywoman. She gave me a wonderful account of the Island of Java. I had a lot of questions to ask her, for you remember how persistently I read that book by a naturalist (Wallace) who went to Java in search of the Bird of Paradise. Miss R. is so extremely intelligent, and yet so una.s.suming; and then this high-bred manner.--I did not have time to hear her talk half enough, and, unfortunately, her party went away the next day.

The other day was an auction in poor little Tausig's house, and all his furniture was sold. It was very handsome, all of solid oak, beautifully carved. He had spent five thousand thalers on it. His wardrobe was sold, too, and I don't know how many pairs of his little boots and shoes were there, his patent leather concert boots among others. His little velvet coat that he used to wear went with the rest. I saw it lying on a chair.

I came home quite ill, and was laid up two days. It was the fatigue, I suppose, and miserable reflections. I wanted to buy a picture, but they were all sold in a lot. He had excellent ones of all the great composers, down to Liszt and Wagner, hanging over his piano in the room where he always played. Kullak deplores Tausig's death very deeply. He had visited him in Leipsic two days before he was taken ill, and said no one would have dreamed that Tausig was going to die, he looked so well.

Kullak said Tausig was one of the three or four great _special_ pianists. "Who will interpret to us so again?" said he; and I echoed, sadly enough, "Who, indeed?"

Kullak, by the way, is a wonderfully _finished_ teacher. He is a great friend of Liszt's, and Liszt has taught him a good many things. I doubt, however, how M. will fare with him, if she is only going to be here a year. My experience is that it takes fully a year to get started under a first cla.s.s master. These great teachers won't take a pupil raw from America, still less trouble themselves with a scholar who cannot immediately comprehend. I have written her to-day a three-sheet letter in which I have set forth the disadvantages of Germany in a sufficiently forcible manner to prevent her feeling disappointed if she still insists upon the journey. I have come to the conclusion that I am no criterion as to other people's impressions. Unless people have an enthusiasm for art I don't see the least use in their coming abroad. If they cannot appreciate the _culture_ of Europe, they are much better off in America.

There is no doubt whatever that as to the _comfort_ of every-day life, we are a long way ahead of every nation, unless perhaps the English, whom, however, I have not seen.

BERLIN, _December 25, 1871_.

To-day is Christmas-day, and I have thought much of you all at home, and have wondered if you've been having an apathetic time as usual. I think we often spend Christmas in a most shocking fashion in America, and I mean to revolutionize all that when I get back. So long a time in Germany has taught me better. Here it is a season of universal joy, and _everybody_ enters into it. Last night we had a Christmas tree at the S.'s, as we always do. We went there at half past six, and it was the prettiest thing to see in every house, nearly, a tree just lighted, or in process of being so. As a separate family lives on each floor, often in one house would be three trees, one above the other, in the front rooms. The curtains are always drawn up, to give the pa.s.sers-by the benefit of it. They don't make a fearful undertaking of having a Christmas tree here, as we do in America, and so they are attainable by everybody. The tree is small, to begin with, and nothing is put on it except the tapers and bonbons. It is fixed on a small stand in the centre of a large square table covered with a white cloth, and each person's presents are arranged in a separate pile around it. The tree is only lighted for the sake of beauty, and for the air of festivity it throws over the thing.--After a crisp walk in the moonlight (which I performed in the style of "Johnny-look-up-in-the-air," for I was engaged in staring into house-windows, so far as it was practicable), we sat down to enjoy a cup of tea and a piece of cake. I had just begun my second cup, when, Presto! the parlour doors flew open, and there stood the little green tree, blossoming out into lights, and throwing its gleams over the well-laden table. There was a general scramble and a search for one's own pile, succeeded by deep silence and suspense while we opened the papers. Such a hand shaking and embracing and thanking as followed! concluding with the satisfactory conviction that we each had "just what we wanted." Germans do not despise the utilitarian in their Christmas gifts, as we do, but, between these and their birthday offerings, expect to be set up for the rest of the year in the necessaries of life as well as in its superfluities. Presents of stockings, under-clothes, dresses, handkerchiefs, soaps--nothing comes amiss. And every one _must_ give to every one else. That is LAW.

I have just heard a young artist from Vienna who made a great impression on me. His name is Ignaz Bruhl. He is quite exceptional, and has not only a brilliant technique, but also a peculiar and beautiful conception.--But the best concert I have heard this season was one given by Clara Schumann a week ago last Monday. She was a.s.sisted by Joachim and his wife, and _that_ galaxy is indeed unequalled. Frau Joachim sings deliciously. Not that her voice is so remarkable. You hear such voices all the time. But she manages it consummately, and sings German songs as no one but a German _could_ sing them. Indeed I never heard any woman approach her in un.o.btrusive yet perfect art. She does not take you by storm, and when I first came here I did not think much of her, but every time I hear her I am struck with how exquisite it is. Every word takes on a meaning, and on this account I think you have to understand the language before you can realize the beauty of it. One of her songs was Schumann's "Spring Song," with that rapid _agitato_ accompaniment, you know.--She came out and started off in it with a half breath and a tremor just like a bird fluttering up out of its nest, and then went up on a portamento with _such_ abandon!--like the bird soaring off in its flight. I never _shall_ forget that effect! Of course it carried you completely away.

Beside singing so admirably she is a beauty--a sort of baby beauty--and when she comes out in a pale pink silk, contrasting with her dark hair and revealing her imperial neck and arms, she is ravishing. I've been told she wasn't anything remarkable when Joachim married her. No doubt dwelling with such a genius has developed her. They say that Joachim has had such a happy life that he wants to live forever! He certainly does overtop everything. On this occasion he played Beethoven's great Kreutzer Sonata for violin and piano, with Clara Schumann, and I thought it the _most magnificent performance I ever heard_! I perfectly adore Joachim, and consider him the wonder of the age. It is simple ecstasy to listen to him.

CHAPTER XIII.

Visit to Dresden. The Wiecks. Von Bulow. A Child Prodigy. Grantzow, the Dancer.

BERLIN, _February 10, 1872_.

A week ago last Monday I went to Dresden with J. L. to visit B. H. We got there at about five in the afternoon, and were met at the station by B.'s maid, who conducted us straightway to their house in Christian Stra.s.se. B. and Mrs. H. received us with the greatest cordiality, and we had a splendid time. I came home only the day before yesterday, and J.

is still there. The H.'s have a charming lodging, and Mrs. H. is a capital housekeeper. The _cuisine_ was excellent, and you can imagine how I enjoyed an American breakfast once more, after nothing but "rolls and coffee" for two years. B. did everything in her power to amuse us, and she is the soul of amiability. She kept inviting people to meet us, and had several tea-parties, and when we had no company she took us to the theatre or the opera. She invited Marie Wieck (the sister of Clara Schumann) to tea one night. I was very glad to meet her, for she is an exquisite artist herself, and plays in Clara Schumann's style, though her conception is not so remarkable. Her touch is perfect. At B.'s request she tried to play for us, but the action of B.'s piano did not suit her, and she presently got up, saying that she could do nothing on that instrument, but that if we would come to _her_, she would play for us with pleasure.

I was in high glee at that proposal, for I was very anxious to see the famous Wieck, the trainer of so many generations of musicians. Fraulein Wieck appointed Sat.u.r.day evening, and we accordingly went. B. had instructed us how to act, for the old man is quite a character, and has to be dealt with after his own fashion. She said we must walk in (having first laid off our things) as if we had been members of the family all our lives, and say, "Good-evening, Papa Wieck,"--(everybody calls him Papa). Then we were to seat ourselves, and if we had some knitting or sewing with us it would be well. At any rate we must have the apparent intention of spending several hours, for nothing provokes him so as to have people come in simply to call. "What!" he will say, "do you expect to know a celebrated man like me in half an hour?" then (very sarcastically), "perhaps you want my autograph!" He hates to give his autograph.

Well, we went through the prescribed programme. We were ushered into a large room, much longer than it was broad. At either end stood a grand piano. Otherwise the room was furnished with the greatest simplicity. My impression is that the floor was a plain yellow painted one, with a rug or two here and there. A few portraits and bas-reliefs hung upon the walls. The pianos were of course fine. Frau Wieck and "Papa" received us graciously. We began by taking tea, but soon the old man became impatient, and said, "Come! the ladies wish to perform (_vortragen_) something before me, and if we don't begin we shan't accomplish anything." He _lives_ entirely in music, and has a cla.s.s of girls whom he instructs every evening for nothing. Five of these young girls were there. He is very deaf, but strange to say, he is as sensitive as ever to every musical sound, and the same is the case with Clara Schumann.

Fraulein Wieck then opened the ball. She is about forty, I should think, and a stout, phlegmatic-looking woman. However, she played superbly, and her touch is one of the most delicious possible. After hearing her, one is not surprised that the Wiecks think n.o.body can teach touch but themselves. She began with a nocturne by Chopin, in F major. I forgot to say that the old Herr sits in his chair with the air of being on a throne, and announces beforehand each piece that is to be played, following it with some comment: _e. g._, "This nocturne I allowed my daughter Clara to play in Berlin forty years ago, and afterward the princ.i.p.al newspaper in criticising her performance, remarked: 'This young girl seems to have much talent; it is only a pity that she is in the hands of a father whose head seems stuck full of queer new-fangled notions,'--so new was Chopin to the public at that time." That is the way he goes on.

After Fraulein Wieck had finished the nocturne, I asked for something by Bach, which I'm told she plays remarkably. She said that at the moment she had nothing in practice by Bach, but she would play me a _gigue_ by a composer of Bach's time,--Haesler, I think she said, but cannot remember, as it was a name entirely unknown to me. It was very brilliant, and she executed it beautifully. Afterward she played the last movement of Beethoven's Sonata in E flat major, but I wasn't particularly struck with her conception of that. Then we had a pause, and she urged me to play. I refused, for as I had been in Dresden a week and had not practiced, I did not wish to sit down and not do myself justice. My hand is so stiff, that as Tausig said of himself (though of him I can hardly believe it), "When I haven't practiced for fourteen days I can't do anything." The old Herr then said, "Now we'll have something else;" and got up and went to the piano, and called the young girls. He made three of them sing, one after the other, and they sang very charmingly indeed. One of them he made improvise a _cadenza_, and a second sang the alto to it without accompaniment. He was very proud of that. He exercises his pupils in all sorts of ways, trains them to sing any given tone, and "to skip up and down the ladder," as they call the scale.

After the master had finished with the singing, Fraulein Wieck played three more pieces, one of which was an exquisite arrangement by Liszt of that song by Schumann, "_Du meine Seele_." She ended with a _gavotte_ by Gluck, or as Papa Wieck would say, "This is a gavotte from one of Gluck's operas, arranged by Brahms for the piano. To the superficial observer the second movement will appear very easy, but in _my_ opinion it is a very hard task to hit it exactly." I happened to know just how the thing ought to be played, for I had heard it three times from Clara Schumann herself. Fraulein Wieck didn't please me at all in it, for she took the second movement twice as quickly as the first. "Your sister plays the second movement much slower," said I. "_So?_" said she, "I've never heard it from her." She then asked, "So slow?" playing it slower.

"Still slower?" said she, beginning a third time, at my continual disapproval. "_Streng im Tempo_ (in strict time)", said I, nodding my head oracularly. "_Vaterchen_." called she to the old Herr, "Miss Fay says that Clara plays the second movement _so_ slow," showing him. I don't know whether this correction made an impression, but he was then _determined_ that I should play, and on my continued refusal he finally said that he found it very strange that a young lady who had studied more than two years in Tausig's and Kullak's conservatories shouldn't have _one_ piece that she could play before people. This little fling provoked me, so up I jumped, and saying to myself, "_Kopf in die Hohe, Brust heraus,--vorwarts!_" (one of the military orders here), I marched to the piano and played the fugue at the end of Beethoven's A flat Sonata, Op. 110. They all sat round the room as still as so many statues while I played, and you cannot imagine how dreadfully nervous I was. I thought fifty times I would have to stop, for, like all fugues, it is such a piece that if you once get out you never can get in again, and Bulow himself got mixed up on the last part of it the other night in his concert. But I got well through, notwithstanding, and the old master was good enough to commend me warmly. He told me I must have studied a great deal, and asked me if I hadn't played a great many _Etuden_. I informed him in polite German "He'd better believe I had!"

I should like to study with the Wiecks in my vacation next summer if they would take me. Perhaps I may. They are considered somewhat old-fashioned in their style, and I shouldn't wish to exchange Kullak for them, but they are _such_ veterans that one could not help getting many valuable ideas from them. Papa Wieck used to be Bulow's master before he went to Liszt.

Did I tell you how carried away with Bulow I was? He is magnificent, and just between Rubinstein and Tausig. I am going to hear him again on Sat.u.r.day, and then I'll write you my full opinion about him. He is famous for his playing of Beethoven, and I wish you could have heard the Moonlight Sonata from him. One thing he does which is entirely peculiar to himself. He runs all the movements of a sonata together, instead of pausing between. It pleased me very much, as it gives a _unity_ of effect, and seems to make each movement beget the succeeding one.

BERLIN, _May 30, 1872_.

I wish L. were here studying piano with Kullak's son. He has one little fairy of a scholar ten years old. Her name is Adele aus der Ohe--(isn't that an old knightly name?)--and it is the most astonishing thing to hear that child play! I heard her play a concerto of Beethoven's the other day with orchestral accompaniment and a great cadenza by Moscheles, absolutely _perfectly_. She never missed a note the whole way through. I suppose she will become, like Mehlig, a great artist. But perhaps, like her, she won't have a great conception, but will do everything mechanically. One never can tell how these child-prodigies will turn out.--Please don't form any exalted ideas of _my_ playing! I'm a pretty stupid girl, and go forward slowly. I never expect to play as Miss Mehlig does. If I can ever get up to Topp, I shall be satisfied.

You wouldn't believe how long it takes to get to be a virtuoso unless you tried it. Mehlig, you know, studied steadily for ten years, under the _best_ of teaching all the time, and she had probably more talent to start with than I have. Miss V. and Mr. G. have been here _five_ years studying steadily, and they are no farther than I am now. Not so far. It makes all the difference in the world what kind of hand and wrist a person has. Mine, you know, were pretty stiff, and then it is a great disadvantage to begin studying after one is grown up. One ought to be learning while the hand is forming.

I am just now learning that A minor concerto of Schumann's that Topp played at the Handel and Haydn Festival in Boston. The cadenza is tough, I can tell you. That is the worst of these concertos. There is always a grand cadenza where you must play all alone and "make a splurge." I don't know how it feels to be left all at once without any support from the orchestra. It is bad enough when Kullak lies back in his chair and ceases accompanying me. He plays with me on two pianos, and I get so excited that my wrists tremble. He is a magnificent pianist, and his technique is perfect. There's nothing he can't do. Like all artists, he is as capricious and exasperating as he can be, and, as the Germans say, he is "_ein Mal im Himmel und das nachste Mal im Keller_ (one time in heaven and the next time in the cellar)!" He has a deep rooted prejudice against Americans, and never loses an opportunity to make a mean remark about them, and though he has some remarkably gifted ones among his scholars, he always insists upon it that the Americans have no real talent. As far as I know anything about his conservatorium just now, his _most_ talented scholars are Americans. There is a young fellow named Sherwood, who is only seventeen years old, and he not only plays splendidly but composes beautifully, also. In my own cla.s.s Miss B. and I are far ahead of all the others. Kullak will praise us very enthusiastically, and then when some one plays particularly badly in the cla.s.s he will say to them, "Why, Fraulein, you play exactly as if you came from America." It makes Miss B. and me so indignant that we don't know what to do. Of course we can't say anything, for he addresses this remark in a lofty way to the whole cla.s.s. Miss V. couldn't bear Kullak, and the other day, when she and Mr. G. were taking leave of him to go to America, she let him see it. He said to her, "And when shall I see you again?" "_Never_," exclaimed she! We have only one way of revenging ourselves, and that is when he gives us the choice of taking one of his compositions or a piece by some one else, always to take the other person's. For instance, he said to me, "Fraulein, you can take Schumann's concerto or _my_ concerto." I immediately got Schumann's.

The other night I went to see a great ballet-dancer. Her name is Fraulein Grantzow, and she is the court dancer at St. Petersburg, where I've heard that the ballet surpa.s.ses everything of the kind in the world. This danseuse is a wonder, and they say there has never been such dancing since the days of f.a.n.n.y Ellsler. She has the figure of a Venus, and the most expressive face imaginable. When she dances, it is not only dancing, but a complete representation of character, for she plays a role by her motions just the same as if she were an actress. I have seen many a ballet, but I never conceived what an art dancing is before. I saw her in "Esmeralda," a ballet which is arranged from Victor Hugo's romance and modified for the stage. Fraulein Grantzow took the part of Esmeralda. In the first act a man is condemned to death, but is pardoned on condition that one of the women present will promise to marry him.