Part 10
“‘Evening-Bells?’ Ah, indeed. That is an idea! There is something so soft and soothing about the word. I’ll make a note of the suggestion. But we should have to have a critical supplement. I have been thinking we might call it ‘The Distiller.’”
“It is very expressive,” I replied; “it is quite customary in these times to subject books to a chemical process of review or criticism; the distillation is carried on until the spirit sought for has evaporated, or until the learned chemist can announce to the world what all the different elements were that combined in the decoction he analysed. But with such a name the paper might appear to smell of the gin-shop. How would it strike you to call it ‘The Critical Chimney-Sweep’?”
The publisher gazed at me in silence for a moment, and then embraced me with emotion. “An idea,” he cried; “a remarkable idea! What a volume of meaning there is in the word! German literature is the chimney, our reviewers are the sweepers: they scrape down the literary soot, to preserve the house from fire. It must be an extremely radical paper; it must be striking, that is the first thing. ‘The Critical Chimney-Sweep!’ And we will bring the art critiques under the promising title, ‘The Artistic Night-Watch.’” Hastily putting down the names, he continued: “Sir, my guardian-angel has brought you to my door; when I sit by my table writing my mind seems blocked up, but I have often noticed that when I once begin to speak, my thoughts flow like a stream. So when you were speaking of Walter Scott and his influence a glorious idea arose within me. I will make a German Walter Scott.”
“How so? Are you too going to write a novel?”
“I? Dear me, no; I have something better to do; and _one_? no, twenty! If I only had my thoughts all ordered. I am going to procure a great Unknown, and this mysterious personage is to consist of a party of novel-writers; do you understand?”
“It is not quite clear to me, I confess. How will you----?”
“There is nothing that cannot be accomplished with money; I shall address myself to, say, six or eight clever men who have already made their mark in writing novels, invite them here, and offer the proposal that they should join to produce this Walter Scott. They choose the historical subjects and characters, discuss the secondary figures to be introduced, and then----”
“Ah, now I understand your glorious plan; then you will erect a factory like the one at Scheeran. You will send for cuts of all the most romantic scenery in Germany; the costumes of old times can be procured at Berlin; legends and songs can be found in the _Boys’ Wonderhorn_, and other collections. You engage two or three dozen of aspiring young men; your sexavirat, the great Unknown, gives the general plot of the novels, here and there he models and corrects an important character; the twenty-four or thirty-six others write the dialogue, picture towns, scenes, buildings, after nature----”
“And,” he interrupted me gleefully, “as the one has more talent for the delineation of scenery, the other for costumes, the third for conversation, the fourth or fifth for comedy, others for the tragic----”
“Ah, I see; so the young poets will be divided into painters of scenery, tailors of costume, leaders of conversation, comedians, and tragedians, and the novel passes through the hands of each, like the pictures at Campe’s in Nuremberg, where one draws the sky, the other the earth, this one roofs, and that one soldiers, where one paints green, the other blue, the third red, the fourth yellow.”
“And in this way harmony and uniformity would be reached, just as they are in Walter Scott, where all characters have a striking family resemblance. And we’ll have a pocket-edition as cheap as possible; we can count on forty thousand.”
“And the title shall be: ‘The History of Germany, from Hermann the Cheruskian to 1830, in one hundred historical novels!’”
Herr Salzer shed tears of emotion. Having recovered, he seized my hand. “Well, am I not as enterprising as anybody?” he said. “Think of the talk it will make. But to you, most excellent friend, I am indebted for aid in bringing forth this giant thought. Pick out the handsomest book in my shop, and in token of my gratitude I name you to be--one of the twenty-four!”
_Wilhelm Hauff._
_MOZART’S JOURNEY TO PRAGUE._
IT was in the autumn of the year 1787 that Mozart, accompanied by his wife, undertook the journey to Prague to supervise the performance of _Don Juan_.
“The waggon drawn by three horses,” writes the Baroness von T. to her friend, “a stately chaise of reddish yellow, was the property of a certain old Frau Generalin Volkstett, who was fond of setting her relations to the Mozart family, and the kindnesses she bestowed upon the same in the right light.” This hasty description of the vehicle in question can easily be enlarged upon by any connoisseur of the taste of those days. The reddish-yellow chaise was decorated on each side with bouquets of flowers in their natural colours; the edges of the doors bore narrow gilt mouldings; the whole could not by any means boast the glassy varnish of to-day’s Vienna mode; the body was not fully rounded, though drawn in below with a bold, coquettish curve; then there was a high top with stiff leather curtains, which, for the time being, were pushed back.
Regarding the attire of the two passengers there is this to be said. With wise economy Frau Constanze had packed her spouse’s new and splendid garments of state and chosen modest ones for the occasion; with an embroidered vest of somewhat faded blue there was his common brown coat with a row of large buttons, so fashioned that there was a layer of reddish gold-leaf glimmering through a starry surface, black silk trousers and stockings, and gilt buckles on his shoes. For the last half-hour he has abandoned his coat on account of the unusual heat, and sits gaily talking bare-headed, and in shirt-sleeves. Madam Mozart wears a comfortable travelling-dress, light green and white striped; a wealth of light-brown curls, but loosely fastened, fall over her neck and shoulders; as long as she lived they were never disfigured by powder; her husband’s thick cue was also more scantily supplied than usual owing to the ceremonial freedom of travel.
The horses had just walked slowly up a gently sloping hill between ripe fields that interrupted the long stretches of woodland here and there, and now they had reached the edge of the woods.
“Through how many miles of woods have we passed to-day and yesterday and the day before,” said Mozart, “and thought nothing of it, it never so much as occurring to me to set my foot within them. Let us get down now, darling mine, and get some of those dainty blue-bells over there in the shade. Your poor beasts, postillion, will be glad of a rest.”
As they both arose a little mishap came to light, which brought upon the Meister something of a scolding. Through his carelessness a flask of fragrant essence had come open, and had poured its contents unobserved over their garments and over the cushioned interior of the chaise. “I might have known it,” lamented Frau Constanze; “there was such a sweet odour all the time! Alack-a-day, a whole flask of pure _Rosée d’aurore_ quite empty! I was so chary of it.” “Ah, little miser,” he comforted her, “take thought, and consider that thus, and thus only, could your divine smelling-whisky do us any good. At first we sat as in an oven, for all your fanning, and then suddenly there was a cool and refreshing atmosphere. You attributed it to the drop or two I poured on my jabot; we were revived, and conversation was once more animated and gay, whereas before our heads had hung low like those of sheep on the butcher’s cart; and this benefit will stay with us for all the rest of the way. But now let us put our Vienna noses into the green wilderness here.”
Arm-in-arm they scrambled through the trench by the side of the road and entered the dusky shade of the fir-trees. The spicy freshness, the sudden change from the sunny glow without, might have proved disastrous to the reckless man but for the prudence of his companion. She had some trouble in urging his discarded garment upon him. “Ah, the glory of it,” he cried, gazing up the tall trunks; “it is like being in church! Seems to me I never was in the woods before, and it is only now that I can see what this means, this assembly of trees! No man’s hands planted them, they all came of themselves, and stand so only just because it is jolly to live and labour together. Fancy, when I was young I passed this way and that through Europe; I saw the Alps and the ocean, the most beautiful and most sublime things that were ever created; and now here stands the fool in an ordinary forest of firs on the boundary-line of Bohemia, astonished and enraptured that such things should be, that it’s not just _una finzione di poeti_, like the nymphs and fauns and all that, and no stage-forest; no, it’s a genuine one, grown out of the earth, nourished by its moisture and by the warm light of the sun.”
“To hear you talk,” said his wife, “one would think you had never gone twenty steps into our Vienna _Prater_, which surely can boast of similar wonders and rarities.”
“The _Prater_? Thunder and lightning! How dare you name the word here! What with their carriages, and state uniforms, and toilets and fans, and music, and all horrors under the sun, there’s nothing to be seen beyond. And even the trees, though they are big enough to be sure, I don’t know how it is--beech-nuts and acorns lying on the ground can’t for the life of them help looking like brothers and sisters to the hosts of worn-out corks among them. For miles it smells of waiters and sauces.”
“Was there ever such ingratitude!” cried she; “and all this from a man who is deaf to all other delights when he can dine on baked chickens at the _Prater_!”
When they were both seated in the chaise once more, and the road, after running through a flat stretch, began to fall again to where a laughing landscape unfolded, losing itself in the distant hill-lands, the Meister began again after a span of silence: “This world is truly beautiful, and no one is to be blamed for wishing to stay here as long as possible. Thank God, I feel as strong and hale as ever, and there are a thousand things I should like to be up to as soon as ever my new _opus_ is done and on the stage. How much there is out in the world and how much there is at home,--things remarkable and things beautiful, that I do not even know of, wonder-works of nature, science, art, and useful trades! The black collier-boy yonder knows just about as much as I do about some things, by my soul. I should like for the life of me to take a look into this, that, and the other thing, that doesn’t come within the narrow limits of my trade.”
“The other day,” she answered, “I came across an old pocket calendar of yours; it was of ’85; there are three or four memoranda in it. One of them, under-scored, is: _Professor Gattner, to visit him_. Who is he?”
“Yes, yes, I know--the kind old gentleman at the observatory, who has invited me there from time to time. I have always wished you and I could take a look at the moon and the man in it. They have a tremendous telescope up there now; they say it seems as if you could touch the mountains and valleys and rifts, and on the side where the sun doesn’t shine the shadows that the mountains cast. It’s two years now that I’ve wanted to see it, and I don’t manage to get around to it, ridiculous and shameful though it seems!”
“Ah, well,” said she, “the moon won’t run away. There are many things we’ll make up for later. I have a presentiment.”
“Out with it!”
“I heard a little bird twitter that ere long the King of Prussia would need a _Capellmeister_.”
“Oho!”
“General Musical Director, I would say. Let me spin a dream! It is a weakness I have from my mother.”
“Go ahead! the wilder the better!”
“No, quite natural. First then take the time, a year from date----”
“When the Pope marries Kate----”
“Hush, you clown! I say a year from to-day there must be no such person as an Imperial composer named Wolf Mozart to be found within the walls of Vienna.”
“Thank you kindly for that!”
“I hear our old friends talking about us and our fortunes.”
“Give us an example.”
“Well, say one morning, shortly after nine, our exubriant old neighbour, Frau Volkstett, strutting straight across the cabbage market. She had been absent for three months; her great journey to visit her brother-in-law--her constant theme since we knew her--had at last become a reality; and now she has come back, and her full heart--bubbling over with the joy of travel and the impatience of friendship, and all sorts of delightful news--draws her irresistibly to the Frau Oberst. Upstairs she goes, taps at the door, and, without waiting to be bidden, walks in; you can imagine the delight and the embracements from both sides! ‘Now, dearest, best Frau Oberst,’ she begins, after some preliminaries, taking a fresh breath, ‘I bring you a bagful of messages! Can you guess from whom?’ ‘What? is it possible--did you pass through Berlin? Did you see the Mozarts? Ah, dear, sweet friend, relieve my impatience! How are our good friends? Do they like it as well as they did at first?’ ‘Yes, indeed! This summer the king sent him to Karlsbad. When would his beloved majesty, Emperor Joseph, have thought of doing such a thing? They had both but just come back when I was there. He is beaming with health and life, is growing stout and roundish, and is as lively as Mercury.’”
And now the little woman proceeded to elaborate everything in her assumed _rôle_ in the most glowing colours. Of their home _Unter den Linden_, of their garden and country-house, of the brilliant effectiveness of his appearance in public, and of the exclusive little gatherings at court, where he accompanied the queen’s song on the piano, her description taking life as she went on. Entire conversations, the most charming anecdotes, she seemed to shake out of her sleeve. At the same time she was roguish enough to supply the person of our hero with a number of brand-new homely virtues, which had sprouted out of the solid ground of Prussian existence, and among which the said Frau Volkstett had noted as the highest phenomenon and proof of the marvellous potence of new surroundings the wee beginnings of a most praiseworthy little trait of parsimony, which proved a most graceful acquisition. “Yes, and only think, he has three thousand thalers secure, and all that for what? For leading a concert once a week and the opera twice. Ah, I saw him, our dear, little precious Mozart, in the midst of his _kapelle_. I sat with his wife in her box right across from their majesties. And what did the handbill say? Here it is; I brought it for you,--I wrapped it about a little present I brought you from myself and the Mozarts; here it is in plain letters!
“Heaven help us! _Tarar!_ Ah, dear friend! To think that I should live to see it! Two years ago, when Mozart was writing his _Don Juan_, and that confounded villainous Salieri was also making preparations to repeat the triumph his piece brought him in Paris upon his own territory, and when he and his boon-companions thought they had plucked the _Don Juan_ as they had _Figaro_, leaving it neither dead nor alive to put it upon the stage,--don’t you remember, I then and there took a vow not to go and see the infamous piece, and I kept my word. When everybody rushed to the show--you too, dear Frau Oberst--I sat down quietly by my stove and took my cat upon my lap to spend the evening. But now, think of it! _Tarar_ on the Berlin stage, the work of his bitterest enemy, directed by Mozart! ‘You must come,’ he said to me, ‘though it were only to tell them in Vienna that I do not hurt a hair of his head. I wish he were here himself, the envious knave, to see that there is no need for _me_ to murder another fellow’s thing to remain what I am!’”
“Brava! bravissima!” exclaimed Mozart with roaring delight. He took his little wife by the ears, kissing and tickling her, until this bright soap-bubble game of a dreamy future--which, alas! never approximated this happy culmination--ended in mirth and boisterous laughter.
Meanwhile they had reached the valley, and were approaching a village which they had noticed from the hill-top, and behind which a pleasant country-house in modern style, the residence of the Count von Schinzberg, became visible. It was their intention to rest and dine in the place. The inn where they stopped was quite at the end of the village, and close beside it a by-road planted with a row of poplars led to the garden of the Count.
Mozart left the ordering of dinner to his wife, merely signifying his intention of having a glass of wine in the common room below, while she asked for a drink of water and for a quiet spot in which to enjoy a peaceful hour’s sleep. She was shown up a flight of stairs, her husband following, humming and whistling a tune as he went. In a newly whitewashed room, just aired, there was, among other old-fashioned furniture of noble origin,--which had, no doubt, wandered hither out of the possessions of the Count,--a neat, airy bed, with a painted canopy resting on slender green posts, the silk curtains of which had long ago been replaced by some more common fabric. Constanze exacted a promise from her husband to be waked in time, and bolted the door behind him, he seeking amusement in the common tap-room. There was not a soul there, however, except the host; and, finding the conversation of the latter as little to his taste as the wine, he thought to fill out the time before dinner with a walk to the Count’s park. He was told that respectable strangers were allowed to enter, and, moreover, the family had gone out for a drive.
He went, and ere long he had reached the open gate, and was walking slowly along under the stately limes until he had the schloss in view. It was built in the Italian style, light in colour, with a generous flight of steps lying broadly to the front; the slate roof was decorated with statues in the usual manner, gods and goddesses, and a balustrade.
Turning away from the _parterres_ of blooming flowers, the Meister bent his steps toward the shrubbery, passing groups of beautiful pines, and gradually approaching sunnier spots once more, attracted by the merry sound of a splashing fountain which he soon reached.
The large oval basin was set round with orange trees in tubs, intermingled with laurels and oleanders; there was a small arbour at one side, and a soft path of sand led around to it. The arbour seemed a most attractive spot for a rest; there was a seat and small table in it, and Mozart sat down near the entrance.
Inclining his ear indolently to the gentle plash of the water, his eyes resting upon an orange tree of medium size standing apart from the others close by his side and covered with exquisite fruit, our friend, under the influence of these reminiscences of the South, fell to musing on a graceful episode of his boyish travels. Smiling thoughtfully, he put out his hand to touch the fruit and feel its delicious juicy coolness in his hollow hand. In connection with the youthful scene arising before him there was a half-forgotten musical memory the uncertain trail of which he was dreamily following. Now his eyes begin to shine, they wander restlessly here and there; a thought had seized him, and he is eagerly following it. Absentmindedly he takes hold of the orange once more; it breaks from the branch, and he holds it in his hand. He does not see it; so far is he absorbed in his artistic preoccupation that he turns and twirls the fragrant fruit under his nose, moving his lips inaudibly to some newly-caught melody. At last, without knowing what he does, he takes a small enamelled case out of a pocket of his coat, pulls out a silver-handled knife, and slowly cuts the golden ball in two. Perhaps he was led by a vague feeling of thirst, but the delicious fragrance seemed to satisfy his stimulated senses. For moments he gazed fixedly at the two inner surfaces, then gently put them together, very gently separated, and joined them once more.
Suddenly he heard steps approaching; he started, and the consciousness of where he was and of what he had done dawned upon him. He was about to hide the orange, but desisted immediately, impelled by pride or by the knowledge that it was too late. A tall, broad-shouldered man in a livery, the Count’s gardener, stood before him. He had evidently seen the last suspicious motion, and looked at him dubiously. Mozart was silent also, and felt as if he were nailed to his seat; he glanced up with a half-laugh and a visible blush, but at the same time there was a look of undaunted frankness in his large blue eyes; then with a petulant air of courageous audacity, which would have been absurdly funny to an unconcerned looker-on, he put the orange, apparently uninjured, in the middle of the table before him.
“Begging your pardon,” said the gardener, now repressing his indignation, after having inspected the unpromising garb of the stranger, “I do not know with whom I have the honour----”
“Kapellmeister Mozart from Vienna.”
“Doubtless you are an acquaintance of the Count?”
“I am a stranger here, passing through the village merely. Is the Count at home?”
“No.”
“The Countess?”
“Is occupied, and it is unlikely she will see any one.”
Mozart arose and seemed about to go.
“I beg your pardon, sir,--by what right did you help yourself in this garden?”
“What?” cried Mozart; “help myself? The devil! do you believe I wanted to steal and eat that thing here?”
“Sir, I believe what I see. These fruits are counted, and I am responsible. This tree is designed by the Count to figure at an entertainment; just now it was to be carried away. I cannot let you go before having made mention of this affair, and before you explain how this happened.”
“Well, then, I will wait here. You may depend upon it.”
The gardener looked around doubtfully, and Mozart, thinking he might be manœuvring for a fee, put his hand in his pocket, but there was not a coin in it.
Two lads came up now, lifted the tree upon a barrow, and carried it away. Meanwhile our Meister had pulled out his note-book, and while the gardener did not leave his side, he wrote--
“GNÄDIGSTE FRAU,--Here I sit, a poor unfortunate, in your paradise, like Adam after having tasted the apple. The evil is done, and I cannot even seek refuge by throwing the guilt upon the shoulders of gentle Eve, for the latter is sleeping the sleep of innocence at the inn guarded by the Graces and Cupids of a four-post bed. You have but to command, and I will personally give your Grace an account of my incomprehensible offence. In sincere contrition, your most obedient servant,
W. A. MOZART (on the way to Prague).”
* * * * *
While this was passing in the schloss, our prisoner, not greatly concerned about the final result, had occupied himself with waiting. But as no one appeared, he began to walk up and down uneasily; then there came an urgent message from the inn to tell him dinner was ready, and would he please come at once, the postillion was anxious to get started. He picked up his things, and was about to leave without further ceremony, when the two gentlemen appeared before the arbour.