# The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz/Volume Two/2 Journey to the West — Short Visit to Europe, Wagner

CHAPTER II
A JOURNEY to the West in 1854 was not the comfortable sleeping-car affair on fast through trains that it is now, and travelers did not seem to be so nervously anxious to make the quickest possible time. I leisurely visited Pittsburg, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Indianapolis, St. Louis, and Chicago. All these cities were then in that period of youthful development which is confidently anticipating a great future. Society still felt itself on a footing of substantial equality—not, indeed, equality in point of fortune, but equality in point of opportunity and expectation. There seemed to be a buoyant, joyous spirit animating all classes, and between those classes—if, indeed, classes they could be called—an easy, unrestrained intercourse and co-operation. Of all the places I visited I found this least, perhaps, in St. Louis, where slave-holders—“old families” with aristocratic pretensions of social and political superiority—lived. There the existence of slavery, with its subtle influence, cast its shadow over the industrial and commercial developments of the city, as well as over the relations between the different groups of citizens. But St. Louis had, after all, much more of the elasticity of Western life than any of the larger towns in the slave-holding States, and had among its population a strong anti-slavery element. The political leader of that element was Mr. Frank P. Blair, a man of much ability and an energetic spirit. But the constituency of the anti-slavery movement, in St. Louis and in Missouri generally, was furnished mainly by the population of German birth or descent.
The bulk of that German population consisted, of course,
of agriculturists, small tradesmen, mechanics, and common laborers. But there were many persons of education and superior capacity among them, who vigorously leavened the whole body. Two different periods of political upheaval in that of 1830 and the years immediately following, of 1848 and 1849, had served to drive out of the old Fatherland hosts of men of ability and character, and of both of these two “immigrations” the German element in St. Louis and neighborhood had its full share. Some of the notable men of early '30's, the Engelmanns, Hilgards, Tittmanns, Bunsens, Follenius, Körners, and Münchs, settled down in and around Belleville in Illinois, near the Mississippi, opposite St. Louis, or not far from St. Louis, on the Missouri, there to raise corn and wine. Those who, although university men, devoted themselves to agriculture, were called among the Germans half sportively, half respectfully, the “Latin farmers.” Of them, Gustav Körner, who practiced law in Belleville, rose to eminence as a judge, as a lieutenant-governor of Illinois and as a minister of the United States to Spain. Another, Friedrich Münch, the finest type of the “Latin farmer,” lived to a venerable old age in Gasconade County, Missouri, and remained active almost to the day of his death, as a writer for newspapers and periodicals, under the name of “Far West.” These men regarded St. Louis as their metropolis and in a large sense belonged to the “Germandom” of that city.
They were strongly reinforced by the German immigration of 1848, which settled down in that region in considerable number, bringing such men as Friedrich Hecker, the revolutionary leader in Southwest Germany, who bought a prairie farm in Illinois, opposite St. Louis; and Dr. Emil Preetorius, Dr. Boernstein, Dr. Däntzer, Mr. Bernays, Dr. Weigel, Dr. Hammer, Dr. Wm. Taussig and his brother James,
the Sigels, Franz and Albert, and others, who made their abode in the city of St. Louis itself. The infusion of such ingredients gave to the German population of St. Louis and its vicinity a capacity for prompt, intelligent, and vigorous patriotic action which, when the great crisis of 1861 came, made the pro-slavery aristocrats, who had always contemptuously looked down upon the “Dutch” as semi-barbarians, stare with amazement and dismay at the sudden appearance of their hardly suspected power which struck such telling blows for Union and Liberty.
FRIEDRICH HECKER The German revolutionary leader. “As an exile he had become a sort of legendary hero”
Before leaving the vicinity of St. Louis I visited the German revolutionary leader, Friedrich Hecker, on his prairie farm near Belleville in Illinois. I had never personally met him in Germany, but had heard much about his brilliant qualities and his fiery, impulsive nature. He had started a republican uprising in South Germany at an early stage of the revolutionary movement of 1848, which, although quickly overcome by a military force, had made him the hero of popular songs. His picture, representing him in a somewhat fantastic garb, was spread all over Germany, and as an exile he had become a sort of legendary hero. Being a man of much study and large acquirements, he was entitled to high rank among the “Latin farmers.”
His new home was a log-house of very primitive appearance. Mrs. Hecker, a woman of beauty and refinement, clad in the simple attire of a farmer's wife, plain but very tidy and tasteful, welcomed me at the door. “The Tiedemanns announced your coming,” she said, “and we have been expecting you for several days. Hecker is ill with chills and fever and in very bad humor. But he wants to see you very much. If he uses peculiar language, do not mind it. It is his way when he is out of sorts.” Mrs. Tiedemann, Hecker's sister in
Philadelphia, had already told me of his tantrums. Thus cautioned, I entered the log-house and found myself in a large room very scantily and roughly furnished. Hecker was sitting on a low couch covered with a buffalo skin.
“Hello,” he shouted in a husky voice. “Here you are at last. What in the world brought you into this accursed country?”
“Do you really think this country is so very bad?” I asked.
“Well—well, no!” he said. “It is not a bad country. It is good enough. But the devil take the chills and fever! Only look at me!” Then he rose to his feet and continued denouncing the chills and fever in the most violent terms.
Indeed, as he stood there, a man little over forty, he presented a rather pitiable figure. As a young lawyer at Mannheim and deputy in the legislative chamber of Baden, he had been noted for the elegance of his apparel; now he wore a gray woolen shirt, baggy and shabby trousers, and a pair of old carpet slippers. Mrs. Hecker, who noticed my look of surprise whispered to me with a sigh, “Since we have lived here I cannot get him to make himself look decent.” I had always heard that Hecker was a handsome man. And he might have been, with his aquiline nose, his clear blue eyes, his finely chiseled features, and his blonde hair and beard. But now that face looked haggard, sallow, and weary, and his frame, once so elastic, was drooping and hardly able to bear its own weight.
“Ah,” said he, “you see what will become of an old revolutionist when he has to live on quinine pills.” Then again he opened the vast resources of his vituperative eloquence on the malarial fever, calling it no end of opprobrious names. Gradually he quieted down, and we began to discuss the political situation. His wrath kindled again when speaking of slavery and the iniquitous attempt of Douglas to permit slavery
unlimited expansion over the Territories. With all the fine enthusiasm of his noble nature he greeted the anti-slavery movement, then rising all over the North, as the dawn of a new era, and we pledged ourselves mutually to meet on the field in a common endeavor if that great cause should ever call for our aid.
I was invited to stay for the midday dinner, which I did. It was a very plain but good farmer's meal. Mrs. Hecker, who had cooked it, also helped in serving it. Two rather rough-looking men in shirt-sleeves, the farm-hands, sat with us at the table. This, as Hecker informed me, was the rule of the house. “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,” said he. But this fraternity did not prevent him from giving one of the farm-hands, who had in some way displeased him, after dinner, in my presence, a “dressing down” with a fluency, vigor, and richness of language which I should hardly have thought possible, had I not heard it.
* From a photograph by Hessler, owned by the Chicago Historical Society
* CHICAGO IN 1858
* From the Court-house looking northeast. Randolph Street in the immediate foreground.
From Hecker's farm I went to Chicago, and I shall never forget the first night I passed in that city. I arrived there by a belated train about an hour after midnight. An omnibus took me to the Tremont Hotel, where I was informed that every room in the house was occupied. The clerk directed me to another house, and I started out, valise in hand. The omnibus was gone and no hack to be had, and I walked to two or three other hostelries with the same result. Trying to follow the directions I had last received, I somehow lost my way, and overcome with fatigue I sat down on a curbstone, hoping that a policeman or some other philanthropic person would come that way.
Chicago had at that time sidewalks made of wooden planks, under which, it appeared, rats in incalculable numbers had made their nests. Troops of them I saw moving about in the gaslight. As I was sitting still, they playfully scampered
over my feet. Efforts to scare them away proved unavailing. I sought another curbstone, but the rats were there too. At last a policeman hove in sight. For a minute he seemed to be in doubt as to whether he should not take me to the station-house; but having heard my story he finally consented to show me an inn where he thought I would find shelter. But there, too, every guest-room was occupied. They had just one bed free, which I might have, if I wished, but it was in a room without a window, a sort of large closet. I was tired enough to take anything. But an inspection of the bed by candle-light utterly discouraged every thought of undressing. I spent the rest of the night on a chair and hailed daylight with great relief.
Chicago was then a city of about 65,000 inhabitants. The blockhouse of old Fort Dearborn was still standing and remained so for several years. Excepting the principal public edifices, hotels, and business houses, and a few private residences, the town was built of wood. The partly unpaved and partly ill-paved streets were extremely dusty in dry, and extremely muddy in wet weather. I noticed remarkably few attempts to give dwelling houses an attractive appearance. The city had, on the whole, what might be called an unhandsome look. During my short visit I heard many expressions of exceedingly sanguine anticipation as to the future of the place—anticipations which have since proved hardly sanguine enough. But at that time there were also doubters. “If you had been here a year ago,” a friend said to me, “you might have invested money in real estate to great advantage. But it is too late now.” Everybody seemed very busy—so busy, indeed, that I was almost afraid to claim anybody's time and attention.
MILWAUKEE IN 1858 From a contemporary lithograph by D. W. Moody after a drawing by George J. Robertson.
From Chicago I went to Wisconsin, and there I found an atmosphere eminently congenial. Milwaukee, with a population much smaller than that of Chicago, had received rather
more than its proportional share of the German immigration of 1848. The city had possessed a strong German element before,—good-natured, quiet, law-abiding, order-loving, and industrious citizens, with persons of marked ability among them, who contributed much to the growth of the community and enjoyed themselves in their simple and cheery way. But the “Forty-Eighters” brought something like a wave of spring sunshine into that life. They were mostly high-spirited young people, inspired by fresh ideals which they had failed to realize in the old world, but hoped to realize here; ready to enter upon any activity they might be capable of; and eager not only to make that activity profitable but also to render life merry and beautiful; and, withal, full of enthusiasm for the great American Republic which was to be their home and the home of their children. Some had brought money with them; others had not. Some had been educated at German universities for learned professions, some were artists, some literary men, some merchants. Others had grown up in more humble walks of life, but, a very few drones excepted, all went to work with a cheerful purpose to make the best of everything.
They at once proceeded to enliven society with artistic enterprises. One of their first and most important achievements was the organization of the “Musical Society” of Milwaukee, which, in an amazingly short time, was able to produce oratorios and light operas in a really creditable manner. The “German Turn Verein” not only cultivated the gymnastic arts for the benefit of its own members, but it produced “living pictures” and similar exhibitions of high artistic value. The Forty-Eighters thus awakened interests which a majority of the old population had hardly known, but which now attracted general favor and very largely bridged over the distance between the native American and the new-comer.
The establishment of a German theater was a matter of course, and its performances, which indeed deserved much praise, proved so attractive that it became a sort of social center.
It is true, similar things were done in other cities where the Forty-Eighters had congregated. But so far as I know, nowhere did their influence so quickly impress itself upon the whole social atmosphere as in the “German Athens of America,” as Milwaukee was called at the time. It is also true that, in a few instances, the vivacity of this spirit ran into attempts to realize questionable or extravagant theories. But, on the whole, the inspiration proved itself exhilaratingly healthy, not only in social, but soon also in the political sense.
From Milwaukee I went to Watertown, a little city about 45 miles further west. One of my uncles, Jacob Jüssen, of whom I have spoken in my childhood recollections as the burgomaster of Jülich, was settled there with his family, among whom were two married daughters. Thus I dropped there into a family circle which was all the more congenial to me as this was the one of my uncles I had always been most fond of. The population of Watertown was also preponderantly German—not indeed so much impregnated with the Forty-eight spirit as were the Milwaukeeans, although in Watertown, too, I found a former university student whom in September, 1848, I had met as a fellow-member of the Students' Congress at Eisenach, Mr. Emil Rothe, and several other men who had taken part in the revolutionary movements of the time. Among the farmers in the neighborhood, who did their trading at Watertown, there were many Pomeranians and Mecklenburghers, hard-working and thrifty people, who regularly began with the roughest kind of log-cabin for a home, and then in a few years evolved from it, first the modest frame dwelling, and then the more stately brick-house—the barn, however, always
remaining the most important edifice of the establishment. There were some Irish people, too, and some native Americans from New England or New York State, who owned farms, or ran the bank and a manufacturing shop or two, and two or three law offices. But these different elements of the population were all on a footing of substantial equality—neither rich nor poor, ready to work and enjoy life together, and tolerant of one another's peculiarities. Of culture and social refinement there was, of course, very little. Society was no longer in the pioneer stage, the backwoods condition. But it had the characteristic qualities of newness. There were churches, and schools, and hotels, all very simple, but decent in their appointments, and, on the whole, reasonably well conducted. There was a municipal organization, a city government, constructed according to law, officered by men elected by the people. And these people had but recently flocked together from different quarters of the globe. There were comparatively few persons among them who, having been born in this country, had grown up in the practical experience of the things to be done, and of the methods usually followed for the purpose. A large majority were foreign to the tradition of this republic. The task of solving certain problems by the operation of unrestrained municipal self-government, and of taking part through the exercise of the suffrage in the government of a State, and even of a great republic, was new to them. In Wisconsin the immigrant became a voter after one year's residence, no matter whether he had acquired his citizenship of the United States, or not: it was only required that he should have regularly abjured his allegiance to any foreign state or prince, and declared his intention to become a citizen of the United States. And of such early voters there were a good many.
This seemed to be, therefore, an excellent point of
observation from which to watch the growth and the behavior of the political community composed of what might have been thought rather crude and heterogenous elements, comparatively uninfluenced by the guidance of the experienced native mind; to follow the processes by which the foreign-born man, the new-comer, develops himself into a conscious American, and to discover what kind of an American will result as a product of those processes. I intend to express my conclusions somewhat more elaborately in a chapter specially devoted to the subject.
On the whole, the things that I saw and heard made the West exceedingly attractive to me. This was something of the America that I had seen in my dreams; a new country, a new society almost entirely unhampered by any traditions of the past; a new people produced by the free intermingling of the vigorous elements of all nations, with not old England alone, but the world for its motherland; with almost limitless opportunities open to all, and with equal rights secured by free institutions of government. Life in the West, especially away from the larger towns, lacked, indeed, the finer enjoyments of civilization to a degree hard to bear to those who had been accustomed to them and who did not find a compensation in that which gave to Western life—and American life generally—its peculiar charm: a warm, living interest in the progressive evolution, constantly and rapidly going on, the joy of growth—that which I have attempted to call in German “die Werdelust.” Now and then we have heard persons of culture—exaggerated culture, perhaps—complain that this country has no romantic, ivy-clad ruins, no historic castles or cathedrals, and, in general, little that appeals to sentiment or to the cultivated esthetic sense. True, it has the defects common to all new countries, and it will be tedious and unattractive to those who cherish as the quintessence of life the things which a new
country does not and naturally cannot possess. But it offers, more than any other country, that compensation which consists in a joyous appreciation not only of that which is, but of that which is to be—the growth we witness, the development of which we are a part.
The stimulating atmosphere of the West, as I felt it, was so congenial to me that I resolved to establish my home in the Mississippi valley. What I had seen and heard of the State of Wisconsin and its people was so exceedingly pleasing that I preferred that State to any other; and, as several of my relatives were domiciled at Watertown, and my parents and sisters had in the meantime come over from Europe and would naturally be glad to live near other members of the family, I bought some property there with a view to permanent settlement.
Before that settlement was effected, however, I had, on account of my wife's health, to make a journey to Europe. We spent some time in London. What a weird change of scene it was between the two worlds! The old circle of political exiles which I had left three years before was dispersed. The good Baroness Brüning, who had been so sweet and helpful a friend to many of them, had died of heart-disease. Most of those who had gathered around her hospitable fireside had either emigrated to America or somehow disappeared. My nearest friends, the Kinkels, were still there and had prospered—he as lecturer on art-history, she as teacher of music,—and occupied a larger house.
My friend Malwida von Meysenbug was still there superintending the education of the daughters of the famous Russian Liberal, Alexander Herzen. I found the friend of my university days, Friedrich Althaus, who was teaching and had also been engaged by Prince Albert to help him catalogue his
collection of engravings. But there was little left of that revolutionary scheming and plotting to which the exiled had formerly given themselves, inspired by the delusive hope that a new uprising for free government would soon again take place on the European continent. Louis Napoleon sat firmly on the imperial throne of France, and the prestige he had gained by the Crimean War had brought him the most flattering recognition by other European sovereigns and made him appear like the arbiter of the destinies of the continent. In Germany, the stupid and rude reaction against the liberal current of 1848 went its course. In Austria, the return to absolutistic rule seemed almost complete. In Italy, Mazzini's revolutionary attempt, the prospects of which he had pictured to me in such glowing colors three years before, had resulted in disastrous failure. No part of the European horizon seemed to be illumined by a ray of hope to cheer the exiles still living in London. There was indeed an international committee of revolutionary leaders, to give direction to whatever revolutionary possibility might turn up. Whether they could see any such possibilities among the hard actualities of the time, it is difficult to say. But, as a matter of experience, nothing can be more active and fatuous than the imagination, and nothing more eager, boundless, and pathetic than the credulity of the exile. To those whose eyes were open to the real situation, the international committee looked like a gathering of specters moving about in a graveyard.
GIUSEPPE MAZZINI
Whether Mazzini was at the time in London, I do not know. If he was, he held himself in that mysterious seclusion characteristic of him—a seclusion in which he met only his most confidential political agents and those English families whose members, completely under his wonderful fascination, were devoted to him to the point of almost limitless self-sacrifice.
* [From the dageurreotype made by Hawes of Boston during Kossuth's visit to America]
* LOUIS [LAJOS in Hungarian] KOSSUTH
But Kossuth was in London, and I promptly went to pay
my respects. I had seen him only once, four years before, when he first visited England as the spokesman of his unfortunate country, which, after a most gallant struggle, had been overpowered by superior brute force. He was then the hero of the day. I have already described his entrance into London and the enthusiastic homage he received from what seemed to be almost the whole English people; how it was considered a privilege to be admitted to his presence, and how at a public reception he spoke a word to me that made me very proud and happy. He had then, at the invitation of the government,—I might say of the people of the United States,—proceeded to America, where he was received almost like a superior being, all classes of society surging around him with measureless outbursts of enthusiastic admiration. But he could not move the government of this Republic to active interference in favor of the independence of Hungary, nor did he obtain from his American admirers that “substantial aid” for his cause which he had looked and worked for, and thus he returned from America a profoundly disappointed man.
His second appearance in England convinced him that the boiling enthusiasm of the English people had evaporated. His further appeals in behalf of his cause met only with that compassionate sympathy which had no longer any stirring impulse in it, and it must have become clear to him that, for the time being at least, his cause was lost. At first he had appeared in England, as well as in America, in the character of the legitimate, although the deposed, ruler of Hungary, and his countrymen in exile had surrounded their “governor” with a sort of court ceremonial which was to express their respect for him, which flattered his pride, and which was accepted by many others as appropriate to his dignity. This “style” had, in Hungarian circles in London, been kept up for a while even after the
disappearance of the popular enthusiasm. But it fell naturally into disuse when many of the followers, who had formed his brilliant retinue in triumphal progresses, dispersed to seek for themselves the means of living; when poverty had compelled him to retire into seclusion and modest quarters, and when, appearing on the street, he was no longer surrounded by cheering crowds, but at best was greeted with silent respect by a few persons who recognized him.
This was the condition of his affairs when I called at the very unpretending cottage he inhabited in one of the suburbs of London. The door was opened by a man well advanced in years, of an honest, winning countenance typically Hungarian, with keen dark eyes, broad cheekbones, and gleaming teeth. From his appearance I judged that he was rather a friend, a devoted companion, than a servant, and such I afterwards learned him to be. Without ceremony he took me into a very plainly furnished little parlor where, he said, the “governor” would receive me.
After a few moments Kossuth came in and greeted me with cordial kindness. He had aged much since I had last seen him. His hair and beard were streaked with gray. Yet his voice still retained the mellow tones which, but a few years ago, had charmed such countless multitudes. He spoke much of his American tour, praised the hospitable spirit of the American people, and with quiet dignity expressed his disappointment at the fruitlessness of his efforts. He drew a gloomy picture of existing conditions in Europe, but thought that such a state of things could not endure and that the future was not without hope. After a while, Madame Kossuth came into the room, and Kossuth introduced me to his wife with some kind remarks. She spoke to me with great politeness, but I must confess that I was somewhat prejudiced against her. In her prosperity she
had borne the reputation of being haughty and distant, and her presumptuous attitude is said to have been occasionally dangerous to her husband's popularity. In the case of such characters the fall from greatness is usually not regarded as a claim to especial sympathy. But as I saw her then, she seemed to be full of tender care for her husband's health.
I left Kossuth's presence with a heart full of sadness. In him, in that idol of the popular imagination, now reduced to impotence, poverty, and solitude, I had seen the very personification of the defeat suffered by the revolutionary movement of 1848.
It was on the occasion of this sojourn in London that I made the acquaintance of Alexander Herzen, a natural son of a Russian nobleman of high rank, himself a Russian patriot in the liberal sense, who had been obliged to leave his native country as a “dangerous man,” and who now, by his writings, which were smuggled across the frontier, worked to enlighten and stimulate and inspire the Russian mind. Malwida von Meysenbug, who lived in his family superintending the education of his daughters, which she did with all her peculiar enthusiasm, brought us together, and we soon became friends. Herzen, at least ten years older than I, was an aristocrat by birth and instinct, but a democrat by philosophy, a fine, noble nature, a man of culture, of a warm heart and large sympathies. In his writings as well as in his conversation he poured forth his thoughts and feelings with an impulsive, sometimes poetic eloquence, which, at times, was exceedingly fascinating. I would listen to him by the hour when in his rhapsodic way he talked of Russia and the Russian people, that uncouth and only half conscious giant, that would gradually exchange its surface civilization borrowed from the West for one of national character; the awakening of whose popular intelligence
would then put an end to the stolid autocracy, the deadening weight of which held down every free aspiration; and which then would evolve from its mysterious depths new ideas and forces which might solve many of the problems now perplexing the Western world. But, in his fervid professions of faith in the greatness of that destiny, I thought I discovered an undertone of doubt, if not despondency, as to the possibilities of the near future, and I was strongly reminded of the impression made upon me by some of Turguéneff's novels describing Russian society as it entertained itself with vague musings and strivings of dreary aimlessness.
Other impressions I gathered through my contact with some of Herzen's Russian friends who from time to time met in his hospitable house and at his table. At dinner the conversation would sparkle with dramatic tales of Russian life, descriptions of weird social conditions and commotions, which opened mysterious prospects of great upheavings and transformations, and which were interspersed with witty sallies against the government and droll satires on the ruling classes. But when, after dinner, the bowl of strong punch was put on the table, the same persons, who, so far, at least had conducted themselves like gentlemen of culture and refinement, becoming gradually heated, would presently break out in ebullitions of a sort of savage wildness, the like of which I had never witnessed among Germans, or French, or English, or Americans. They strongly reminded me of the proverb: “You scratch a Russian, and you find a Tartar.”
Herzen himself always remained self-contained; but as an indulgent host he did not restrain his guests. Probably he knew that he could not. Once or twice he would say to me in an undertone, witnessing my amazement: “So they are! So they are! But they are splendid fellows for all that.” And
so, I suppose, they are indeed, not only as individuals but as a nation—a huge, unshapely mass, with a glossy polish on the outer surface, but fierce forces within, kept in control by a tremendous pressure of power, or superstition, or stolid faith, but really untamed and full of savage vigor. If they once break loose, awful cataclysms must result, producing in their turn—what? It is difficult to imagine how the Russian empire as it now is, from Poland to eastern-most Siberia, could be kept together and governed by anything else than an autocratic centralization of power, a constantly self-asserting and directing central authority with a tremendous organization of force behind it. This rigid central despotism cannot fail to create oppressive abuses in the government of the various territories and diverse populations composing the empire. When this burden of oppression becomes too galling, efforts, raw, crude, more or less inarticulate and confused, will be made in quest of relief, with a slim chance of success. Discontent with the inexorable autocracy will spread and seize upon the superior intelligence of the country, which will be inspired with a restless ambition to have a share in the government.
At the moment when the autocrat yields to the demands of that popular intelligence and assents to constitutional limitations of his power, or to anything that will give an authoritative, official voice to the people, the real revolutionary crisis will begin. The popular discontent will not be appeased, but it will be sharpened by the concession. All the social forces will then be thrown into spasmodic commotion; and, when those forces, in their native wildness, break through their traditional restraints, the world may have to witness a spectacle of revolutionary chaos without example in history. The chaos may ultimately bring forth new conceptions of freedom, right, and
justice, new forms of organized society, new developments of civilization. But what the sweep of those volcanic disturbances will be and what their final outcome, is a mystery baffling the imagination—a mystery that can be approached only with awe and dread.
Such were the contemplations set going in my mind by the contact with this part of the Russian world, that enigma of the future. With what delightful assurance I turned from this cloudy puzzle to the “New World” which I had recently made my home—the great western Republic, not indeed without its hard problems, but a Republic founded upon clear, sound, just, humane, irrefragable principles, the conscious embodiment of the highest aims of the modern age; and with a people most of whom were full of warm sympathy with every effort for human liberty the world over, and animated with an enthusiastic appreciation of their own great destiny as leaders of mankind in the struggle for freedom and justice, universal peace an good-will! How I longed to go “home” and take part in the great fight against slavery, the only blot that sullied the escutcheon of the Republic, and the only malign influence, as then conceived, that threatened the fulfillment of its great mission in the world!
But before my return to America I had a joyful experience which I cannot refrain from describing. It was of an artistic nature. Frau Kinkel took me to a concert—in which Jenny Lind, then retired from the stage, was to sing the great aria of Agathe in the “Freischütz,” and in which also Richard Wagner's overture to “Tannhäuser” was to be produced, Wagner himself acting as conductor of the orchestra. As I have already said in the first part of these reminiscences,
Frau Kinkel was one of the most highly educated and most accomplished musicians I have ever known. I owe to her not only my capacity to enjoy Beethoven, Bach, and Gluck, and other great classical composers, but she also made me intimately acquainted with Chopin and Schumann, whose productions she played with exquisite grace. Still her musical principles and taste were severely those of the “old school,” and she detested Wagner as a reckless and almost criminal demoralizer of the musical conscience. On the way to the concert she did not fail to give me a thorough lecture on Wagner's vices, his contempt of the most sacred rules of harmony, his impossible transitions from one key to another, his excruciating dissonances, his intemperate straining after sensuous effects, and what not. “It is true,” she added by way of precautionary warning, “there is something exciting, a certain fascination in his music, and many people are carried away by it—some musicians, even, of whom something better might have been expected. But I hope when you hear it, you will remain cool and not lose your critical sense.” I had never heard a note of Wagner's music. I had seen some of his writings, the tone of which had not favorably impressed me. My personal contact with Wagner in Zürich, of which I have spoken before, had not been at all sympathetic; on the contrary, I shared the judgment about Wagner prevalent among the refugees there, that he was an excessively presumptuous, haughty, dogmatic, repellent person, from whom it was best to keep away. I was, therefore, by no means predisposed to be taken off my feet by the charms of his productions. All of which, when I told her, was quite reassuring to my mentor.
JENNY LIND
As to the performance of Jenny Lind, Frau Kinkel and I were altogether of the same mind and feeling. Jenny Lind was then no longer young. Her appearance, although
still exceedingly pleasing, had become somewhat matronly. Her voice might, perhaps, not have retained all its original birdsong-like lightness of warble. But there was still that half veiled tone, as if there were something mysterious behind it; that velvety timbre, that strange, magnetic vibration, the mere sound of which could draw tears to the eyes of the listener. She was the nightingale still. To hear her was deep, pure, dreamy delight. Of all the great voices that I have heard—and I have heard many—none was so angelic and went so entrancingly, so caressingly to the heart as Jenny Lind's.
At last came the overture to “Tannhäuser.” Frau Kinkel, who in the most eloquent words had expressed her ecstasy over Jenny Lind's rendering of the “Freischütz” aria, became uneasy. “Now keep yourself well in hand,” she said, looking at me with an expression betraying some anxiety as to the outcome. The opening “Pilgrim's Chorus,” as it rose from the orchestra, pleased me much, without, however, impressing me as something overpowering. But when the violins set in with that weird and constantly growing tumult of passion, drowning the pious notes of the “Pilgrim's Chorus” under the wild outcries of an uncanny frenzy, then sinking into whining moans of exhaustion, I could hardly restrain myself. I felt as if I should jump up and shout. Frau Kinkel observed my emotion, put her hand upon my own as if to hold me down to my seat, and whispered: “Oh, oh, I see how it takes you, too. But do you not hear that it is all wrong?” I could not answer, but continued to listen with rapture. I did not hear that it was all wrong; and if I had noticed anything that was wrong under the accepted rules of thorough-bass, I should not have cared. I was fairly overwhelmed by those surging and rolling billows of harmony, by the breakers of passion rushing and tumbling over the rocks, those plaintive voices of sadness or despair,
those tender accents of love or delight floating above and through the accompaniment which lifted the melody in a poetic cloud. When the last notes of the “Tannhäuser” overture had died away, I sat still, unable to say anything articulate. I felt only that an entirely new musical world had opened and revealed itself to me, the charms of which I could not possibly resist. My good friend Frau Kinkel noticed well what had happened to me. She looked at me sadly and said with a sigh, “I see, I see! You are now a captive, too. And so it goes. What will become of our art?”
Indeed, I was a captive, and I remained one. It so happened that many years, nearly thirty, elapsed before I heard any Wagner music again, except some transcriptions for the piano which were naturally but feeble echoes of the orchestral score, and a single representation of “Lohengrin” in the little theater of Wiesbaden. But when at last during those memorable seasons of German Opera in New York, beginning in 1885, I had the happiness of witnessing the wonderful Nibelungen-Ring tetralogy, and “Tristan and Isolde,” and the “Meistersinger,” and when, still later, I heard “Parsifal” in Bayreuth, the impressions I received were no less powerful and profound than had been that first which I have just described. I did not care to study Wagner's theories of the “Music-Drama,” or, by deciphering the printed scores, to dive into the mysterious depths of his harmonic elaborations. I simply gave myself up to the sensations stirred in me by what I heard and saw. The effects produced on me were perfectly free from the influence of preconceived opinion or affectation—in other words, they were entirely unbidden, unprepared, natural, irresistible. I did not lose my appreciation of Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Schubert, Chopin, and other music-poets. But here was something apart—something
different, not in degree, but in kind. How could I “compare” Wagner with Beethoven? I might as well compare the Parthenon with the Cathedral of Cologne,—or either with the Falls of Niagara. The musical language of Wagner has always impressed me as something like the original language of the eternal elements—something awe-inspiringly eloquent, speaking in tones, rising from mysterious depths, of understanding and passion. It is difficult to illustrate by example, but I will try. Among the funeral marches in musical literature, Beethoven's and Chopin's had always most sympathetically appealed to my feelings—Beethoven's with the stately solemnity of its mourning accents, and Chopin's with its cathedral bells interwoven with melodious plaints. But when I hear the Siegfried dead-march in the “Götterdämmerung,” my heart-beat seems to stop at the tremendous sigh of woe, never heard before, rushing through the air.
To me, as one who was born and had grown up in Germany, Wagner's Nibelungen-Ring, especially “Young Siegfried” and the “Götterdämmerung,” had a peculiar home-born charm which grew all the stronger the more familiar I became with those tone poems. The legends of Siegfried in various forms had been among the delights of my early boyhood. Siegfried was one of the mythical heroes of the Rhineland. And when I heard the “Leit-motifs” of the Nibelungen-Ring, they sounded to me like something I had heard in my cradle—in the half-consciousness of my earliest dreams. This, indeed, was an illusion; but that illusion showed how Wagner, to my feeling at least, had in those phrases touched the true chord of the saga as it hovers over my native land, and as it is echoed in my imagination.
I shall never forget my first impressions of “Parsifal” which I enjoyed many years later. The performances at
Bayreuth were then still on their highest level. The whole atmosphere of the town and the neighboring country was charged with artistic enthusiasm and exaltation. The crowds of visitors from all parts of the civilized world had come almost like pilgrims to a shrine. People went to Wagner's Opera House as true believers go to church. When the audience was assembled in the severely plain building, and the lights were turned down, an almost startling silence fell upon the house. The multitude held its breath in reverential expectation. Then came the solemn tones of the orchestra, floating up from the depth of its mysterious concealment. Then the parting of the curtain revealed the scene of the sacred lake. The suffering Amfortas entered with his companions of the Holy Grail, and the mystic action, as it unrolled itself, the appearance of the youthful Parsifal, and the killing of the sacred swan, all wrapped in majestic harmonies, held our hearts spellbound. But all this was but a feeble prelude to what followed. The changing scene became gradually enveloped in darkness, made more mysterious by the swinging peals of mighty cathedral bells. As by magic, the great temple hall of the Castle of the Holy Grail was before us, flooded with light. And then, when the knights of the Grail marched down its aisles and took their seats, and the blond-locked pages, fair as angels, and the king of the Grail appeared, bearing the miraculous cup, and the chorus of the boys came streaming down from the lofty height of the Cupola—then, I have to confess, tears trickled down my face, for I now beheld something like what I had imagined Heaven to be when I was a child.
You may call this extravagant language. But a large portion, if not a majority of the audience, was evidently overwhelmed by the same emotions. When, after the close of the act, the curtain swept together, and the lights in the
audience-room flashed out again, I saw hundreds of handkerchiefs busy wiping moistened cheeks. There was not the slightest attempt at a demonstration of applause. The assembled multitude rose in perfect silence and sought the doors. In the little company of friends who were with me, not a word was spoken. We only pressed one another's hands as we went out. In the row behind us sat Coquelin, the great French comedian. He walked out immediately in front of me. His face wore an expression of profound seriousness. When he reached the open door I heard one of his companions ask him how he had liked the performance. Coquelin did not answer a word, but turned from his friend and walked away, silent and alone. Between the first and the second acts, according to custom, we took dinner at one of the restaurants near by. Not one of us had recovered himself sufficiently to be fit for table talk. We sat there almost entirely speechless during the whole repast.
When all this happened—1889—I was no longer young and easily excitable, but rather well past the meridian of life. I had never been inclined to sentimental hysterics. My friends around me were all sensible persons, some of them musically well educated. We had all seen and heard much in and of the world. What, then, was there in the first act of the “Parsifal” that excited in us such extraordinary emotions? It was not the splendor of the scenery; for that, however magnificent, could only appeal to our sense of the picturesque and call forth admiration. Neither was there in the action anything melodramatic that might have touched our sympathetic hearts and thus moved us to tears. The action was, in fact, exceedingly simple, and rather mystic than humanly sympathetic in its significance. Nor was it the music alone. This, when heard in the concert hall, as I have since often heard it, would indeed strike one as something of extraordinary beauty and grandeur, but it would
not produce that feeling of perfectly overpowering exaltation. No, it was all these things together, scenery, action, and music, that transported us into an atmosphere of—shall I so call it?—religious, devotional fervor, lifting us high above all the prosy, commonplace actualities of life, into the sphere of the purely sublime, the holy, and unloosing all the craving for faith and adoration that may have been dormant in the soul. We were truly and profoundly pious as we sat there gazing and listening—pious beyond the control of our feelings. Our hearts were full of a strange joyfulness, heaving upward with those grand harmonies, as they swelled and rose toward the mystery of heaven.
Beyond comparison, no production of art has ever touched me so wondrously, so supernaturally, as the first act of “Parsifal.” The effect was the same when I saw it again and it lacked the element of surprise. Nor have I ever met anyone who has seen and heard it and has altogether resisted its charm. And this was the last and crowning achievement of a most astonishing career. In the highest degree astonishing, it may well be said, was the success of a man who in elaborate treatises put forth the systematic theories of a truly revolutionary character, upon which his works of imagination had been, or were to be, constructed, giving the why and wherefore of everything, the ends he had in view, and the means to be used for their accomplishment, and who, thus assailing generally accepted principles and notions with a supreme, almost insolent confidence in his own power, had prejudiced almost the whole artistic world against himself. Yet Wagner finally won a triumph which no musical composer before him ever had dared to dream of; for he substantially said to princes and potentates, to the leaders in literature and art, and to mankind generally: “I am no longer to peddle my productions among you. I have selected,
not for your convenience but for mine, a little out-of-the-way town in Germany, where you will have to come in order to see and hear my works, as I wish them to be seen and heard.” And they came. The most renowned artists considered it the highest honor to appear, without a penny of pay, in that modest opera-house built on a hill near Bayreuth; and the powerful, and the rich, and men and women of high culture from all parts of Europe and from across the seas filled that plain auditorium as eager and devout listeners. In the history of art there has never been such a demonstration of public homage as this.
How long Wagner's works will hold the stage as prominently as they do now, will, of course, depend upon what may follow him. So far they are proving an embarrassing, if not positively oppressive, standard of comparison. If a new composer adopts Wagner's conception of the music drama, blending words, music, and scenery in one harmonious poem, together with something like Wagner's methods of instrumentation, he will be liable to be called an imitator, and the comparison with the great original will probably be to his disadvantage. If he does not, if he adheres to old models, or strikes out on lines of his own, his music will be in danger of being found thin and commonplace by the ear accustomed to Wagner's massive and striking powers of musical expression. It may require a genius of extraordinary power to break this sort of thraldom, and for such a genius mankind may have to wait a good while.