Chapter 5

For the Valkyrie I wore a new mauve and pale green frock. I don't think you've seen it. The bill was atrocious. I sha'n't pay it; but the costume is a great success. Portions of this second opera are awfully tiresome, first one couple and then another, going on for hours about nothing, but there are some exquisite clouds that move and grow and scatter exactly like nature, only more so, and make up a little for the dull people. I notice one thing: _all_ the gods and goddesses have always such troubles. There isn't a single happy creature among them, not even Wotan, who is god of them all, and wears a silly gold curl over one eye. I think it lowers his whole dignity; but they make a great many mistakes like that. Of course, one oughtn't to think of these things, but should simply listen to and enjoy the beautiful music, but my nature is so sensitive I can't help it. There are a lot of Valkyrie, you know, who wear a sort of antique dress-reform costume, not pretty, and ride through the air on deliciously funny-looking horses. And Brunhilde, the leader of them, a rather nice person, behaves quite like a human being in "Siegfried," the next opera, which I will tell you about later. In "Valkyrie" you think she is going to be burnt up, but in "Siegfried" she is saved after all. I suppose there is some sort of Biblical idea about hell. You recognized the Bible very often in "Parsifal." I much prefer Siegfried as a person to Parsifal. He's not such a _very_ good boy. There's more an air of athletics, football, rowing, and all that about Siegfried, while Parsifal smacks just a little, I think, of the Young Men's Christian Association. You can _kiss_ Siegfried with impunity, too; in fact, it saved Brunhilde's life, and I wouldn't mind running a few risks myself to be saved in the same way! You get perfectly drunk with this music of the last act of Siegfried. Of course, my dear, you know I am now writing about the _third_ opera, "Siegfried." You must follow me closely, for it's very easy to get confused about them. "Siegfried" is awfully long, too, and the first act--well, I don't mind telling you I slept a good deal. You see, the theatre gets so stuffy, and then one is digesting one's luncheon, and the stage is so dark, and I maintain that the music soothes you. I wore, of course, another dress, something quiet, as it was rainy, but I saw no one who looked any better. Between the first and second acts I managed to get a bow and a hand-shake from the Prince, to the visible envy of Mrs. Gordon. I wish you could see the dear beast. She flutters around the royalties every minute, like a nervous bird, and as if they were her nest of eggs and a bad little boy was in the neighborhood. I _hate_ snobs; don't you? I am lunching, by the way, with Mrs. G. to-morrow. Quite a big, smart party of us, I hear.

That funny dragon comes in "Siegfried," you know, and of course it is much more amusing here than in Covent Garden or New York. But it's the last act that I _love_! Such passionate music! Brunhilde falls madly in love with Siegfried, who is, of course, ever so many years younger than she. But it's just like us women, especially when we are Brunhilde's age. For I suppose she's forty something, as she was grown up and went to sleep before Siegfried was born, and when he kisses her he seems to be quite a man! By the way, Brunhilde was put to sleep for interfering somehow or other in the love affairs of Siegfried's mother and father, who are really sister and brother. If you think of it, the story is extremely indecent, but operatic things never seem to be shocking; music, apparently, covers a multitude of naughtiness, like charity is reported to do. Very likely that's why Mrs. ---- is always doing so much for institutions and what not--for her sins, I suppose. I always thought she was a naughty old hypocrite! By the way, there is a comic character in "Siegfried," and in one of the others, I forget which, called Mime--a funny little dwarf, the sort of thing they put in a Christmas pantomime to amuse the children.

_Later._

I have just come from the "Goetterdaemmerung," the last opera, and I am completely exhausted. I am as if I were in a dream, and can only think and feel and write of this beautiful, beautiful music and scenery. I am absolutely absorbed in it. Some people took the train for Nuremberg right after the performance. I am sure I never could have. I really can't believe they _felt_ the thing. Our train goes at 1:45. Such a nice hour; one doesn't have to hurry in the morning, and can have one's hair done properly. I have a charming new way of doing the hair. I got it from a Frenchwoman who sat just in front of me in the theatre to-day, and when it was light enough I studied the arrangement till I got it by heart. You want something like that to do during the long duets. Otherwise your attention is apt to wander from the opera, or you get sleepy. To go back to the opera, it began with the same scene that Siegfried finished with, which was rather disappointing, but a real horse came on and behaved as quiet as a lamb, with Brunhilde screaming like mad all about him. I suppose they put cotton in his ears, or something. The scene changed (without letting us go out for a rest, which I thought something of a sell) to the house, where Siegfried falls in love with another woman (Oh, these men!) I forgot to tell you, my mind is so full of the music, that I wore my new Russell & Allen winter frock, and I caught lots of people taking it in. But, dear me, how badly the German women dress! I haven't seen a single _chic_ one among them since I've been here, I don't believe I shall come to Bayreuth again. Besides, the music is too wearing. The Rhine maidens come back in this act! It is most wonderful the way they swim about! But, as far as I can gather, they are rather nasty cats. One thing I will say, though: I think Wagner's on the side of the women; for, in spite of Brunhilde's being in love with little more than a boy, she has all your sympathies. So has Siegfried, too; which is odd. I really sobbed when he died, he was so good-looking, and seemed so sad. This whole opera is very depressing. We reach Munich to-morrow night at 7; and I propose going to the Residenz Theatre there, and seeing a light opera just for contrast. But how bad the shops are at Munich. I believe there are some good pictures, but I think one sees so many pictures in Europe; don't you?

I presume you know Brunhilde behaves rather like Dido in the end: nearly everybody, more or less, is murdered off, and there is a sort of Madame Tussaud exhibition in the clouds at the curtain. Of course, I haven't really given you any sort of an idea about it at all. There are no words that will adequately describe it, only I promised to give you a detailed personal account; and I have done so. The reason we are going to Munich is we can't get a sleeper yet, everything is so crowded. Isn't it disgusting. This last opera is rather too noisy at times, and awfully long--longer than the others. But there's a men's ballet in it that is rather nice; not dancing, you know, but singing and posing and walking about, with imitation bare legs, most of them. But I think the best thing about the opera is it leaves you in such an exalted mood. I know I won't be able to think of small or worldly things for weeks, much less write about them. Before I forget it, be sure and write me if it's true that Mrs. ---- and Sir George ---- are both at Homburg, at the same hotel. I hear they are, and there's no end of talk about it. But then I find there's no end of talk about everything and everybody. It is not that people mean badly, but one has to pass the time somehow. I think I love best of all the Rheingold music. It is like a jeweller's shop window in Bond street; it seems to shine and glitter and sparkle. You see very few jewels here in Bayreuth; of course, there's very little chance to display them. Women wear the usual small string of pearls. That's about all. As most everyone wore one I wear two, with a different pendant each day. I like to be just a little original, and keep my own individuality.

Well, now I must tumble into bed or I shall lose my beauty sleep. I'd hate to have my figure get like these German singers. I wonder why! I'd have myself strapped between boards--I'd do _something_. Good-bye, my dear. Write me all the gossip you can get a hold of. I haven't sent you any in this, but that you couldn't expect. It was impossible that this letter should be anything but Wagner, Wagner, Wagner. I wish you could have been here with me--you'd have seen heaps of your friends. Of course I ought to tell you one thing, because I felt it myself: there's nothing catchy about the music.

Lovingly,

FANNY.

Art

A Letter

_A second Letter from Lady Aires to the Countess of Upham._

Munich.

My dear Rose:

It was very thoughtful of you to write me so soon, and Aubrey and I wish very much we could join you, but our money is all spent and we must hurry back to England, where we can economize by making cheap visits among our friends for a couple of months. In December we go to New York to spend the winter with mother. You never go home, do you?

I am so glad you felt you got so complete an idea of Wagner from my letter. I was a little afraid I hadn't done the whole thing justice, but I assure you there were many more people there than I thought of suggesting, and the operas, tho' long, are very delightful.

Here in Munich the chief thing is the picture gallery, as of course at this time of year all fashionable society is away and the theatres and opera either closed or giving second-rate performances. There are more musees than you really care to visit, and are full of masterpieces, many quite as atrocious as masterpieces so often are. The principal one--its name begins with a P--is the one we've been to.

I wish you could see the Rubens, or else it's the Van Dykes--I forget which, but they are beautiful; and when one thinks how long ago they were painted, it's wonderful, isn't it? One thing awfully interesting about a picture gallery is to see the absurd difference in women's dress now and in former times; don't you think so? And sometimes one gets ideas for one's self.

This particular gallery is altogether one of the most satisfactory I've ever been in. It wasn't crowded full of Baedeker people and that sort of thing. In the second room we went in we met Lord and Lady Jenks and the Countess of Towns. That was the room where we saw a portrait the living image of Janet Cowther. We all shrieked with laughter! You know how she has what my vulgar little brother calls an "ingrowing face"--it sinks in instead of coming out, so that the poor creature can't know what it seems like to have a real profile. It's extraordinary that there should have been two such faces in the world--don't you think so?--even with two or three hundred years between them. The portrait was painted by--dear me! I can't remember, but it was some one we all know. There's one thing I shouldn't mind, and that is knowing the lady's corset maker; I'd like to give his address to Janet, because, my dear, in spite of her face he had made the lady's figure beautiful. I think that's really the nicest part of a picture gallery--seeing comic likenesses to your friends.

Lady Jenks and I sat down on an uncomfortable bench without any back and talked away for nearly an hour. What an amusing creature she is! Has stories to tell about everybody under the sun. By the way, she vowed you and your husband got on awfully, and only lived together as a matter of form! I took up your cudgels, my dear, and told her it wasn't true in any particular; that Ned adored you and was an angel. Of course, he got drunk--that I knew, as all the world did, but you were used to that. It isn't true, is it? He never struck you? I'm sure he didn't! You'd have told a good friend like me; wouldn't you?

Well, just as Lady Jenks and I finished the others came back from going through all the other rooms. We were everyone of us dead tired, looking at pictures is so fatiguing. We decided to go back to the hotel and have tea in the garden. But I think it is a dear gallery, and to-morrow--we don't leave till the next day--if we've any time left after doing the shops, I intend to go back and see the pictures all over again.

Write to Eaton Sqr.; the servants will forward. Poor things, they must have had a dull summer! They say the heat in town has been fearful! But I don't think servants mind; do you? And then they have the run of the house. I am sure they use the drawing-room and sleep in my bed!

Good-bye,

Lovingly,

FANNY.

Aubrey says Janet's portrait is by Rembrandt; but I tell him I don't think it was by a Frenchman at all, I think it was by Greuze.

Sorrow

A Letter

_A Letter to Mrs. Carly, Florence, Italy._

New York, Wednesday.

My Dear Mary:

You were right when you said to me, two years ago, that the time would come when I would realize the futility, the selfish, the absurd insufficiency of my life. It is now six months since I lost my little girl--my only child. I thank you so much for your letter; I was sure you, who had so much heart, would realize more than most people what I suffered and feel still. And it needn't have been--I shall always maintain it _needn't_ have been! She was overheated at dancing-school and caught cold coming home. I was late dressing for an early dinner, thought it was nothing, and paid no attention. From the dinner I went to the opera, from the opera to a ball, on to somebody else's. I was dead tired when I came home and fell into bed and asleep. All this time, my child, with her cold, was sleeping close beside an open window! The maid was careless, of course, but it wasn't _her_ child--it was mine--and I hold myself most to blame. In two more days the doctor told me she couldn't live. I shall never forgive him! In six hours she was dead. I think I went quite mad. I know I really felt as if I had wantonly murdered her; and I still feel I was myself largely responsible. She was the dearest little creature! I am so sorry you never saw her. "I love my mamma best, and God next," she kept on saying all that last day. One wondered and wondered what thought was in her little brain. "You are mother's darling," I said to her--"mother's precious little girl, but God gave you to her, so you are God's first!" She threw her arms about my neck and kissed me, and said: "I like you better than all the little boys at dancing-school put together!" She fluttered about the bed with her arms like a little tired bird! She made me sing to her. I sang hours and hours--lullabies and comic songs she liked best. My maid came to me: "Madame is lunching out."

I was furious with her for coming to me with any such remark. "Telegraph!" was all I said. "Telegraph what, madame?"

"I don't care," I answered.

O my dear Mary! to watch a little soul going--a little soul that is all yours, or at least that you thought was all yours! To watch the light of life fade and fade out of a face precious to you, into which you cannot kiss the color again; to watch this little life, dearer to you than your own, slip, slip away from you in spite of your hands clutching to hold it back, or clasped in prayer to keep it! To sit and lose and be helpless! Oh, the agony of it! Marie came once more; it was dark; I guessed her errand, and only looked at her. She went away without a word. I took the child out of the bed--it was like lifting a flower. At dawn she died in my arms. Oh, were ever arms so empty as when they hold the dead body of someone loved?

And then began the revelations. The stilted letters of condolence, written with exactly the same amount of feeling as a note of regrets or acceptance, and couched very much in the same sort of language.

One woman recommended her dressmaker as being the most _chic_ woman in New York for mourning--as if I cared! A great many cards were left at the door with their corners turned down, and for awhile no invitations came. That was all! Most of the people I was unfortunate enough to meet made such remarks as----

"My Dear Mrs. Emery, I am so sorry to hear of your loss" (as if the house had been burned down or the silver plate had been stolen); or else----

"Dear Mrs. Emery, I was so shocked to hear it; such a _sweet_ child! Which was it, a boy or a girl? Oh, yes, I remember, a boy--a nice creature; but, my dear, so many boys turn out badly. You must try and console yourself with thinking perhaps you have both been saved a world of trouble after all!"

"My child was a little girl," I answered.

Another woman came to me, saying:

"You poor, dear thing! I'm glad you are bearing it so well--you look splendidly. Of course you won't stay in mourning long; will you? It's really not necessary for a child; and then I think one _needs_ the distractions of society to drown one's sorrows!"

And all in such a flippant tone!

There are some who haven't heard of it at all, which seems so strange to me, who see and think of nothing else indoor and out!

And Sue Troyon I shall never forget or stop loving as long as I live. She put her arms about me and kissed me, when she first met me, right in the street, and never said a word, but her eyes were wet. _She_ is a woman and a friend!

So now I am going to join you abroad, to travel and live among pictures and music and real people. These months out of society have broken the charm. I've tried to go back, but I can't stand it. The inanities of an afternoon At Home are more than I can bear. Everybody repeating to each other the same absurd commonplaces over and over again. Society conversation in one way is like a Wagner opera: it is composed of the same themes, which recur over and over again; only, in the conversation referred to, these themes are deadly, dull, fatuous remarks. As for balls and evening parties, I don't care about dancing any more, somehow, and to see the young _debutantes_ about me almost breaks my heart, full of memories of my daughter and what she might have been. Tears are not becoming to a very low-necked dress, and shouldn't be worn with powder and jewels. No, my dear Mary, I see in this society of ours, we all grow so hardened, that if we don't have some such grief as I have had, we become hopeless. People soon forgot I had ever had a child, or at least that she hadn't been dead for years. I find myself becoming a bore, because of perhaps a certain lack of spirit that I used to have; and I began to realize that I had never been liked for myself, but for what I gave, and for the atmosphere of amusement which I helped to create by nearly always being gay and enjoying myself. As you yourself said of society, it is absolutely unsatisfactory. I never knew a purely society woman yet who wasn't somewhat or sometimes dissatisfied. First, they can't go as much or everywhere they want; and soon after they have all the opportunities they desire, they find that isn't sufficient, after all, to make life perfect, and then the boredom of fatigue begins to creep upon them with the years, and soon old age begins like a worm to eat into what happiness they have had.

Oh, no! When I think of how full your life is, of the interesting people you know--not merely empty names with a fashionable address or a coronet on their note paper,--of the places you see and the books you read; and then hear you say your life is too short to see or enjoy a third the world has to offer you! You happy, _happy_ woman you!

Well! The house is for sale! What furniture I want to keep stored! John, who is prematurely old and half-dead with trying to earn enough money to keep us going as we wished in New York, has entered into it all in exactly my spirit. He has sold his seat on the stock exchange. He has disposed of all his business interests here. We find we have quite enough income to travel as long as we like, moderately, and to live abroad for as many years as we please. When we get homesick--as we are both sure to, for after all we are good Americans--we will come back here and settle down quietly in some little house, near everybody, but not in the whirlpool--on the banks of society, as it were, so that when we feel like it we can go and paddle in it for a little, just over our ankles. Two weeks after you receive this letter you will receive us! We sail on _Kaiser Wilhelm_ to Naples.

No one here knows what to make of us! It's absurd the teapot tempest we've created. The verdict finally is that we've either lost our money or else our minds!

With a heart full of love,

Affectionately,

AGNES.

The Theatre

Four Letters, a Bill, and a Quotation from a Newspaper

I

_A Letter from Mrs. Frederick Strong to her Husband._

... Fifth Avenue, Saturday.

My Dear Fred:

You must come home at once. Dick has announced his engagement to an actress--a soubrette, too, in a farce-comedy. If it had been a woman who played Shakespeare, it would have been bad enough, but a girl who sings and dances and does all sorts of things, including wearing her dresses up-side down, as it were--that is, too high at the _bottom_ and too _low_ at the top--well, this is a little too much!--just as we were getting a really good position in society. If the marriage isn't put a stop to, you can be sure she'll soon dance and kick us out of any position whatever that's worth holding. It isn't as if we had any one to back us; but you never had any family, and the least said about mine the better, so we have to be our own ancestors. And just as we had succeeded in getting a footing, in placing ourselves so that our children will be all right, your brother must go and do his best to ruin it all! You see how necessary it is for you to be on the spot. We may be able to break the engagement off before it is too late. Leave the mine to take care of itself, or go to pieces if need be. One mine more or less won't make any difference to us. Besides, you must think of your children! Your brother, too; he's sure to regret it.

I am ill over this thing. Can't sleep, and have frightful indigestion. Everybody's talking about it, and the newspapers are full this morning. My new costume came home from Mme. V----'s yesterday; but there's no pleasure now in wearing it!

With love,

ANNIE.

January 19th.

And the ball we were going to give next month! What about the ball? Mrs. W---- had promised me we should have some of the smartest people here! This will ruin everything. Telegraph me when you will come. I am suicidal.

II

_A Bill._

Mr. Fred'k Strong, Dr.

To the ---- Private Detective Agency, for services rendered, $---- --.

Rec'd payment, ---- --

Feb. 10th, 189-.

III

_A Letter from Miss Beatrice North to Richard Strong, sent by special delivery to his Club._

February 11th.

My Darling Dick:

What is the meaning of this letter from a lawyer? Who has been trying to damage my character? To ruin my happiness? Who hates me? I have never willingly harmed any one. I can't and won't believe this letter was sent with your approval. But why didn't you come to see me yesterday? My dearest in the world, you wouldn't believe evil stories of me, surely! You to whom I have told all my life, everything, for there has been nothing to hide. No, no; I am sure you don't know anything about this cruel letter, and for God's sake hurry and tell me so yourself, hurry and tell me so, and let me kiss the words as they come to your lips.

Thine,

BEATRICE.

IV

_Letter from the Same to the Same._

The evidence that you have proves nothing whatever, and even then much of it is exaggerated, which I, in my turn, can prove. I shall sue you for breach of promise.

BEATRICE NORTH.

V

_From the Same to the Same, a day later._