After rambling over Weimar and burrowing in the Liszt museum, one feels tempted to pronounce Liszt the happiest of composers, as Yeats calls William Morris the happiest poet. A career without parallel, a victorious general at the head of his ivory army; a lodestone for men and women; a poet, diplomat, ecclesiastic, man of the world, with the sunny nature of a child, loved by all, envious of no one—surely the fates forgot to spin evil threads at the cradle of Franz Liszt. And he was not a happy man for all that. He, too, like Friedrich Nietzsche had dÆmonic fantasy; but for him it was a gift, for the other a curse. Music is a liberation, and Nietzsche of all men would have benefited by its healing powers.
In Weimar Liszt walked and talked, smoked strong cigars, played, prayed—for he never missed early mass—and composed. His old housekeeper, Frau Pauline Apel, still a hale woman, shows, with loving care, the memorials in the little museum on the first floor of the Wohnhaus, which stands in the gardens of the beautiful ducal park.
Pauline Apel
Liszt's housekeeper at Weimar
Here Goethe and Schiller once promenaded in a company that has become historic. And cannot Weimar lay claim to a TannhÄuser performance as early as 1849, the Lohengrin production in 1850, and the Flying Dutchman in 1853? What a collection of musical manuscripts, trophies, jewels, pictures, orders, letters—I saw one from Charles Baudelaire to Liszt—and testimonials from all over the globe, which accumulated during the career of this extraordinary man!
The Steinway grand pianoforte, once so dearly prized by the master, has been taken away to make room for the many cases containing precious gifts from sovereigns, the scores of the Christus, Faust Symphony, Orpheus, Hungaria, Berg Symphony, Totentanz, and FestklÄnge. But the old instrument upon which he played years ago still stands in one of the rooms. Marble casts of Liszt's, Beethoven's, and Chopin's hands are on view; also Liszt's hand firmly clasping the slender fingers of the Princess Sayn-Wittgenstein. Like Chopin, Liszt attracted princesses as sugar buzzing flies.
There is a new Weimar—not so wonderful as the two old Weimars—the Weimar of Anna Amalia and Karl August, of Goethe, Wieland, Herder, and Schiller, Johanna Schopenhauer and her sullen son Arthur, the pessimistic philosopher—and not the old Weimar of Franz Liszt and his brilliant cohort of disciples; nevertheless, a new Weimar, its intellectual rallying-point the home of Elisabeth Foerster-Nietzsche, the tiny and lovable sister of the great dead poet-philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche.
To drift into this delightful Thuringian town; to stop at some curious old inn with an eighteenth century name like the Hotel Zum Elephant; to walk slowly under the trees of the ducal park, catching on one side a glimpse of Goethe's garden house, on the other Liszt's summer home, where gathered the most renowned musicians of the globe—these and many other sights and reminiscences will interest the passionate pilgrim—interest and thrill. If he be bent upon exploring the past glories of the Goethe rÉgime there are bountiful opportunities; the Goethe residence, the superb Goethe and Schiller archives, the ducal library, the garden house, the Belvidere—here we may retrace all the steps of that noble, calm Greek existence from robust young manhood to the very chamber wherein the octogenarian uttered his last cry of "More light!" a cry that not only symbolised his entire career, but has served since as a watchword for poetry, science, and philosophy.
If you are musical, is there not the venerable opera-house wherein more than a half century ago Lohengrin, thanks to the incredible friendship and labour of Franz Liszt, was first given a hearing? And this same opera-house—now no more—is a theatre that fairly exhales memories of historic performances and unique dramatic artists. Once Goethe resigned because against his earnest protest a performing dog was allowed to appear upon the classic boards which first saw the masterpieces of Goethe and Schiller.
But the new Weimar! During the last decade whether the spot has a renewed fascination for the artistic Germans or because of its increased commercial activities, Weimar has worn another and a brighter face. The young Grand Duke Ernst, while never displaying a marked preference for intellectual pursuits, is a liberal ruler, as befits his blood.
Great impetus has been given to manufacturing interests, and the city is near enough to Berlin to benefit by both its distance and proximity. Naturally, the older and conservative inhabitants are horrified by the swift invasion of unsightly chimneys, of country disappearing before the steady encroachment of railroads, mills, foundries, and other unpicturesque but very useful buildings. And the country about Weimar is famed for its picturesque quality—Jena, Tiefurt, Upper Weimar, Erfurt, museums, castles, monuments, belvideres, wayside inns, wonderful roads overhung by great aged trees. But other days, other ways.
Weimar has awakened and is no longer proud to figure merely as a museum of antiquities. With this material growth there has arisen a fresh movement in the stagnant waters of poetic and artistic memories—new ideas, new faces, new paths, new names. It is a useless, though not altogether an unpleasant theme, to speculate upon the different Weimar we would behold if Richard Wagner's original plan had been put into execution as to the location of his theatre. Most certainly Bayreuth would be a much duller town than it is to-day—and that is saying much. But emburgessed prejudices were too much for Wagner, and a stuffy Bavarian village won his preference, thereby becoming historical.
However, Weimar is not abashed or cast down. A cluster of history-making names are hers, and who knows, fifty years hence she may be proud to recall the days when one Richard Strauss was her local Kapellmeister and that within her municipal precincts died a great poetic soul, the optimistic philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche.
Now, Weimar is the residence and the resort of a brilliant group of poets, dramatists, novelists, musicians, painters, sculptors, and actors. Professor Hans Olde, who presides over the imposing art galleries and art school, has gathered about him an enthusiastic host of young painters and art students.
There have been recently two notable exhibitions, respectively devoted to the works of the sculptor-painter, Max Klinger, and the French sculptor, Auguste Rodin. Nor is the new artistic leaven confined to the plastic arts. Ernst von Wildenbruch, a world-known novelist and dramatist (since dead); Baron Detlev von Liliencron, one of Germany's most gifted lyric poets; Richard Dehmel, a poet of the revolutionary order, whose work favourably compares with the productions of the Parisian symbolists; Paul Ernst, poet; Johannes Schlaf, who a few years ago with Arno Holz blazoned the way in Berlin for Gerhart Hauptmann and the young realists—Schlaf is the author of several powerful novels and plays; Count Kessler, a cultured and ardent patron of the fine arts and literature, and Professor van de Velde, whose influence on architecture and the industrial arts has been great, and the American painter Gari Melchers, are all in the Weimar circle.
In the summer Conrad Ansorge, a man not unknown to the New York musical public, gathers around him in pious imitation of his former master, Liszt, a class of ambitious pianists. A former resident of New York, Max Vogrich, pianist and composer, has taken up his residence at Weimar. In its opera-house, which boasts an excellent company of singers, actors, and a good orchestra, the premiÈre of Vogrich's opera Buddha occurred in 1903. Gordon Craig, the son of Ellen Terry, often visits the city, where his scheme for the technical reform of the stage—lighting, scenery, costumes, and colours—was eagerly appreciated, as it was in Berlin, by Otto Brahm, director of the Lessing Theatre. Mr. Craig is looked upon as an advanced spirit in Germany. I wish I could praise without critical reservation the two new statues of Shakespeare and Liszt which stand in the park; but neither one is of consummate workmanship or conception.
When I received the amiable "command" of Elisabeth Foerster-Nietzsche, bidding me call at a fixed hour on a certain day, I was quite conscious of the honour; only the true believers set foot within that artistic and altogether charming Mecca at the top of the Luisenstrasse.
The lofty and richly decorated room where repose the precious mementos of the dead thinker is a singularly attractive one—it is a true abode of culture. Here Nietzsche died in 1900; here he was wheeled out upon the adjacent balcony, from which he had a surprising view of the hilly and delectable countryside.
His sister and devoted biographer is a comely little lady, vivacious, intellectual, bright of cheek and eye, a creature of fire and enthusiasm, more Gallic than German. I could well believe in the legend of the Polish Nietzskys, from whom the philosopher claimed descent, after listening to her spirited discussion of matters that pertained to her dead brother. His memory with her is an abidingly beautiful one. She says "my poor brother" with the accents of one speaking of the vanished gods.
His sister showed me all her treasures—many manuscripts of early and still unpublished studies; his original music, for he composed much during his intimacy with Richard Wagner; the grand pianoforte with which he soothed his tortured nerves; the stately bust executed by Max Klinger; the painful portrait etched by Hans Olde, and many other souvenirs.
Mrs. Foerster-Nietzsche, who once lived in South America—she speaks English, French, and Italian fluently—assured me that she sincerely regretted the premature publication in English of The Case of the Wagner. This book, so terribly personal, is a record of the disenchanting experiences of a shattered friendship.
Madame Foerster spoke most feelingly of Cosima Wagner and deplored the rupture of their intimate relations. "A marvellous woman! a fascinating woman!" she said several times. What with her correspondence in every land, the publication of the bulky biography and the constant editing of unpublished essays, letters and memorabilia, this rare sister of a great man is, so it seems to me, overtaxing her energies. The Nietzsche bibliography has assumed formidable proportions, yet she is conversant with all of it. A second Henrietta Renan, I thought, as I took a regretful leave of this very remarkable woman, not daring to ask her when Nietzsche's unpublished autobiography, Ecce Homo, would be given to the world. (This was written in 1904; Ecce Homo has appeared in the meantime.)
Later, down in the low-ceilinged cafÉ of the Hotel zum Elephant, I overheard a group of citizens, officers, merchants—all cronies—discussing Weimar. Nietzsche's name was mentioned, and one knight of this round table—a gigantic officer with a button head—contemptuously exclaimed:—"Nietzsche Rauch!" (smoke). Yes, but what a world-compelling vapour is his that now winds in fantastic spirals over the romantic hills and valleys of the new Weimar and thence about the entire civilised globe! Friedrich Nietzsche, because of his fiery poetic spirit and ecstatic pantheism, might be called the Percy Bysshe Shelley of philosophers.
II
BUDAPEST
My first evening in Budapest was a cascade of surprises. The ride down from Vienna is not cheery until the cathedral and palace of the primate is reached, at Gran, a superb edifice, challenging the valley of the Danube. Interminable prairies, recalling the traits of our Western country, swam around the busy little train until this residence of the spiritual lord of Hungary was passed. After that the scenery as far as Orsova, Belgrade, and the Iron Gates is legendary in its beauty.
To hear the real Hungarian gipsy on his own heath has been long my ambition. In New York he is often a domesticated fowl, with aliens in his company. But in Budapest! My hopes were high. The combination of that peppery food, paprika gulyas, was also an item not to be overlooked. I soon found an establishment where the music is the best in Hungary, the cooking of the hottest. After the usual distracting tuning the band splashed into a fierce prelude.
Fancy coming thousands of miles to hear the original of all the cakewalks and eat a preparation that might have been turned out from a Mexican restaurant! It was too much. It took exactly four Czardas and the Rakoczy march to convince me that I was not dreaming of Manhattan Beach.
But this particular band was excellent. Finding that some of the listeners only wished for gipsy music, the leader played the most frantically bacchanalian in his repertory. Not more than eight men made up the ensemble! And such an ensemble. It seemed to be the ideal definition of anarchy—unity in variety. Not even a Richard Strauss score gives the idea of vertical and horizontal music—heard at every point of the compass, issuing from the bowels of the earth, pouring down upon one's head like a Tyrolean thunderstorm. Every voice was independent, and syncopated as were the rhythms. There was no raggedness in attack or cessation.
Like a streak of jagged, blistering lightning, a tone would dart from the double bass to the very scroll of the fiddles. In mad pursuit, over a country black as Servian politics went the cymbalom, closely followed by two clarinets—in B and E flat. The treble pipe was played by a jeweller in disguise—he must have been a jeweller, so fond was he of ornamentation and cataracts of pearly tones. He made a trelliswork behind which he attacked his foes, the string players. In the midst of all this melodic chaos the leader, cradling his fiddle like something alive, swayed as sways a tall tree in the gale. Then he left the podium and hat in hand collected white pieces and kronen. It was disenchanting.
The tone of the band was more resilient, more brilliant than the bands we hear in America. And there were more heart, fire, swing and dash in their playing. The sapping melancholy of the Lassan and the diabolic vigour of the Friska are things that I shall never forget. These gipsies have an instinctive sense of tempo. Their allegretto is a genuine allegretto. They play rag-time music with true rhythmic appreciation for the reason that its metrical structure is grateful to them.
In Paris the cakewalk is a thing of misunderstood, misapplied accents. The Budapest version of the Rakoczy march is a revelation. No wonder Berlioz borrowed it. The tempo is a wild quickstep; there is no majestic breadth, so suggestive of military pomp or the grandeur of a warlike race. Instead, the music defiled by in crazy squads, men breathlessly clinging to the saddles of their maddened steeds; above them hung the haze of battle, and the hoarse shouting of the warriors was heard. Five minutes more of this excitement and heart disease might have supervened. Five minutes later I saw the band grinning over their tips, drinking and looking absolutely incapable of ever playing such stirring and hyperbolical music.
After these winged enchantments I was glad enough to wander next morning in the Hungarian Museum, following the history of this proud and glorious nation, in its armour, its weapons, its trophies of war and its banners captured from the Saracen. Such mementos re-create a race. In the picture gallery, a modest one, there are some interesting Munkaczys and several Makarts; also many specimens of Hungarian art by Kovacs, Zichy (a member of a noble and talented family), SzÉkely, and Michael Zichy's cartoon illustrations to MÁdach's The Tragedy of Mankind.
Munkaczy's portrait of Franz Liszt is muddy and bituminous. Two original aquarelles by DorÉ were presented by Liszt. I was surprised to find in the modern Saal the Sphynx of Franz Stuck, a sensational and gruesome canvas, which made a stir at the time of first hanging in the Munich Secession exhibition. Budapest purchased it; also a very characteristic Segantini, an excellent Otto Sinding, and Hans Makart's Dejanira. A beautiful marble of Rodin's marks the progressive taste of this artistic capital.
It would seem that even for a municipality of New York's magnitude the erection of such a Hall of Justice and such a Parliament building would be a tax beyond its purse. Budapest is not a rich city, but these two public buildings, veritable palaces, gorgeously decorated, proclaim her as a highly civilised centre. The opera-house, which seats only 1,100, is the most perfectly appointed in the world; its stage apparatus is better than Bayreuth's. And the natural position of the place is unique. From the ramparts of the royal palace in Buda—old Ofen—your eye, promise-crammed, sweeps a series of fascinating faÇades, churches, palaces, generous embankments, while between its walls the Danube flows torrentially down to the mysterious lands where murder is admired and thrones are playthings.
In the Liszt museum is the old, bucolic pianino upon which his childish hands first rested at Raiding (DobrjÀn), his birthplace. His baton; the cast of his hand and of Chopin's and the famous piano of Beethoven, at which most of the immortal sonatas were composed, and upon which Liszt Ferencz played for the great composer shortly before his death in 1827. The little piano has no string, but the Beethoven—a Broadwood & Sons, Golden Square, London, so the fall-board reads—is full of jangling wires, the keys black with age. Liszt presented it to his countrymen—he greatly loved Budapest and taught several months every winter at the Academy of Music in the spacious Andrassy strasse.
A harp, said to have been the instrument most affected by Marie Antoinette, did not give me the thrill historic which all right-minded Yankees should experience in strange lands. I would rather see a real live tornado in Kansas than shake hands with the ghost of Napoleon.
III
ROME
The pianoforte virtuoso, Richard Burmeister, and one of Liszt's genuine "pet" pupils, advised me to look at Liszt's hotel in the Vicolo Alibert, Rome. It is still there, an old-fashioned place, Hotel Alibert, up an alley-like street off the Via Babuino, near the Piazza del Popolo. But it is shorn of its interest for melomaniacs, as the view commanding the Pincio no longer exists. One night sufficed me, though the manager smilingly assured me that he could show the room wherein Liszt slept and studied. A big warehouse blocks the outlook on the Pincio; indeed the part of the hotel Liszt inhabited no longer stands. But at Tivoli, at the Villa d'Este, with its glorious vistas of the Campagna and Rome, there surely would be memories of the master. The Sunday I took the steam-tramway was a threatening one; before Bagni was reached a solid sheet of water poured from an implacable leaden sky. It was not a cheerful prospect for a Liszt-hunter. Arrived at Tivoli, I waited in the CaffÉ d'Italia hoping for better weather. An old grand pianoforte, the veriest rattletrap stood in the eating salle; but upon its keys had rested many times the magic-breeding fingers of Liszt. Often, with a band of students or with guests he would walk down from the villa and while waiting for their carriages he would jestingly sweep the keyboard. At the Villa d'Este itself the cypresses, cascades, terraces, and mysterious avenues of green were enveloped in a hopeless fog. It was the mistiest spot I ever visited. Heaven and earth, seemingly, met in fluid embrace to give me a watery welcome. Where was Liszt's abode is a Marianite convent. I was not permitted to visit his old room which is now the superior's. It was at the top of the old building, for wherever Liszt lived he enjoyed a vast landscape. I could discover but one person who remembered the Abbate; the conciÊrge. And his memories were scanty. I wandered disconsolately through the rain, my mood splenetic. So much for fame. I bitterly reflected in the melancholy, weedy, moss-infested walks of the garden.
As I attempted to point out to our little party the particular window from which Liszt saw the miraculous Italian world, I stepped on a slimy green rock and stretched my length in the humid mud. There was a deep, a respectful silence as I was helped to my feet—the gravity of the surroundings, the solemnity of our recollections choked all levity; though I saw signs of impending apoplexy on several faces. To relieve the strain I sternly bade our guide retire to an adjacent bosky retreat and there roar to his heart's content. He did. So did we all. The spell broken we returned to the "Sirene" opposite the entrance to the famous Tivoli water-falls and there with Chianti and spaghetti tried to forget the morning's disappointments. But even there sadness was invoked by the sight of a plaster bust of Liszt lying forlorn in the wet grass. The head waiter tried to sell it for twenty liri; but it was too big to carry; besides its nose was missing. He said that the original was somewhere in Tivoli.
Sgambati in Rome keeps green the memory of the master in his annual recitals; but of the churchly compositions no one I encountered had ever heard. At Santa Francesca Romana, adjoining the Forum, Liszt once took up his abode; there I saw in the cloister an aged grand pianoforte upon which he had played in a concert given at the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore many years ago. About an hour from Rome is the Oratory of the Madonna del Rosario on Monte Mario. There Liszt lived and composed in 1863. But his sacred music is never sung in any of the churches; the noble Graner Mass is still unheard in Rome. Even the Holy Father refers to the dead Hungarian genius as, "il compositore Tedesco!" It was different in the days of Pius IX, when Liszt's music was favoured at the Vatican. Is it not related that Pio Nono bestowed upon the great pianist the honour of hearing his confession at the time he became an abbÉ? And did he not after four or five hours of worldly reminiscences, cry out despairingly to his celebrated penitent:
"Basta, Caro Liszt! Your memory is marvellous. Now go play the remainder of your sins upon the pianoforte." They say that Liszt's playing on that occasion was simply enchanting—and he did not cease until far into the night.
Liszt's various stopping-places in and around Rome were: Vicolo de Greci (No. 43), Hotel Alibert, Vicolo Alibert, opposite Via del Babuino; Villa d'Este with Cardinal Hohenlohe, also at the Vatican; in 1866 at Monte Mario, Kloster Madonna del Rosario, Kloster Santa Francesca Romana, the Princess Sayn-Wittgenstein first resided in the Via del Babuino, later (1881) at the Hotel Malaro. Monsignor Kennedy of the American College shows the grand piano upon which Liszt once played there.
Perhaps Rome, at a superficial glance, still affects the American as it did Taine a half century ago, as a provincial city, sprawled to unnecessary lengths over its seven hills, and, despite the smartness of its new quarters, far from suggesting a Weltstadt, as does, for example, bustling, shining Berlin or mundane Paris. But not for her superb and imperial indifference are the seductive spells of operatic Venice or the romantic glamour of Florence. She can proudly say "La ville c'est moi!" She is not a city, but the city of cities, and it needs but twenty-four hours' submergence in her atmosphere to make one a slave at her eternal chariot wheels. The New York cockney, devoted to his cult of the modern—hotels, baths, cafÉs and luxurious theatres—soon wearies of Rome. He prefers Paris or Naples. Hasn't some one said, "See Naples and die—of its smells?" As an inexperienced traveller I know of no city on the globe where you formulate an expression of like or dislike so quickly. You are Rome's foe or friend within five minutes after you leave its dingy railway station. And it is hardly necessary to add that its newer quarters, pretentious, cold, hard and showy, are quite negligible. One does not go to Rome to seek the glazed comforts of Brooklyn.
The usual manner of approaching the Holy Father is to go around to the American Embassy and harry the good-tempered secretary into a promise of an invitation card, that is, if you are not acquainted in clerical circles. I was not long in Rome before I discovered that both Mgr. Kennedy and Mgr. Merry del Val were at Frascati enjoying a hard-earned vacation. So I dismissed the ghost of the idea and pursued my pagan worship at the Museo Vaticano. Then the heavy hoofs of three hundred pilgrims invaded the peace of the quiet Hotel Fischer up in the Via Sallustiana. They had come from Cologne and the vicinity of the Upper Rhine, bearing Peter's pence, wearing queer clothes and good-natured smiles. They tramped the streets and churches of Rome, did these commonplace, pious folk. They burrowed in the Catacombs and ate their meals, men and women alike, with such a hearty gnashing of teeth, such a rude appetite, that one envied their vitality, their faith, their wholesale air of having accomplished the conquest of Rome.
Their schedule, evidently prepared with great forethought and one that went absolutely to pieces when put to the test of practical operation, was wrangled over at each meal, where the Teutonic clans foregathered in full force. The third day I heard of a projected audience at the Vatican. These people had come to Rome to see the Pope. Big-boned and giantlike Monsignor Pick visited the hotel daily, and once after I saw him in conference with Signor Fischer I asked him if it were possible——
"Of course," responded the wily Fischer, "anything is possible in Rome." Wear evening dress? Nonsense! That was in the more exacting days of Leo XIII. The present Pope is a democrat. He hates vain show. Perhaps he has absorbed some of the Anglo-Saxon antipathy to seeing evening dress on a male during daylight. But the ladies wear veils. All the morning of October 5 the hotel was full of eager Italians selling veils to the German ladies.
Carriages blocked the streets and almost stretched four square around the Palazzo Margherita. There was noise. There were explosive sounds when bargains were driven. Then, after the vendors of saints' pictures, crosses, rosary beads—chiefly gentlemen of Oriental persuasion, comical as it may seem—we drove off in high feather nearly four hundred strong. I had secured from Monsignor Pick through the offices of my amiable host a parti-hued badge with a cross and the motto, "Coeln—Rom., 1905," which, interpreted, meant "Cologne—Rome." I felt like singing "Nach Rom," after the fashion of the Wagnerians in act II of TannhÄuser, but contented myself with abusing my coachman for his slow driving. It was all as exciting as a first night at the opera.
The rendezvous was the Campo Santo dei Tedeschi, which, with its adjoining church of Santa Maria della Pieta, was donated to the Germans by Pius VI as a burying-ground. There I met my companions of the dining-room, and after a stern-looking German priest with the bearing of an officer interrogated me I was permitted to join the pilgrims. What at first had been a thing of no value was now become a matter of life and death.
After standing above the dust and buried bones of illustrious and forgotten Germans we went into the church and were cooled by an address in German from a worthy cleric whose name I cannot recall. I remember that he told us that we were to meet the Vicar of Christ, a man like ourselves. He emphasised strangely, so it appeared to me, the humanity of the great prelate before whom we were bidden that gloomy autumnal afternoon. And then, after intoning a Te Deum, we filed out in pairs, first the women, then the men, along the naked stones until we reached the end of the Via delle Fundamenta. The pilgrims wore their everyday clothes. One even saw the short cloak and the green jÄgerhut. We left our umbrellas at a garderobe; its business that day was a thriving one. We mounted innumerable staircases. We entered the Sala Regia, our destination—I had hoped for the more noble and spacious Sala Ducale.
Three o'clock was the hour set for the audience; but His Holiness was closeted with a French ecclesiastical eminence and there was a delay of nearly an hour. We spent it in staring at the sacred and profane frescoes of Daniele da Volterra, Vasari, Salviati and Zucchari staring at each other. The women, despite their Italian veils, looked hopelessly Teutonic, the men clumsy and ill at ease. There were uncouth and guttural noises. Conversation proceeded amain. Some boasted of being heavily laden with rosaries and crucifixes, for all desired the blessing of the Holy Father. One man, a young German-American priest from the Middle West, almost staggered beneath a load of pious emblems. The guilty feelings which had assailed me as I passed the watchful gaze of the Swiss Guards began to wear off. The Sala Regia bore an unfamiliar aspect, though I had been haunting it and the adjacent Sistine Chapel daily for the previous month. An aura, coming I knew not whence, surrounded us. The awkward pilgrims, with their daily manners, almost faded away, and when at last a murmur went up, "The Holy Father! the Holy Father! He approaches!" a vast sigh of relief was exhaled. The tension had become unpleasant.
We were ranged on either side, the women to the right, the men to the left of the throne, which was an ordinary looking tribune. It must be confessed that later the fair sex were vigorously elbowed to the rear. In America the women would have been well to the front, but the dear old Fatherland indulges in no such new fangled ideas of sex equality. So the polite male pilgrims by superior strength usurped all the good places. A tall, handsome man in evening clothes—solitary in this respect, with the exception of the Pope's body suite—patrolled the floor, obsequiously followed by the Suiss in their hideous garb—a murrain on Michelangelo's taste if he designed such hideous uniforms! I fancied that he was no less than a prince of the royal blood, so masterly was his bearing. When I discovered that he was the Roman correspondent of a well-known North German gazette my respect for the newspaper man abroad was vastly increased. The power of the press——!
"His Holiness comes!" was announced, and this time it was not a false alarm. From a gallery facing the Sistine Chapel entered the inevitable Swiss Guards; followed the officers of the Papal household, grave and reverend seigniors; a knot of ecclesiastics, all wearing purple; Monsignor Pick, the Papal prothonotary and a man of might in business affairs; then a few stragglers—anonymous persons, stout, bald, officials—and finally Pope Pius X.
He was attired in pure white, even to the sash that compassed his plump little figure. A cross depended from his neck. He immediately and in the most matter of fact fashion held out his hand to be kissed. I noted the whiteness of the nervous hand tendered me, bearing the ring of Peter, a large, square emerald surrounded by diamonds. Though seventy, the Pope looks ten years younger. He is slightly under medium height. His hair is white, his complexion dark red, veined, and not very healthy. He seems to need fresh air and exercise; the great gardens of the Vatican are no compensation for this man of sorrows, homesick for the sultry lagoons and stretches of gleaming waters in his old diocese of Venice. If the human in him could call out it would voice Venice, not the Vatican. The flesh of his face is what the painters call "ecclesiastical flesh," large in grain. His nose broad, unaristocratic, his brows strong and harmonious. His eyes may be brown, but they seemed black and brilliant and piercing. He moved with silent alertness. An active, well-preserved man, though he achieved the Biblical three-score and ten in June, 1905. I noted, too, with satisfaction, the shapely ears, artistic ears, musical ears, their lobes freely detached. A certain resemblance to Pius IX there is; he is not so amiable as was that good-tempered Pope who was nicknamed by his intimate friend, the AbbÉ Liszt, Pia Nina, because of his musical proclivities. Altogether, I found another than the Pope I had expected. This, then, was that exile—an exile, yet in his native land; a prisoner in sight of the city of which he is the spiritual ruler; a prince over all principalities and dominions, yet withal a feeble old man, whose life might be imperilled if he ventured into the streets of Rome.
The Pope had now finished his circle of pilgrims and stood at the other end of the Sala. With him stood his chamberlains and ecclesiastics. Suddenly a voice from the balcony, which I saw for the first time, bade us come nearer. I was thunder-struck. This was back to the prose of life with a vengeance. We obeyed instructions. A narrow aisle was made, with the Pope in the middle perspective. Then the voice, which I discovered by this time issued from the mouth of a bearded person behind a huge, glittering camera, cried out in peremptory and true photographer style:——
"One, two, three! Thank your Holiness."
And so we were photographed. In the Vatican and photographed! Old Rome has her surprises for the patronising visitors from the New World. It was too business-like for me, and I would have gone away, but I couldn't, as the audience had only begun. The Pope went to his throne and received the heads of the pilgrims. A certain presumptuous American told him that the church musical revolution was not much appreciated in America. He also asked, rash person that he was, why an example was not set at St. Peter's itself, where the previous Sunday he had heard, and to his horror, a florid mass by Milozzi, as florid and operatic as any he had been forced to endure in New York before the new order of things. A discreet poke in the ribs enlightened him to the fact that at a general audience such questions are not in good taste.
The Pope spoke a few words in a ringing barytone voice. He said that he loved Germany, loved its Emperor; that every morning his second prayer was for Germany—his first, was it for the hundredth wandering sheep of the flock, France? That he did not explain. He blessed us, and his singing voice proved singularly rich, resonant and pure in intonation for an old man. Decidedly Pius X is musical; he plays the pianoforte it is said, with taste. The pilgrims thundered the Te Deum a second time, with such pious fervour that the venerable walls of the Sala Regia shook with their lung vibrations. Then the Papal suite followed the sacred figure out of the chamber and the buzzing began. The women wanted to know—and indignant were their inflections—why a certain lady attired in scarlet, hat and all, was permitted within the sacred precincts. The men hurried, jostling each other, for their precious umbrellas. The umbrella in Germany is the symbol of the mediÆval sword. We broke ranks and tumbled into the now sunny daylight, many going on the wings of thirst to the Piazza Santi Apostoli, which, notwithstanding its venerable name, has amber medicine for parched German gullets.
Pius X is a democratic man. He may be seen by the faithful at any time. He has organised a number of athletic clubs for young Romans, taking a keen interest in their doings. He is an impulsive man and has many enemies in his own household. He has expressed his intention of ridding Rome of its superfluous monks, those unattached ones who make life a burden by their importunings and beggaries in Rome.
His personal energy was expressed while I was in Rome by his very spirited rebuke to some members of the athletic clubs at an audience in the Vatican. There was some disorder while the Pontiff spoke. He fixed a noisy group with an angry glance:—"Those who do not wish to hear me—well, there is the open door!"
Another incident, and one I neglected to relate in its proper place;—As Pius proceeded along the line of kneeling figures during the German audience he encountered a little, jolly-looking priest, evidently known to him. A smile, benign, witty, delicately humourous, appeared on his lips. For a moment he seemed more Celt than Latin. There was no hint of the sardonic smile which is said to have crossed the faces of Roman augurs. It was merely a friendly recognition tempered by humility, as if he meant to ask:—"Why do you need my blessing, friend?" And it was the most human smile that I would imagine worn by a Pope. It told me more of his character than even did his meek and resigned pose when the official photographer of the Vatican called out his sonorous "Una, due, tre!"
