CHAPTER IX
[What the Beautiful Maiden Said]
One day we took the train and went down to Mannheim to see "King Lear"played in German. It was a mistake. We sat in our seats three wholehours and never understood anything but the thunder and lightning; andeven that was reversed to suit German ideas, for the thunder came firstand the lightning followed after.
The behavior of the audience was perfect. There were no rustlings, orwhisperings, or other little disturbances; each act was listened to insilence, and the applauding was done after the curtain was down. Thedoors opened at half past four, the play began promptly at half pastfive, and within two minutes afterward all who were coming were in theirseats, and quiet reigned. A German gentleman in the train had said thata Shakespearian play was an appreciated treat in Germany and thatwe should find the house filled. It was true; all the six tiers werefilled, and remained so to the end--which suggested that it is not onlybalcony people who like Shakespeare in Germany, but those of the pit andgallery, too.
Another time, we went to Mannheim and attended a shivaree--otherwise anopera--the one called "Lohengrin." The banging and slamming and boomingand crashing were something beyond belief. The racking and pitiless painof it remains stored up in my memory alongside the memory of the timethat I had my teeth fixed.
There were circumstances which made it necessary for me to stay throughthe four hours to the end, and I stayed; but the recollection of thatlong, dragging, relentless season of suffering is indestructible. Tohave to endure it in silence, and sitting still, made it all the harder.I was in a railed compartment with eight or ten strangers, of the twosexes, and this compelled repression; yet at times the pain was soexquisite that I could hardly keep the tears back.
At those times, as the howlings and wailings and shrieking of thesingers, and the ragings and roarings and explosions of the vastorchestra rose higher and higher, and wilder and wilder, and fiercer andfiercer, I could have cried if I had been alone. Those strangers wouldnot have been surprised to see a man do such a thing who was beinggradually skinned, but they would have marveled at it here, and maderemarks about it no doubt, whereas there was nothing in the present casewhich was an advantage over being skinned.
There was a wait of half an hour at the end of the first act, and Icould have gone out and rested during that time, but I could not trustmyself to do it, for I felt that I should desert to stay out. There wasanother wait of half an hour toward nine o'clock, but I had gone throughso much by that time that I had no spirit left, and so had no desire butto be let alone.
I do not wish to suggest that the rest of the people there were likeme, for, indeed, they were not. Whether it was that they naturallyliked that noise, or whether it was that they had learned to like itby getting used to it, I did not at the time know; but they did likeit--this was plain enough. While it was going on they sat and looked asrapt and grateful as cats do when one strokes their backs; and wheneverthe curtain fell they rose to their feet, in one solid mighty multitude,and the air was snowed thick with waving handkerchiefs, and hurricanesof applause swept the place. This was not comprehensible to me. Ofcourse, there were many people there who were not under compulsion tostay; yet the tiers were as full at the close as they had been at thebeginning. This showed that the people liked it.
It was a curious sort of a play. In the manner of costumes and sceneryit was fine and showy enough; but there was not much action. That isto say, there was not much really done, it was only talked about; andalways violently. It was what one might call a narrative play. Everybodyhad a narrative and a grievance, and none were reasonable about it, butall in an offensive and ungovernable state. There was little of thatsort of customary thing where the tenor and the soprano stand down bythe footlights, warbling, with blended voices, and keep holding outtheir arms toward each other and drawing them back and spreading bothhands over first one breast and then the other with a shake and apressure--no, it was every rioter for himself and no blending. Each sanghis indictive narrative in turn, accompanied by the whole orchestra ofsixty instruments, and when this had continued for some time, and onewas hoping they might come to an understanding and modify the noise, agreat chorus composed entirely of maniacs would suddenly break forth,and then during two minutes, and sometimes three, I lived over again allthat I suffered the time the orphan asylum burned down.
We only had one brief little season of heaven and heaven's sweet ecstasyand peace during all this long and diligent and acrimonious reproductionof the other place. This was while a gorgeous procession of peoplemarched around and around, in the third act, and sang the WeddingChorus. To my untutored ear that was music--almost divine music. Whilemy seared soul was steeped in the healing balm of those gracious sounds,it seemed to me that I could almost resuffer the torments which hadgone before, in order to be so healed again. There is where the deepingenuity of the operatic idea is betrayed. It deals so largely in painthat its scattered delights are prodigiously augmented by the contrasts.A pretty air in an opera is prettier there than it could be anywhereelse, I suppose, just as an honest man in politics shines more than hewould elsewhere.
I have since found out that there is nothing the Germans like so much asan opera. They like it, not in a mild and moderate way, but with theirwhole hearts. This is a legitimate result of habit and education. Ournation will like the opera, too, by and by, no doubt. One in fifty ofthose who attend our operas likes it already, perhaps, but I think agood many of the other forty-nine go in order to learn to like it, andthe rest in order to be able to talk knowingly about it. The latterusually hum the airs while they are being sung, so that their neighborsmay perceive that they have been to operas before. The funerals of thesedo not occur often enough.
A gentle, old-maidish person and a sweet young girl of seventeen satright in front of us that night at the Mannheim opera. These peopletalked, between the acts, and I understood them, though I understoodnothing that was uttered on the distant stage. At first they wereguarded in their talk, but after they had heard my agent and meconversing in English they dropped their reserve and I picked up manyof their little confidences; no, I mean many of _her_ littleconfidences--meaning the elder party--for the young girl only listened,and gave assenting nods, but never said a word. How pretty she was,and how sweet she was! I wished she would speak. But evidently she wasabsorbed in her own thoughts, her own young-girl dreams, and found adearer pleasure in silence. But she was not dreaming sleepy dreams--no,she was awake, alive, alert, she could not sit still a moment. She wasan enchanting study. Her gown was of a soft white silky stuff that clungto her round young figure like a fish's skin, and it was rippled overwith the gracefulest little fringy films of lace; she had deep, tendereyes, with long, curved lashes; and she had peachy cheeks, and adimpled chin, and such a dear little rosebud of a mouth; and she was sodovelike, so pure, and so gracious, so sweet and so bewitching. For longhours I did mightily wish she would speak. And at last she did; the redlips parted, and out leaps her thought--and with such a guileless andpretty enthusiasm, too: "Auntie, I just _know_ I've got five hundredfleas on me!"
That was probably over the average. Yes, it must have been very muchover the average. The average at that time in the Grand Duchy of Badenwas forty-five to a young person (when alone), according to the officialestimate of the home secretary for that year; the average for olderpeople was shifty and indeterminable, for whenever a wholesome younggirl came into the presence of her elders she immediately lowered theiraverage and raised her own. She became a sort of contribution-box.
This dear young thing in the theater had been sitting thereunconsciously taking up a collection. Many a skinny old being in ourneighborhood was the happier and the restfuler for her coming.
In that large audience, that night, there were eight very conspicuouspeople. These were ladies who had their hats or bonnets on. What ablessed thing it would be if a lady could make herself conspicuous inour theaters by wearing her hat.
It is not usual in Europe to allow ladies
and gentlemen to take bonnets,hats, overcoats, canes, or umbrellas into the auditorium, but inMannheim this rule was not enforced because the audiences were largelymade up of people from a distance, and among these were always a fewtimid ladies who were afraid that if they had to go into an anteroom toget their things when the play was over, they would miss their train.But the great mass of those who came from a distance always ran the riskand took the chances, preferring the loss of a train to a breach of goodmanners and the discomfort of being unpleasantly conspicuous during astretch of three or four hours.