Dame 
 Ethel Smyth 
 
 celebrates her eightieth birth- 
 day today, and will broadcast 
 a special birthday talk at 8.0 
 
 ****** Jfc- 
 
 
 this evening. Later, at 9.25, 
 the Spencer Dyke String Quar- 
 tet will give a concert of her 
 chamber music. The picture 
 shows Dame Ethel as she 
 faced the television cameras 
 only a few months ago. 
 
 mw ** . *' * ** * . 
 m. * * * s.
 
 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 BY 
 
 ETHEL SMYTH 
 
 MUS.^DOC. 
 AUTHOR OF ' IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED 
 
 *8S> 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO 
 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON 
 
 FOURTH AVENUE & 30 STREET, NEW YORK 
 BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, AND MADRAS 
 
 10,21
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 Concerning this Book . 
 Recollections of the Empress Eugenie 
 A Fresh Start and Two Portraits 
 Two Glimpses of Queen Victoria 
 1 Mount Music ' . . 
 
 An Adventure in a Train 
 The Quotation-Fiend . 
 A Winter of Storm 
 The Opera Fiasco 
 An Open Secret 
 
 i 
 
 4 
 69 
 
 93 
 112 
 119 
 
 i34 
 139 
 206 
 231 
 
 Note. The thanks of the author, for permission to reprint, are 
 due to the Editors of Blackwood's Magazine, The London Mercury, 
 The Englishwoman, Country Life, and The Evening News.
 
 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 CONCERNING THIS BOOK 
 
 I call this collection of papers * Streaks of Life * 
 because although most of them are autobiographical 
 there is no attempt at a connected story. Dealing with 
 modern times, continuity is impossible unless you are 
 prepared either to hurt feelings, or to dip your pen 
 in purest solution of rose-coloured amiability. And 
 without wishing to incur the imputation of treachery, 
 I can imagine nothing more tiresome than always to 
 speak of people as if they were listening at the 
 door. 
 
 I should like to say a word about one or two 
 articles of a different class that appear in this volume 
 the review of ' Mount Music,' for instance, which is 
 included because I think no modern book gives such 
 a faithful picture of Ireland. True, it is the Ireland 
 of yesterday of the very end, that is, of last century 
 but what a masterly analysis of the soil in which 
 Sinn Fein has struck root ! As our two islands are 
 irrevocably bound together, the more we know of the 
 other island the better, particularly since we need not 
 expect to be studied and understood ourselves. We 
 have to be, we must be, intelligent and sympathetic 
 enough for two, and if anyone can help us to this
 
 2 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 admirable state of mind it is E. CE. Somerville and 
 Martin Ross. 
 
 As for the two articles dealing with musical topics, 
 the first, ' The Opera Fiasco,' was written before the 
 disappearance from the operatic scene (only for a while, 
 we hope) of Sir Thomas Beecham. I want to say that 
 although obliged elsewhere to criticise his methods and 
 in some ways deprecate his influence, the feelings of 
 gratitude, indebtedness, and, if I may say so, affection 
 there expressed remain unaltered. 
 
 When Goethe was endeavouring to teach his young 
 friend Eckermann to see, he began by showing him 
 none but the choicest engravings of supreme master- 
 pieces. ' Thus alone can taste be acquired,' he said, 
 1 after which you are fit to deal adequately with the 
 second-best, neither over- nor under-rating it. But 
 there must be a standard of reference to start with. 1 
 
 The creation of this standard is one of the duties 
 the State owes to the nation, or rather the nation to 
 herself, for who but we ourselves have created, under 
 enlightened guidance, our great art collections ? But 
 this principle, as I show in both my musical articles, is 
 not acknowledged in music with consequences that 
 are dealt with in detail in ' The Opera Fiasco.' The 
 arguments there used are unanswerable, and will have 
 as much effect as a puff of smoke ! I know my 
 England what she really cares about, and what she 
 considers it necessary to her self-respect to pretend to 
 care about. 
 
 As for the part of ' An Open Secret ' that refers to 
 women, if I had time and strength I would travel all 
 England holding up the mirror to those who are still at 
 the stage of King Canute's courtiers, and believe that a 
 far more irresistible tide than the one he used as text 
 can be arrested bv the action of Trades Unions. None
 
 CONCERNING THIS BOOK 3 
 
 but bread-winners know the cruelty of that action ; 
 Dr. Flora Murray's wonderful book ' Women as Army 
 Surgeons ' dispels the illusion that the medical fight is 
 won ; the male medical students at University College 
 are now trying to squash female competition ; the 
 Halle* Orchestra has sacked its women members, none 
 of whom replaced fighting men, and so on. In the same 
 article I quote Sir Henry Wood's recent remarks about 
 women in orchestras. But without that I know, and 
 we all know, that the root of the matter is selfishness 
 and fear; * ca' canny' a system which would drive 
 women crazy versus what Mr. Chesterton calls c the 
 terrible conscientiousness of women.' 
 
 That amiable philosopher used to soothe harassed 
 wage-earners by calling them ' uncrowned Queens,' 
 and entreating them, as such, to keep out of the labour 
 market. Some day there may be Doles for Uncrowned 
 Queens. It will be charming. But at present we need 
 all the hard workers we can get, and I fancy England 
 will not cut off her nose by way of improving her face. 
 
 Women must stand firm against tyranny, and not 
 meet it with any description of smile whether hypo- 
 critical, philosophical, or diplomatic. Meanwhile, to 
 show there is no ill-feeling, let us borrow the finest of 
 battle-cries a cry brave men have given us : 
 
 ' Are we downhearted ? . . . NO ! ' 
 
 Coign. December 1920.
 
 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE EMPRESS 
 EUGENIE 
 
 ' . . . celle a qui Dieu donna tant de choses, et a qui il a enleva, un 
 par un, tout ce qu'il avait donne . . . ! ' 
 
 From a letter written by the Empress to M. Pietri, 
 
 Maritzburg, 3rd May, 1880. 
 
 I 
 
 Strange that the death of a woman of ninety-five 
 should seem to those who knew her the one incredible 
 thing. Yet this, I am certain, was the feeling with 
 which, on July 12, hundreds of people read the news 
 that the Empress Eugenie's long life had come to a 
 close. There seemed no reason why she should not 
 live on indefinitely nor any for wishing it might be 
 otherwise, since the one shadow that darkened her later 
 years (though she herself never believed it could not be 
 dissipated), the dread of total blindness, had passed away. 
 
 There are two conditions, I think, which determine 
 fitness to survive : your own interest in life must be 
 unimpaired, and further, you must possess the cer- 
 tainty that your company is still eagerly desired by your 
 friends. Such was more emphatically the Empress's 
 case, surely, than that of other mortals who have reached 
 so great an age. One felt convinced, too, that as she 
 had been, so she would be to the end ; that there would 
 be no gradual failing no sad period of death in life, 
 which is the fate one most dreads for the old. 
 
 And so it turned out. Well in health, back in 
 Spain again, after years of absence, and among her own 
 people ; her sight painlessly and, as it seemed, miracu- 
 
 4
 
 THE EMPRESS EUGENIE 5 
 
 lously restored ; congratulating herself on having faced 
 an operation that if painless was formidable ; glorying 
 in the fact that it was a Spanish doctor who invented 
 the method, behold her one day walking in her 
 nephew's garden, discussing the details of her imminent 
 return to England and the next, after a few hours of 
 pain and distress, sinking gently into death. As one 
 who loved and was beloved by her has told me, ' her 
 heart gradually ceased to beat, as it might be a little 
 bird that dies in your hand.' 
 
 Such was her end ; and who shall say it was not 
 the happiest one could wish for her ? 
 
 In the following pages no attempt will be made to 
 speak of the Empress as historical personage, unless 
 incidentally, when recording things she said that struck 
 one so much that they found their way into private 
 letters, or into a diary which, alas ! was only started in 
 1 917. This is merely a record written by one who saw 
 her constantly, travelled with her, stayed in her houses, 
 lived practically next door to her for more than thirty 
 years, and who eagerly sought her company because, 
 quite apart from her story, she was one of the most 
 interesting, original, remarkable, and delightful people 
 in the world. 
 
 In order to show what my claims may be to speak, 
 I will say, briefly, how I came to know her. 
 
 When she came to live at Farnborough Hill after 
 the Prince Imperial's death, my parents were among 
 the neighbours occasionally invited to tea or dinner ; 
 and my mother's French upbringing, which included 
 an easy command of the language, was a point in her 
 favour in a house where no one but its mistress had 
 any English. In those days the Empress had more or 
 less of a household : the old Due de Bassano ; Madame 
 le Breton once Lectrice, now Dame d'Honneur, sole 
 companion of the flight to England in 1870 ; and
 
 6 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 Monsieur Pietri, the Empress's secretary, who was one 
 of the few people connected with her in the old days 
 of whose deep personal devotion there could be no 
 doubt. And besides one or two daughters of ancient 
 officials of the Imperial Court, who occasionally took a 
 spell of honorary service, there were later attempts at a 
 resident Demoiselle d'Honneur. But these were not suc- 
 cesses, as will be recounted in due course, and the idea 
 was soon abandoned ; particularly as the Empress went 
 nowhere except on occasional visits to Queen Victoria, 
 and at such times was attended by Madame Arcos who 
 was a persona grata at Court. 
 
 The first time I saw Her Majesty was in the year 
 1883 the time when, as I have related elsewhere, 1 
 the Duchesse de Mouchy remarked that in a certain 
 sense she was even more beautiful now than in her 
 youth ; and certainly that beauty surpassed one's 
 extremest expectations. Not more than 5 feet 5 inches, 
 I fancy, the perfection of her proportions gave the idea 
 of a far taller woman, and any one interested in motion 
 must at once have been struck by her walk. Less like 
 walking than gliding, it was the easiest, most graceful 
 style of progression imaginable. The face was very 
 pale, and except as to the eyebrows not in the least 
 made up (no powder, no rouge) ; and under the large 
 hat you caught sight of her hair grey, inclining to 
 white. It was not till some years later that I saw her 
 bare-headed, but to the end she never changed her 
 coiffure. She detested caps and never wore them, and, 
 as the years went on, the flat curls and other additions, 
 she permitted herself, faithfully turned white with her 
 own strong, plentiful hair. I always thought the whole 
 head-arrangement a triumph of genius absolutely suit- 
 able to her age, yet not hiding the shape of that 
 exquisitely poised little head. 
 
 1 Impressions that Remained. (Longmans.)
 
 THE EMPRESS EUGENIE 7 
 
 The occasion I am speaking of, when I first came 
 into personal contact with her, was a meet of the 
 harriers, which took place, at her special request, at 
 Farnborough Hill. She came out on to the gravel 
 sweep in front of the house, and her manner was more 
 gracious and winning than any manner I had ever seen 
 as she bowed right and left to the awestruck field, say- 
 ing repeatedly, ' Put on your 'ats ; I pray you, put on 
 your 'ats.' The Master was then presented, and she 
 really and truly did remark to him as, if you come to 
 think of it, she naturally would ' I 'ope the 'ounds 
 will find the 'are near the 'ouse,' all of which was my 
 first intimation of a fact which surprised me in later 
 years, her lack of gift for languages ; for well I knew 
 that her education had included a prolonged sojourn 
 at a boarding-school at Clifton. 
 
 In due course I and my sisters were presented, and 
 instantly were lifted into the seventh heaven by the 
 warmth of our reception, for even then she had the 
 delight in young people that became such a marked 
 characteristic in after years. A little later my mother 
 was bidden to tea, and thus began the relation that was 
 one of the great joys and burning interests of my life 
 up to the day of her death. 
 
 One more instance, before I leave the subject, of 
 her peculiar English of that epoch (for as time went 
 on, though it was never very good, there was consider- 
 able improvement). She was driving me back to our 
 home, Frimhurst, one day, the entrance to which was 
 extremely awkward. Her coachman not being the 
 soberest of men, one of the hind wheels caught the 
 gate-post and an accident was narrowly avoided. 
 Pulling up, he explained that the 'orses were pulling 
 very 'ard. The Empress's angry rejoinder was : ' It's 
 not the 'orses that are pulling 'ard, it's you that always 
 forget the be'ind of the carriage.'
 
 8 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 In connection with the boarding-school I spoke of, 
 one of those little incidents occurred that beget reflec- 
 tions on the wide subject called ' human nature.' A 
 very creditable Smyth relation of ours, who had figured 
 in her youth in the ' Book of Beauty,' and who once 
 told me that her mouth was considered an exact repro- 
 duction of Cupid's bow, had known Mademoiselle de 
 Montijo in those Clifton days ; indeed, the family had 
 been asked to be kind to this young Spanish girl of 
 partly Scotch descent. Naturally we imagined that 
 the fact would be a passport to the good graces of the 
 Empress ; but she seemed to have no recollection of 
 my cousin's existence, and we suddenly felt this was 
 not a subject to be pursued. 
 
 In after-life I noticed that she would talk freely 
 about the impecunious days of her childhood in Spain ; 
 how, from motives of economy, she and her sister were 
 not allowed to wear stockings ; how they would gallop 
 twenty miles across country on rough, unshod horses, 
 in order to have a good meal, for once in a way, at 
 the house of a high-born and wealthy relation, and so 
 on. This picturesque Spanish penuriousness appealed 
 to her imagination ; not so the dingy boarding-school 
 era ! I can only recall her alluding to it once, when 
 she told us that her life had been made a burden to 
 her ' at school ' because of the colour of her hair 
 that wonderful golden-red that a few years later all the 
 hairdressers in Europe were endeavouring to reproduce 
 on the heads of their clients ! Boarding-schools were 
 not patronised by the aristocracy in those days, and I 
 was never to learn anything about a bit of her life which 
 would have interested me particularly. 
 
 In the same way, though less of a snob in the 
 depths of her soul than any one it is possible to conceive, 
 she obviously gloried in the illustriousness of her 
 Spanish descent, was horrified if any of her relations
 
 THE EMPRESS EUGENIE 9 
 
 contemplated what she considered a mesalliance, and 
 rather implacable if the marriage came off. And 
 though she was proud, theoretically, of her Scotch 
 blood, I came to the conclusion that certain genealogical 
 investigations had not yielded a wholly satisfactory 
 result, and that here again was a point upon which it 
 was not tactful to cross-question her. 
 
 During the years that followed that first vision of 
 her at the meet of the harriers, I personally saw little 
 of her, being in Germany or Italy for a great part of 
 the year ; and it was not till 1890, when, all my sisters 
 being married, I took up my abode at Frimhurst, that 
 I came to know her well. By way of illustrating the 
 human, understanding side of the Empress perhaps I 
 may be permitted a glance into our home life. 
 
 I have told elsewhere how, shortly before my 
 mother's death, overcome by the tedium of life in the 
 country, she was seized with a sudden desire to live in 
 London, and how this prospect appalled my father and 
 me. ' II faut tacher de la distraire, de Tegayer un peu,' 
 said the Empress, and she began planning a dinner 
 party for the following week to which my mother was 
 to be invited, begging me to find out whom she would 
 like to meet. And on the day when her last illness fell 
 upon her, my mother had been discussing the matter 
 with delight. 
 
 Shortly after her death I paid my first visit to Cap 
 Martin, where the Empress was already meditating the 
 building of her villa, ' Cyrnos ' ; and afterwards I 
 accompanied her, as a sort of honorary Demoiselle 
 d'Honneur, on a yachting trip down the east coast of 
 the Adriatic. It was then, during two months of close 
 intimacy, that I formed an impression of her character 
 an impression conceived in a first whirl of affection 
 and admiration, but which the succeeding years only
 
 io STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 served to deepen. ' Whatever may be her faults,' I 
 wrote home, ' they are faults of a noble character, and 
 one wonders how her worst enemies can ever have 
 attributed littleness to her. Her judgments of people, 
 including these, are so temperate, so free from bitter- 
 ness, so generous and merciful, that one feels ashamed 
 of one's own acrimony and harshness.' It is worth while 
 saying this here, because many are under the impression 
 that certain of her qualities were only acquired in old 
 age. But in 1891 she was a great deal nearer to ' les 
 eVenements, ' as she always called the downfall of the 
 Second Empire, than in 191 8 the last date at which 
 I came upon some remarks to this purpose, coupled 
 with truisms concerning the mitigating effects of time 
 upon character. 
 
 I remember noticing at Venice one convenient 
 result of that gliding walk of hers. Some festa was 
 going on ; night after night the Piazza was thronged, 
 and she always loved wandering unknown in a crowd. 
 But if you lost her it was easy to find her again, for 
 though there were scores of tussore parasols lined with 
 green, none moved among the packed heads as did 
 hers, without jerk or oscillation. 
 
 It was at Venice that I discovered that she had not 
 a drop of artistic blood in her veins. It was amusing 
 and at the same time embarrassing to look at pictures 
 in her company, so anxious was she to believe and prove 
 that she was enjoying them, yet so obviously at sea ; 
 also secretly bored to death, as are all people who have 
 genuine interests of their own when condemned -to 
 flutter ignorantly round things they do not understand. 
 Confronted by a fine portrait her comments were of 
 the order of those you may overhear at an exhibition 
 of the Royal Academy : ' Isn't that the image of Aunt 
 Jane ? ' But if it were the case of an historical picture, 
 the battle of Lepanto for instance, you could listen to
 
 THE EMPRESS EUGENIE n 
 
 her by the hour, such was her grasp of the interests at 
 stake and of what would have happened had the issue 
 been the other way. It was this quality of hers, her 
 knowledge of history, her perception of the general lie 
 of events, that so profoundly impressed my friend Mr. 
 Wickham Steed when he went with me to see her just 
 after the Armistice was signed, and talked with her for 
 five hours on end. ' There is not a soul alive,' he said, 
 1 who has this precise knowledge of political events of 
 the past. It is like talking with a dozen dead-and-gone 
 statesmen, with the very incarnation of history ! ' 
 
 The yachting party consisted of three persons only, 
 H.M.'s gentleman in attendance being Count Joseph 
 Primoli, and at Corfu I learned to know her passionate 
 love of justice. We arrived in the midst of one of the 
 periodical disturbances between Jews and Christians 
 including a revival of the old charge of massacring a 
 Christian child in honour of the Passover and the 
 Empress, greatly to the alarm of the local authorities, 
 marched ostentatiously through the Ghetto, and insisted 
 on presenting the Chief Rabbi with a large sum of 
 money for the outcasts. 
 
 Wherever we went, the Empress being meticulous 
 as to outside observances, the Church was visited, and 
 the whole population would follow in her train. This 
 used to annoy her considerably, for she had had enough 
 of that sort of thing in the past and now cherished 
 the unrealisable hope of preserving her incognita. 
 Besides which, publicity involved large donations, and 
 though she was a generous giver, she objected to her 
 purse being prized open like an oyster. 
 
 On one occasion a supremely ridiculous incident 
 happened, and to give point to it I must explain that 
 she had a physical horror of relics which no sense of 
 their sanctity had power to counteract. One can 
 imagine her consternation, therefore, when we were
 
 12 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 informed, on landing at Trau, that a ceremony had been 
 arranged at the Cathedral in her honour, in which the 
 shin-bone of the founder was to play a part. There 
 was no escape, the church was filled to bursting, and 
 as she knelt at the altar-rails, the organist meanwhile 
 playing a thunderous valse-tune, the relic was not only 
 produced, but as an unheard-of favour presented to her 
 to kiss. I watched the whole scene from the back- 
 ground where I had modestly placed myself, fearing, as 
 heretic, to desecrate the bone ; but the priest, informed 
 by the mischief-loving Count Primoli that I also was 
 of the Imperial party, made a kindly yet authoritative 
 signal. And no sooner had I pressed my lips to the 
 relic, than a bell was rung and the valse broke off 
 abruptly in the middle of a bar which is an exceedingly 
 difficult feat to accomplish. 1 We subsequently visited a 
 Convent, where the Mother Superior said she had heard 
 that the Empress suffered from rheumatism ; if so, the 
 application of the relic to the painful spot could doubt- 
 less be arranged. But the Empress, whose complaint 
 was lumbago, hastily assured her that she was in the 
 best of health. 
 
 I have many vignette-memories of that entrancing 
 voyage : the journey from Trieste to join the yacht at 
 Corfu in a huge liner, empty but for a crowd of Mussul- 
 mans on their way to Mecca, who walked about with 
 large, long loaves of bread under their arms in the day- 
 time, and used them as pillows at night ; I see Primoli, 
 who was mad on photography, snapshotting the pil- 
 grims, and the Empress's terror lest they should murder 
 us all in consequence ; I see them draw aside their 
 floating garments in civil dread of contamination as we 
 moved amongst them ; I see the whole party, includ- 
 ing the servants, in the throes of sea-sickness, while 
 
 1 I have since been told it was probably a barrel-organ, which 
 explains everything.
 
 THE EMPRESS EUGENIE 13 
 
 the Empress, who did not know what it meant and 
 gloried in rough weather, was divided between genuine 
 sympathy for our sufferings, and that mixture of scorn 
 and evil triumphant delight which is the inevitable 
 state of mind of the immune. . . . And here a vision 
 of later years obtrudes itself : we are rounding the Mull 
 of Cantire labouring in wliat must surely be the most 
 horrible bit of water in the world and I see her, lashed, 
 chair and all, to the mast, needless to say with no 
 company save that of the crew 1 
 
 From that time onwards the Empress became one 
 of the two pivots of my life in England, and when my 
 father died in 1894 I took a little cottage about two 
 miles from Farnborough Hill. If I mention that my 
 public career as musician was just beginning, it is 
 because I want to lay stress on the fact that never had 
 beginner a more wonderful friend to look to. She had 
 always been keen on women's work, and told me how 
 furious it had made her during the Empire when they 
 decided that, inasmuch as women were not eligible as 
 members of the Legion d'Honneur, that distinction 
 was to be conferred upon Rosa Bonheur's brother^ who, 
 it appears, was a very middling painter ! I now learned, 
 too, that it was at the Empress's instigation that women 
 were first employed in the French P.O., and how fierce 
 the opposition had been. 
 
 Such being her views, it will be believed that all 
 it was possible to do was done by her to help me. 
 The expenses of printing some of my earliest compo- 
 sitions were borne by her ; and in my interests she 
 broke a rule, rigorously kept ever since ' les 6v6ne- 
 ments,' never again to appear in public, and attended 
 the first (and only) performance of my Mass at the 
 Albert Hall in 1893. Alas 1 too soon she came to the 
 conclusion that in some ways I was a bad horse to
 
 i 4 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 back too uncompromising and bent on having things 
 properly done, too averse to diplomacy and the use of 
 soft sawder ! ' Vous n'&tes done jamais lasse de vous 
 faire des ennemis ! ' she would say. 
 
 This, according to her own account, was not a 
 matter she herself had considered negligible. I re- 
 member her once relating how at Biarritz she had been 
 at infinite pains to shower civilities upon an imposing 
 gentleman whom she believed to be the editor of The 
 Times, a journal that had been inimical to the Empire 
 from the first and how it gradually became manifest 
 that the object of her amenities was not connected 
 with The Times at all, but owner of a racing stable ! 
 I suppose Sovereigns are obliged to do this sort of 
 thing, but I wondered how such a conspicuously sin- 
 cere, upright nature could thus stoop to conquer. It 
 was, however, one of the peculiarities of her complex 
 character that, in spite of a sense of honour so delicate 
 that at times one felt as if all other nations were 
 crawling worms compared to the Spaniards, she could 
 not conceive why any reasonable being should shrink 
 from opportunism in cases such as one's ' career.' 
 
 In the same way she would advise me to be specially 
 civil to so and so, because he or she was very rich ; 
 and I must admit that though she was pre-eminently 
 the friend of the unfortunate, riches appealed to and 
 impressed her. I remember saying in the case of a 
 certain Dives, that, apart from his being a cad and 
 antipathetic to me, I hated rich people. Whereupon 
 she remarked with some violence, ' Dieu, que e'est 
 bete ! ' 
 
 It is chiefly on account of the Empress that I regret 
 not having kept a diary till late in life, except during 
 a brief period of three months. Outstanding events get 
 into one's correspondence, and there is some chance of 
 refreshing memory at this source later on. But as
 
 THE EMPRESS EUGENIE 15 
 
 regards the side-lights thrown on history in the course 
 of conversation with one who has played a leading part 
 in it, nothing but a diary meets the case. At special 
 moments, when some passing event brought sunken 
 details of the past whirling to the surface, she would 
 discuss the matter eagerly, illustrate it by her personal 
 knowledge, go to a drawer, pull out papers, and prove 
 her statements. Especially would this happen, of 
 course, in connection with affairs in France, and one 
 marvelled at her dignity and self-restraint in never 
 using the terrible weapons that lay to her hand. 
 
 In those early days I used in my innocence to urge 
 her to write her memoirs, and even maintain it was a 
 duty. She said it never would be done by her mainly 
 because the idea of reliving her past filled her with 
 horror. And there were other reasons. In such 
 cases,' she remarked, ' one is surrounded by St. Peters 
 people who in a moment of infidelity failed you, but 
 later on in their remorse did their best to atone 
 sometimes at heavy cost to themselves. Who could 
 show up such penitents ? Yet if memoirs are not to 
 be useless it must be done ' which was unanswerable. 
 
 Many years later she spoke one day of the folly 
 of supposing that she and the Emperor, who had little 
 to gain by success and everything to lose by defeat, had 
 pressed for war. As for the role of firebrand attributed 
 to herself, she said she had not even been present at 
 the councils of that period, the Emperor having in- 
 formed her, on her return from opening the Suez Canal, 
 that M. Ollivier desired her attendance should be 
 dispensed with, ' which,' she remarked characteristically, 
 1 I found quite natural. Former Ministers had requested 
 my presence, this one requested my absence. Why 
 not ? ' She added, that so far were she and the Emperor 
 from conviction that France would be victorious, and 
 so convinced that in the opposite case they themselves
 
 16 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 would be driven from the Tuileries, that as soon as 
 war was declared she made over the Crown Jewels to 
 the Ministry on her own responsibility and got a 
 receipt I 'for I knew,' she said, 'that if it came to a 
 revolution, I should be accused of having stolen them.' 
 
 As the Emperor was very ill at the time, and in 
 constant pain, he may not have always been able to 
 conceal his forebodings. If so, and indeed in any case, 
 it would be like her to do her best her violent best, 
 one may say to profess enthusiastic confidence ; hence 
 perhaps the legend of her crying, * C'est ma guerre a 
 moi ! ' and so forth. 
 
 This trait, a belief in keeping people's spirits up, 
 I remember noticing when I knew her but slightly 
 in the course of a visit she once paid to the sick-bed 
 of her old steward. 
 
 ' But you are looking splendid, M'Laurin ! ' she 
 said to the dying man ; ' we shall soon have you back 
 at work again ! ' 
 
 * Now don't you believe it, M'Laurin,' sobbed his 
 very Scotch wife ' that's the Empress's kindness ! 
 But the doctor says you'll never be better in this world, 
 and if you're alive to-morrow it'll be a miracle ! ' And 
 after the Empress had gone poor M'Laurin remarked : 
 1 I hope Her Majesty'll come again soon ; she cheers me 
 up, like ! ' 
 
 Her comments on this incident were very funny. 
 ' O this Scotch truthfulness ! ' she cried. ' If the poor 
 man has got to die, what harm to let him hope to the 
 last ? ' adding : ' when my time comes, Heaven grant 
 that I may not be surrounded by truth-telling friends ! ' 
 
 This, and a few other details, I found in some 
 letters of my own, miraculously preserved by one of 
 my family. Thus I am able to state a fact I had quite 
 forgotten namely, that at the end of 1892 she believed 
 in a possible return to power of her dynasty. Let the
 
 THE EMPRESS EUGENIE 17 
 
 political historian say what crisis was raging in France, 
 but she then thought there was nothing for it but the Com- 
 mune, or else an appeal to the people * and there is 
 only one name that appeals to them,' she added. The 
 individuals who came out worst in that particular fracas 
 were the very same who had combined to vilify her in 
 1870, and I remarked that she must rejoice at this 
 exposure of her enemies a sentiment I should not 
 have uttered in later years, when I came to know the 
 strength of her public feeling and her complete 
 immunity from personal points of view. Her reply 
 was that she took no pleasure in this side issue of an t 
 incident that made her sick and miserable for France. 
 1 If they must attack each other, why do it in such 
 fashion ? ' she exclaimed. 
 
 Here M. Pietri struck in Pietri who, as I have 
 said, adored her, and of whom, in spite of her detesta- 
 tion of Corsicans (though why she detested them I 
 cannot recall), she was as fond as it was possible to 
 her to be fond of any one. Alluding to her magnifi- 
 cently kept resolution never to defend herself, since 
 defence involves attack, he said slyly : ' Si Ton attaquait 
 a la maniere de l'lmperatrice on serait inoffensif ! ' 
 With a flash of her eyes the Empress retorted : * Ah ! 
 moi je ne suis pas Corse ! ' ' Non,' said Pietri, who 
 loved chaffing her, ' une fausse Espagnole ! ' which was 
 one of the epithets used, in a very different sense, by 
 her enemies, but which in this case meant a Spaniard 
 who meekly accepts insult 1 And this particular appli- 
 cation of the phrase, involving a compliment to Spain, 
 delighted her. 
 
 She would have been less than human, however, if 
 Bismarck's revelations concerning the Benedetti tele- 
 gram which were published about that date had left 
 her indifferent, and next time I saw her she cried, 
 almost triumphantly : ' Vous voyez comme on a raison
 
 1 8 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 de ne pas se deYendre ! ' Yet I think what gave her 
 as much gratification as anything in connection with 
 that affair was the joy of our own Royal Family at seeing 
 her and the Emperor vindicated at last thanks to the 
 cynicism of Bismarck's confessions from the charge of 
 having brought about the war. 
 
 II 
 
 All who knew her would agree on one point, that 
 never was a more baffling conundrum than the 
 Empress's character. It was quite possible to predict 
 how she would feel or act on a given occasion, but 
 impossible to ' rhyme,' as the Germans say, her war- 
 ring characteristics. 
 
 Take the question of pride, for instance keynote to 
 the attitude of incomparable dignity maintained by her 
 since the fall of the Empire. It did not prevent her, as 
 we see, from kowtowing to a journalist ; and though she 
 had reason enough, Heaven knows, for limitless grati- 
 tude and affection as regards Queen Victoria, it seemed 
 to me unnecessary and rather humiliating to conceal 
 her convictions on a given subject when in that august 
 presence, for fear of giving annoyance. And yet at 
 times she did so. 
 
 Again, take the matter of kind-heartedness. In 
 certain ways she was, without exception, the kindest 
 person I have ever met in the whole course of my life 
 the most lenient, the most considerate, and the least 
 exacting. Nothing was too small to be thought out 
 and done by her if it was a question of giving pleasure 
 or alleviating pain, whether of mind or body. Yet she 
 was capable, even in the case of old friends and old 
 servants, of a curious hardness that would amaze and 
 puzzle. What had touched that chord you could not 
 imagine ; but there it was, and I have no doubt that
 
 / 
 THE EMPRESS EUGENIE 19 
 
 the causes were her lack of intuition, or poetic imagina- 
 tion, as to character, and her extremely halting and 
 uncertain sense of humour. 
 
 Writing the above sentence, I once more become 
 aware that no sooner have you stated definitely, ' She 
 was thus and thus,' than you find yourself obliged to 
 qualify the statement. I suppose poetic imagination 
 includes the power of understanding the spirit of an 
 utterance or an action, and no one would kindle more 
 readily at an instance of moral beauty that appealed to 
 her. But it was quite on the cards that the reverse 
 might happen, and that, far from chiming in with your 
 Hymn of Praise, the comment would be : ' Comme il 
 a ete bete, celui-la ! ' 
 
 Her sense of humour was perhaps the most incal- 
 culable element of all. She would enjoy the ludicrous- 
 ness of dear Sir Evelyn Wood falling on his knees 
 before her on the gravel path, and kissing her hand 
 in the costume he adopted when driving over from 
 Government House on Sundays to play lawn tennis at 
 Farnborough Hill ; which costume consisted of a top 
 hat, a frock-coat, white flannel trousers, and tennis 
 shoes his extremities being enveloped, while he sat on 
 the box, in a rug, lest the camp should be scandalised 
 at the Sabbath recreations of its commandant. In fact, 
 obviously funny situations appealed to her much as they 
 do to children. Moreover she could be exceedingly 
 funny herself, and would tell a story admirably and 
 effectively, the only drawback being that, having 
 finished, she would instantly tell it a second, and per- 
 haps a third time, with regrettable amplifications and 
 explanations which I have been informed is a not 
 infrequent Spanish trait. She was an admirable mimic, 
 too, in some cases in others an execrable one and 
 seemed to have no idea which were, and which were 
 not, her masterpieces. But this was probably the
 
 2o STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 result of immunity from criticism a corrective she 
 could entirely dispense with in regions of greater 
 importance, being critical and merciless to a fault as 
 regards herself. 
 
 A story she was fond of telling, and told to per- 
 fection, was a little scene between the then Crown 
 Princess of Prussia, later the Empress Frederick, and 
 her cousin, the Grand Duchess X (not a favourite 
 cousin) which took place in the Imperial box at the 
 Opera. The Empress had marked with secret trepida- 
 tion the growing ' nervosite ' of the Crown Princess, 
 which finally culminated in a remark addressed with 
 chilling intonation to her Russian kinswoman : ' I do 
 not like being called Vicky,' she observed, ' except by 
 members of my own family.' Thereupon the other, 
 examining the house through her bejewelled opera- 
 glass, said lightly: ' Eh bien, ma chere, je t'appellerai 
 comme tu voudras, Altesse Royale si tu le desires ! 
 . . . Et toi, tu m af-pelleras Aliesse Imperiale ! ' One 
 could well credit the Empress's account of her agony, 
 seated in that box between the august combatants. 
 
 Last summer she gave me a most amusing account 
 of the visit paid by her to the Sultan, on her way home 
 after opening the Suez Canal a visit she was requested 
 to pay, so she told me, by the English Government, 
 the Sultan being Suzerain of Egypt. He sallied forth 
 to meet her man-of-war in a caique built to hold one 
 passenger only, himself ; nevertheless, she was obliged 
 to step into it and was rowed to shore at a terrific pace, 
 practically sitting on his knees. I may add that she 
 was the first Sovereign of her sex received by His 
 Majesty, and of course the only woman with whom he 
 had ever been seen in public. One must allow that 
 he seems to have done the thing with commendable 
 thoroughness. 
 
 Apparently she had cherished a hope which at that
 
 THE EMPRESS EUGENIE 21 
 
 time must have been still more fantastically unrealisable 
 than in voyages undertaken by her later, she had 
 actually dreamed of stealing about Constantinople 
 incognita ! but unfortunately her host would not leave 
 her for an hour. I had forgotten for the moment the 
 Sultan's notorious infatuation, and asked why he had 
 been so embarrassingly attentive ? ' Mon Dieu, je ne 
 sais pas ! ' said she, for, as I have told elsewhere, she 
 never referred either to her beauty or to the passions 
 it inspired. But Madame Antonia d'Attainville, one of 
 her young relations companion, preferred before all 
 others, of her later years winked at me and said, 
 * C'&ait sa grande admiration ! ' Then I remembered 
 the whole thing, and said we all knew that the Sultan 
 had often expressed his regrets at having met her too 
 late, etc., whereupon she ejaculated ' Betises ! ' and 
 went on to tell us that nothing would persuade the 
 Turks but that her suite was her harem. They thought 
 it was always like that in the case of female Sovereigns. 
 1 Pourtant,' she remarked, ' ils etaient presque tous bien 
 vieux ... et si 9a eut 6t6 ainsi, je les aurais choisis 
 plus jeunes ! ' And in this connection she quoted an 
 enchanting Spanish proverb : ' Si vous voulez aller au 
 diable, au moins allez-y en voiture ! ' 
 
 Now all this proves that in some ways she had a 
 keen sense of humour, but one of the most hopeless 
 undertakings in the world was to try to tell her even 
 very obvious jokes. How describe her puzzlement 
 her desperate efforts to understand her agonised 
 attempt at a laugh, followed by some remark which 
 clearly proved that the point had escaped her ! One 
 could not refrain from telling a funny story sometimes 
 in order to witness its still funnier reception. She was 
 fond of saying that she preferred English ' humour ' to 
 French ' wit,' which she described as ' de l'esprit sur 
 la pointe d'une pingle,' and I cannot help suspecting
 
 22 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 that her extreme difficulty in understanding that sort 
 of ' esprit ' had something to do with it. 
 
 But if for once, to use an expressive vulgarism, she 
 really did catch on, what triumph ! what a scene ! It 
 reminded one of a child's delight blowing open a 
 watch ! That joke would be repeated by her over and 
 over again, its anatomy analysed, and comment after 
 comment would satisfactorily prove to you (and her- 
 self) that the point had been grasped. And once more 
 you realised as in other cases where, perhaps, it was 
 less a matter of unmixed delight the childlike quality 
 of certain aspects of her spirit. 
 
 Again, as regards artistic feeling, one is puzzled to 
 say how much of it she possessed. I have said that 
 pictures were a sealed book to her, and one of the 
 difficult moments at Farnborough Hill was being called 
 upon to admire works of certain famous painters of 
 the Second Empire which were unhesitatingly accepted 
 by her as masterpieces. Nor can one deny that such 
 decorations in the house as she herself was responsible 
 for were not in good taste. Yet it is certain that she 
 must always have dressed beautifully, and in later days 
 her costumes were the perfection of appropriateness, 
 simplicity, and grace. She once told a very elegant 
 sister of mine that in the old days no pains were too 
 great for her to take as regards her toilette, but that 
 once she had left her dressing-room she never gave 
 the matter another thought which is exactly what one 
 would expect. There is no doubt whatever that she 
 loved nature ; but I have come to the conclusion that 
 this particular form of sensitiveness to beauty, shared 
 by some of the least artistic people I know, can have 
 nothing to do with the so-called artistic temperament. 
 
 On one point no qualifications whatever are needed. 
 Any one more totally devoid of musical instinct I have
 
 THE EMPRESS EUGENIE 
 
 23 
 
 seldom met. She was quite aware of this, and would 
 make fun of herself on the subject, as testified by the 
 following unique autograph, which, I think, dates from 
 
 TiKHBOROUCH 
 
 }{ XLL ' 
 
 fk 
 
 JWIBORO. 
 
 
 
 tf A- 
 
 ANTS. 
 
 I^ W W 
 
 r ' 1 r 1 1 1 f 1 r 1 1 1 
 
 N 
 
 c v i r u ifff 
 
 i 
 
 
 about 1895. (I make no attempt to sort the quavers 
 and semiquavers ; that way madness lies.) 
 
 Countless are my memories of her connected with 
 music among them her touching belief that the Prince 
 Imperial must have had strong though undeveloped 
 musical proclivities, inasmuch as, when a baby, after 
 hearing Madame Alboni sing, he reached forward out 
 of his nurse's arms, and putting his fingers on the
 
 24 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 singers vast throat, said ' Ici ! ici ! * It was a charming 
 anecdote, but seemed to me rather an indication of the 
 map-making genius for which the Prince became cele- 
 brated at Woolwich than a proof of musical instinct. 
 For Madame Alboni was so enormous that people used 
 to call her ' the elephant that has swallowed a nightin- 
 gale ' and to find the right spot on so large a surface 
 was a remarkable feat for a baby in arms. But if one 
 had said so to the Empress, this is the sort of joke she 
 would not have understood. Besides which she would 
 have preferred her own reading. 
 
 Once upon a time our friend George Henschel, 
 who was staying with us, asked me if I thought she 
 would like him to sing her Schumann's * Two Grena- 
 diers ' ? Of course she said she would be delighted, 
 but as it was to be sung in German, I took the precau- 
 tion of explaining that Heine's poem was a tribute to 
 the Great Emperor. This explanation seemed to be 
 unnecessary, for apparently she knew all about the 
 song (in which, as we know, ' The Marseillaise ' is 
 introduced), and no doubt had heard it scores of times 
 in the French version. None the less next day she 
 remarked to me : ' Quelle drole d'ide de votre ami de 
 me chanter cette chanson-la . . . " le Kaiser . . . le 
 Kaiser " ! ' Horror-struck I explained matters all over 
 again, and needless to say that at the time no one would 
 have suspected a hitch anywhere ; her manners were 
 proof against far severer trials than this ! 
 
 Close on the heels of this incident came a similar 
 one, if possible more surprising still. One day s|ie 
 paid a visit to the County Lunatic Asylum, and on her 
 arrival the band (composed of lunatics) struck up 
 ' Partant pour la Syrie,' which is the hymn of the 
 Napoleonic dynasty and is attributed to la Reine 
 Hortense. I felt certain that it was not on their usual 
 repertory and must have been specially studied for the
 
 THE EMPRESS EUGENIE 2$ 
 
 occasion ; so as we drove away, I remarked that it was 
 a delightful idea on their part. The Empress gave a 
 great jump : ' Comment ? ' she exclaimed, ' vous etes 
 bien sure que c'&ait " Partant pour la Syrie " qu'ils 
 ont joue* ? II me semblait connaitre cette mlodie-la, 
 mais j'ai pense* que c'&ait God save!* . . . And a 
 letter was despatched expressing her gratification at this 
 delicate attention. 
 
 I think no one can ever have had greater natural 
 violence of temperament than the Empress. Age may 
 be supposed to have mitigated it, but as late as 191 8 
 I have seen her possessed by a passion of wrath and 
 pouring forth a torrent of magnificent invective such 
 as few young women could emulate. We had been 
 discussing the future of Serbia, and gradually worked 
 round to the murder of King Alexander and Queen 
 Draga. None have ever disputed the proposition that 
 these unfortunate Sovereigns were puppets of Austria, 
 and I had been contending that this fact should count, 
 to a certain extent at least, in defence of a people 
 struggling for independence. But the Empress hated 
 and disbelieved in the Slavs. Moreover Austria was 
 one of her sacred subjects, owing chiefly to the romantic 
 attachment she cherished for the aged Emperor Francis 
 Joseph. 
 
 This cult found expression in a visit she had paid 
 him some years previously, and her fond belief was 
 that one as sorely stricken in his domestic affections 
 as she herself would inevitably share the emotion she 
 felt at the thought of their meeting again. Pathetic 
 illusion ! blatant instance of her lack of intuition as 
 regards character 1 I do not suppose that in the whole 
 world you could have found another monarch who, on 
 being informed of her desire to visit him, would merely 
 have said, as did that cold-hearted old cynic, ' Was will
 
 16 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 denn eigentlich die alte Eugenie ? ' x This supremely 
 characteristic remark went the round of Vienna, and 
 greatly amused the Viennese who rather admired, but 
 had no illusions concerning, their venerable Sovereign. 
 The following winter was spent by me at Vienna, and 
 when, on my return to England, the poor unsuspecting 
 Empress cross-questioned me as to the impression her 
 visit had left in his faithful heart, for once I lied and 
 lied freely. 
 
 To return to the murder of the unfortunate Alex- 
 ander and Draga, the Empress's contention was that 
 the horrible circumstances of the crime, though carried 
 out (as she must have known) by a Court cabal, proved 
 the Serbians to be a race of barbarians, unworthy to 
 take rank among civilised nations. Thereupon I could 
 not refrain from pointing out that no nation, civilised 
 or otherwise, had gone the lengths of the French in 
 the unnameable charges brought by a more or less 
 regularly constituted tribunal against Marie Antoinette. 
 It was not a bad retort, for Marie Antoinette was a 
 still greater idol of hers than the Emperor Francis 
 Joseph, and for the moment she could not think of an 
 adequate rejoinder. 
 
 Nobody likes being cornered, and one could not 
 expect a woman of ninety-three, and an ex-Empress, to 
 like it more than another. As a matter of fact, large- 
 minded as she was, and far from demanding other 
 deference than that due to her age, she was not 
 accustomed to her dicta being opposed. Pietri was 
 of course a privileged person, though she did not 
 always endure his bluntness with equanimity ; otherwise 
 I think young Count Clary, son of her former Master 
 of the Horse (?), and myself were the only two people 
 who ever ventured to contradict her, for which reason she 
 bracketed us together as ' mauvais caractere, tous les deux ! ' 
 1 What does old Eugenie want ?
 
 THE EMPRESS EUGENIE 27 
 
 Long, long ago I remember a splendid onslaught 
 of hers. Something I said infuriated her to such a 
 pitch that she suddenly seized me by the shoulders, 
 and, with an ' allez-vous-en pour vous calmer ! ' ran 
 me bodily out of the smoking-room, dragging one half 
 of the double swing-door to with such violence that I 
 found myself involuntarily plagiarising the young lady 
 of Norway. I cannot remember ever hearing of a 
 similar outbreak on her part, and fear I must have 
 begun by showing temper, or at least unseemly zeal, 
 myself.. Anyhow, to continue the plagiarism, if the 
 door squeezed me flat, well may I exclaim 'what of 
 that ! ' for I never think of that scene the Empress's 
 swift concentrated fury and the herculean strength it 
 gave her without laughing. 
 
 Her usual method of signifying annoyance was a 
 way she had of looking at you without seeing you. 
 Suddenly you would find yourself reduced to the status 
 of a plate-glass window, thus to remain for several 
 hours, or in extreme cases for several days. Another 
 plan of hers was to address her replies to some third 
 person. Any one would do ; and thus some maiden, 
 who happened to be having tea with her between two 
 sets of tennis, has found herself recipient of the 
 Empress's views concerning protection, colonisation, 
 bimetallism, or the principles of foreign policy. One 
 day last summer I was lunching alone with her and 
 Madame d'Attainville, as so often happened, and being 
 by no means sure of my sympathy she addressed her 
 scathing analysis of the English Government's fiscal 
 policy to Antonia, who naturally had not studied the 
 question but none the less went on comfortably mur- 
 muring at intervals : ' Mais oui ! je crois bien ! . . . 
 naturellement ! ' and raising her eyebrows at the proper 
 places though I fancy her thoughts were elsewhere. 
 At last the Empress saw the ludicrousness of her
 
 28 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 situation, and remarked : ' Je m'adresse a toi . . . mais 
 a l'intention d'une autre personne ! ' 
 
 There was one particular manifestation of annoyance 
 that could only be. studied at meals. The Empress had 
 told me that toothpicks, together with a certain over- 
 thorough, not to say dreadful, use of finger-bowls, 
 were forbidden by the Emperor at the Royal Table. 
 But in my day the toothpick had come back again, 
 and at certain critical moments you might watch it 
 turn into a weapon of warfare in the Empress's hands. 
 Brandished right and left, it gave point and emphasis 
 to her argument ; put to its proper purpose, the while 
 she listened with simulated patience to your reply, 
 nothing but the reflection that never was a human 
 body made of more magnificent material than hers, 
 relieved your anxiety as to the outcome of so furious 
 an onslaught. Meanwhile her eye would be fixed on 
 you sideways, darting such disgust and aversion that 
 you were thankful it was only a toothpick and not a 
 stiletto she held in her crispe fingers. 
 
 I must add that sooner or later after these little 
 scenes she would be at special pains to soften down the 
 impression perhaps put her arm round the offender's 
 shoulder as the party trooped down the corridor. On 
 one such occasion, quite in early days, I remember her 
 saying to me, ' vous n'etes pas commode, ma chere ! ' 
 It was said chaffingly and in all friendliness, but she 
 meant it ! 
 
 I love insisting on the violence of the Empress's 
 temperament, because apart from its being so won- 
 derful at her age one must remember that it was this 
 immense force, tamed and channelled, that held her 
 unswerving in the road of heroic endurance she had 
 marked out for herself, and made of her a live and 
 inexhaustible source of beneficence where others were
 
 THE EMPRESS EUGENIE 29 
 
 concerned. There was one Royal House she detested, 
 for political reasons of course : * I would rather see 
 them dragged down than ourselves uplifted ! * she 
 exclaimed one day. ' Could I but live to witness their 
 downfall, I would willingly accept an extra spell of 
 purgatory in exchange ! ' She raised her voice, and 
 raised her arm : ' Ce sentiment que j'exprime. . . .' 
 But here Pietri cut in with one of his amused little 
 comments : ' Ce n'est pas un sentiment, Madame, c'est 
 une passion ! ' ' Eh bien,' cried she, ' c'est la derniere 
 que j'eprouve ' ; adding in accents of tragi-comic 
 regret, ' et combien jaut-il encore -pour la rechauffer ! ' 
 
 Less than she imagined was sufficient to rekindle 
 the fire. True, it did not often flare up to this extent, 
 but association with her was like a stroll on the upper 
 slopes of Vesuvius ; a chance stumble cracks the cool lava 
 . . . and lo ! the sole of your boot is smouldering ! 
 It was this eternal ardour, combined with a powerful 
 brain and unlimited intellectual curiosity, that kept her 
 so young, and guaranteed her against boredom. An 
 advance in science, a new discovery in medicine (which 
 I trust one is not expected to class among the sciences) 
 was a fortune to her bookseller, for no scientific or 
 technical book was too recondite for her. She was a 
 great and wise doctor herself, and thanks to her medical 
 instinct and knowledge, also no doubt to her magni- 
 ficent constitution, was able to tackle with impunity 
 certain Spanish dishes high explosives, swooning in 
 languorous oil that daunted even her own com- 
 patriots. Her firm intention to go up in an aeroplane 
 was crossed by the war, and her only consolation was 
 to reflect that her growing blindness would have taken 
 away half the pleasure. ' But if, when peace comes, 
 I recover my sight,' she said, ' then . . . nous allons 
 voir ! ' And I have not the slightest doubt that had 
 she lived to return to England she would have gone
 
 3o STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 up in an aeroplane not by-and-by, but this very 
 summer. 
 
 I fancy hers was one of those natures that love 
 danger for its own sake. Old as she was, and surrounded 
 by people who felt it to be their duty to say ' don't,' if 
 there was any danger going she wanted to be in it. 
 At one period of the war the Germans were said to 
 be planning to bomb Aldershot, and one objective 
 would certainly be the Royal Aeroplane Factory, just 
 beyond her park. ' S'ils viennent,' she said, her whole 
 face lighting up with excitement, * au moins nous 
 serons au premier rang ! ' and I could not help fancy- 
 ing that the presence in her house of a guest who made 
 no secret of her own extreme dread of air-raids rather 
 enhanced her delight in the prospect. 
 
 To one whose physical courage was so flawless, 
 whose sense of honour was so passionate, it must have 
 been torture that among the cruel things said of her 
 in 1870 was the attributing of her flight to fear. As 
 Empress she had walked the cholera hospitals. Those 
 who at that time said ' don't ' and there must have 
 been plenty were not listened to. But the French 
 would seem to have forgotten the incident. I never 
 heard her allude to that monstrous imputation of 
 cowardice, but in the early days of the late war one 
 was to learn how it had rankled. 
 
 When the French Government removed to Bor- 
 deaux, Paris became a desert. A former Dame du 
 Palais of hers was among those who took refuge in 
 England, and though, when I saw her in Paris two 
 years later, she did not comment on her reception by 
 the Empress, I can well imagine it ! What she did 
 tell me, however, was, that the Empress had instantly 
 announced her own determination to start for Paris 
 then and there. ' If I left after Sedan,' she said, ' it 
 was in order to save bloodshed, but some said it was
 
 THE EMPRESS EUGENIE 31 
 
 from fear ! Now I will prove to them that that was 
 not the reason 1 ' My informant added that if, after 
 unexampled efforts, she and the rest of the ' don't ' 
 party carried the day, it was by insisting that if the 
 Empress were to go to France it might make difficulties 
 for the French Government, which she would rather 
 have died than do. 
 
 One of the strangest things about her was that, 
 notwithstanding this unquenchable fire within, you felt 
 instinctively that love can never have played a great 
 part in her life. People have said that her skill, as 
 Caesar's wife, in avoiding the breath of scandal, is a 
 great proof of her ' cleverness,' but I suspect it was 
 still more a case of absence of temptation from within. 
 She was not tender, for one thing, nor imaginative ; 
 and imagination plays a great part, I think, in women's 
 love affairs. Above all, not to beat about the bush, 
 there was no sensuality in her composition. Age has 
 nothing to do with it. There are old women who are 
 far from being that bete-noire of the Empress, ' de 
 vieilles folles,' in whom you none the less feel how 
 great a part that element must have played in their 
 youth. Without their realising it, to the end of their 
 days their whole outlook is thereby coloured. But in 
 her case you felt convinced that it must have been the 
 feeblest string of the lyre from the first. 
 
 She was anything but lacking in romance, however, 
 and given a temperament so passionate in other respects, 
 it would be strange indeed had there been no love 
 episode. Even the least amorously gifted should be 
 able to fall in love once in a lifetime, and that much 
 she accomplished. Unfortunately this was not a sub- 
 ject it was possible to broach with her, and her con- 
 temporaries, among whom the story was no secret, are 
 dead long ago. But it is well known in the inner circle,
 
 32 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 and I think there is no indiscretion in repeating it as 
 it was told to me by a relation of hers one deep in 
 her confidence, a faithful, ardent admirer, to whom, in 
 a rare and fortunate moment of expansion, she com- 
 municated the details. 
 
 One must begin by saying that the Empress idolised 
 her sister in my humble opinion this was the strongest 
 emotion of her life and after the Due d'Albe married 
 that sister their house became her home. A certain 
 
 Due de S became deeply enamoured of the Duchess, 
 
 and in order to gain easy access to the house made love 
 to Mademoiselle de Montijo, who, suspecting nothing, 
 fell desperately in love with him. The truth having 
 dawned upon her she did exactly what one would expect 
 her to do under the circumstances took poison ; and 
 when the fact was discovered, nothing would persuade 
 her to swallow an antidote. Finally, as a last resource, 
 the man she loved was brought to her bedside to break 
 her resolution, and as he bent over her he whispered, 
 ' Where are my letters ? * Well can I imagine that his 
 victim's love thereupon perished in the blaze of her 
 contempt ! ' You are like Achilles' spear,' she ex- 
 claimed, ' that healed the wounds it had made ! ' . . . 
 and forthwith she swallowed the antidote. 
 
 Even if the story had not come to me from an 
 indisputably reliable source, one would be certain that 
 it must be true. She herself was probably proud of 
 only having loved once ; myself, I wish she could have 
 had the experience of a second and happier passion. 
 But to wish that is to wish the Empress had been some 
 one else which is inadmissible. 
 
 Ill 
 
 The anomalies of her mental equipment were 
 nowhere more baffling than on the field of politics.
 
 THE EMPRESS EUGENIE 33 
 
 I am not venturing to speak of her political action 
 in France ; nothing save the lapse of time can decide 
 how far it went, and as I have hinted, there were docu- 
 ments in her possession which, to my certain knowledge, 
 would reverse many a settled conviction. 
 
 Judging by her character, and in spite of a qualified 
 sympathy with democratic ideals, I imagine she must 
 always have been an absolutist at heart. I remember 
 her saying that though the English monarchical system 
 was undoubtedly the only one suited to England, to be 
 a ruler bereft of real power would not appeal to her 
 personally, nor did she think the position dignified ' au 
 fond.' At the same time she allowed that to fill it 
 adequately required a rare combination of qualities 
 especially in war-time ; ' and if you were to search 
 history,' she added, ' you could not find a more ideal 
 war-time monarch than le Roi Georges. 1 
 
 As for the verdict of history on herself, a very 
 sympathetic cover-notice in the Revue des Deux Mondes 
 for this month (August 1920) quotes a bitter remark I 
 have heard her make more than once : ' Ma legende est 
 faite ; au debut du regne, je fus la femme futile, ne 
 s'occupant que de chiffons ; et, vers la fin de l'Empire, 
 je suis devenue la femme fa tale, qu'on rend responsable 
 de toutes les fautes et de tous les malheurs ! Et la 
 legende l'emporte toujours sur l'histoire ! ' One day, 
 in the last summer she was to spend at Farnborough 
 (19 1 9), she said, ' Je d&este les gens qui ont peur de 
 la responsabilite. On veut me rendre responsable pour 
 les eV^nements ; bien ! j'en accepte la responsabilite* 1 
 . . . au moins j'ai l'air de l'avoir accepted, puisque je 
 me tais ! ' Then, after a pause, she added, ' C'est 
 Torgueil,' and I shall never forget her accent as she 
 said it the proud magnificent expression that was on 
 her face. . . . 
 
 Nevertheless, towards the end of her life, when the
 
 34 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 Great War, monstrous epilogue of the Bismarck revela- 
 tions, opened all eyes to Germany's designs of world- 
 dominion, I think she came to believe in the silent 
 depths of her heart that that legend of ' la femme fatale' 
 might some day fade out of existence. I would often 
 urge only one had to put these things very carefully, 
 so intolerant was the of anything that might be con- 
 strued into flattery that the self-restraint exercised by 
 her since the fall of the Empire must shed a reflex light 
 on the past. And she herself was surely too sensible, 
 too just, to believe that such testimony could be swept 
 aside as worthless. So, at least, I hope. 
 
 I think the Empress cared for politics more than 
 anything, and if you take passionate interest in a subject, 
 it is hard not to believe yourself specially equipped for 
 it. One day I had been asking her who were the most 
 fascinating personalities she had met, and among them, 
 greatly to my surprise, she mentioned Bismarck ! 
 ' When it was worth his while,' she added, with a 
 peculiar look on her face, * no one could be a more 
 adroit courtier.' To extol her beauty would have left 
 her indifferent, and suddenly it was borne in upon me 
 that he must have laid himself out to flatter her on the 
 score of her political flair ! It was late in the sixties 
 when last he was in Paris, and such flattery would 
 have been well ' worth his while ! ' 
 
 Whatever her political action and influence may or 
 may not have been in France, listening to her comments 
 on current English politics I reluctantly came to the 
 conclusion that seldom was any one more pertinaciously 
 wrong-headed ! If black seemed the obvious colour 
 to name, she would say white ; if the turn to be taken 
 lay on one hand, she would maintain that salvation was 
 to be found on the other. And, still stranger fact, 
 although, as better judges than myself can testify, her
 
 THE EMPRESS EUGENIE 35 
 
 political knowledge was unlimited, her judgment on 
 past events sound and even brilliant, there were certain 
 political factors which she seemed incapable of grasping 
 because collective states of mind escaped her. 
 
 The Dreyfus case is an instance. This was a 
 conundrum to which she possessed no clue. People 
 who knew nothing whatever about France might be 
 excused for racking their brains as to what it was all 
 about, though to others who, like myself, had some 
 acquaintance with French mentality, I 'Affaire, however 
 regrettable, was comprehensible. But the Empress 
 never got beyond asking how it was possible that a 
 question of justice should be treated in such a fashion ? 
 I have said that a sense of justice was among her ruling 
 characteristics. Here it was outraged, and her lack of 
 insight into the spirit of a people did the rest. 
 
 She had believed from the first in the innocence 
 of Dreyfus, and was amazed at the storm which this 
 conviction was to bring about her head. Not that she 
 would have shrunk from proclaiming it in any case, 
 but it is strange that she failed to realise the state of 
 feeling in France. Her earliest intimation of it was the 
 behaviour of the very first person who came to see her 
 as she passed through Paris a lady, who began with 
 the three profound reverences which, it appears, are de 
 rigueur on entering the presence of royalty. (' Je vous 
 dis cela,' interjected the Empress, ' pour vous montrer 
 la personne.') But when, as was inevitable, V Affaire 
 was broached and the Empress's views became manifest, 
 her visitor fled from the room in horror without even 
 one curtsey ! She also told me that she and the Duchesse 
 de Mouchy had all but quarrelled for good and all on 
 this terrible theme ' that is to say,' she added, ' it was 
 the Duchess who was almost ready to give me up ! ' 
 But this, of course, was a humorous exaggeration. 
 
 Again, during the late war, her sentimental attach-
 
 26 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 ment to the Emperor Francis Joseph, and perhaps, too, 
 an old political hatred of Italy, made it impossible to 
 her to see the inevitableness of the break-up of Austria ; 
 and I perceived that she knew nothing, or rather chose 
 to know nothing, of what the Austrian Empire really 
 amounted to a conglomerate of States in which different 
 languages were spoken, and which were welded together 
 by the cement of mutual hatred. She had read every 
 word of a book I had taken malicious pleasure in calling 
 her attention to my friend H. Wickham Steed's classic 
 study of the Hapsburg Dynasty and ever since she 
 had been desirous to know the author a desire that 
 was fulfilled 1 8 months before her death. But for all the 
 conviction it brought her, she might never have read 
 that book at all, and it was the same when the subject 
 was discussed between her and the author. Amenable 
 as few people I have met to new ideas, in some direc- 
 tions you were up against a wall ; and her one reason 
 for tolerance of the Jugo-Slav idea was, I fear, that she 
 knew it would be a thorn in Italy's side ! Otherwise, 
 whether from the standpoint of European tranquillity, 
 of the peculiar interests of England (which she desired 
 to see safeguarded at all costs), or even of abstract 
 justice, she refused to admit the raison d'etre of a Jugo- 
 Slav State. 
 
 Still the fact remains, that the person of my 
 acquaintance I most intensely longed to see at all 
 critical moments in the last five nightmare years was 
 the Empress so sane and so unshakable was her faith 
 in ultimate victory. She was blessedly free from that 
 belief in their own strategical powers which temporarily 
 clouded the intellects of many of one's most revered 
 friends ; and once she made me laugh by saying, 
 in reference to H. Belloc's far-famed articles in 
 Land and Water : ' Je d&este les livres qui vous
 
 THE EMPRESS EUGENIE 37 
 
 donnent l'illusion de comprendre des choses que vous 
 savez tres bien ne pas comprendre ! ' She gloried 
 in the raising of Kitchener's army a feat to which 
 the patriotism and devotion of no other country in the 
 world, she said, would have been equal ; and later on 
 she was even more fired by the fine attitude of Sir 
 Douglas Haig, and the armies he led, in the matter of 
 the Supreme Command. Of course England was not 
 the only nation called upon to make that gesture of 
 magnanimity ; but the problem between ourselves and 
 France was peculiarly complicated, and the Empress 
 maintained that such a triumph of commonsense over 
 national vanity could only happen on this side of the 
 Channel. ' Ah ! you are an easy race to govern ! ' she 
 would say wistfully. 
 
 All the same, I am sorry to say that she, who up 
 to 1 9 14 had worshipped England and English ways to 
 an extent that sometimes seemed to me excessive, would 
 now level many a reproach against us. 
 
 There were many reasons to account for it. As 
 years went on she had become intensely Spanish, and I 
 think felt a little uncomfortable about Spanish neutrality; 
 but the form it took was railing at the stupidity of the 
 English, who wanted all countries to be dragged into 
 the war, and did not see how greatly it was to the 
 advantage of the Allies that Spain should remain out- 
 side. During the first two years of the war I had been 
 away, either in France or Italy, so do not know if she 
 was speaking generally or referring to some special 
 incident. 
 
 Then there was the censorship, and the special 
 supervision exercised over a foreign establishment such 
 as hers matters in which I thought her curiously 
 unreasonable. I imagine that here again the Spaniard 
 in her was specially sensitive. ' Here am I,' she would
 
 38 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 say angrily, ' whose love for England has all my life 
 amounted to a passion, who have taken up my abode 
 among you, half of whose house has become a hospital 
 for your wounded officers. . . . Not that I think any- 
 thing of that,' she threw in quickly ; ' it is my duty 
 and my pleasure but at least it shows where my heart 
 is. And yet it would appear that I am un personnage 
 suspect ! * It was vain to try and make her see that 
 a principle was involved, that her Swedish footman or 
 other of her foreign servants might receive and write 
 letters, or do deeds it was impossible for her to super- 
 vise. She was wounded in her pride, and either couldn't 
 or wouldn't see the point. 
 
 D.O.R.A. and all her works were anathema to her. 
 4 I will not live in England when the war is over,' she 
 once said, though I knew she did not mean it ; ' this 
 used to be a free country where people were left alone, 
 but now you shower des petits papiers on one, just as 
 military-mad Continental nations do, and ask for oaths, 
 and dates, and signatures ! It was because there was 
 none of that over here that one loved England.' And 
 one day, when I remarked, possibly with some heat, 
 that we had perhaps been too careless in the past, and 
 that anyhow it was only reasonable to take precautions 
 in war-time, she looked at me curiously. ' Strange,' she 
 said, ' how the war has changed even you ! You used 
 to listen reasonably and with good humour to criticism 
 of your country ; now you are up in arms at a word ! ' 
 I couldn't exactly speak my thought, which was, that 
 when your country is safe and at peace you do not mind 
 fault-finding, but when it is in the throes of a life-and- 
 death struggle the carpings of ever so friendly and 
 beloved a foreigner are hard to bear. Yet something 
 of this sentiment must have made itself felt in my 
 reply ; I think she partly understood and partly resented. 
 And the whole incident is referable to that trait I spoke
 
 THE EMPRESS EUGENIE 39 
 
 of lack of comprehension for the collective sentiments 
 of a people. 
 
 On the other hand, everything connected with her 
 hospital was a source of unmitigated joy to her. How 
 human she was about it ! how delighted, one June 
 day in 191 8, when the King and Queen came to inspect 
 it ! ' People will take it seriously now,' she said, ' and 
 that is what I want.' Well they might ! No modern 
 appliance was too expensive for her, no contrivance for 
 the comfort of her wounded officers too far-fetched, too 
 complicated for her eager thought to devise. How 
 proudly she said one day last year, ' Not one of them 
 but, when he was well again, has come to see me.' 
 And if in the case of a slow and doubtful recovery her 
 constant pre-occupation was touching to witness, the 
 one or two deaths that occurred under that roof plunged 
 her into such grief, that one day, speaking of a boy 
 whose third operation seemed likely to end badly, 
 Antonia said, with reason : ' On craint autant pour 
 l'lmperatrice que pour lui, le pauvre garcon ! ' 
 
 And I must not forget to say that all and any means 
 of increasing a patient's hold on life were welcomed by 
 her. There was one young lady visitor whom we used 
 to chaff about the devastation her visits wrought in 
 their hearts ; ' Tant mieux ! ' said the Empress, ' cela 
 leur fera du bien d'etre amoureux ! ' 
 
 She used often to insist on the faultless manners of 
 her patients : ' Many of these young fellows are clerks, 
 solicitors, engineers, not necessarily belonging by birth 
 and education to the class of gentlemen ; and yet there 
 is not one of them whose behaviour has not been per- 
 fect modest, dignified, grateful, all one could desire ! 
 " Comme ils sont foncierement bien-eleves, les Anglais, 
 n'importe d'ou ils viennent de l'Angleterre ou des 
 colonies anglaises 1 " ' And she went on to say that
 
 4 o STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 young Frenchmen of the equivalent class might easily 
 have fallen into bumptiousness by way of proving they 
 were not shy ; * and of course it would have been because 
 they were shy,' she added. 
 
 Her hospital was one of the last to be demobilised ; 
 she refused to do it till absolutely commanded. Mean- 
 while she informed all the patients, many of whom were 
 to convalesce in the neighbourhood of Aldershot, that 
 they could have the run of her house and gardens. 
 * " Puisque je vous ai connu au lit" leur dis-je, " impos- 
 sible d'etre plus intime ! " ' 
 
 One day last autumn Maurice Baring, for whose 
 whole family she cherished a special and comprehen- 
 sible attachment, lunched with her at Farnborough Hill, 
 and afterwards he said to me : ' It is useless telling 
 people, as one does, that the Empress is wonderful. 
 Only those who see her can know how wonderful she 
 is. She is thirty at most ! so brilliant, so amusing, such 
 delicate exquisite tones in her voice, when, bending 
 her head a little, she puts in some nuance. She is the 
 marvel of the ages ! ' (That is why, as I said at the 
 beginning of these recollections, it was so impossible 
 to think of death in connection with her.) 
 
 She was very amusing that day. ' But these nice 
 English boys I am so fond of,' she said, ' know little 
 of history. In fact, they know nothing at all ' ; and 
 she told us that when Antonia was showing one of 
 them her Cabinet de Travail, he pointed to the full-length 
 portrait by Cabanel of Napoleon III. with the sash of 
 the Legion d'Honneur across his breast, and remarke4 : 
 
 1 That's M. Poincar, isn't it ? ' 
 
 But even more incredible was the comment of 
 another patient of hers. There hangs at Farnborough 
 Hill a celebrated picture, I think by Bougereau, of 
 Romeo and Juliet and of course the group is full of 
 amorous suggestion. ' That's the Empress, I suppose ? '
 
 THE EMPRESS EUGENIE 41 
 
 remarked the young officer ! Few things ever amused 
 her more than that naive assumption. 
 
 As if to soothe the national pride of Maurice and 
 myself, however, she allowed that Americans are still 
 more hopeless as regards history. She told us that 
 soon after the Philippine war her yacht found itself 
 moored in the harbour of Naples between two American 
 men-of-war, and that both captains were for ever urging 
 her to come on board their vessels. At last she pointed 
 to the rifle-rack and said : ' Well, you see, I could only 
 go on board with those ! ' The captains looked pro- 
 foundly puzzled ; then one of them exclaimed, in a 
 flash of intelligence : ' I have it ! I guess you're a 
 Spaniard ! ' And the Empress said (I should like to 
 have seen her face as she said it), ' Yes, I am a Spaniard.' 
 
 It was just after the Armistice was signed that Mr. 
 Steed went down to see her. Under the transparent 
 disguise of ' a Correspondent,' he has told the story of 
 that visit in the Times, but one or two of the incidents 
 are so arresting that it is worth while repeating them here. 
 
 She had observed that although Clemenceau had 
 always been one of the bitterest enemies of the Second 
 Empire, she could willingly embrace him now, so 
 magnificently had he served France in the hour of her 
 greatest need. Nevertheless she considered he had 
 made a great mistake in not waiving, for the moment, 
 his anti-clericalism, and attending the recent celebration 
 of the Armistice at Notre Dame. ' It would have been 
 a grand lesson,' she exclaimed, ' in union and modera- 
 tion,' and went on to point out that he could still retrieve 
 his error by attending the similar celebration that was 
 shortly to be held in Strassburg Cathedral. Here Mr. 
 Steed asked her if he might give M. Clemenceau a 
 message to that effect ? but she said, ' Non ; je suis 
 morte en 1870.'
 
 42 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 A few days later Mr. Steed repeated her words, 
 though not as a message, to M. Clemenceau, who 
 remarked : ' Well, she will be disappointed again ; I 
 shall not attend that celebration in Strassburg Cathedral!' 
 But he did ; and what is more, in publicly recounting 
 his impressions of the ceremony he told how he had 
 seen a little old nun softly singing the ' Marseillaise ' 
 under her coif, ' which,' he added, ' is a lesson to all 
 of us in moderation and unity.' He may, as Mr. Steed 
 remarks, have forgotten the Empress's words, but there 
 the fact remains. 
 
 That day Mr. Steed brought down with him a 
 copy of Le Journal. In it was a picture of a woman 
 and her little boy standing beside one of the many 
 battle crosses that were the only crop I saw in the 
 north of France after the war ; and the little boy is 
 saying : ' Mere, est-ce que pere sait que nous sommes 
 vainqueurs ? ' The paper was lying on a side-table 
 and I called the Empress's attention to the picture, 
 reading aloud the text, which I knew her dim eyes 
 could not decipher. I shall never forget how she 
 gripped my arm in her amazingly strong fingers, 
 and, looking across the park towards the Mausoleum, 
 whispered : ' Je l'ai bien dit aux miens la-bas ! ' 
 
 Another vivid recollection of mine is the account 
 given me a few weeks previously in Paris by her friend 
 and dentist M. Hugenschmitt, of the celebrated letter 
 written to her after Sedan by the King of Prussia, 
 which letter she passed on during the late war to the 
 Archives of France. It was in reply to one from her, 
 in which she had implored him, for the sake of future 
 peace, not to make the mistake of annexing Alsace- 
 Lorraine ; and the point is, that, far from looking on 
 these provinces as ancient German territory, which was 
 the claim put up in later years by the Germans, the 
 King wrote that if they should decide to annex French
 
 THE EMPRESS EUGENIE 43 
 
 territory it would not be from any desire to enlarge 
 Germany, ' which,' he adds, ' is large enough already,' 
 but in order to guarantee themselves against future 
 attack by France. Knowing that Clemenceau was one 
 of M. Hugenschmitt's patients, the Empress bade him 
 show the Minister a copy of the letter. Whereupon 
 M. Clemenceau begged that the original of so important 
 a document might be deposited in the Archives. 
 
 Together with that letter were others from the 
 Emperors of Russia and Austria which M. Hugen- 
 schmitt was also permitted to read ; and in returning 
 the packet to the Empress he asked if he might take 
 copies of these as well. ' They are a wonderful justifi- 
 cation of Your Majesty,' he added. But the Empress 
 snatched the parcel from him, saying, ' I will have 
 nothing said or done in my own justification. I have 
 long ceased to care about that.' And nothing that 
 M. Hugenschmitt could say would move her from 
 that position. 
 
 When I came home I spoke of all this to the 
 Empress who confirmed it in every detail, adding : 
 ' I told Hugenschmitt to impress upon M. Clemenceau 
 that I gave up the letter, not to the Government, but to 
 France \ that I wished it put in the Archives, and that 
 if he chose to use it I could not prevent him ! ' Watch- 
 ing her proud face, the flash of her eyes that at such 
 moments seemed undimmed, the incredible transforma- 
 tion of an old into a young woman that always 
 happened when she was deeply moved, I could not 
 help wondering if M. Clemenceau would catch the 
 nuance of that message. . . . 
 
 Afterwards the conversation veered in the direction 
 of William II., who, it may be remembered, had paid 
 her a surprise visit in her yacht years ago, somewhere 
 in the North Sea. She remarked that he had obviously 
 taken pains to make that visit an agreeable one, and
 
 44 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 succeeded. I reminded her of what she once told me 
 she had said to him, almost as farewell word : ' For the 
 sake of the principle of monarchy don't upset any more 
 thrones ! ' and we spoke of the downfall of his own throne, 
 utterly without what the Germans call ' Schadenfreude ' 
 on her part that is, pleasure in the misfortunes of 
 others. Speaking of revolutions in general, not of 
 1870 in particular, she said : 'It is not that your 
 enemies dethrone you, c'est que le vide se fait autour de 
 vous ' ; and I thought of what Napoleon had written 
 about the battle of Waterloo ' tout d'un coup je me 
 trouvais seul sur le champs de bataille. . . . ' That 
 same day she had been reading the account of the 
 cheering of our King at Buckingham Palace : ' It is 
 the most intoxicating sound mortal ears can hear,' she 
 said, and then her face changed suddenly, * and no one 
 who has not heard it can realise the horror of its pendant, 
 the roar of a crowd that has only one desire to tear 
 you to pieces.' 
 
 Sometimes, but not often, the Empress would talk 
 about the Prince Imperial, and no one who ever heard 
 it can forget the piteous fall of the phrase by which 
 she always referred to him, ' mon petit garcon.' The 
 last time I remember her speaking of him was when I 
 came back from Paris last summer, and told her that 
 at that moment every one in France was saying the 
 country was ripe for a Dictator. Rather to my surprise, 
 I noticed she had been meditating this point with 
 reference to her dead son. ' If he had lived,' she sa,id, 
 pausing between the phrases, . . . ' he had every 
 quality they needed . . . now might have been his 
 chance . . . but I often say to myself I would rather 
 he is dead than think of him as Emperor. . . .' 
 
 Then she began speaking of her past experiences, 
 telling me among other things, that when, after the
 
 THE EMPRESS EUGENIE 45 
 
 fall of the Empire, Gambetta came to the front, he 
 informed the Government that he had known nothing 
 whatever about Metz being in danger, whereas the 
 Empress herself had gone into every detail of the in- 
 vestment with him, day by day ! But of course the 
 blame was to be hers, and while dragging her in the 
 mud he knew her well enough to count on her silence ! 
 It has always made me ache to reflect that many of 
 those who betrayed her must have known her true fibre ; 
 but in the moment of danger the legend of the jemme 
 jatale lay conveniently to hand, and was used to destroy 
 her. ' Not for one second have I ever regretted losing 
 my throne,' she went on, ' to think of his perhaps going 
 through it all de passer par la ou j'ai du passer . . . 
 ah ! ' and her face contracted with an indescribable 
 pain and horror it pierced one to witness. ' Je remercie 
 Dieu que cela, au moins, lui a ete epargne ! ' 
 
 When these Recollections were first published, 
 much interest was excited by a curious psychic experi- 
 ence of the Empress's in Zululand, whither she went 
 in 1880 to visit the spot where her son had fallen. 
 When she told me the story I remembered having heard 
 something about it from Sir Evelyn Wood who was in 
 command of the expedition, but in those days I kept 
 no diary, and certain details had distorted themselves 
 in my mind. 
 
 I will therefore collate my version with that given 
 by my friend, Lucien Daudet one of ' les enfants de la 
 maison ' in a Memoir 1 of which, before it finally 
 appeared in book-form, the Empress herself corrected 
 the proofs. She disliked being written about at all, 
 but this particular work gave her great pleasure. And 
 though her weaknesses find no mention here, (' inevitable, 
 but a pity ! ' as she herself remarked) this is the most 
 
 1 Ulmpbratrice EugSnie, par Lucien Daudet (A. Fayard).
 
 46 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 faithful and delicate portrait of her in later years that 
 exists. 
 
 When, at length, after many days trekking across 
 the veldt, the expedition was nearing the goal, the 
 Empress begged that instead of pressing on they might 
 pitch camp. The first sight of the Zulus in war- 
 panoply had produced a terrible impression on her, 
 and she wished to brace herself for the last stage. Since 
 many months it was only with the aid of chloral and by 
 inducing physical fatigue that she could win a little 
 sleep in the 24 hours, and at the close of that long sultry 
 day she slipped out of her tent for her usual solitary 
 walk. 
 
 It appears that the Prince had a passion for verveine, 
 that to think of ' mon petit garcon ' was to think of that 
 scent. Suddenly the air was full of it ; so unexpected, 
 so overwhelming was the perfume that the Empress 
 told me she thought she should faint. But it seemed 
 to drag her onwards, and presently, without sensation 
 of fatigue, ever faster and faster, she was following it 
 ' comme un chien sur un piste,' passing over rough, 
 broken ground, pushing through thickets, crossing 
 hidden ravines without conscious effort . . . Then, 
 quite as suddenly, the perfume failed, and with it her 
 strength. She found herself on a hill covered with 
 curious flat stones and knew she could never retrace 
 her path. Presently men sent after her by her alarmed 
 suite appeared and led her back to the camp. 
 
 Next day, as they neared the spot where the Prince 
 had fallen, no need to tell her the goal was at hand ; she 
 recognised the hill and the stones. 
 
 This story is doubly impressive since, as I have said, 
 she was not imaginative, and to all appearance anything 
 but psychic. Yet Mademoiselle Gobert, who used to 
 administer the local charities at Farnborough Hill, tells 
 me that one day the Empress asked who had brought
 
 THE EMPRESS EUGENIE 47 
 
 fresias into the room. And on being informed that there 
 were none, she said : 
 
 ' Ce n'est pas la premiere fois que cela m 'arrive de 
 sentir des fieurs ; cela veut dire quelquechose.' But 
 nothing particular appears to have happened. 
 
 She seems always to have taken interest in 
 Spiritualism, though possibly not more than in any 
 other new departure in unexplored regions, for one 
 remembers the seances of the spiritualist Home that 
 took place at the Tuileries, and, I think, caused some 
 scandal at the time. She once made me laugh by saying 
 that in her opinion the spirits invoked by mediums 
 were probably embryonic, undeveloped spirits, since 
 they did such childish things rapping tables, making 
 chairs walk about, and so forth. I suggested that 
 perhaps the limitations of terrestrial conditions had 
 something to do with it, and that the spirits were obliged 
 to use such means as were to hand in order to attract 
 attention and stimulate investigation which, I added, 
 they have succeeded in doing, vide the Society for 
 Psychical Research. This view not an original one 
 of course was evidently new to her, and arrested her 
 attention for the moment, though I expect she speedily 
 relapsed into her own view of the matter, as happens 
 with the old and not with the old only. 
 
 When Home was invited to the palace, she herself 
 decided at the last moment that the seance should not 
 take place in her own sitting-room, as originally 
 intended, but in a room at the other end of the building, 
 in which no one ever sat. Ranged against the walls 
 were arm-chairs so heavy that it took two men to move 
 them, and the first thing that happened was that one 
 of these chairs, raising first its front, then its back legs, 
 came lumbering across the room at a good pace towards 
 Home. Then the chair upon which he himself was 
 sitting rose slowly in the air, the Empress and his
 
 48 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 neighbour on the other side passing their hands under 
 all the four legs. She also mentioned his having 
 floated out of the window, but I forgot to put down 
 what she said. 
 
 While she was holding a seance with some other 
 medium a strange incident happened. Bazaine was 
 shut up in Metz at the time, and she asked what exactly 
 was the situation there ? A message came through, 
 spelt out by the alphabet : ' Ne r^pondez pas trop 
 tot au G6n6ra\ B. ; zizani entre les generaux ' (zizani 
 meaning squabbles and disputes). As it was impossible 
 for any communication from Metz to reach the outside 
 world she could not make head or tail of the message ; 
 but next morning she read in the Times that General 
 Boyer had stolen out of Metz and had passed through 
 Brussels, bearing a letter from Bazaine to herself. 
 
 Another spiritualistic story she told me concerned 
 her sister the Duchess of Alba, to whom, as I have said, 
 she was passionately attached. On her way to Algiers, 
 where she had a series of important functions to per- 
 form, she stopped in Madrid to see the Duchess, who 
 was ill, and who begged her to tell her straight out 
 whether she was dying that being her own conviction. 
 The Empress replied that no one seemed to consider 
 the illness serious, even, let alone likely to end fatally. 
 ' She then asked me to promise,' said the Empress, 
 ' that if ever I should consider her to be dying I would 
 tell her so. I thought a moment, gave her the promise, 
 and left for Algiers, fearing nothing.' But while the 
 Empress was in the midst of that ceremonial progress 
 through Algeria the blow fell. A telegram was put 
 into her hand the Duchess was dead ! 
 
 Not long afterwards she was at a seance where the 
 medium's efforts resulted in a series of extraordinarily 
 stupid communications ; and at last one came through, 
 of which the medium remarked : ' This is gibberish ;
 
 THE EMPRESS EUGENIE 49 
 
 I can't make head or tail of it.' The Empress examined 
 the message and found it was in Spanish (a language 
 of which no one present but herself had any knowledge), 
 though all the words ran into each other. Gradually 
 she spelt out the equivalent of the phrase : ' Pourquoi 
 ne m'as-tu pas prevenue ? ' 
 
 Another incident she mentioned concerned an 
 equerry of hers called Rainbeaux, of whom one vaguely 
 knew that long ago his sister had died of the plague. 
 At some seance or other the words were rapped out : 
 1 I was quite conscious when you stood at the door.' 
 No one knew for whom this message was intended, 
 and, when interrogated, the spirit gave some queer 
 name soon after which Rainbeaux left the seance. 
 He subsequently told the Empress that when his sister 
 had fallen ill he had hastened to Paris, but found her 
 practically at the last gasp. And as the nurses told 
 him she was unconscious, and that it was useless his 
 going into the room and spreading the infection, he 
 merely glanced in at the door and went away. The 
 name given by the spirit was a pet name of hers 
 occasionally used in the family. 
 
 IV 
 
 I had never been able to decide in my mind what 
 part religion played in the Empress's life, and on the 
 whole fancied it was a question of principle with her 
 rather than an inward need and a source of consolation 
 and strength. This, too, was the opinion of my dearly- 
 loved friend the late Count Clary, who saw deeply into 
 character, was one of the ' enfants de la maison,' and 
 who simultaneously adored and defied her. He had 
 always been an unbeliever ; but during the course of 
 the long illness that terminated his life two years ago, 
 faith came back to him, and he told me that the joy
 
 50 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 and thankfulness expressed by the Empress in her 
 letters made it evident that religion had played the 
 same merciful part in her life that it came to play in his. 
 
 She was unexpansive on such subjects, and the last 
 person one would feel tempted to discuss religious 
 experiences with ; but as for her supposed ' bigotry,' 
 never was any one more emphatically at the opposite pole. 
 
 My first intimation of the fact was in early days 
 during the Adriatic yachting tour, when, in my then 
 High Church zeal, I reminded her that to-morrow was 
 a fast day. ' Vous Stes insupportable ! ' she said ; ' je 
 l'avais totalement oublie" ! . . . maintenant il faut s'y 
 conformer ! ' And, like many Catholics, she detested 
 fish, especially Adriatic fish which are not in high 
 repute. She had a horror of the conversion of Anglicans 
 to Roman Catholicism, and I used to maintain that, 
 given the claims of her Church to infallibility, this was 
 a most illogical attitude ! But in her the instinct of 
 loyalty to kith and kin snapped its fingers at religious 
 consistency, and she considered that in nine cases out 
 of ten people can get all that is necessary to salvation 
 out of the religion they were born into. 
 
 In those early days I used to sing a good deal at 
 the Abbey Church which is attached to the monastery 
 she founded in connection with the Mausoleum at 
 Farnborough ; and if Gregorian music were not now 
 compulsory in R.C. churches I would pass on to friends 
 of that persuasion the discovery that ' O Salutaris 
 Hostia ' can be made to fit the tune of ' O rest in the 
 Lord ' admirably. The organ is in a side chapel, 
 whence the organist, Brother Wilfred, and I commanded 
 a fine view of the acolytes engaged in fencing-bouts 
 behind the high altar with the long hooded sticks used 
 for extinguishing the lights ; after which they would 
 pass round to their duties in front of the altar with 
 arms folded reverently across the chest. I was surprised
 
 THE EMPRESS EUGENIE 51 
 
 that Brother Wilfred uttered no remonstrances ; but 
 the Empress said it would be indeed strange if ' ces 
 gamins ' did not take any available opportunity of 
 relieving the tedium of office. She used to accuse me 
 of religious aggressiveness. Wine always brings out 
 people's main traits, and she declared that after the 
 champagne had gone round twice the Roman Church 
 invariably managed to get into the conversation some- 
 how ! It was her way to throw an occasional English 
 colloquialism into her French with variants of her own, 
 and on such occasions the remark would be : ' Now, 
 don't pick up a quarrel ! ' 
 
 In spite of the crimes of D.O.R.A., her love of 
 England and the English was deep and intelligent. 
 She would even insist that our improvidence is the 
 trait of a strong race, confident in its power to face the 
 futUx~e an aspect of that optimism she so greatly 
 admired but used to joke about sometimes. " If a man 
 were falling from the top of the Monument,' she once 
 said, ' you would hear him exclaiming, as he turned in 
 mid-air : " It'll all come right in the end ! " ' But she 
 was not prepared to state that optimism was always 
 justified by the event. ' Is your husband jealous ? ' she 
 once asked one of my sisters. 4 Not at all,' said my 
 sister, ' English husbands never are ! ' ' No ! ' replied 
 the Empress, ' they always think it's all right, . . . but 
 it generally isn't.' 
 
 She was fond of pointing out that no nation is less 
 given to prolonged sojourn beside the domestic hearth 
 than the English. ' You are always somewhere else,' 
 she said, * et voila le peuple qui ne se lasse pas de 
 chanter a tout propos " 'ome sweet 'ome ! " ' I said: 
 ' Nous nous rattrapons dans la theorie ! ' and to that 
 she made a reply which I thought very shrewd that 
 here you have an instance of what foreigners wrongly
 
 52 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 call English hypocrisy. ' It is not hypocrisy,' she said, 
 * it is, as you say, that the English don't mix up theory 
 and practice ; as do the French, for instance, with their 
 ideas about equality. Equality is evidently contrary to 
 nature, and they try to make of it a basis of material 
 existence ! ' In theory, as I think I said before, she was 
 more or less of a democrat. But reflecting on her golden 
 sincerity and on her inconsistencies, I remember a cer- 
 tain phrase part of a prayer that may be found in the 
 preface of H. Brewster's 4 L'Ame pa'ienne ' : ' Faites que 
 je me contredise souvent . . . afin d'etre simple et 
 vrai ! ' 
 
 If the Empress loved England, England loved her 
 with an intensity of sympathetic understanding which, 
 I think, would astonish many old French friends of 
 hers who had seen her in the possibly fierce, but above 
 all artificial, light that beat about that particular throne, 
 and met her but seldom in the later decades of her 
 life. I used to notice that all who had known the 
 Emperor spoke of him with that particular inflection 
 of voice that conveys the idea of personal affection 
 more unmistakably than many an asseveration ; but no 
 such inflection would accompany their reference to his 
 consort, who seems, in those days, to have lacked the 
 quality of inspiring personal devotion. I have heard 
 her say that, in her position, anything in the nature of 
 favouritism would have been inadmissable ; and I have 
 no doubt that the same exaggerated conception of the 
 correct official attitude that was to trouble her relations 
 with her son later on, hampered her unnecessarily during 
 her reign. 
 
 Certainly the one exception she made was unfor- 
 tunate. One can well understand that the brilliant 
 Princess Pauline Metternich grande dame, and ex- 
 ponent of that ancient Austrian Court which had so 
 much prestige for the Empress would be paramount
 
 THE EMPRESS EUGENIE S3 
 
 in the favour of the newly-promoted Sovereign ; when 
 the crash came, however, among those who dropped 
 her without hesitation who, even in later years, 
 studiously avoided any marked show of attachment and 
 sympathy was her former great friend. But neither 
 on this point nor on any other did the Empress show 
 bitterness : ' Etant donne les circonstances c'&ait tout 
 a fait naturel,' she would say. . . . And all the time 
 one knew that she herself would have suffered torture 
 and death rather than even seem to fail the fallen. 
 
 The human adorable side of her seems but scantly 
 appreciated out of England, and yet I must own that 
 in early days, when she had a Household, more or less, 
 she was not at her happiest in her relations with her 
 Ladies. Here there was nothing human. I do not 
 think that she and Madame Le Breton really liked each 
 other rather the reverse, though one's impressions 
 were of course indirect. When the latter died, and in 
 her will made absolutely no mention of her Sovereign 
 Lady, the Empress was deeply wounded and for years 
 there was no mention of Madame Le Breton. But I, 
 who was devoted to both, said to myself that though 
 to omit that name was a strong measure, the testatrix 
 probably had her reasons. And certainly had I been 
 the Empress it would not have surprised me, for if it 
 came to violence of temperament one was a match for 
 the other. 
 
 As for the younger ladies whose brief careers as 
 demoiselles cThonneur I had an opportunity of watching, 
 I think that the Empress would have disliked them 
 however excellent the qualities they possessed ; and I 
 also came to the conclusion that their presence in the 
 house, which decidedly got on her nerves, was a con- 
 cession to what she imagined would be the views of 
 the English Court as to a fitting entourage for an 
 ex-Empress. Inasmuch as M. Pietri met all her
 
 54 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 secretarial requirements she had no use for a demoiselle 
 cThonneur^ unless to pour out tea, and later on, before 
 Madame d'Attainville practically came to live with her, 
 one or other of a neighbour's daughters used to be 
 telephoned for to do the honours of the tea-table a 
 far better arrangement, for the Empress always loved 
 young people about her. 
 
 If, in the days of the Empire, her choice of a friend 
 seems to have been unfortunate, in later years one 
 could not help marvelling at some of the specimens of 
 humanity she delighted to honour. Of course there 
 are exceptions to all rules, but she, the greatest of great 
 ladies herself, seemed often unable to distinguish 
 between the gentleman and the cad and their feminine 
 equivalents. In the same way among her own relations 
 it was not invariably the most delightful that she 
 seemed to prefer, nor the cleverest of whose intelli- 
 gence she had the highest estimate and though her- 
 self compact of integrity, she was fairly easy to take in. 
 A very little trait or action she disapprove^ of in any 
 one whose fate she considered linked up with hers, 
 whether by relationship or association, would make her 
 blind, or at least indifferent, to that person's other 
 qualities and, strange to say, the intensest, most dis- 
 interested devotion on their part weighed with her but 
 little. I once told her that a whimsical friend of mine 
 had said he was quite aware that his nephews were 
 civil to him with an eye to his testamentary dispositions, 
 and that this trait, far from annoying him, appeared to 
 him natural and not unseemly ; and her comment was : 
 ' II y a du vrai la-dedans ! ' 
 
 Nevertheless, in one case of passionate and dis- 
 interested devotion, she was neither unperceptive nor 
 lacking in sense of its value the case of M. Pietri. 
 She accepted his chaff in the spirit in which it was 
 intended, as a proof of affection, and was marvellously
 
 THE EMPRESS EUGENIE 55 
 
 patient when, as would sometimes happen under the 
 stress of gout, his rather violent temper overstepped 
 limits. I shall never forget one such occasion, on which 
 she said to him, quite quietly and rather sadly : ' Pietri, 
 vous n'auriez pas parle* de cette facon si j'&ais encore 
 aux Tuileries ! ' In a second he was on his knees at 
 her feet, kissing her hand and begging her pardon, his 
 protestations of remorse and devotion choked by tears. 
 To give an idea of the quality of that devotion, shortly 
 before his last illness he begged that he might be buried 
 under the pathway that leads to the Crypt ; ' Thus/ 
 he said, ' when you go in there to pray beside your 
 dead, your feet will pass over my body.' 
 
 One of the bitterest experiences of her life, I truly 
 believe, was a sad little tragedy connected with his 
 death. He was away in Paris when his health suddenly 
 failed, and with it his mind. Possessed by the delusion 
 that the people at his hotel were bent on poisoning him, 
 he was brought back by his doctor to Farnborough 
 Hill ; ' There,' he said, ' near the Empress, I shall get 
 well in a week.' But he did not get well, and, terrible 
 irony of fate, he now became possessed of the idea 
 that she herself was compassing his death. 
 
 One day I went over to see him ; he appeared to 
 be perfectly sensible and spoke of her as usual, regret- 
 ting the trouble his illness was giving, and when I went 
 downstairs I found her waiting to hear how I had 
 found him. Then, weeping, she told me that he had 
 suddenly pointed a trembling finger at her and said : 
 ' Regardez cette femme vetue de noir cette femme a 
 laquelle j'ai voue tout mon respect, toute ma devotion, 
 toute ma vie, pour laquelle, a cette heure-ci, je rdpandrais 
 volontiers mon sang. . . . Et voila que maintenant 
 quand je suis vieux elle voudrait ma mort qu'elle 
 donne a son chef l'ordre de m'empoisonner ! ' She 
 said she had taken his hand, and cried ' Pietri, Pietri J
 
 $6 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 C'est done que vous ne me connaissez plus ! Vous ne 
 savez plus qui parle avec vous en ce moment 1 ' ; where- 
 upon he lifted his velvet cap from his head, bowed 
 from his arm-chair till the cap touched the ground, and 
 said solemnly : ' Je vous connais bien ! Vous etes Sa 
 Majeste" 1'ImpeYatrice Eugenie 1 ' 
 
 The anguish of the Empress at this terrible delu- 
 sion was painful to witness : ' Vous voyez done,' she 
 said, ' aucune 6preuve ne m'est pargn6e ! ' After his 
 death, which was rather sudden, it touched me even 
 more deeply when she said, like a child, ' Tout a la 
 fin il etait bon avec moi ; il m'a baise* la main, me 
 disant de ne pas le quitter. Mais je lui ai dit qu'il 
 fallait qu'il dorme, et une heure apres c'&ait fini.' But 
 in her heart she knew that if any one on earth was 
 sure of her faithful affection as was she of his it 
 was Pietri. 
 
 They buried him close to the spot he had chosen, 
 and the Empress said : ' Now the last is gone to whom 
 I could speak of the past without having to explain.' 
 
 Thinking over her mental equipment, the balance, 
 the depth, the brilliancy of her intellect, the immense 
 amount of common-sense that made her the most invalu- 
 able of counsellors, I have often wondered at one trait 
 that would be surprising in a person endowed with 
 less than half her gifts namely, her liability to fuss. 
 I fancy this trait must have been innate, for one re- 
 members that when Queen Victoria attended the Opera 
 in Paris during the Second Empire, it was noticed that 
 she walked straight up to the front of the box and sat 
 down, without looking round to see what her ladies 
 were, or were not, doing whereas the Empress could 
 not refrain from indicating to both sets of ladies the 
 special chairs they were to sit upon. In later years 
 this undue preoccupation with detail, this conviction
 
 THE EMPRESS EUGENIE 57 
 
 that things had, on the whole, a tendency to go wrong, 
 probably grew on her. Courageous to a fault herself, 
 she was full of terrors for others. If any of her party 
 were motoring, no theory of an ordinary break-down, 
 of a voluntarily extended programme, could prevent 
 her asking every quarter of an hour if they had not yet 
 come back ? And though her luncheon visitors from 
 London were invariably taken down to the station in 
 her own car, nothing would persuade her that either 
 they or her chauffeur were capable of calculating time 
 and distance. Half an hour before it was needful she 
 would begin to speed the parting guests, urging that 
 they must not, out of politeness, miss their train ; and 
 finally, she would bundle them down to the station, 
 where they were forced to tramp and tramp on the 
 platform till the train came in, for during war-time 
 waiting-rooms were suppressed. One of the greatest 
 joys of the last year of her life was the visit paid to her 
 by her great hero, Field-Marshal Lord Haig she her- 
 self having superintended the decoration of the front 
 door with evergreens. But I am sure she will not have 
 credited her illustrious visitor with sufficient tactical 
 and strategical skill to catch the 3.42 train at Farn- 
 borough. 
 
 It is perhaps more reasonable that she did not trust 
 English trains to start without giving warning 
 though this dignified style of departure is practised at 
 the great London termini rather than in the country. 
 I remember once her accompanying me down to Farn- 
 borough station, whither I was going to catch a passing 
 glimpse of Lady Ponsonby on her way to Osborne, and 
 how the Empress endeavoured to embrace the traveller 
 from the platform, standing, for safety, so far away 
 from the carriage that my sister and I were privately 
 considering how best to catch Lady Ponsonby in our 
 arms when the inevitable disaster should take place.
 
 58 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 It was a most absurd and touching spectacle, one of 
 them so overwhelmed, both of them so affectionate, 
 and all four of us so frightened ; but the scene ended 
 happily. 
 
 Of course the Empress was an ardent suffragist. 
 During the fight for the vote I saw little of her ; I 
 think she took two of her long voyages in successive 
 years. Being ostentatiously law-abiding in her senti- 
 ments, she disapproved, theoretically, of militant 
 methods. All the same, I cartnot but suspect that 
 certain chords in her nature must have responded 
 sympathetically to Militancy. People have said that 
 women's services during the war would have won 
 them the vote without violent methods : the answer to 
 that is, that one could not base one's tactics on an 
 event which none of our most sapient statesmen fore- 
 saw. This the Empress allowed, but none the less 
 continued to say : ' Moi, je suis contre la violence, vous 
 savez.' And meanwhile she expressed a strong desire 
 to make the acquaintance of the Militant Leader ! 
 
 Never have I seen the Empress more utterly bowled 
 over, if I may use the expression, than by Mrs. Pank- 
 hurst. The gentle manner, the quiet authority, the 
 immense radical good sense that veils the violence of 
 that fiery spirit, and, I must add, the daintiness and 
 good taste of her clothes, captivated the Empress at 
 first sight, and I was entreated to bring her to luncheon 
 as often as possible. On labour questions she was the 
 Empress's last Court of Appeal, and a dozen times she 
 has said how fantastic it was that under our Constitu- 
 tion no use could be made of so statesmanlike a brain. 
 I said that Ministers would doubtless shrink in horror 
 from the idea of anti-compromise incarnate seated at the 
 council board ; whereupon she shrugged her shoulders 
 and remarked that responsibility begets moderation only
 
 THE EMPRESS EUGENIE 59 
 
 too rapidly ; ' Eux-mSmes mettent assez d'eau dans 
 leur vin, il me semble ! ' she said. 
 
 I must add that her feelings of respect and admira- 
 tion were fully reciprocated, and once or twice when 
 she emitted some view that I knew her visitor disagreed 
 with, I was surprised that Mrs. Pankhurst held her 
 hand from ever so gentle a slaughter. ' I couldn't 
 dispute with her,' she explained afterwards. ' She is 
 large-minded and generous enough in argument as it 
 is.' And, indeed, I never saw the Empress more 
 utterly adorable with any one than she was with 
 Mrs. Pankhurst. 
 
 One of the most interesting conversations I ever 
 had with her was last year, about the son of the great 
 Napoleon, the Due de Reichstadt. Antonia had been 
 showing his death-mask, which is in the museum in 
 the park, to some Spanish visitors, calling their atten- 
 tion to its resemblance with the present King of Spain ; 
 and I asked the Empress casually if she really thought 
 the Due de Reichstadt had been poisoned ? This is 
 one of the statements that Count d'Herisson puts into 
 her mouth in his abominable book ' Napoleon IV.,' and ' 
 given her cult for the Hapsburgs I thought it unlikely 
 that she had ever said anything of the kind. 
 
 The question elicited an extraordinarily interesting 
 reply which I will epitomise. 
 
 Long ago, in the days of the Empire, the Empress 
 had made the acquaintance of a certain Count Prokesch, 
 then a very old man, who had been in the Due de 
 Reichstadt's regiment. He was one of his closest 
 personal friends, and gave her many details respecting 
 the young Duke's life at the Court of the Emperor 
 Francis. Marie Louise was then living in Italy with 
 Count Neipperg, and her son was never allowed to visit 
 her, but occasionally she came to Vienna and saw him
 
 60 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 there. His name, of course, was Napoleon, but that 
 word was never uttered, and he was supposed not to 
 know that he was the great Emperor's son. 
 
 At this point I asked the Empress if she believed 
 the concealment of such a fact was possible, recalling 
 that a certain illegitimate child at a boarding-school I 
 was at was supposed by our schoolmistress to be ignorant 
 of what was delicately called her ' misfortune,' but, as 
 a matter of fact, knew all about it. The Empress said 
 she imagined it must have been thus with the Due de 
 Reichstadt, but Prokesch had told her that not a soul 
 about that Court dared to mention the dreadful name of 
 Napoleon even in a dream, so terrific was the ban placed 
 upon it by Metternich. Strange to say, the young 
 Duke was far more beloved and petted by his grand- 
 father than all the rest of the Imperial children, and, 
 as a concession to his passionate love of soldiering, the 
 Emperor gave him one of his most famous mounted 
 regiments of the Guard, and had it re-christened ' The 
 Due de Reichstadt's Own ' (or whatever is the Austrian 
 equivalent of such a title). 
 
 Then came a crisis in the life of the unfortunate 
 Aiglon ; he persuaded the Emperor to come and see the 
 regiment manoeuvre, after which he rode up to receive 
 his congratulations, and for a while moved along with 
 the Imperial Staff in a line parallel to that which the 
 troops were taking. Turning his horse to rejoin his 
 regiment, he found that a wide ditch lay between them. 
 He was a very fine horseman . . . ' Comme l'a t 
 mon petit garcon,' said the Empress, with the sad, 
 lingering inflection her voice took whenever she men- 
 tioned the Prince Imperial, and, setting his horse at 
 the obstacle he cleared it with such dash and grace that 
 moved to sudden admiration the regiment shouted as 
 one man 
 
 4 Vive Napole'on ! '
 
 THE EMPRESS EUGENIE 61 
 
 This was almost a penal offence ; by order of the 
 all-powerful Minister Metternich, the regiment was 
 taken from him and bidden to resume its old name. 
 
 From that moment, Prokesch said, the falseness of 
 his position, the hopelessness of his fate, seemed suddenly 
 to dawn upon the young Duke ; it was as if some vital 
 chord had snapped. He languished, became a prey 
 to settled melancholy, and the seeds of tuberculosis, 
 which had always been latent, developed so rapidly 
 'that the world believed he had been poisoned. 
 
 Later on in that conversation the Empress told me 
 that when at the Tuileries she had seen a diary of Marie 
 Louise that was evidently genuine, and from which one 
 gathered that her nature was romantic and sentimental 
 to the last degree. Moreover, she had been brought up 
 to abjure any characteristics or preferences of her own 
 more so, even, than are other princesses fashioned, 
 in short, to fit in anywhere. One thing is certain ; 
 once she had seen Neipperg, she desired never to hear 
 Napoleon's name mentioned. As for her supposed 
 longing to join him at St. Helena a touching legend 
 which was put about in defence of that least sympathetic 
 of royal ladies, and, as we know, encouraged by the 
 Prisoner of St. Helena himself never was anything 
 farther from the truth ! 
 
 Speaking of other legends such as posterity is apt 
 to weave around certain crowned heads, the Empress 
 once made me laugh about her own mother-in-law, 
 L.a Reine Hortense. We outsiders have always imagined 
 that the life of this deeply-tried Queen was a record of 
 unbroken melancholy, but according to the Empress 
 a gayer, more pleasure-loving nature never existed. 
 The harps and willow-trees were embellishments added 
 by sentimental commentators : ' C'&ait de son poque,' 
 she remarked, ' il fallait a ce temps-la que toutes les 
 femmes fo dis ent en pleurs ' ; and I must add that
 
 62 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 the Empress had nothing but sympathy for people who 
 in spite of slings and arrows make the best of things, 
 and get as much distraction out of life as possible. 
 
 She herself was one of the most fundamentally serious 
 natures I have ever known, and I cannot imagine that 
 she would ever have found relief from sorrow in what 
 are called ' les distractions.' Fate drove her back, with 
 blow after blow, upon her ultimate reserves, and fortu- 
 nately these were many and reliable. Without wishing 
 to appear unduly cynical, foremost among them I must 
 place the possession of a very large private fortune. 
 But what must have helped her as much as anything 
 was her inexhaustible interest in life itself, whether 
 abstract questions, history, politics, or the lives of others. 
 She never seemed to me to think of herself at all, net 
 to pity herself, not to consider herself in any way. She 
 endured . . . and went on. I have seen her in all 
 sorts of situations and in various moods ; in what I 
 cannot describe as other than the highest spirits, and 
 in what, with equal sincerity, must be called a bad temper. 
 But never once have I heard her utter a mean or 
 ungenerous thought. 
 
 Be her weaknesses what they may and I have never 
 seen any of the slightest consequence the extreme 
 nobility of her nature, together with her flawless kindness, 
 remain the master impressions. Her manners were 
 perfect because she was never thinking of herself, and 
 was quick beyond belief to guess the feelings of others. 
 If she thought she had given, whether inadvertently 
 or in the heat of argument, the very slightest pain, 
 or even a passing wound to vanity, no trouble was too 
 great for her to take in order to soothe ruffled feelings. 
 And if one had no other friend in the world to whom 
 to turn in trouble, to her one could turn with confidence. 
 All she did was done on grand lines no hanging back,
 
 THE EMPRESS EUGENIE 63 
 
 no half measures, not the faintest desire for commenda- 
 tion or applause, and very little expectation of gratitude. 
 Her generosity in money matters was unbounded, 
 her charities unlimited, 1 but the world heard nothing 
 of these things. Only the other day I was staggered 
 to learn what immense sums she had given to hospitals 
 in France, both French and Spanish, during the war ; 
 but the beneficiaries were sternly forbidden to publish the 
 facts, which both my informant and I thought was a pity. 
 When the Germans invaded Belgium, the head of 
 the Bonaparte family and his wife were bidden to con- 
 sider Farnborough Hill their home, and there they, 
 their children, and their servants lived till peace was 
 signed. It was only natural ; no one could desire that 
 it should be otherwise. Yet I often wondered how 
 many ladies of ninety would accommodate themselves 
 so simply, naturally, and generously to a situation that 
 changed their habits root and branch. The Empress 
 spoke freely before those in whose discretion she had 
 complete confidence, but in all those five years the only 
 comment I heard escape her lips was perpetual fear that 
 her guests were bored to death, and regret that it was out 
 of her power, given war-time conditions, to do anything 
 to alleviate that boredom. 
 
 And all this time a shadow worse than death hung 
 over her, for she was called upon to face the probability 
 of total blindness. She had been one of the most 
 assiduous readers I have known not of novels, for which 
 she had a contempt as unreasonable as it was adamantine, 
 but of stiff books which most people would have thought 
 twice about tackling. True, she was immensely fond 
 of conversation and of company ; but the relations and 
 intimates she was accustomed to receive as guests, 
 year after year, were now out of her reach. For one 
 1 The Empress left one million francs to charities in her Will.
 
 64 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 thing, Governments discouraged private travelling ; 
 for another, there was now no room for guests at Farn- 
 borough Hill. Even from such distraction as casual 
 English visitors might have afforded her she found 
 herself debarred, for who had time or petrol for visiting 
 in those days ? It may be imagined, therefore, what 
 it meant to her to be deprived of books, and unfortunately 
 she could not bear to be read to ; yet no one ever heard 
 her grumble. 
 
 Once, when a cold confined her upstairs, I found her 
 and her old maid, Aline, who had been with her at the 
 Tuileries, busy pasting ancient cuttings from news- 
 papers into huge scrap-books. The maid, far more 
 shaky than the mistress but at least in possession of 
 her eyesight, was on all-fours on the floor ; the Empress, 
 seated in her chair, was pointing with a stick to the 
 cuttings she wished pasted into a particular place 
 occasionally, under the influence of an attack of mis- 
 trust, insisting on having the whole monstrous book 
 lifted on to the table and seizing the paste-brush herself. 
 But gently, firmly, with Tuileries courtesy, Aline would 
 intervene : ' Non, Majesty, . . . pas comme cela, 
 . . . c'est tout a fait de travers ' ; and with the same 
 gentle firmness the book would be removed, the brush 
 extricated from the Empress's obstinately clutching 
 fingers, and the former operator would resume opera- 
 tions. Whereupon the Empress would shrug her 
 shoulders. ' Aline croit toujours qu'il n'y a qu'elle 
 pour bien faire les choses ! ' she would say, and resign 
 herself to the inevitable. The relation between thqse 
 two always touched and amused me deeply. 
 
 Only once do I remember the Empress seeming 
 to pity herself. She had always detested needlework, 
 but now took to knitting comforters and cholera-belts 
 for her wounded officers. I cannot say these efforts 
 progressed very quickly, and the aid of Aline and her
 
 THE EMPRESS EUGENIE 65 
 
 other maid was invoked at the finishing-ofF parts and 
 other crises. One day when I went into her sitting- 
 room she was busily rolling into a ball a skein of wool 
 that was stretched across two chair-backs : ' Vous 
 voyez a quoi je suis r&luite,' she said. It stabbed one's 
 heart to hear her. She knew that, and that is why she 
 never complained. 
 
 Of her amazing physical vigour at ninety-three 
 the following adventure will give an idea. She had been 
 going upstairs to dress for dinner, and, arrived at the 
 top, thought there was still a step. Finding none, in 
 order to avoid falling on her face she hurled herself 
 backwards with such violence that she fell down the 
 whole flight, her head bumping on each of its twelve 
 steps. Her rheumatic wrists were slightly sprained 
 and she could not get up, but luckily Antonia and Aline 
 heard her cries for help and picked her up. She hated 
 a fuss being made over her and was not feeling in 
 the least inclined to faint. When, therefore, Aline 
 reappeared with a glass of cognac, she was so provoked, 
 and rejected the stimulant with such emphasis, that it 
 flew over the banisters, glass and all. 
 
 Up to a few years ago time had left but little mark 
 on her, and there was no diminution of her beauty 
 the touching majestic beauty of a once supremely beau- 
 tiful woman who, if I may again quote Lord Rosebery's 
 dedication, had ' lived on the summits of splendour, 
 sorrow, and catastrophe with supreme dignity and 
 courage.' The face was of the pallor of ivory, the 
 figure full and gracious, and in spite of her rheumatism 
 she was erect and active. But within the last five or 
 six years she became smaller and thinner, also rather 
 deaf, and with the oncoming of blindness she began to 
 stoop ; but one always felt it was because she chose 
 to rather than because it was inevitable. And, strange 
 to relate, in spite of her blindness, if some small
 
 66 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 catastrophe happened, a tiny crack in a huge plate-glass 
 window, for instance, which it was hoped would escape 
 her notice, the event proved the vainness of that hope. 
 To the last, in moments of fire and at least one such 
 occurred whenever one saw her forty years would fall 
 from her like a garment. Forty ? That is to under- 
 state the case. Let us rather say sixty ! Personally, I 
 never got accustomed to this transfiguration, and was 
 amazed afresh whenever it happened. 
 
 The very last time I saw her, in November 19 19, 
 it was a bright sunny day and she had just come in 
 from the garden. She had on a new hat, and looked 
 so magnificent that I stood astonished on the threshold. 
 Whereupon she cried out, ' Qu'avez-vous done ? 
 Entrez entrez ! ' It would have been impossible to 
 give the real reason of that pause, for to her the asso- 
 ciation of old age and beauty was ludicrous, but an 
 allusion to the loveliness of the hat was well received. 
 That vision was so striking that I recorded the impres- 
 sion in my diary, little thinking it was to be the last. 
 And when in June news came of the success of the 
 operation, I had been counting as never before on 
 seeing her again in a week or two, younger and more 
 radiant than ever in the triumph of her recovered sight ! 
 
 Going for the last time through what I have written 
 and considering the lines in the portrait here attempted, 
 I see that I have spoken more than once of the brilliancy 
 of the Empress's intellect, yet seem to have dwelt 
 chiefly on its lapses ! 
 
 This is inevitable. She wrote no books, and during 
 the years I knew her took no public action. I am 
 aware that M. Marconi was thunderstruck at her grasp 
 of the problems of wireless telegraphy ; that M. Santos 
 Dumont, and later on the officers of the Royal Aero- 
 plane Factory, were amazed at her knowledge of their
 
 THE EMPRESS EUGENIE 67 
 
 particular subject. But to say so here does not carry 
 us much farther. 
 
 All you can judge by is the class of books she read 
 habitually, how she discussed them afterwards, and, 
 above all, by her conversation, in which it was impos- 
 sible not to feel the easy power of her brain and the 
 complete independence and originality of her points of 
 view. 
 
 As for lapses, the. spots on the sun are far more 
 interesting symptoms of that monstrous fever-patient's 
 temperature than statistics as to what amount of heat 
 he emits per millionth part of a second. 
 
 I have no doubt that readers will be struck, too, 
 by the contradictions in the Empress's personality as 
 described by the present writer. 
 
 I cannot help it. They were there. And this, I 
 think is the reason why she has been so imperfectly 
 appreciated, for the world resents being puzzled. On 
 the other hand the latter part of her life is one strong, 
 clear line that more than redeems the uncertainty of 
 other lines and this, I believe, is the impress she will 
 be found to have left on the pages of history. Can 
 anything transcend the dignity of that long, iron 
 silence ? Can the world ever forget that supreme 
 spectacle of one who knew how to fall ? 
 
 To those who have known her in all the matchless 
 nobility of her spirit, in all the miracle of her undimmed 
 mental power, this death is not like the passing of a 
 human being. It is as if the Temple at Paestum had 
 been suddenly overthrown by an earthquake. 
 
 Probably she never realised the depths of reverence 
 and affection, the passionate admiration she inspired. 
 She had long since lost the habit of expecting or asking 
 anything for herself, and, as I have said, hers was not 
 an imaginative, tender nature not one of those in the
 
 68 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 house of whose spirit every hearth that blazed in youth 
 holds a flame, even in extreme old age. She stood, and 
 was capable of standing, alone, and it was difficult to 
 do anything for her except, now and again, bring 
 interest and stimulus into her intellectual life. I think 
 she took delight in the devotion of those few she may 
 be said to have been fond of, and among these Madame 
 d'Attainville and Count Joseph Primoli, both of them 
 relations, were prominent. I am certain, too, that she 
 was glad in the knowledge that those whom she had 
 befriended whether old members of her group like 
 the present writer, or the very last batch of young 
 officers who passed through her hospital -were not 
 ungrateful, and, above all, counted on her as the one 
 friend who would never fail. 
 
 Otherwise she had won for herself an independence 
 of sympathy that, if in a certain sense rather inhuman, 
 was counterbalanced by her most human, phenomenal, 
 and tireless pre-occupation with the sorrows and the 
 joys of others. In a word, she had outlived the power 
 of receiving consolation but had become herself the 
 great Consoler. 
 
 Possibly that which was, and is, in the hearts of 
 those that loved her may reach her yet, and be of some 
 use to her in the place she has gone to. If one did not 
 venture to believe this, the sorrow of her death would 
 be almost unbearable. 
 
 Drishane. September 1920.
 
 A FRESH START AND TWO PORTRAITS 
 
 When, in the year 1894, my father died, our old 
 home was broken up. My mother had been dead 
 three years, my five sisters were married, and my 
 brother, a Cavalry soldier, had more use for ready 
 money than for a non-ancestral mansion with sixteen 
 bedrooms. So Frimhurst was put up for sale, and 
 among the things I bought in with the lump sum left 
 me by my father for that purpose were a beloved 
 revolving dumb-waiter, the handiest shelf of which was, 
 and is, very groggy, and the old schoolroom table 
 beneath which our brother Johnny had taken refuge 
 when Mary and I, aged nine and seven, threw knives 
 at each other, and which is still garnished with the tin- 
 tacks a younger sister drove into its sides and limbs. 
 
 As my father had foreseen, I determined to start 
 life on my own, and soon found an ideal eight-roomed 
 cottage in our old neighbourhood, surrounded by fields 
 and woods. What its real name was I never knew ; 
 but as there was one special oak-tree standing up on 
 a mound just in front of the house, and as what counts 
 is the only thing that ever need be counted, I called 
 "my cottage ' One Oak,' regardless of the fact that there 
 were other obscure oak-trees all along the fifty yards or 
 so of frontage. 
 
 My landlady, to whom we already owed the price- 
 less benefit of a recommendation, as ' nice ' people, to 
 her country-woman the Empress Eugenie, was an 
 
 69
 
 70 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 original, made up in equal parts of happy-go-luckiness 
 and Spanish dignity ; a sportswoman too, who appar- 
 ently drove a phaeton and pair with closed eyes, her 
 eye-lids being so amazingly heavy that one seldom 
 caught a glimpse of the fine orbs beneath them. 
 
 She informed me that the house wanted next to 
 nothing doing to it, and when I went to see for myself, 
 I found her tearing off strips of wall-paper with her 
 own hands, while the gardener was doing wonders 
 with a pail of whitewash. Eventually she agreed to 
 call in professional assistance, and by degrees it leaked 
 out that although farm-hands had occasionally inhabited 
 the kitchen and scullery, the latest occupants of the 
 two front rooms had been a pony and a donkey. There 
 wasn't a bell in the house, and such was my innocence 
 such, too, the spell the place had cast over me that 
 I meekly accepted her theory that eight-roomed cot- 
 tages never had bells. Nor were any needed, for that 
 winter the Master of the York and Ainstey hounds 
 gave me a beautifully toned hunting-horn, carried by 
 him during a memorable run, which now became an 
 integral part of the ceremony of laying the table. A 
 very soft blast penetrated the thick wall between dining- 
 room and kitchen carried even farther according to a 
 well-meaning neighbour, who once observed, ' I know 
 you must be getting on with your opera, for as I pass 
 the house I often hear you blowing away on your 
 trumpet.' 
 
 The charms of seclusion are seldom combined with 
 the conveniences of civilisation. Unfortunately the 
 communal main drain stopped some 600 yards short 
 of my house, and on prospecting the garden for the 
 immemorial substitute it was found in close proximity 
 to the well. I never gave this matter a thought till 
 some years later and even then not because of a 
 typhoid epidemic raging in our neighbourhood, but
 
 A FRESH START TWO PORTRAITS 71 
 
 because of an incident, of which more presently, that 
 would have made even Robinson Crusoe thoughtful. 
 
 Everyone lent a hand when it came to getting into 
 One Oak, and I remember my friend H. B., who 
 disliked physical exertion, being requested to dig a 
 large hole ' large enough to bury a cow ' were the 
 exact instructions wherein the thousand nameless 
 things that accumulate in the garden of an uninhabited 
 house found a last home. 
 
 The servant problem seemed likely to present diffi- 
 culties. It must be someone who did not get on with 
 other servants and therefore preferred solitary service ; 
 on the other hand her spirits must be equal to life in 
 a small house where little ' company ' was seen, and 
 where the mistress played her own operas from morn- 
 ing till night. But even before One Oak was found, 
 the problem had resolved itself. 
 
 Those who have met my mother in ' Impressions 
 that Remained ' will readily believe that some of her 
 servants were devoted to her. Not all, for she was 
 liable to violent and unreasonable antipathies. But 
 those she liked returned her sentiments with interest 
 especially a certain young cook who literally adored her, 
 and who had left us under a cloud some months before 
 my mother's death. She was an exceedingly pretty 
 Devonshire girl named Ford, with wonderful grey 
 eyes, rippling black hair, an exquisite complexion, the 
 smallest and roundest of waists, and both physically 
 and mentally of a suppleness and grace that suggested 
 better breeding than her pedigree would have shown. 
 Her manners, though not those of her class, were per- 
 fect ; in fact she was neither a servant nor a lady she 
 was Ford. 
 
 The cause of her undoing was a blameless passion 
 for open air, complicated by the selection of a gentle- 
 man-cadet from Sandhurst as companion of her rambles
 
 72 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 along the banks of the Basingstoke Canal. In answer 
 to my mother's remonstrances she allowed that this sort 
 of thing wouldn't do, and promised it should not occur 
 again. Alas ! in the summer months that canal is 
 thick with boating young gentlemen from Aldershot 
 and Sandhurst. Once more she was met under the 
 same compromising circumstances, and it seemed advis- 
 able that her services should be transferred to a less 
 exciting neighbourhood. Much to the regret of my 
 mother, therefore for she was a superb cook she 
 departed ; and that autumn a basket full of mushrooms, 
 gathered in her Devonshire fields, arrived at Frimhurst 
 guerdon of unaltered good-will. The following Christ- 
 mas, when my mother died, among the letters received 
 by my father and me, none conveyed a deeper and more 
 touching sense of personal loss than hers. 
 
 I never lost sight of her. Every autumn a basket 
 of mushrooms arrived at Frimhurst, (she always seems 
 to have taken her holiday in the mushroom season) 
 and with them ever-renewed assurances of her affection 
 for me and mine. Nevertheless I was surprised, one 
 April day in 1 8 94, to get a letter telling me that she had 
 seen my father's death in the papers, and that should 
 it be my intention to set up house for myself she wished 
 to come and do for me, no matter how small the wages 
 I could offer. To live with my mother's daughter 
 and dear Marco (my big yellow dog) would make her 
 happier, she said, than any other fate she could look to. 
 
 Now Ford was earning high wages, and though she 
 did not as a rule hit it off with her species, being of a 
 different fibre, she dearly loved coping with garden- 
 parties, dinner-parties, and anything that brought her 
 genius into play on a large scale. For this and other 
 reasons I doubted whether an unrelieved duet with 
 no chorus would appeal to her. But she would take 
 no denial, and duly arrived in time to throw herself
 
 A FRESH START TWO PORTRAITS 73 
 
 enthusiastically into the work of making One Oak the 
 adorable little place it soon became. 
 
 She instantly revealed herself as the ideal general 
 servant, and if the place had been her own could not 
 have taken greater pride in it. Except my mother 
 I have known few people so devoted to flowers, and the 
 house was always full of them, though where they came 
 from I thought best not to enquire. For my garden 
 was never very grand, a row of stocks under the windows, 
 a crimson rambler over the porch, a few creepers, and 
 two round beds dedicated to the mid-Victorian com- 
 bination of geraniums, calceolarias and lobelias (from 
 which I emancipated myself later on) being the extent 
 of my floral achievements. In the winter she would 
 scour the lanes for belated bramble sprays or anything 
 else decorative, and never came home empty-handed. 
 
 Her relations with Marco, which at Frimhurst had 
 been tender but fugitive, now became continuous and 
 passionate. Everything about him enchanted her, his 
 fierce reception of the tradesmen, his marked friendliness 
 towards tramps, and other points that one would not 
 select for admiration. Sometimes, especially when 
 another dog was barking in the neighbourhood, he 
 would wolf his food, after which a kind of stately, sub- 
 terranean hiccough would afflict him. On one such 
 occasion I remember her putting her head on one side 
 and exclaiming sentimentally : ' Hark at him breaking 
 wind like an old man ! ' 
 
 As for her cooking, whether from the point of view 
 of economy or greediness, how shall words describe 
 it ? We know what Schubert has done with three 
 notes on a posthorn, or a nasal little fragment of a phrase 
 ground out on a barrel organ. Ford's genius was of 
 the same quality. She would make superb soup out 
 of two claws of a grouse, or an old mutton-chop bone, 
 in short out of anything or nothing, flavouring as only
 
 74 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 genius knows how. As for the simpler achievements 
 that defeat the incompetent boiled potatoes, for instance, 
 or pancakes everything her hands touched became a 
 work of art, whether it was food in a dish or flowers 
 in a vase. 
 
 Occasionally, on birthdays maybe, or in honour of 
 some musical event successfully pulled off, I would 
 ask a friend or two to supper ; my neighbours the 
 Furses, for instance, (Charles Furse, the beloved painter 
 perhaps the most courageous human being I have 
 known except Katherine his wife) and my sister Nina 
 Hollings and her husband who lived close by. 
 Maurice Baring sometimes came to dine and sleep, and 
 if he happened to be in England of course H. B. was 
 of the party. Then Ford was in her glory and my guests 
 were astonished at the delicate fare set before them ; 
 for One Oak was not an establishment to rouse great 
 expectations. 
 
 It was in connection with one of these little festivities 
 that my attention was called to the water supply. Having 
 no cellar I used to cool the wine, which generally was 
 H. B.'s contribution to the feast, by sinking it in the 
 well for a few hours. But one day the pail brought an 
 unspeakably loathsome object to the surface a limp, 
 slimy bladder in two sections, suspended by a sort of 
 Siamese-twin connection round the neck of a champagne 
 bottle. 
 
 I said nothing to the company but decided to have 
 the well cleaned out next day ; and it was then dis- 
 covered that not only was it badly in need of it, but also 
 that its bottom was a foot lower than that of another 
 excavation I have mentioned ; also that in the opinion 
 of the expert the strata ran at an unfavourable angle. 
 Evidently this last disquieting circumstance was not 
 perceptible to profane eyes, for I could see no sign of 
 any strata at all ; and as the analysis of the water proved
 
 A FRESH START TWO PORTRAITS 75 
 
 to be surprisingly satisfactory, and as the object looked 
 more like some very repulsive kind of inland seaweed 
 than an egg-layer, no further steps were taken. If a 
 submarine monster it may have been a microbe destroyer, 
 and ' handsome is that handsome does.' Perhaps too 
 much fuss is made about drinking water ; anyhow I 
 never had a single severe illness while at One Oak. 
 
 Only once did Ford fail me the occasion on which 
 the Duchess of Connaught, who, with the Duke, had 
 always been wonderfully kind to my parents, drove 
 over from Bagshot to see my new home. In deep but 
 controlled excitement Ford duly brought in tea at the 
 right moment ; but what was my mortification when 
 tea and milk flowed simultaneously into H.R.H.'s cup ! 
 In her agitation the tea-maker had reverted to School- 
 Feast traditions a striking instance of the devastating 
 effect of Royalty on loyal British nerves. 
 
 She bore the loneliness of our life heroically for 
 the first year, although now and again there were 
 symptoms of low spirits, particularly when one of my 
 periodical absences was imminent, or just concluded. 
 She was one of those people predestined to unfortu- 
 nate attachments, and I often fancied that my return 
 coincided with the funeral of a cherished dream. 
 
 Once I came back to find that the two white cane 
 chairs in the spare bedroom had been painted vermilion, 
 whereas the kitchen ones were now particoloured, 
 their backs being vermilion, some of their legs white, 
 and the other legs half white and half red. In response 
 to my cries of horror Ford explained that she had been 
 ' feeling low,' and having come across two pots of 
 Aspinall's paint in a cupboard, had endeavoured to 
 give her surroundings a more cheerful aspect. Asked 
 why she had stopped half way she replied that the paint 
 had run out, and that her spirits had not been equal
 
 76 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 to getting more from Camberley. And thus the chairs 
 remained a depressing monument to depression. 
 
 At the end of her first year with me a great event 
 happened, she was invited to the Christmas Ball given 
 by the Empress's servants. I dined that night at 
 Farnborough Hill, and after dinner the whole party 
 went to look at the dancing. Ford was a vision, and 
 while watching her graceful movements and entrancing 
 smile, the Empress remarked that here was evidently 
 one result of the Spanish Armada, which, so we are told, 
 came to special grief on the coasts of Devon and Corn- 
 wall. ' Who but a Spaniard ' she exclaimed ' could 
 wear that rose above her ear just as your servant wears 
 it ! ' This compliment I afterwards passed on to the 
 wearer, and she lived on it for a month. 
 
 But as time went on, the fits of depression becoming 
 deeper and more frequent, I began to suggest that 
 having seen me well into my career as householder she 
 ought to give some less lonely place a trial. The answer 
 was always the same . . . tears, and an assurance that she 
 could not bear to leave me and dear Marco. At length, 
 after a rather long absence, I came home to find her 
 plunged in such depths of gloom that I determined 
 to call in bald, grey-bearded Dr. Vaudrey, who was a 
 humorist, a student of human nature, and as kindly a 
 man as ever breathed. 
 
 I was out when he came, but caught him as he was 
 stepping into the low pony-chaise in which he used to 
 drive himself about the country at the rate of four miles 
 an hour. It was one of those vehicles that lock when 
 you turn round and have been well styled ' infernal 
 machines.' 
 
 * There's nothing at all the matter with her ' he said 
 * except low spirits. I'd send her away if I were you.' 
 
 ' But she won't go ' I objected. 
 
 * Then my advice is . . . take her out for a walk
 
 A FRESH START TWO PORTRAITS 77 
 
 and lose her ! ' said Dr. Vaudrey, whipping up his 
 pony. 
 
 About a fortnight later, after a period of ceaseless 
 tears, she herself agreed that a change of scene was 
 advisable. I found her a splendid place, engaged a 
 caretaker, (for I was just off abroad again) and in mutual 
 love and sadness we parted. 
 
 When I came back Dr. Vaudrey told me the follow- 
 ing story. 
 
 A few days before I had cited him to One Oak, a 
 certain young officer belonging to a Scotch regiment 
 stationed at Aldershot had casually asked him whether 
 he knew Miss Ethel Smyth, and if so what kind of person 
 she was ? ' I told him you were a patient of mine, 
 and quite mad, said Dr. Vaudrey ; whereupon the officer 
 related that he had seen me one day coming out of the 
 Empress's park-gate, that he had got into conversation 
 with me, walked home with me, and since then had had 
 tea at One Oak once or twice ; ' in fact,' he added with 
 a smirk,' we are now on kissing terms 1 ' 
 
 ' Now I didn't think,' the doctor went on, ' that your 
 madness takes that particular form, so I asked him to 
 describe your appearance.' In glowing colours the 
 young man proceeded to paint a picture of . . . Ford, 
 specially dwelling on a costume which I recognised as 
 my new summer gown 1 Dr. Vaudrey said he went off 
 into fits of laughter and exclaimed : ' My dear fellow, 
 you've been making love to the cook ! ' ; whereupon the 
 young man got scarlet and indulged in language such as 
 mingled fury and humiliation would be likely to inspire. 
 
 Poor Ford 1 The defection of this admirer, whom 
 Dr. Vaudrey described as ' rather a sweep but what is 
 called a gentleman,' was evidently the last straw. Of 
 course she never learned that the affair had come to my 
 ears, and until the curtain fell on her troublous career 
 a few years later we kept in touch with each other. And
 
 78 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 never did the basket of mushrooms fail to turn up in 
 due season. 
 
 Before abandoning my cottage to a caretaker's 
 mercies I had been far too busy to think about the 
 future, and inasmuch as a still more strenuous period 
 would surely follow there would be no time to go servant- 
 hunting on my return. Thus it came that I committed 
 the inconceivable folly of engaging a new ' general ' 
 without having seen her, and, what is more, without 
 any testimony save her own as to her character and 
 accomplishments 1 She was Scotch however, and this 
 I considered a guarantee of all the virtues, love of 
 hard work, thrift, honesty, and common-sense. Above 
 all I counted on a temperamental seriousness such as 
 would safeguard even a younger woman than she claimed 
 to be against sentimental weaknesses a la Ford. 
 
 She arrived, a gaunt Highlander 5 ft. 11 in. in her 
 stockings, and shall be dismissed in a paragraph pro- 
 portioned to the length of her sojourn at One Oak. 
 Among my pleasanter recollections of her are a few 
 trenchant phrases ; one a remark, in connection with 
 Marco's meals, that she had not been engaged * to 
 feed the beasts of the field,' and another, in reply to a 
 request to scrub the kitchen floor, that she ' wouldn't 
 go down on her knees for anybody.' 
 
 The end of it was that one day when he drove 
 over to luncheon with me, poor H. B., who was the 
 most peace-loving of individuals, and more averse to 
 scenes than anyone I ever met, was warned that he 
 might have to lift her bodily into his cab, inasmuch as 
 she flatly refused to leave the premises till her month 
 was up. A pacific nature thoroughly aroused to fury 
 is a nerve-shattering spectacle ; and when at last, deaf 
 to his mild reasonings, the Highlander became out- 
 rageously abusive, he suddenly rushed at her with such
 
 A FRESH START TWO PORTRAITS 79 
 
 ferocity that she fled into the cab of her own accord. 
 And that was the end of Mrs. McPherson. 
 
 My domestic troubles now appeared to me insur- 
 mountable. Bereft of Ford there seemed no further 
 possibilities in this world. So I gladly fell in with a 
 suggestion of my married sisters to plant myself out 
 on them till my work was finished. Being in a state 
 of temporary penury I decided, too, to let the cottage 
 for a couple of months, nailing a home-made announce- 
 ment to that effect on the salient oak-tree whereby 
 agents' fees were evaded. 
 
 A client at once presented himself in the person of 
 a beautiful young man with the best cut pair of riding 
 breeches I had ever seen. He informed me that he 
 was by way of going to the Staff College, and wanted just 
 to see what the lectures were like beforehand ; hence he 
 was looking for a small house wherein to install him- 
 self, his wife, and his wife's pugs for a couple of months 
 possibly three, if, when the time came, it should suit 
 us both to extend the let. 
 
 In those days I knew nothing of the procedure of 
 houseletting ; but as he was such a very charming- 
 looking young man, and as he produced handfuls of 
 sovereigns from the pockets of those wonderful breeches 
 (whose sides, to quote O. Henry, resembled the varia- 
 tions on a typhoid chart) and proposed to pay the first 
 month's rent then and there, I closed with him eagerly, 
 merely scribbling a rough agreement and suggesting 
 that the rest of the rent be paid, when due, into my 
 account at the Camberley bank. 
 
 Now inasmuch as that extra month's let might 
 turn out to be very convenient there could be no harm 
 in making the young couple's stay as pleasant as pos- 
 sible ; so I asked both my sister and the clergyman's 
 wife to call. For in those days country people really
 
 80 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 did call on each other, and neighbourliness, though not 
 observed by a solitary and busy individual like myself, 
 was counted a virtue, not a madness. 
 
 My sister is one of those correspondents whose 
 replies to your letters invariably fail to arrive. Thus it 
 was not till some months later that I learned how she 
 had knocked and thumped at the door, the pugs mean- 
 while barking furiously behind it, and how at length, 
 giving it up as hopeless, she had gone away, and, 
 looking back from the road, had caught sight of a 
 lady in elegant but extreme deshabille peeping out of 
 an upper window. This at 4 o'clock in the afternoon. 
 
 The experiences of the clergyman's wife had been 
 still more remarkable. As she approached the house 
 she was amazed to see two huge powdered footmen 
 playing leapfrog on the lawn, the idea being that the 
 first frog had to clear one of the round geranium beds 
 and then double up like lightning, whereupon the other 
 frog rushed round and performed the same feat over 
 the second bed. As soon as it was possible to attract 
 their attention Mrs. Basset pressed a visiting card on 
 them and retreated hastily. 
 
 I omitted to enquire afterwards whether these 
 gorgeous creatures slept at the White Hart, or whether, 
 like the attendant genii in Eastern fairy-tales, they only 
 materialised when wanted aerial pledges of my tenant's 
 love for the lady behind the curtains. Anyhow there 
 was not room for even a page-boy at One Oak. 
 
 The let duly lasted for three months, and when I 
 came home my first action was to remove from my 
 sacred piano a song entitled ' Tommy's tickling Totty ' 
 property of one ' Babs,' whose handwriting was more 
 remarkable for size than symmetry. The next step was 
 to charter a donkey cart, whose owner was good enough 
 to take away the stack of empty champagne bottles 
 found behind the wood-shed.
 
 A FRESH START TWO PORTRAITS 81 
 
 Later on came the far more difficult task and 
 strange to say it was eventually accomplished of 
 extracting two months' unpaid rent from my late 
 tenant's lawyer, the young man himself, as so often 
 happens, being unfortunately abroad at the moment. 
 The lawyer informed me that his client had run through 
 one large fortune, but was on the point of coming into 
 another (which I was glad to hear) ; also that ' Babs,' 
 the person mainly responsible for the melting away of 
 fortune No. i, was not his wife but a Music-Hall star 
 whom the lawyer thought I must surely have heard 
 of. I had not but on the other hand I have never 
 forgotten her. 
 
 Meanwhile the domestic problem was still unsolved, 
 and though I doubted whether a cottage owner were 
 not too small fry to get much attention from the poten- 
 tate who for years had fed Frimhurst with servants, I 
 applied to Mrs. Hunt's Agency and in due course went 
 to London to inspect a few selected applicants. None of 
 them appealed to me, but just as I was going away in 
 despair I was told that another woman had come in 
 whom Mrs. Hunt thought I might as well see. It 
 appeared that she was now caretaking for the Hon. Mrs. 
 X., but before that had been engaged as cook ; ' not at a 
 very grand place,' said Mrs. Hunt, ' in fact it was at 
 some eating-house for sailors down at Portsmouth, but 
 she's a nice-spoken woman who has seen better days.' 
 And presently in walked one of the supreme people 
 I have met in my life, the servant who was with me for 
 1 6 years, wonderful, adorable Mrs. Faulkner ! Before 
 we had exchanged a dozen words my mind was made 
 up. Have her I must. 
 
 She was about 40 then, and must have been very 
 pretty in her youth a sad, pale, well-cut face, and fair 
 hair with a wave in it, worn in the old fashioned bandeaux 
 style. She told me she had been brought up on Lord
 
 82 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 Bandon's Irish estates, where her father had been 
 steward, and that her husband, after sadly mismanaging 
 his affairs, had gone off with all the cash he could lay- 
 hands on, leaving her penniless with four little children. 
 It had been a hard struggle, she said, but things were 
 better now, and she was looking out for a quiet place. 
 
 I asked her what her husband's line of life had been 
 and how he had come to grief, whereupon she informed 
 me that he had ' failed in the water-cress business.' 
 Never had I heard of such a business, but now I learned 
 how a rich man's factory may poison streams, and do 
 worse than kill the fish in them. She told me that she 
 had been in service as housemaid when a young girl, 
 and feared she was a poor hand at cooking ; I said that 
 was of no consequence, and that her youngest boy could 
 clean my boots and bicycle. The matter was settled in 
 five minutes. 
 
 I then begged my sister's cook to grill a chop before 
 my very eyes ; also to tell me what should be done with 
 eggs and potatoes, how to make an eatable rice pudding, 
 and so on. This knowledge was subsequently imparted 
 to Mrs. Faulkner, who, though devoid of inventive 
 genius, could, and did, exactly follow instructions ; and 
 that was all that was required. 
 
 Everyone who saw her fell in love with her, I think. 
 I never heard a sweeter, gentler voice, and her manners 
 were those of the old-world servant, respectful and self- 
 respecting. The eldest daughter was engaged to be 
 married, and a good place was easily found for the 
 second one of the dearest, prettiest girls imaginable. 
 The eldest boy, a mild young fellow very like his Mother, 
 was urged, and eventually aided by me, to enlist in the 
 9th Lancers ; and the youngest, after faithfully dealing 
 for a few months with the One Oak boots and bicycle, 
 passed into the stable of three dear old maiden-ladies of 
 property who lived opposite. Later on, being, as his
 
 A FRESH START TWO PORTRAITS 83 
 
 mother put it, ' wild about horses,' he obtained a post 
 in the Duke of Grafton's racing stable. 
 
 It was while this planting-out business was in 
 progress that one day I found Mrs. Faulkner quietly 
 weeping. An old sore on her leg had broken out again ; 
 she had said nothing, but this meant good-bye to her 
 chances of earning a livelihood. Again and again in my 
 life has the Empress come to the rescue, and this time 
 it was with a nomination for the Guildford hospital. 
 Six weeks later Mrs. Faulkner came back to me, com- 
 pletely cured, after what I suspect was the first rest she 
 had had for years and years. 
 
 She told me that she had been very happy at the 
 hospital ; that they had offered her books but that she 
 was ' quite pleased to lie quiet,' especially since the 
 nurses had shifted her bed so that she could look out of 
 the window. ' I think they were satisfied with me,' she 
 said, ' for being so contented,' and I can well believe it. 
 
 To think of her as element in a household is an 
 anodyne to restlessness. She did her work as noise- 
 lessly as a ghost ; no stumpings about overhead in 
 precious early working hours ; no fantasias on saucepans 
 and fire-irons in the kitchen ; no percussion effects with 
 the oven-door ; no distractingly cheerful bandinage with 
 the baker. Silence seemed her medium rather than 
 speech, and as I was what is called ' all nerves ' in those 
 days, this state of things was heaven. 
 
 Her only fault was that she didn't like dogs. I have 
 had three since the Frimhurst days ; Marco, a hybrid 
 St. Bernard ; Pan I, an Old English sheep-dog ; and 
 Pan II, my present dog, distant cousin and living image 
 of Pan I. And all these three have been trained to 
 combine the wildest of spirits with perfect amenableness 
 to discipline, an ideal which can be achieved in a house- 
 hold of two. But Mrs. Faulkner, who had no authority 
 with ' beasts of the field,' and whose bad leg was the
 
 84 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 result of terrible varicose veins, naturally dreaded the 
 rushings and boundings of large animals, and concen- 
 trated her affections on the cat. I once lent One Oak 
 to my sister Violet, who brought with her a dreadful 
 little dog, property of a friend who was too tender- 
 hearted to put it down. It was old, stout, deaf, blind, 
 and idiotic, but Mrs. Faulkner liked that dog ; ' he was 
 a nice quiet little thing ' she said. 
 
 A great bond between us was our common love of 
 what is called a dull life. A ' change,' the ideal of most 
 servants, was abhorrent to her, as I found out when 
 I took her with me, as a great treat, to stay with 
 my brother-in-law Charles Hunter and his wife. The 
 scale of life in the Hunter establishment frightened her ; 
 also the fact of my dressing for dinner a ceremony not 
 observed at One Oak and the duty that devolved on 
 her of putting out various garments she had never 
 seen before. I am sure the servants were kind to her 
 no one could be otherwise to Mrs. Faulkner but she 
 was shy with them, and deeply relieved when I sent 
 her home, myself proceeding to Scotland in diminished 
 state. 
 
 And yet that tranquil spirit harboured dreams or 
 perhaps she dreamed for her children. Once when I 
 was abroad, H. B. and his daughter went to live at One 
 Oak, and one day Clotilde Brewster, going suddenly 
 into the kitchen, found her busy drawing. The picture 
 was hastily pushed under a newspaper, and when, in an 
 agony of scarlet shyness, she was persuaded to draw it 
 forth, lo ! it turned out to be an amorous scene ! Bolt 
 upright upon a sofa sat a soldier all stripes and buttons, 
 and if his arm, instead of encircling the young lady 
 who sat beside him, was stiffly extended behind her 
 back, it was doubtless because the artist had not felt 
 equal to foreshortening. 
 
 When one considers how many legends spring up
 
 A FRESH START TWO PORTRAITS 85 
 
 under our very eyes, it is impossible not to ask oneself 
 how much of history has been put together in the same 
 haphazard fashion. This reflection is induced by my 
 remembering that years afterwards in Rome, discussing 
 Mrs. Faulkner, H. B. remarked casually ' how amusing 
 that incident was, her sitting quietly in the kitchen 
 and drawing a girl and a naked man seated together on a 
 sofa ! ' Thus had the incident shaped itself in his memory ! 
 
 Montaigne, one of the few men who understand 
 friendship as women do, says somewhere that he could 
 have spent his life writing about his dead friend La 
 Boetie. I could spend mine writing about H. B. ; but 
 here I will only say that he was an indulgent student 
 of human nature, whose motto might have been * You 
 never can tell ! ' and who certainly took special interest in 
 what goes on at the other side of the moon. When I 
 protested with indignation that Mrs. Faulkner was less 
 capable of such a flight of fancy than any soul on earth, 
 I think he believed me, but a shade of disappointment 
 passed over his face. 
 
 Maybe it was that sketch that made me wonder 
 whether my servant ever yearned after the absconded 
 water-cress merchant. ' Perhaps your husband is still 
 alive,' I remarked one day, ' and may turn up again.' 
 Her rejoinder effectually dissipated foolish sentimentality: 
 ' I hope not, Miss,' she said, in her pleasant, even voice, 
 ' he used to beat the children something dreadful.' 
 
 Another occasion for a display of this soothing and 
 characteristic matter-of-factness was the appearance 
 above my house of one of the earlier military air-ships 
 1 Beta ' I think was its name. The shape of this inflated 
 object was far from graceful, but with the rays of the 
 setting sun gilding its delicate sheath, it looked, as a 
 sister of mine remarked, like a bit of the Milky Way 
 broken loose. Ford would have gone into ecstasies over 
 it, so I summoned Mrs. Faulkner from the kitchen and
 
 86 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 asked her if it was not a beautiful sight ? * Yes, Miss,' 
 she said, ' it looks just like a pig.' And when Violet 
 and I could not help laughing at this strange encomium 
 she looked shy and puzzled. 
 
 One of her great charms was that you never knew 
 how a thing would take her. Just to see her face I once 
 repeated to her the most exquisite bit of flattery that has 
 ever come my way the flatterer being a disreputable 
 old Italian landlady of mine, whose parting words were : 
 1 E una vera signora Lei libera, aristocratica, pulita ! ' 
 ' Do you know, Mrs. Faulkner,' I said, ' that an old 
 Italian woman once told me I must be a real lady because 
 I was free in my ways, aristocratic, and clean ! ' Mrs. 
 Faulkner's comment did not disappoint me. ' O dear,' 
 she said, ' fancy anyone daring to speak to you like that ! ' 
 
 If she was devoid of romance as regards her husband, 
 she worshipped her children, to whom I well know all 
 her savings went though she never would allow it. 
 And specially did she love her youngest girl, who became 
 engaged to the smartest corporal in her brother's regi- 
 ment, a great cricketer, a fine shot, and winner of most 
 of the regimental competitions. He and his bride came 
 to One Oak before they went to India, and I remember 
 poor Mrs. Faulkner saying * I am informed that India 
 is a splendid place for a young cavalry soldier.' She 
 used stately language of the kind sometimes. 
 
 About a year later I was working 10 to 12 hours a 
 day. It was one of the many times in my life when, 
 rightly or wrongly, I believed that everything depended 
 on being ready by a certain date, and no one had greater 
 respect and consideration for dogged diligence than Mrs. 
 Faulkner. I was astonished, therefore, when one day, 
 without knocking, the door burst open, and in she came 
 with a dazed look on her face that frightened me. ' Will 
 you please to read this,' she said tremulously, ' I can't 
 understand it.' It was a telegram from some station in
 
 A FRESH START TWO PORTRAITS 87 
 
 India, and silently I read the words : ' Lizzie dead, 
 baby alive.' Alas ! I seemed to remember that her 
 daughter's name was Elizabeth ... ' Who is Lizzie ? ' 
 I asked in dread. And never shall I forget that strange 
 broken cry of hers . . . ' It's my daughter ! ' 
 
 I uttered the impotent words it was possible to 
 say, but almost immediately she was herself again, 
 quietly thanking me for my sympathy. And O 
 imperishable memory ! an hour later when I went into 
 the kitchen to see how it was with her, she said: ' I am 
 very sorry this should have happened when you are 
 so busy.' Can anyone recall, in a whole lifetime, an 
 incident more poignant, more heartrending ? 
 
 In after years another great sorrow befell her. One 
 dark night her youngest boy, now high up in the Duke 
 of Grafton's stable and a beautiful horseman, was run 
 over and killed by one of those motorists who drive on 
 without stopping. Next morning the body was found 
 at the side of the road, cut to pieces. But I think the 
 loss of her daughter was the supreme grief of her life. 
 
 Our relations were curious ; no intimacy in a certain 
 sense and no demonstrations, but silent respect and 
 affection that I hope was mutual and that grew as the 
 years went on. We hardly ever spoke to each other on 
 side issues. She would not have considered it seemly. 
 One day, however, when the very last bar of ' The 
 Wreckers ' had been written, in my exhilaration reserve 
 was cast overboard for once. ' Do you know my 
 Opera's finished ! ' I said. She met this strange outburst 
 with obvious embarrassment and a soft, shy ' O indeed 
 Miss ! ' But I was far too excited to be checked, and 
 seeing that for nine long months that music had been 
 shaking the house to its very foundations I couldn't 
 help adding : ' By this time I should think you must 
 know it pretty well by heart ! ' She now realised that 
 an effort to rise to a unique occasion was required of her;
 
 88 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 * Yes, Miss,' she said ' . . . some of the soft parts are 
 very pretty I'm sure.' 
 
 Immortal pronouncement that doubtless sums up 
 the feelings of a large percentage of concert-goers ! 
 Many a time, when inclined to morose reflections after 
 listening to some tumultuous piece of modern music, 
 I bethink me of Mrs. Faulkner and murmur to myself 
 in a spirit of justice : ' Some of the soft parts were very 
 pretty I'm sure.' 
 
 During the Boer War her soldier son was at the 
 front, but my impression is that she seldom if ever scanned 
 the lists of the slain and wounded. Her view was that 
 ' what had to be would be ' no use therefore in fussing. 
 When he came home again she said : ' I ought to be 
 very thankful he's safe.' That was all. Of course he 
 came to see her at once, and it was difficult to recognise 
 in the grave, hard-bitten soldier I found sitting in the 
 kitchen the gentle young fellow I had known years ago, 
 more anxious to please than otherwise remarkable. 
 
 His regiment had done splendidly, and in discussing 
 the War with him I was anxious to find out indirectly 
 what the men thought about the officers ; for it will be 
 remembered that the art of taking cover was then in its 
 infancy, and War Correspondents were for ever reporting 
 cases of unskilful or fool-hardy leading. After accepting 
 the incontrovertible statement that some officers are good 
 and some bad, I came to close quarters. ' What did 
 you do,' I asked, 'if some young officer from Sandhurst, 
 who, you could see, knew nothing about it, ordered you 
 to do some very foolish thing ? ' I confess that the 
 answer rather took my breath away. Quietly and as a 
 matter of course, with exactly his mother's smile and 
 manner, he said : ' O, then we didn't obey.' 
 
 As its title indicates, this group of memories con- 
 cerns a new page only, I do not propose to turn the
 
 A FRESH START TWO PORTRAITS 89 
 
 following pages here, but should like to wind up the 
 accounts of the three chief personages connected in my 
 mind with those early days at One Oak, namely, Ford, 
 Mrs. Faulkner, and Marco. 
 
 Ford died in the latter half of the One Oak period. 
 Coming home one day from abroad I found a letter 
 from the Matron of a Bath Hospital, dated three days 
 previously, telling me that a former servant of mine had 
 been brought in, suffering apparently from tumour on 
 the brain, and that just before she became unconscious 
 she had begged that I might be written to. ' I know 
 she'd like you to tell her I am here,' were her words. 
 I telegraphed to say I would come at once, but almost 
 immediately a second letter arrived saying she had died 
 without recovering consciousness. 
 
 * If only I had been there ! ' is a refrain that accom- 
 panies most people through life. But in the case of 
 that strange, gifted creature, so lovable and so lonely, 
 it has always had for me a peculiar sadness. 
 
 There has been little mention of Marco in these 
 pages, but he was so thoroughly appreciated in all his 
 greatness by those who met him in my Memoirs that 
 perhaps I may be pardoned for playing The Last Post 
 over him here. 
 
 I have said that he became ferocious and nerve- 
 rasped in his old age, and about a couple of years before 
 the end he actually turned one day on a member of the 
 class he specially favoured a particularly disreputable 
 and truculent tramp whose trouser-leg he tore from the 
 knee downwards. 
 
 The hullabaloo that ensued at the back door drowned 
 the music in the front room. Rushing to the scene I 
 collared him, shut him up in the scullery, and faced the 
 eloquence of the tramp.
 
 9 o STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 His demands were categorical ; either a new pair 
 of trousers or a sovereign. I answered that a couple of 
 solitary women could not well produce a pair of trousers, 
 and offered half a crown, which well met the needs of 
 the case but was contemptuously rejected in fact 
 hurled with great violence to the ground. And all this 
 time Marco never ceased barking for one second. 
 
 I then went into the house, to reappear presently 
 with a large and threaded needle ; whereupon the tramp 
 put up his leg on an empty box, and pointing to the rent 
 said imperiously, ' You mend that ! ' I may add that he 
 wore no stockings. 
 
 This proposal, which would have shocked Mrs. 
 Faulkner inexpressibly had she not long since shut 
 herself up in the kitchen, made me so angry, that a 
 drama with a sympathetic part in it for Marco was 
 hurriedly arranged. Picking up the half crown I placed 
 it on the box together with the needle. Then, flinging 
 the door wide open, I seized my collaborator by the 
 scruff of the neck, and advised the tramp to make himself 
 scarce as I could not hold back the dog long. Marco, 
 whose intelligence was unearthly, no doubt knew that 
 the whole thing was make-believe ; but so convincingly 
 did he play his part that the tramp made a plunge at the 
 box, and Mrs. Faulkner, now stationed at an upper 
 window, was the gratified spectator of his wild rush for 
 the gate. 
 
 Later on the postman said he had seen a man 
 sitting on a bank a good way down the road, mending 
 his trousers and talking to himself. Asked what he 
 had been talking about, the postman said he had not 
 caught his remarks which was a pity. 
 
 Alas ! Marco did not transfer his favour, as in logic 
 bound, to our tradesmen, and his aversion to a certain 
 butcher boy perhaps accounted for the tragedy that 
 happened shortly afterwards. One day when this young
 
 A FRESH START TWO PORTRAITS 91 
 
 brute called, he had a specially unfriendly, not to say 
 alarming, reception, and after flinging my chop in at 
 the kitchen window he had gone away in a cloud of 
 violent language, not improbably seen off the premises 
 by Marco. All of which details were subsequently 
 gleaned from Mrs. Faulkner. 
 
 Looking up presently from my work I was horrified 
 to see Marco lurching and tumbling across the lawn 
 in the strangest manner, with a huge bleeding lump on 
 his head ; and though as a rule the tradesmen were glad 
 enough to shut the gate once they were safely in the road, 
 on this occasion it was open. It is possible that a 
 passing motor may have touched him, but Mrs. Faulkner 
 always believed it was the vengeance of the butcher boy. 
 She declared she had heard things . . . but I never 
 really knew what had happened. 
 
 He recovered more or less, but it was pathetic to 
 see him tumble down when trying to be a ' mad dog ' 
 (i.e. rushing round in circles), though I daresay it 
 depressed me more than it did him. Gradually his 
 body assumed a strange curve, as if his head and one 
 hind leg were tied together. Nevertheless he seemed 
 well and happy, though Charles Furse used to say that 
 to walk from my wicket to the front door, accompanied 
 by a huge yellow thing shaped like a comma that growled 
 uninterruptedly, and whose nose was literally laid against 
 the calf of your leg, was a severe test of nerve. He knew 
 he wouldn't be bitten Marco never actually bit anyone, 
 I think it was merely that the whole thing was so 
 fantastic and terrifying. 
 
 He was 16 years old, a great age for a big dog, 
 when I felt that the hour for parting had struck at last. 
 Lethal chambers did not exist in those days, but his end 
 was instantaneous and painless. Goodness knows it 
 was not in a spirit of irony that I buried him in the wood 
 which for two years had practically been the home of
 
 92 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 the cat, so pertinaciously did he hunt her out of the 
 house. It was only that cemeteries do not appeal to 
 me, least of all a dogs' burying ground in a garden. 
 
 Mrs. Faulkner left me a year or two after I had 
 migrated to Woking. I even urged her to go ; partly 
 because I knew that general service, which involves 
 being on your legs nearly all day long, had become too 
 much for her, but mainly because I guessed she was 
 yearning to be near her only surviving daughter who 
 lives at Southampton. Determined to earn her own 
 livelihood as long as it shall be possible, she takes easy 
 jobs in those parts, resting at her daughter's house during 
 the intervals ; and while writing these pages I have 
 fixed up a meeting with her a week hence, on the quay 
 where the Havre-Southampton boat reluctantly disgorges 
 its victims. 
 
 La Roche-Posay. July 1920.
 
 TWO GLIMPSES OF QUEEN VICTORIA 
 
 In the summer of 1891, my father and myself being 
 now the only members of the family left to inhabit our 
 old home, Frimhurst, I was searching England for a 
 conductor bold enough to produce a big choral work 
 by a little-known native composer. It was a Mass for 
 solo voices and chorus which, so far, existed in piano- 
 forte score only. But this was of no consequence, for 
 when my first orchestral compositions had been per- 
 formed in the previous year the instrumentation had 
 been specially commended. So I knew I should be 
 trusted on that point. 
 
 One has heard of young ladies who keep a proposal 
 list, though never, I think, of a man who keeps a 
 refusal list. I wish I had kept one. I wish I had 
 counted how many shots are aimed at that pigeon of 
 one's dreams, a perfect performance, to bring down in 
 the end perhaps one wretched, mangy crow of a 
 scramble-through ! It is for my own satisfaction that 
 I wish such a record existed, for whether its perusal 
 would depress or encourage other sportsmen is a matter 
 hard to decide. 
 
 As regards the Mass, however, one refusal is 
 indelibly engraved in my mind, because of a scene 
 connected with it a scene such as can only happen in 
 a country full of originals like England. 
 
 The protagonists were a chorus conductor and his 
 wife, whom I will call Mr. and Mrs. James Harvey. 
 
 93
 
 94 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 Mr. Harvey was a capital musician, a wag, no fool, 
 and one whose histrionic talent would surely have made 
 the success of any private theatricals. I may add that 
 though a devoted husband he practised an elegant and 
 (I believe) blameless gallantry towards the other sex. 
 Mrs. Harvey, though by no means in her first youth, 
 still considered herself a charmeuse in the warm, lavish 
 tea-gown style, and was not averse to letting the world 
 know that in spite of James's ingratiating manners with 
 the ladies he was fast in the thrall of her dangerous 
 fascinations. In short she was one of those women 
 my friend Mrs. Robert Crawshay once described as 
 4 easy to live with but difficult to reside with ! ' 
 
 My appointment was at 9.15 a.m., and for an hour 
 the house rocked and rang, as houses do when com- 
 posers are playing their own works, after which James 
 and I sat together for a while discussing possibilities. 
 
 Suddenly the door burst open and Mrs. Harvey 
 appeared, clad in a flowing purple garment mitigated 
 with white chijfon and lace that must have hampered 
 her morning excursions in the basement. For the 
 Harveys lived in a small way, and I had heard that 
 this fatal Helen was a first-rate housekeeper. 
 
 Pausing in admirable confusion on the threshold, 
 she remarked with rallying coyness : 
 
 ' Ow, James ! . . . I didn't know you were still 
 closeted with Miss Sm^'the ! ' (She pronounced the 
 name to rhyme with scythe.) 
 
 James got up and struck an attitude. 
 
 ' And pray, my dear,' he asked dramatically, ,in 
 accents of outraged tenderness, ' is that any reason 
 why I should be defrauded of my morning salute ? ' 
 
 Mrs. Harvey advanced reluctantly a picture of 
 womanly modesty overborne by the passion of the 
 male and delicately presented her right ear. There- 
 upon James thundered :
 
 TWO GLIMPSES OF QUEEN VICTORIA 95 
 
 1 Your LIPS, madam, if you please ! ' and with a 
 side-glance in my direction, as much as to say, ' It has 
 to be ! ' she yielded her ample lips, red lip-salve and 
 all, to her slave. 
 
 Unfortunately I never met the Harveys again, for, 
 as I have indicated, my Mass was not accepted by the 
 Committee of that Choral Society, though I think 
 James really wanted to produce it. 
 
 In * Impressions that Remained,' speaking of our 
 kind friend and neighbour the Empress Eugenie, I 
 mentioned that she had always been interested in the 
 efforts of women to overcome sex-prejudice, and had 
 taken action during the Second Empire towards that 
 end. It was about a year after my career as public 
 musician began that I came to know her well, and 
 from the very first she followed my proceedings with 
 the greatest sympathy. The fate of the Mass interested 
 her particularly, because most of it had been written 
 while I was staying with her at Cap Martin ; and being 
 wholly unmusical herself a great asset in a musical 
 patron she readily accepted the composer's estimate 
 of its worth ! I do not think that she was less delighted 
 than I myself when, in the autumn of 189 1, Mr. Barnby 
 (later Sir Joseph), Director of the Royal Choral Society, 
 provisionally accepted the Mass for production at the 
 Albert Hall. By ' provisionally ' I mean that I could 
 not get him to fix a date, but the general idea was that 
 the performance would be in the second half of the 
 ensuing season, that is about March, 1892. 
 
 Mr. Barnby's reluctance to name the day rather 
 troubled me, and the Empress thought it would help 
 matters if she commissioned me to inform him that she 
 herself might possibly be present a wonderful con- 
 cession to friendship, for since 1870 she had refused 
 to appear officially in any public place.
 
 96 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 This proposal of hers, which I should never have 
 dared to suggest, showed how thoroughly she had 
 grasped the musical situation in England, where, even 
 before the war denuded the country of concert-going 
 Germans, good music does not pay. That being so, 
 composers who have money fight their way with it, 
 and those who have not try to get up a little boom 
 which comes to the same thing. If you cannot afford 
 to distribute dozens of tickets among friends and 
 supporters, the public must be induced to buy ; and 
 Sir Thomas Beecham once said that the safest plan 
 would be to introduce an elephant that can stand on its 
 trunk, or some such spot of relief, into every concert 
 programme. 
 
 In this spirit, then, did the Empress tackle my 
 problem. Further, learning that the Duke of Edin- 
 burgh was President of the Royal Choral Society, she 
 thought there could be no harm in manifesting her 
 sympathy for me under the eyes of the Royal Family. 
 An excellent opportunity of doing so lay to hand ; it 
 had been for many years the Queen's habit to put one 
 of her Scotch houses at the Empress's disposal during 
 the autumn months, and thus it came to pass that in 
 October I was invited to join her at Birkhall. 
 
 Birkhall was a laird's house, not big, but comfort- 
 able, about eight miles from Balmoral and in the midst 
 of most beautiful scenery. My first amazed impres- 
 sion had nothing to do with the landscape, however, 
 but with the Empress herself. O horror ! She, who 
 loathed caps and never wore them, now appeared , at 
 the front door with a little erection of black lace on 
 her small, beautifully-poised head ! What did this 
 portend ? 
 
 It portended that the Queen did not approve of 
 capless old ladies, and this compromise was the result. 
 I was indignant at such pusillanimity, but she only
 
 TWO GLIMPSES OF QUEEN VICTORIA 97 
 
 laughed and said what on earth did it signify ? ' Si 
 cela fait plaisir a votre Reine ! ' 
 
 The day after my arrival the Duke and Duchess of 
 Connaught and Prince Henry of Battenberg came over 
 to see her, and as the Duchess and the Prince were 
 both fond of music I was asked to sing. Following on 
 that, the Queen sent a message to say that when she 
 came to pay her own visit next day I was to be 
 presented. 
 
 Mary Crawshay, whose jokes I am never weary of 
 repeating, once said to an old lady from South Africa 
 who had remarked that you mustn't play games with 
 the English climate : ' No ; or, at least, only indoor 
 games ! ' But the Queen's life was one long outdoor 
 game with the Scotch climate a still more uncertain 
 playfellow, and next day a storm was raging that, 
 whatever one may say about the fleeting character of 
 Scotch storms, began at breakfast and lasted till night- 
 fall. I could never have believed that any old lady 
 would venture out in such weather, but I was informed, 
 and it proved to be true, that the Queen would infallibly 
 turn up, and probably in an open carriage ; also that 
 her ladies would wear the minimum of wraps, as the 
 Queen herself never caught cold and had a great 
 objection to being crowded out by rugs and furs. 
 
 Some of her ladies were old and frail, but the 
 rigours of a Scotch ' waiting,' including a north-east 
 wind with rain, were evidently nullified by the glow of 
 loyalty within their bosoms. On the other hand, dread 
 of displeasing ' the dear Queen,' as she was always 
 called (and rightly for, if dreaded, she was greatly 
 beloved), may have had something to do with it. Terror 
 often acts as a tonic, and the first rule in the Primer 
 for Courtiers a fine rule that fashions heroes and 
 heroines is : ' Never, never be ill.' Anyhow none of 
 her ladies seems to have died of pneumonia, as might have
 
 98 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 been expected, after these terrific drives that sometimes 
 lasted hours and hours. 
 
 The Queen was expected at three o'clock, but long 
 before that time the Empress was scouting in passages 
 and peering into the storm-tossed garden to make sure 
 that the coast was clear, for the Queen had the greatest 
 horror of coming across stray people. Indeed I know 
 of a case where an unlucky Maid of Honour, surprised 
 in the corridor of Windsor Castle by the unexpected 
 appearance of Her Majesty in the far distance, remained 
 concealed and trembling behind a curtain for half an 
 hour, while the Empress of India was supervising the 
 placing of tributes from an Indian Prince. And when, 
 on the stroke of three, the Royal carriage arrived at 
 Birkhall, but for the Empress, Madame Arcos, and the 
 footmen it might have been a deserted house. 
 
 The Empress and Madame Arcos received the 
 Queen and Princess Christian at the front door, and 
 the red carpet, unrolled in a flash, was sopping wet 
 before the august visitors had time to set foot on 
 it. The three Royal Ladies then disappeared into 
 the drawing-room, while Madame Arcos and Lady 
 Ampthill, who was in waiting on the Queen, came 
 into the room where I in another sense was also in 
 waiting. Presently the Empress herself looked in, 
 beckoned to me, I followed . . . and lo ! I was in the 
 Presence. 
 
 Seated on one of the ordinary cane-chairs, no doubt 
 because easier to get up from, was a wee little old lady 
 with exactly the face of the photographs, though paler 
 than one expected, on her head a close white straw hat, 
 tied under her chin with a black ribbon (the only 
 possible plan, given the storm and an open barouche). 
 It is a well-known fact that in spite of a physique that 
 did not lend itself to effects of majesty the personality 
 of the Queen was dignified and imposing to the last
 
 TWO GLIMPSES OF QUEEN VICTORIA 99 
 
 degree. So awe-inspiring was the first impression that 
 I should have been terrified but for the wonderful, blue, 
 child-like eyes, and the sweetest, most entrancing smile 
 I have ever seen on human face. 
 
 The Empress had told me that though the Queen 
 had chronic sciatica and walked with a stick she never 
 permitted anyone to help her out of her chair, even 
 when that chair had no arms. Much to my astonish- 
 ment she now got up to shake hands with me, lifting 
 herself with a sort of one, two, three, and away move- 
 ment, which it took all one's strength of character not 
 to assist with a hand under her elbow. 
 
 I cannot remember what passed at that interview 
 except that she was markedly kind, and that Princess 
 Christian, who, as I was to find out later, always knew 
 what the helpful thing to say was and said it, at once 
 remarked that she had heard a great deal about me 
 from the Bishop of Rochester and his wife, the point 
 being that the Bishop (who is now Archbishop of 
 Canterbury) had been Dean of Windsor, and besides 
 being the Queen's Private Chaplain was one of her 
 most valued friends and advisers. A further passport 
 to favour was the fact that I could claim to be connected 
 with him, his brother having married my eldest sister. 
 
 It was not the Queen's way, and not according to 
 the tradition she had been brought up in, to put you 
 at your ease, as some Sovereigns do and bring about 
 anything distantly approaching conversation. But the 
 Empress, who was the most socially competent of 
 beings, talked away cheerfully in her own easy, 
 delightful fashion, all in adopting a manner I had 
 hitherto seen no trace of and which was reserved 
 exclusively for the Queen something of the manner 
 of an unembarrassed but attentive child talking to its 
 grandmother. 
 
 Presently I was asked to sing, and sang several
 
 ioo STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 German songs which seemed to please my audience so 
 highly that the Empress was emboldened to say : * You 
 ought to hear her sing her Mass ! ' Whereupon I 
 performed the Benedictus and the Sanctus after the 
 manner of composers, which means singing the chorus 
 as well as the solo parts, and trumpeting forth orchestral 
 effects as best you can a noisy proceeding in a small 
 room. I had warned the Empress that if I did it at 
 all it would be done in that fashion, and being a most 
 courageous woman she took the responsibility with 
 no dire results, as subsequent events were to prove. 
 Indeed, she remarked afterwards that beyond doubt the 
 Queen was delighted with this novel experience, not 
 merely being polite. 
 
 The Queen then expressed a hope that the Empress 
 would bring me to Balmoral, after which I was dis- 
 missed and joined the official ladies in the other room. 
 There we had tea, and I listened for the first time, in 
 high edification, to the delicate and guarded style of 
 intercourse that appears to be the right thing between 
 such interlocutors. The storm, which had somewhat 
 abated in honour of the Queen's arrival, was now 
 raging more wildly than ever, the rain descending like 
 one continuous waterfall. It was hardly possible to 
 hear oneself speak, but I managed to ask Lady Ampthill 
 if the Queen would have the carriage shut going home, 
 and to catch her serene reply : ' O dear no, I think 
 not.' Watching their departure from behind a curtain 
 a little later on, I saw that this incredible prediction 
 was fulfilled, and my ideas on the subject of what 
 ' Queen's weather ' really amounts to were modified for 
 evermore. 
 
 The Empress told us, after she was gone, that 
 from first to last the Queen made not the slightest 
 comment on the tempest, nor any move to depart till 
 a gilly came banging at the drawing-room door, and
 
 TWO GLIMPSES OF QUEEN VICTORIA 101 
 
 said : ' Your Majesty must go the horses can't stand 
 this ' the sort of thing not one of her children would 
 have dared to say, unless, perhaps, the Empress 
 Frederick. She also told us that after I had left the 
 room the Queen remarked : ' I hear she is going to 
 turn Roman Catholic,' to which she had replied : 
 
 ' I don't think that is at all likely.' 
 
 Here I broke in, being at that time much preoccu- 
 pied with religious questions, and exclaimed that she 
 might surely have added : ' On the contrary, she is an 
 enthusiastic Anglican.' But the Empress said the 
 Queen did not go into these matters as closely as all 
 that, and, knowing in what high favour the Bishop of 
 Rochester stood, she had told her my opinions ' etaient 
 identiques avec les siennes ' ! After which I wrote to 
 Edith Davidson that I trusted the Bishop would from 
 henceforth hold himself responsible for my views, no 
 matter on what subject. 
 
 In due time came the promised command, and one 
 evening I found myself struggling to achieve as pre- 
 sentable a toilette as possible, having been bidden, 
 with the Empress, to dine at Balmoral. At the last 
 moment she herself put a few finishing touches, pro- 
 ducing and arranging upon my head a grand jet serpent 
 and disposing other jetty splendours about my person, 
 for the Court was (as usual) in mourning. 
 
 I, of course, dined with the Household such an 
 everyday affair to hundreds of people that they would 
 hardly deem it worth talking about. But to me it 
 was a new, interesting, and rather alarming experience ; 
 nor has custom staled the impression, for it remained 
 solitary of its kind. 
 
 To begin with, the dinner service impressed me. 
 My own dog, Marco, ate off a tin platter, and often, 
 when cutting away gristle or severing bones for him, 
 I had shuddered at the contact of steel and metal. But
 
 102 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 the first time your own knife and fork are privileged 
 to scratch about on gold and silver plate, unpleasant as 
 it is you are impressed. I was impressed, too, by the 
 air of distinguished boredom, combined with a well- 
 bred but unmistakable consciousness of occupying an 
 enviable position, that, as I was to find out in after 
 years, people about a Court invariably distil. And, 
 again, as at Birkhall, the Agag-like gait of the conver- 
 sation was extremely impressive. I cannot claim to be 
 constitutionally shy, which may be a sign of conceit, 
 and may, on the other hand, indicate that the drama 
 itself, and not your own part in it, absorbs most of 
 your attention ; but surely, I said to myself, the genius 
 of this place must affect even the most brazen ! With 
 what invisible pitfalls is one surrounded, how terrible 
 must be the penalties incurred by one false step, since 
 all are keyed up, as a matter of habit, to this extra- 
 ordinarily high pitch ! No ups and downs of mood 
 here, no enthusiasm, no individual opinions, and for 
 Heaven's sake no originality ! If the writing on the 
 wall were to reveal itself (for there is writing on every 
 wall could one but detect it) you would read these 
 words : ' Corners rounded off here while you Wait.' 
 
 Arthur Ponsonby, who had formerly been a Queen's 
 Page, once told me that when studying modern lan- 
 guages for the Foreign Office he came home from 
 Germany one Christmas to find himself invited to dine 
 with the Household. And when dinner was over he 
 only stopped himself just in time from flapping his 
 table-napkin free from crumbs and folding it up, as 
 was the custom in the North German professorial 
 family he had been living with for months ! It was a 
 narrow escape, and no wonder his heart nearly stopped 
 beating ! 
 
 All the same, dinner was very pleasant. I had met 
 one or two of the Equerries and Maids of Honour at
 
 TWO GLIMPSES OF QUEEN VICTORIA 103 
 
 the Deanery, and as Tosti, the song-writer, whom I 
 liked extremely, sat on one side of me, I was quite 
 sorry when the doors were flung open by scarlet-liveried 
 footmen, signal that the Queen was ready for our 
 presence. 
 
 I must now nerve myself to recount the story of 
 one of the most appalling blunders I ever committed 
 in my life ; even to-day, though I can laugh about it, 
 the thought of it gives me a slight sinking ! At the 
 moment, though conscious of having sinned against 
 ritual, I did not realise the full enormity of my crime 
 you must have been bred to Courts to do that. And 
 though, as time went on, I grasped it exhaustively, 
 somehow or other I shrank from cross-questioning the 
 Empress on the subject. For one thing, so great was 
 her kindness that she would have attenuated my faux 
 pas \ for another, knowing what her agony must have 
 been as she watched her young friend's proceedings, I 
 fancied she would prefer not to live through it all again ! 
 Finally, truth to tell, the whole thing was a humiliation 
 to me to think of ! Despicable, no doubt, to take it as 
 hard as all that, but so it was. 
 
 Why no one prepared me for the situation I was 
 about to become part of, why no one gave me a hint 
 how to comport myself in it, I cannot imagine. The 
 Empress was always thinking out and guarding against 
 eventualities in what seemed to me an almost feverish 
 fashion, yet this time she said not a word, and I can 
 only suppose she felt certain that my darkness would 
 be enlightened by Madame Arcos or one of the Maids 
 of Honour. But it was not, and when we left the 
 dinner-table, being the only guest of my sex present, I 
 gaily headed the procession drawing-roomwards, my 
 mind innocently set on making myself agreeable when 
 I should get there.
 
 104 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 It was a large room with deep bay-windows, and 
 the first thing I noticed was that the sofas and chairs 
 were tightly upholstered in the gay Stuart tartan a 
 proof that to be Queen of Scotland involves painful 
 aesthetic concessions. 
 
 On a large hearthrug tartan, too, I think in front 
 of the grate, in which I rather fancy a few logs burned 
 (though given Her Majesty's hardy habits it seems 
 improbable), stood the Queen, conversing with the 
 Empress in a lively manner that contrasted with the 
 somewhat halting intercourse at Birkhall. Evidently, I 
 said to myself, the animating effects of a good dinner 
 may be counted on even at the less frivolous European 
 Courts. 
 
 Leading up to the two august ladies was an avenue 
 composed of Royal personages ranged, as I afterwards 
 found out, in order of precedence, the highest in rank 
 being closest to the hearthrug which avenue, broaden- 
 ing towards its base, gradually became mere ladies and 
 gentlemen of the Court, and finally petered out in a 
 group of Maids of Honour huddled ingloriously in the 
 bay-window. 
 
 What I ought to have done, I believe, was to stand 
 rigid and silent among these last, try discreetly to 
 catch the eye of the Queen and the Princesses, curtsey 
 profoundly when successful, and await events. Will it 
 be believed that what I did do was to advance uncon- 
 cernedly up the avenue, with a polite intention to say 
 1 How do you do ' to the Queen ? 
 
 If a young dog strays up the aisle during church 
 no one says anything, no one does anything, but, none 
 the less, he soon becomes aware that something is wrong. 
 Even so, as the distance between myself and the hearth- 
 rug diminished, did I become aware that something 
 was very wrong indeed ; my cheerful confidence waned 
 and my step faltered. I saw the Queen slightly turn
 
 TWO GLIMPSES OF QUEEN VICTORIA 105 
 
 her head, look at me for a second as if I were some 
 strange insect, and resume her conversation with the 
 Empress. If I had been a Brobdingnagian spider as 
 big as a Newfoundland she would not have acted 
 differently. Someone would remove the creature ; that 
 was enough. I did not catch the Empress's eye, but 
 I now know that since she could not shriek : ' Mon 
 Dieu, n'avancez pas ! ' she must have wished the earth 
 would open and swallow her up. At this moment 
 dear, human Princess Christian, who had come more 
 in contact with low life than the Queen, stepped forward 
 and shook hands with me and somehow or other, I 
 know not how, I backed away into the obscurity from 
 which I should never have emerged. 
 
 Afterwards I heard all about that Hearthrug, and 
 could gauge the dimensions of my audacity. It was as 
 sacred a carpet as exists outside Mohammedanism, and 
 the distance from it at which people were permitted to 
 station themselves if invited to come near it at all 
 was the measure of their rank and importance. Only 
 Crowned Heads trod it as a right, or occasionally, as 
 supreme honour, some very favourite Minister, like 
 Lord Beaconsfield. If such as I had set foot upon it, 
 as, but for the blessed intervention of Princess Christian, 
 I might have done . . . but, no ! A miracle would 
 have been wrought, a thunderbolt would have fallen 
 upon a tartan sofa and created a diversion, something 
 anything would have happened rather than such sacrilege 
 could have been permitted ! 
 
 When the legitimate moment came for my presence 
 being recognised by the Queen I cannot recall how it 
 was accomplished, whether she went the round of the 
 company, or whether I was summoned to her chair. 
 But whichever it was, my scandalous entry was evidently
 
 106 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 condoned, for nothing could be more gracious than her 
 manner. And presently, having received the command 
 to ' let us hear some more of your Mass,' I was seated 
 at a huge, yawning grand piano, with the Queen and 
 the Empress right and left, in closest proximity. I ven- 
 tured to ask whether the music was to be rendered 
 as at Birkhall a proceeding which seemed unthinkable 
 in these surroundings but I was assured that exactly that 
 rendering was ' so very interesting,' and would be welcome. 
 
 I looked round the frozen ranks of impending 
 listeners, each one of them exhaling decorum and self- 
 restraint unutterable. A vault beneath a church would 
 have been a more kindling mise en scene for an inspira- 
 tional effort on a large scale. Not because of the 
 Royalties, who one and all showed genuine and kindly 
 interest, but because of their inevitable adjunct, ' the 
 Court ' ! Straight in the line of vision, glued against 
 a distant wall, stood Lord Cross, the Minister in Atten- 
 dance, looking stardingly like his caricature in Punchy 
 1 Very Cross.' I afterwards learned that I had not a 
 more appreciative listener in the room, but how could 
 one guess that ? . . . Well, there was nothing for it 
 but to dismiss this Madame Tussaud-like company 
 from my mind and concentrate upon the Mass. 
 
 Strange to relate, once I got under way there was 
 something inspiring in the very incongruity of the 
 whole thing, the desperateness of such a venture ! 
 Never did I get through one of these performances 
 better or enjoy doing it more. I cannot remember 
 what numbers I chose, but the Sanctus must have been 
 one of them, for in it is a D trumpet which I remember 
 rang out astonishingly in that superbly acoustic drawing- 
 room. I dared not let my eyes wander in the direction 
 of the listeners while the high D was being held, lest 
 what I might see should wreck everything. But I need 
 not have been afraid, as I was to learn presently.
 
 TWO GLIMPSES OF QUEEN VICTORIA 107 
 
 And now, emboldened by the sonority of the place, 
 I did the Gloria the most tempestuous and, I thought, 
 the best number of all. At a certain drum effect a 
 foot, even, came into play, and I fancy that as regards 
 volume of sound at least, the presence of a real chorus 
 and orchestra was scarcely missed ! This time, fortified 
 by the simplicity and genuineness of the Sovereign's 
 appreciation, I thought I would risk a glance at the 
 faces of her terrifying Court. What matter if astonish- 
 ment and secret scandalisation be there depicted ? I was 
 well down in the saddle now, not easily to be thrown ! 
 
 I glanced. They were stupendous. No surprise, 
 no emotion of any kind ! a spectacle so exciting, because 
 so fantastic, that the result was a finale to that Gloria 
 such as I had never before succeeded in wresting out ! 
 
 Once more the Queen seemed really delighted 
 whether for the Empress's sake or because she liked 
 it, who shall say ? Anyhow, the Hereditary Grand 
 Duke of Hesse who was a cultivated musician seemed 
 really to understand what he had been listening to, and 
 so did Princess Christian, who was constantly in touch 
 with serious music and musicians. And I could see 
 that the beloved Empress, in spite of the incident in 
 the Royal Avenue, did not repent her of the role she 
 had undertaken according to her (for I have said she 
 accepted the composer's view of the Mass) the role of 
 a foreigner who introduces a gifted Englishwoman to 
 the Queen of England ! 
 
 Then Tosti, accompanying himself, sang some 
 favourite songs of his own composition with exquisite 
 blending of voice, phrasing, and accompaniment. It 
 was small art, but real art. Most of the people to 
 whom I expressed an ecstasy that even the prevailing 
 discretion could not damp, replied instantaneously, as 
 if uttering one of the responses in church : ' Yes, but
 
 108 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 what a pity his voice is so small ! ' And I perceived 
 that this was the accepted formula for Tosti. 
 
 When the Queen said ' Good night ' to me she added 
 a hope ' that we shall see you at Windsor,' and then 
 she and her Imperial guest moved towards a special 
 Royal exit ; for though the Empress, the Marquis of 
 Bassano (who was in attendance on her), Madame 
 Arcos, and I were all driving home in the same carriage, 
 it would never do for us three to go out by the same 
 door as a Crowned Head. 
 
 This was lucky, for I now had the chance of wit- 
 nessing a wonderful bit of ritual. Arrived on the 
 threshold, the while we mortals stood rigid, the Queen 
 motioned the Empress to pass before her ; this the 
 Empress gracefully declined to do. They then curtsied 
 low to each other. The movement of the Queen, 
 crippled though she was, was amazingly easy and 
 dignified ; but the Empress, who was then sixty-seven, 
 made such an exquisite sweep down to the floor and up 
 again, all in one gesture, that I can only liken it to a 
 flower bent and released by the wind. They then 
 passed together out of the door, practically shoulder to 
 shoulder ; but I believe, though far be it from my 
 ignorance to dogmatise, that on such occasions the 
 visiting Sovereign is permitted to permit the home 
 Sovereign to lag about one inch behind. 
 
 Thinking of that superb reverence of the Empress's 
 which I am everlastingly glad to have seen, I have 
 reflected that every bone in her body must have been 
 placed true in its socket to the millionth part of an inch ; 
 that her proportions must have been perfect, the fibre 
 of her muscles, the texture of her skin of the most 
 suberb quality, and that this is probably what the word 
 ' beauty ' means. Otherwise, so unbroken, so undulat- 
 ing was the motion, that one could only explain it by 
 what an old Irish servant remarked to a conspicuously
 
 TWO GLIMPSES OF QUEEN VICTORIA 109 
 
 active friend of mine, temporarily crippled with sciatica : 
 
 1 To think of you like this, you that goes flourishing 
 
 about as if you hadn't a bone in your body ! ' 
 
 I may add that the Empress was not required to 
 
 drain the cup of humiliation to the dregs that night, 
 
 inasmuch as the black jet serpent did not come down 
 
 in coils over my face during the Gloria as might have 
 
 been expected, but not till we were safe in the carriage 
 
 and half-way home. 
 
 
 
 To complete the story of the Mass, I must first say 
 that the Empress's kindness in bringing about that 
 Balmoral performance was of the greatest possible use. 
 A year later (Christmas, 1892) it was still as far off 
 materialising on a Royal Choral Society programme as 
 ever. But by that time my lifelong friendship with 
 Lady Ponsonby, wife of Sir Henry Ponsonby, the 
 Queen's Private Secretary, had just begun, and one 
 day, at her instigation, Sir Henry told the Duke of 
 Edinburgh, whom I did not know, how matters stood. 
 
 The Duke had heard all about the Mass, thanks to 
 the Empress, and the result was that it was at once 
 put down for performance. And not only did the 
 Empress definitely undertake to be present, but Princess 
 Christian and Princess Henry of Battenberg, who was 
 ill when I had been in Scotland, did the same. And 
 whereas singers with reputations are not anxious, as a 
 rule, to take part in novelties by practically unknown 
 composers not, at least, unless they are heavily sub- 
 sidised by the composer to do so it now became 
 emphatically worth while to sing in the Mass. Thus 
 I was able to command the services of admirable soloists. 
 
 The production, which took place in March, 1893, 
 was splendid, the public enthusiastic, the Press the 
 same . . . but the Mass was never performed again. 
 
 This is not surprising, for a huge and complicated
 
 no STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 choral work is not a convenient item in a concert 
 season, even though it be one of the great classical 
 Masses that are certain draws. If I had chosen an Old 
 Testament subject say Methuselah, or perhaps Joash 
 King of Judah, contemporary of Jehoash, son of Jehoahaz 
 King of Israel (2 Kings, xiii. 10) one of the Three 
 Choirs Festivals might have jumped at it. But, strange 
 to say, the everlasting beauty of the Mass appealed to 
 me more strongly, and I have but reaped the reward 
 of my perversity. 
 
 Still, it is a pity, for, judging by the pianoforte 
 score, which Messrs. Novello rashly published, and 
 which I have dragged forth and examined in honour of 
 these pages of reminiscence, I see that, be the worth 
 of my music what it may, I shall never do anything 
 better ! But if, even after one's own death, anyone 
 thinks it worth producing, it will not have been written 
 in vain. 
 
 There is one thing more I should like to say for the 
 comfort of a certain breed of young composers, those 
 who only see where they have failed. It is a difficult 
 experience to recount, yet it ought to be possible to 
 put it decently, to convey exactly what I wish to convey 
 no more and no less. 
 
 The point I want to bring out and should like to 
 insist on beforehand, is that such composers, besides 
 writhing under a sense of their own ineptitude, will at all 
 times be prone to over-estimate and listen with too indul- 
 gent an ear to the efforts of others. But at that moment 
 of special anguish when a public performance of their 
 own work is queering the pitch, one may safely say that 
 the nerves of these unfortunates will be too unhinged 
 to register an approximately true judgment as to any 
 item on the programme ! It is only thus that I can 
 explain an incident from which, nevertheless, I confess
 
 TWO GLIMPSES OF QUEEN VICTORIA in 
 
 to have drawn consolation more than once in hours of 
 gloom. 
 
 I have not examined the score of that Mass, which 
 is where I cannot get at it easily, for fifteen years, and 
 I am sure I should now consider it badly orchestrated. 
 Yet I am also sure that for all its faults of inexperience 
 it would not sound ugly on the whole. A painter may 
 paint a picture which is not hideous in colour as a whole, 
 but he knows what he meant to do with this bit of sky, 
 with that bit of foreground ; and to him it appears 
 irredeemably bad as to colour. 
 
 So I, with my Mass, was in despair at the first 
 orchestral rehearsal. It sounded horrible, all wrong, 
 and when I went away I asked myself how Barn by could 
 have accepted such a vile score. 
 
 Next day, at the second rehearsal, my work was to 
 come on at 1 1.30 a.m., and shortly after eleven, as I was 
 climbing the interminable stairs and twisting about in 
 the intricate corridors that lead to the Great Hall, sounds 
 of music came floating towards me from afar. In sick 
 misery I said to myself: 'That's how I should like my 
 music to sound ! ' 
 
 When I got nearer I seemed to know that phrase. 
 What was it ? . . . It was my own Mass. 
 
 Drishane. October 1920.
 
 MOUNT MUSIC' 1 
 
 Fortunately for our mental health, subjects such as 
 the Income Tax, Justice as Administered, Arithmetic 
 in the Telephone Office, the Origin of Evil, and kindred 
 problems, are not always in the forefront of our minds. 
 Nevertheless at odd times we have thought about 
 Ireland have heard and read about Ireland. And the 
 harder we have tried to understand how things have 
 come to this pass, the greater our bewilderment. 
 
 The latest attempt at a Home Rule Bill is now on 
 us, the country is under martial law, and it is difficult 
 to think of anything else. This, I imagine, is why I 
 have been asked to write about a work that, more than 
 any I know, gives one the sensation of a veil having 
 been lifted. No meretricious lighting of the scene 
 thus revealed no hardening or softening of contours. 
 1 This is Ireland as she really is,' one says to oneself. 
 
 There is one inevitable difficulty connected with the 
 reviewing of a new book by E. GE. Somerville and 
 Martin Ross, namely, that two other works of theirs, 
 1 The R.M.' and ' The Real Charlotte,' spring up in 
 one's mind and range themselves on either side of the 
 newcomer. This being so it is as well to accept the 
 challenge at once, and say that if less brimming with 
 youthful lightheartedness, and, consequently, less amus- 
 ing than the first, and if, on the other hand, more 
 normal as to the subject matter, and, therefore, less 
 1 Mount Music, by E. CE. Somerville and Martin Ross. (Longmans.)
 
 'MOUNT MUSIC 1*3 
 
 startling and terrific than the second, Mount Music is 
 something the others are not. Of the same kinship, in 
 that it is original, entertaining from start to finish, 
 intersected with thrilling hunts, full of fun and admir- 
 able character-drawing, fashioned with the old fastidious 
 workmanship, nevertheless a new spirit has brooded 
 over this latest book of theirs. Not new really, for it 
 is in all their work. But this time it has taken charge, 
 and may, perhaps, be defined as a spirit of white 
 integrity, clothed in tenderness, wisdom, and humour, 
 but above all in tenderness. This is the record of eyes 
 incapable of either blurred or biassed vision ; the 
 sympathy is often veiled in fun, sometimes even in 
 irony, but a kind heart that will not be denied has the 
 last word. Yet never at the expense of truth ; and as 
 the story moves along in the earliest few chapters 
 perhaps at too leisurely a pace the mind is gradually 
 possessed by the conviction that things are, indeed, as 
 here portrayed, that this is the truth. And for this 
 reason we believe that Mount Music , mere novel though 
 it be, will one day find itself taking rank, all unawares, 
 as an historical document. 
 
 It is difficult to explain what exactly is implied by 
 ' white integrity,' though easy to say what it excludes. 
 There are no high lights here, no underlinings, no 
 pilings-on of the agony. If, as you read, the heart is 
 alternately rent and soothed, it is because the hand of 
 a great artist has touched the very spring of truth ; not 
 with a view to getting an effect, but much as life itself 
 lays a finger on the deep, hidden nerve of joy, or of 
 passion, or of pain. To give a concrete example of 
 this sort of integrity the vulgar people in the book 
 are undeniably vulgar, but they are also lovable. We 
 see them as they saw each other, not merely as they 
 appear to the fastidious and better-bred critic. Mrs. 
 Mangan, ' as kindly, lazy, and handsome a creature as
 
 ti4 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 ever lived down spiteful gossip by good nature ' ; her 
 husband, the Big Doctor, one of the great figures and 
 great successes of the story, who, in spite of all and 
 there was a good deal considers himself ' not too bad 
 a fellow altogether ' ; these, and even less promising 
 candidates for our sympathy, manage somehow or other 
 to capture it, or at least to escape ruthless condemnation. 
 It is an amusing symptom, by the by, of the authors' 
 own indifference to ill-natured suggestion, that though, 
 as we see, Mrs. Mangan is primarily introduced on a 
 wave of ' spiteful gossip,' not till some pages later do 
 they condescend to inform us that this gossip was, as a 
 matter of fact, without justification ! 
 
 Again, though the point of the book (if it be not 
 unfair to drag ethics into a work of art) is to exhibit 
 the workings of what the authors call ' the Spirit of the 
 Nation ' in other words, the religious dissension char- 
 acteristic of the Island of Saints neither the Romish 
 priests nor the Protestant clergy can complain of being 
 pilloried in the interests of the other. On the whole, 
 given the sportsmanlike instincts of these writers, one 
 might gather, even if one did not know it to be the 
 case, that they are members of the Church of Ireland. 
 For much as we may regret the use to which these 
 qualities are put, the priests at least show some degree 
 of initiative and intelligence, whereas the others . . . but 
 let us draw a veil over the ineptitudes of the Protestant 
 shepherds ! 
 
 Perhaps the greatest triumph of the book is the 
 love-story of Christian one of those rare spirits that 
 kindly Nature will sometimes enshrine in a shape as 
 utterly human as it is adorable and Larry, a young 
 gentleman of artistic proclivities who, one can but 
 admit, is on a lower plane. For which reason for a 
 brief moment a fear besets us lest it should be another 
 case of Dorothea and the sadly inadequate Will
 
 'MOUNT MUSIC' 115 
 
 Ladislaw. But Mrs. Twomey an ancient retainer, 
 drawn with the unfailing skill of these artists in the 
 portraiture of the Irish peasant shrewd little Mrs. 
 Twomey, in whose judgment we have complete con- 
 fidence, has described Larry quite early in the story as 
 ' a little fella that is in tune with all the world.' And 
 when, almost as last word in the book, she further 
 remarks that Christian ' was fond of him always,' and 
 adds : ' And why wouldn't she be fond of him ? Sure 
 the dog'd be fond of him ! ' (a high encomium from one 
 who, as we are told, ' thought badly of dogs ') readers 
 will find that they have long since come to some such 
 conclusion themselves. It is useless in this case to 
 weigh respective moral specific gravities ; Christian loved 
 him, and, given the depth, the tenderness, the mysterious 
 intuition, the matchless altitude of her soul, Larry will 
 have been drawn up to her level, or somewhere near it. 
 For there are people to love whom is a sanctification ; 
 and Christian, proud, high-spirited, immutably faithful, 
 is one of these. 
 
 Even as the traveller demands of Baedeker the 
 asterisk that shall save him from forlorn wanderings 
 under a starless heaven, so readers look to a reviewer 
 for samples of an author's skill. Happy phrases may 
 be lit on anywhere in Mount Music : ' the laugh that is 
 the flower of the root of scorn,' ' the large and sliding 
 brightness of the river ' ; the old cook's description of 
 Christian, ' I wouldn't doubt that child to be wanting 
 the world in her pocket before it was made ' ; Mrs. 
 Twomey's characterisation of a young dispensary doctor 
 mysteriously lifted to power : ' a low, hungry little fella 
 that'd thravel the counthry for the sake of a ha'penny ' 
 (observe the Irish peasant's contempt for poverty) ; or 
 the authors' remark concerning the stricken Christian, 
 bereft, shipwrecked in a desolate, storm-shaken house, 
 yet unafraid of possible ghostly visitants : ' What
 
 n6 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 spectre from the other world has power to break a 
 heart ? ' One might also star a very perfect differentia- 
 tion which occurs where Dr. Mangan treads heavily on 
 the cat, ' who, her mystic meditations thus painfully 
 interrupted, vanished in darkness, uttering the baleful 
 cry of her kind, that is so inherently opposed to the 
 blended forgiveness and apology that give poignancy 
 to a dog's reproach for a similar injury.' Or, again, as 
 sidelight on political feeling in Ireland, it is instructive 
 to learn that ' Wolfe Tone or Robert Emmet could 
 hardly have abhorred the Government of England more 
 heartily than did these three respectable, law-abiding, 
 unalterably-Unionist ladies.' 
 
 Mount Music is not an easy book to quote from, 
 any more than it would be easy to ' quote ' bits of a 
 sunrise, an incoming tide, or anything else that gradually 
 floods the soul. 
 
 But here is a scene that falls in a time of great 
 sorrow for Christian. On her way to visit a woman 
 who has recently lost her husband, she stops to speak 
 to a labouring man, who says to her : ' Your father 
 knows me well. I remember of one time when the 
 hounds was crossing my land, and I seen yourself and 
 your sisther taking the hur'ls. I cries out to ye " me 
 heart'd rise at ye, me darlins ! " and the Major he 
 laughs.' . . . Presently Christian perceives a girl seated 
 on a heap of rushes ; she is very pale, with a ' fixity of 
 sadness about her,' and does not appear to notice when 
 Christian speaks to her. 
 
 'She's my daughter,' said Peter Callaghan, in' his 
 quiet voice. ' She wouldn't know it was to her you 
 spoke. She's dark, the creature. Blinded she is. 
 She's not long that way.' 
 
 ' How did it happen ? ' said Christian, in a low 
 voice. 
 
 * You could not say,' said Peter Callaghan ; his
 
 'MOUNT MUSIC 117 
 
 dreamy eyes roved again over the broad river ; ' God 
 left a hand on her,' he said. 
 
 Christian went on her way, and the words stayed 
 with her. ' God left a hand on her.' There had been 
 no resentment in the father's voice, only a profound and 
 noble gravity. ' And here am I,' thought Christian, 
 ' angry and whimpering ' 
 
 She then goes on her way to the house of the 
 widow : 
 
 1 In the kitchen a red-haired woman was seated, 
 rocking a wooden cradle with her foot, while she 
 stitched at a child's frock. Hens, with their alert and 
 affected reserve of manner, stepped in and out of the 
 doorway, sometimes slowly, with poised claw, some- 
 times headlong, with greedy speed. Christian watched 
 them and the hound puppies (in whose power of resist- 
 ance to temptation she had no confidence) while she 
 talked to the woman of the house, and heard the story 
 of her trouble. 
 
 Her husband had been ' above in the hospital at 
 Riverstown. He was in it with a fortnight,' said the 
 red-haired woman in the idiom of her district, the 
 noise of the rocker of the cradle on the earthen floor 
 beating through her words ; * he had a bunch, like, 
 undher his chin, and they were to cut it.' She paused, 
 and the wooden bump of the cradle filled the pause. 
 1 When they had it cut, he rose up on the table, and all 
 his blood went from him ; only one little tint, I suppose, 
 stopped in him. Afther a while, the nurse seen the 
 life creeping back in him. " We have him yet," says 
 she to the Docthor. " I thought he was gone from us," 
 says the Docthor.' The voice ceased again. The 
 speaker slashed the frock in her hand at an over-bold 
 hen, which had skipped on to the table beside her and 
 was pecking hard and sharp at some food on a plate. 
 
 ' They sent him home then. We thought he was
 
 n8 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 cured entirely. He pulled out the summer, but he 
 had that langersome way with him through all.' She 
 was silent a moment, then she looked at Christian, 
 with grief, crowned and omnipotent, on her tragic brow. 
 
 ' As long as he was alive, I had courage in spite 
 of all ; but when I thinks now of them days, and the 
 courage I had, it goes through me ! ' Her red-brown 
 eyes stared through the open door at the path twisting 
 across the field to the high road. 
 
 ' Ye'll never see him on that road again, and when 
 I looks up it me heart gets dark. Sure, now when he's 
 gone, I thinks often if he'd be lyin' par'lysed above in 
 the bed, I'd be runnin' about happy ! ' 
 
 When Christian went home Mrs. Barry walked 
 with her to the little green bridge, and stood there 
 until her visitor reached the bend of the river where 
 the path passed from her sight. 
 
 At the turning Christian looked back and saw the 
 lonely figure standing at the bridge-head, and again 
 she said to herself : ' Here am I, angry and whimpering.' 
 
 Perhaps this one scene, simple, poignant, unforget- 
 table and there are many such in Mount Music 
 may suffice to account for and justify the present writer's 
 opinion ; that, with the exception of ' Irish Memories,' 
 which stands in a place of its own, this almost piercingly 
 human book is the most beautiful the authors have 
 given us. 
 
 Jaormina. April 1920.
 
 AN ADVENTURE IN A TRAIN 
 
 It seems to me that anything which purports to be a 
 record of an event that really happened is spoiled by 
 the very slightest admixture of fiction. I believe, too, 
 that if a chronicler have but strength of mind to resist 
 all temptations to improve on his text, integrity will be 
 its own reward. In some occult manner the reader will 
 know he is not being made a fool of. 
 
 The following adventure has not been worked up 
 into literature ; everything took place exactly as will be 
 related. I may add that I am incapable, unfortunately, 
 of retaining with accuracy a single turn in the talk of 
 persons not of my own class whether the dialect of 
 country folk or the latest jargon of the Smart. English 
 as spoken in Shoreditch, the region in which my heroine 
 apparently resided or, as she put it, ' resigned ' is a 
 language wholly unknown to me ; nor have I a notion 
 whether the expressions she used were, or were not, 
 peculiar to herself. 
 
 All I know is that circumstances enabled me to take 
 down, then and there, each golden word that fell from 
 her lips without my indiscretion giving offence ; that 
 for weeks afterwards my notebook, still a cherished 
 possession, lived in my pocket ; and that its contents 
 were inflicted on everyone I met. 
 
 No ; not everyone. Alas ! our generation does not 
 practise what a French writer has called ' la noble 
 franchise ' of the sixteenth century ; and for that reason 
 
 1x9
 
 120 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 at certain points of the dialogue as given here I have 
 had to fall back upon dots and paraphrase. Otherwise 
 not a word has been altered ; and if hyper-delicate 
 readers are shocked at a certain revelling in ailments 
 which is characteristic of the uneducated all the world 
 over, I may perhaps remind them that better-bred 
 people have been known to indulge the same weakness. 
 But ... in these it never makes one laugh. 
 
 One day, in the year 1902, I got into a third-class 
 carriage at Waterloo, my destination being Woking, 
 two stations beyond which is Aldershot. 
 
 The only other occupant of the carriage was an 
 elderly lady, dressed in some black material that looked 
 as if it had originally intended to be satin, but had 
 changed its mind later on. From beneath a close- 
 fitting black bonnet emerged, on either side, two little 
 sausage-rolls of grey hair, and her expression was 
 a mixture of severity, superiority, and self-assurance. 
 I noticed that she had installed herself, with her face 
 to the engine, in the exact centre of the empty row 
 of seats opposite me rather an original and alarming 
 proceeding, I thought. She carried a small patent- 
 leather bag which looked as if it might contain tracts, 
 and it occurred to me that possibly her line was 
 philanthropy. 
 
 Presently one became aware that a touching scene 
 was being enacted on the platform just outside our 
 carriage. A pale, grey-bearded man of the respectable 
 mechanic type, aged about sixty, clad in a seedy grey 
 suit, was submitting without enthusiasm to the fervent 
 hugs and resounding kisses of a middle-aged woman, 
 whose appearance, without amounting to disreputability, 
 suggested that once upon a time she might have been 
 ' gay.' The brown, frizzy front bursting forth from 
 beneath her beflowered head-gear, and the short bugle-
 
 AN ADVENTURE IN A TRAIN 121 
 
 fringed cape with crewel-work pinned in festoons round 
 its neck, carried off and bade defiance to a shabby skirt 
 and a remarkably easy pair of boots. 
 
 The general effect was a severe struggle for life, 
 combined with determination to keep up appearances. 
 One caught many an exhortation to ' keep his heart up ' 
 and ' look after himself,' addressed to the grey-bearded 
 man, the extreme melancholy of whose visage, and the 
 mechanical ' Ay-ay ' with which he punctuated these 
 exhortations, made me think he must surely be a 
 Scotsman. 
 
 Eventually, not without a stumble or two, and with 
 many apologies for treading on my feet, the lady 
 hoisted herself into the carriage and sat down partly 
 beside me, partly upon me all the time firing off 
 volley after volley of affectionate counsel in the direc- 
 tion of the door. They were obviously man and wife. 
 The husband did not strike me as unfriendly ; it was 
 merely that she was so effusive, he so depressed. And 
 as I made myself small in my corner it was impossible 
 to avoid noticing that the new-comer had fortified herself 
 against the pangs of parting by a recent visit to the 
 refreshment-room. 
 
 Finally, but not before we were well under way, 
 she subsided into her seat, and instantly succumbed to 
 drowsiness. 
 
 In those days trains ran into Waterloo on single 
 lines, and there was a platform on either side of us. 
 Just as we were clearing the station the door on the 
 wrong side of the carriage opened, and with cat-like 
 deftness a young man slipped in and gently closed the 
 door behind him a tall young man in a bowler hat 
 and red woollen comforter, whose manner of lowering 
 himself into a seat and at once averting his eyes was 
 curiously discreet and self-effacing.
 
 122 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 By this time my neighbour, unconscious of the 
 disapproval with which her vis-a-vis, the philanthropic 
 lady, was eyeing her, had fallen asleep, her head repos- 
 ing on my shoulder, and I was just thinking of taking 
 steps when the next incident happened. 
 
 As the train slowed down going through Vauxhall, 
 once more the wrong door opened, and in stepped two 
 men. There was a slight scuffle, and in less time than 
 it takes to relate, handcuffs were snapped on to the 
 young man's wrists. After which his captors sat down, 
 one opposite him, one between him and the philan- 
 thropic lady the whole thing having taken place in 
 complete silence. 
 
 The banging of the door had roused my neighbour, 
 who was now sitting up, paralysed, as were we all, 
 with astonishment. But not for long. 
 
 Lurching heavily against me, she suddenly said, in 
 a hoarse whisper : ' Did you see that ? ' 
 
 I nodded. 
 
 1 Ain't you afraid ? ' she asked, .with wide, staring 
 eyes. 
 
 We were five to one, and the philanthropic lady 
 would certainly give a good account of herself. It was 
 not, therefore, in a spirit of braggadocio that I smiled 
 and shook my head. 
 
 ' Lor', what a nerve ! ' she exclaimed, in high 
 admiration. ' You're a couragious one ! ' Then, point- 
 ing dramatically in the direction of the prisoner : 
 ' What's that in 'is 'and ? ' she demanded. Her blood- 
 curdling voice would have frightened a child into fits, 
 but it was easy to see that she was not in the least 
 alarmed. It was merely a concession to drama. 
 
 I transferred my gaze from her large and fascinating 
 countenance to the young man's hand, and gave it as 
 my opinion that the object in question was a pipe. 
 
 1 Pipe indeed ! ' said she, pitying my simplicity,
 
 AN ADVENTURE IN A TRAIN 123 
 
 "Why, they 'as 'em arranged as revolvers and runs up 
 and down this line as bold as brass, disguised in police- 
 man's trousers ! I've often made the mistake myself ! ' 
 
 I now perceived that I was in for a remarkable 
 interview ; and, reflecting that my friend's condition 
 was one in which people are not very observant, also 
 that she seemed disposed to fall asleep on the slightest 
 provocation, I took out a notebook I had just bought 
 in town. After having jotted down all her remarks up 
 to that point, I gently nudged her into wakefulness 
 and asked if she thought the young man was a thief? 
 
 She at once assumed the manner of one who knows 
 more than she is at liberty to communicate. And I 
 may say here that I never met an individual who com- 
 manded a greater variety of moods, or whose facility in 
 passing from one to the other was more bewildering. 
 
 1 I'm not going to say anything,' she remarked, 
 with studied deliberation. ' Tou don't know as much 
 as / do. But if the men had asked me it would have 
 been very awkward, for I live near the place he resigns. 
 Ah,' she added, sighing heavily, ' it's very cruel and 
 very hard to accuse . . . but . . .' (with emphasis) 
 ' that man got in here to rob ! ' 
 
 The philanthropic lady had been sitting bolt 
 upright, withdrawing herself in a marked manner from 
 our proceedings ; but at this point aloofness yielded to 
 curiosity. 
 
 1 You know him, madam ? ' she asked, bending 
 forward. 
 
 ' I do, madam,' replied the other with unction 
 ' and the woman who co-habits with him, and often I 
 hear 'em murdering each other o' nights. A place 
 called The Warring it is 'alf a yard . . . well,' 
 (with a little laugh) ' I won't exaggerate, 'alf a mile 
 from where I live.'
 
 I2 4 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 Here a colloquy took place between the philan- 
 thropic lady and the plain-clothes man who sat next 
 her. I could not catch what passed, but as she took 
 out her purse, and made some proposition which he 
 met with the superior smile policemen reserve for a 
 sentimental public, I gathered that the young man was 
 in the habit of travelling without a ticket and that an 
 offer to pay his fare had been rejected. 
 
 All this time the benevolent intervener had, of 
 course, been holding the attention of the house a 
 state of things that did not suit my neighbour. 
 
 1 Pay his fare, indeed ! ' she remarked sarcastically 
 to the lamp overhead. ' Yes ! Very kind ! But it's 
 only encouraging him to do worse ! Now, if he was 
 a little boy J she went on (and the thought of juvenile 
 delinquents seemed to affect her deeply), ' a boy, a 
 young lad, I don't say ... I'd 'a' given 'im credit ! ' 
 
 The philanthropic lady did not admit criticism. 
 
 ' I'm a Christian,' she said stiffly, ' and I have 
 great sympathy with any one that goes wrong.' 
 
 My friend's enthusiasm over this sentiment knew 
 no bounds. Hurling herself forward in a fervour of 
 acquiescence that all but landed her in the speaker's 
 lap, ' God bless you, dear ! ' she cried in a broken voice. 
 * So do I ! And what / say is, you must have 'em, 
 good . . . and . . . bad ! ' 
 
 The philanthropic lady sat well back and gazed 
 ostentatiously out of the window. 
 
 It now occurred to me, as my friend dozed off again, 
 that I could take her down with impunity under her 
 very nose, as though she were addressing a public 
 meeting (and my impression is that at times she believed 
 herself to be so doing). Next time I righted her in 
 her seat I waited, therefore, with pencil ready poised 
 for the next remark. It came as pat as though there 
 had been no break.
 
 AN ADVENTURE IN A TRAIN 125 
 
 ' Ah ! ' she murmured, promptly but vaguely, 
 * what I say is ... if those people who are bad . . .' 
 (a long pause) ' they ought to be shut up ! * 
 
 This unexpectedly severe sentiment, delivered with 
 great decision, again lured the philanthropic lady from 
 her fastness. Here was an occasion which it beseems 
 the initiated to improve. With a pomposity that the 
 written word cannot hope to convey, she remarked, to 
 my great astonishment and admiration : 
 
 ' We must take into consideration hereditary law I ' 
 
 My friend was not at all impressed. 
 
 ' Decidedly such, dear ! ' she agreed airily, ' But 
 what are you going to do ? It's a Phase of Society ! ' 
 And now, for the first time, she struck the note that 
 dominated most of her subsequent utterances the 
 unmistakable diction and cadence of the informal 
 prayer-meeting. 'Ah,' she moaned, 'there's nothing 
 like living in the Lord 1 He's the personal . . . He's 
 the personal . . .' 
 
 Her voice died away gradually, and, much as I 
 longed to hear the end of that sentence, there was so 
 much to write down that she was allowed to slumber 
 in peace for the time being. 
 
 When next roused, refreshing sleep had done its 
 work ; her voice was loud and clear, her manner forensic 
 and slightly aggressive. 
 
 ' And why do I say they should be shut up ? ' she 
 asked, addressing the meeting. ' So as they couldn't 
 get into trouble ! ' (After all, the philanthropic lady's 
 remark had stung her.) ' There are seven Jews in my 
 house,' she went on. ' They never get into trouble ! 
 That's what they turn round and tell me ! But they 
 do ! Only they get the money like dirt ' (a sniff) 
 ' and landlord says the Jews are damned good fellers 
 to pay, and at the finish this'll be a Jew's island 1 ' 
 
 I expressed a hope that it would not come to that.
 
 126 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 4 Ah/ said she in tragic tones, ' isn't it dreadful 
 to see our dear English people thrown out ? Why, 
 look at my house ; there's a family o' Jews pays 13s. 
 for four rooms, and me, an English person, has to pay 
 ys. for two rooms ! ' 
 
 I made a rapid calculation. 
 
 1 Thirteen shillings for four rooms,' I said, ' and ys. 
 for two. That's all right, surely ? ' 
 
 ' All right ? ' she echoed. * Of course it's all righ 
 but ain't it y ard ? Why, look at the ways of 'em ! 
 You'll hardly believe it, but . . .' 
 
 Here I find myself obliged to paraphrase, for it now 
 became a question of technical procedure in Israelitish 
 communities at an interesting and critical moment in 
 the lives of married ladies. I may add that the informa- 
 tion given where I have broken off, though obviously 
 meant to startle and horrify, conveyed nothing whatever 
 to me ; but I saw that the philanthropic lady was listen- 
 ing in spite of herself. 
 
 ' Only last week,' continued my neighbour, ' I was 
 called in to a young woman. ... It was Dr. Swyers 
 of Shoreditch called me in you know 'im, I dessay ? ' 
 (I said that I had never met Dr. Swyers.) ' Well,' she 
 went on, ' that same young Jewish person and a sweet 
 young thing she was, too she kept on crying out, 
 " Give me an ENGLISH woman ! It's an ENGLISH 
 woman I want ! " ' (her rendering of this impassioned 
 request must have been audible in the next compart- 
 ment). ' And I said to her . . .' 
 
 What my friend said to her must be omitted ; it 
 was a persuasively-worded appeal to submit to the 
 methods employed on such occasions in Christian sick- 
 rooms. 
 
 At this point the philanthropic lady incredibly 
 interjected : 
 
 ' But you must remember the Mosaic Law ! '
 
 AN ADVENTURE IN A TRAIN 127 
 
 The other glanced at her, a world of withering 
 rectitude and propriety in her eye. 
 
 ' Ah,' she said, ' but consider the doctor and a 
 room full of people ! ! ' Then, addressing herself to 
 me, as the more sympathetic listener, she described how 
 Israel had fought for its own beside that bed, to be 
 routed, single-handed, by Christendom in the end. 
 ' And bless you,' she wound up cheerfully, ' while they 
 were talking I got her out of her trouble in no time 1 ' 
 
 The philanthropic lady refused to leave it at that. 
 
 ' One can't blame people for wishing to abide by 
 their own customs,' she remarked, with finality. 
 
 * Customs indeed ! ' jeered my friend. ' Why, look 
 what their customs are ! Look at 'em when they go 
 to death ! Just think of us ... so sympathising, so 
 beautiful to our little dead children ! Why, them 
 Jews'll lay out their little ones on a trestle and brush 
 'em !' 
 
 This time I was adequately startled. 
 
 1 Brush them ! ' I exclaimed, aghast. 
 
 ' Brush 'em all over ! ' said she, nodding violently. 
 ' With an Ambrush.' 
 
 I imagined that this must be another item in the 
 Mosaic Law perhaps the equivalent of the Catholic 
 ceremony, As-perges. 
 
 * What is an Ambrush ? ' I asked. 
 
 ' What they remove the bristles out o' pork with ! ' 
 she replied smartly. ' That's the Jews ! / know 'em ! 
 No one better ! ' 
 
 By now I had of course come to the conclusion that 
 my interlocutor must be a monthly nurse, but not liking 
 to put a direct question felt my way. 
 
 'What is your profession ? ' I asked. 
 
 She stared at me. ' Profession ! ' she ejaculated, 
 and I saw that I had given offence. Then, with 
 immense and ponderous dignity, she said : ' I dessay
 
 128 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 you wondered at me, madam, but it was my 'usband I 
 was a-kissing of on the platform ! ' . . . 
 
 What terrible misunderstanding was this ? . . . 
 When my scattered wits were recovered, I assured her 
 that anyone could see that at a glance, and also that 
 the parting caused her distress. Instantly mollified, she 
 accepted my apologies in the spirit in which they were 
 offered. 
 
 ' Yes,' she said coyly, even bridling a little, ' I 
 dessay you remarked us . . . the very first time it is 
 I left him since his accident, things being so slack.' 
 
 ' Did he have an accident ? ' I enquired. 
 
 ' Accident ! ' cried she. ' The doctor says he never 
 see anything like it. Why, the beam come down right 
 atop of 'im ; compound fracture of the skull, it was,' 
 (the next detail of the devastation wrought by the beam 
 is here omitted) * and 'is poor legs was something 
 dreadful ! ' Overcome at the recollection, she now 
 became maudlin. ' Yes ! it was my 'usband I was 
 a-kissin' of . . . my dear, dear 'usband . . . my own 
 flesh and blood ! ' 
 
 I saw the philanthropic lady glance in a terrified 
 manner at the speaker, then at my notebook, and finally 
 resume her fixed study of the landscape. I think she 
 was calculating how soon the train would arrive at her 
 own station. 
 
 After writing for dear life, I asked my friend if she 
 had any other family. 
 
 1 I have, dear,' she replied ; ' two sons I have, two 
 good sons ; one in the plumbing and gas-fitting line, 
 a beautiful, lovely, handsome boy ! And one a soldier 
 as I am going down this day to Aldershot to see.' (A 
 long-drawn sigh.) ' Ah ! it was only the slackness
 
 AN ADVENTURE IN A TRAIN 129 
 
 that drove my son away from me, my own, brave, sailor 
 boy!' 
 
 This was too much of a good thing for a chronicler 
 bent on accuracy. 
 
 ' I thought you said he was a soldier ? ' I remarked. 
 
 1 I did, dear,' she allowed ; ' but he was invalided 
 out with fits when the old Queen died. " But, lor', 
 mother," 'e said, " I'll have no fits on dry land ! " Nor 
 he ain't ! And so 'e went for a soldier my dear, lovely 
 boy ! Now, wasn't that a . . . wasn't that a . . . ? ' 
 
 Her eyes were rapidly closing, but I thought of a 
 good rousing question. 
 
 4 Is he a good son to you ? ' I asked. 
 
 In a second she was sitting up, wide awake, and 
 gazing at me defiantly, her liberal mouth closed like a 
 rat-trap. Then, delivering the words with slow, por- 
 tentous emphasis : * If . . . God . . . struck . . . me 
 . . . deadl she declaimed, ' my boy never said shan't 
 to his mother ! ' She paused to let this sink in, and 
 while I was murmuring congratulations, a fatuous smile 
 gradually cancelled her expression of extreme sternness. 
 4 And so beautiful he is ! ' she added. 4 You'll know 
 'im by me . . . the very living image of me ! ' 
 
 The family note being now firmly established, she 
 went on without a pause : 
 
 ' And a dear, loving old Christian mother I had : 
 44 Look, my Jessie child ! " she said. 44 You may be a 
 wife some day ! " And sure enough I am / ' (Here the 
 prayer-meeting manner became very pronounced.) ''And 
 she taught us, and she was true, and she is in Heaven 
 now at eighty-three, and rejoicing I love her words. 
 . . .' At this point, catching hold of my arm, she 
 whispered confidentially, with a sort of triumph : 'And 
 my words worry my boys just the same I ' 
 
 To keep pace with her now was not an easy task, 
 and I was glad that a short interval of meditation
 
 130 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 occurred, before, putting her two hands together, palm 
 to palm, like a child saying its prayers, she gave me a 
 powerful nudge with her elbow. 
 
 1 Look ! ' she said. ' This was my mother while 
 she had her reason.' And once more the roof was 
 nearly lifted, as, with tightly-closed eyes, she intoned 
 a mother's prayer : ' " Please . . . God . . . bless . . . my 
 . . . dear-darling-little-sweet Jessie. . . . A . . . men I " ' 
 She then added, in her ordinary tone : ' At the finish 
 she went off without her reason.' 
 
 I was speechless, while she dragged forth a handker- 
 chief from a very inside pocket and held it in readiness. 
 
 * I know I lost an angel of a mother,' she continued, 
 1 and an angel of a father God rest their souls ! And 
 a dear angel of a brother I had, a p-p-preacher.' (She 
 mopped her eyes.) ' They used to pelt 'im with eggs, 
 but now 'e's gone they love 'im ! ' 
 
 4 Didn't they like him before ? ' I asked. 
 
 ' Like him ? They couldn't a-bear 'im ! And when 
 he was took to the asylum . . .' (another little laugh) 
 ' asylum ? infirmary, that is . . .' 
 
 ' What was the matter with him ? ' I threw in 
 quickly. 
 
 ' Rheumatics - stone - in - the - bladder - and - erysipelas- 
 in-'is-face,' she answered in a breath. ' And when 
 I went to see him, " Jessie," 'e says, " how is it with 
 your soul ? " I says, " William, whatever do ' you 
 mean ? " " Ah, Jessie," 'e says, " remember all our 
 little mother taught us, and oughtn't we to gratulate 
 our mother on that point ? " ' 
 
 I confess that I have never interpreted this dark 
 saying wholly to my satisfaction, nor grasped the exact 
 meaning of the verb ' to gratulate,' as used in such a 
 connection. But as she now became rather grave 
 recalling, too, her remark concerning the ' worrying ' 
 quality of a mother's words I am inclined to think
 
 AN ADVENTURE IN A TRAIN 131 
 
 that, true to his vocation, William had been expostu- 
 lating with her on some point of conduct, and also 
 reminding her that their revered mother had warned 
 her on the same subject. Perhaps it was refreshment 
 between meals. 
 
 The reflective mood, however, passed quickly, and 
 was followed by a piece of dramatic presentment whose 
 vigour eclipsed all previous efforts. With a roar, the 
 effect of which on the philanthropic lady's nerves is my 
 last impression of that now silenced moralist, she pro- 
 ceeded to give us further portions of the memorable 
 interview with William : 
 
 ' " PULL UP THE WINDER-CORD ! " 'e said 
 and 'is dear mouth was full of thrush at the time 
 " pull it up," 'e said, " and let in some o' God's air, 
 for 'e's a-callin' o' me ! " " William," I says, " for 
 any sake don't tell me that ! " " God , . . is . . . 
 a-callin' o' me, Jessie," 'e says. " Why, just look at my 
 mouth I " 
 
 ' Ah,' she went on, with melancholy satisfaction, 
 ' he did die handsome, and so did my poor sister, 
 singing : 
 
 " Jesus and the Brides are come, 
 Freely, freely, freely . . ." ' 
 
 These lines, evidently part of a hymn the context 
 of which one would like to hear, were chanted in a 
 sort of loud sing-song ; after which, with one of her 
 sudden drops into the colloquial style, she added, as it 
 were in parenthesis : 
 
 1 Then the baby came and off she went.' 
 
 I think there were further particulars concerning 
 the poor sister's end, but my whole attention was 
 concentrated on the task of faithfully entering the above. 
 When next I was free to listen she was addressing the 
 roof in her most lamentable voice :
 
 132 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 * Ah ! people go about in earthly things/ she was 
 saying, ' and forget the Saviour.' Down her cheek 
 trickled a neglected tear, but not a distressful one. 
 I was glad to see she was enjoying herself thoroughly. 
 
 The train was nearing Woking. I suddenly became 
 aware that we were alone. Gone the philanthropic lady, 
 gone the young man and his captors ! Hypnotised by 
 one fellow-traveller, I had not marked the passing of 
 the others. 
 
 ' I get out at the next station,' I observed, ' and I 
 hope you'll have a pleasant day at Aldershot.' 
 
 My friend was deeply moved. 
 
 ' Thank you, dear, for those true words,' she said, 
 dabbing her eyes. ' The Lord sent us to be lively 
 and pleasurable, but it ain't always easy ! specially if 
 you're suffering from . . .' (and here she mentioned a 
 complaint which I am told is a peculiarly depressing 
 one). 
 
 By this time I was much in love with my companion, 
 and longed to give some expression to my sentiments. 
 Could I venture on the next step ? She seemed such 
 a thoroughly good soul that I thought the risk might 
 be taken. 
 
 ' You tell me times are bad,' I said, ' and your 
 husband out of work. I'm not a rich woman myself, 
 but if you will not think it a liberty . . .' Here I 
 pulled out half-a-crown. 
 
 The train had just come to a standstill. My friend 
 struggled to her feet, extended both arms like twin 
 semaphores, and burst into a loud fit of weeping. 
 
 ' When I got into this carriage,' she sobbed, her 
 voice gradually rising in a sort of crescendo howl, ' the 
 word I said was : "If ever I see a Heart o' GOLD 
 . . . that's one ! " ' And, flinging her arms round 
 me, she squeezed what she had been good enough
 
 AN ADVENTURE IN A TRAIN 133 
 
 to describe as a Heart of Gold convulsively to her 
 bosom. 
 
 There was barely time to get out before the train 
 went on. As it rounded a curve I saw, among many 
 signal-posts, the damp handkerchief that had played 
 such a prominent part in our interview still jerking 
 frantically at a window. 
 
 The tragic thing is that in the excitement of the 
 moment I omitted to ask my friend for her name and 
 address ; nor did it occur to me later on to apply to 
 Dr. Swyers of Shoreditch for information concerning 
 one who doubtless was the best-known householder in 
 his district. 
 
 When, only last month, a friend * of mine, to whom 
 I communicated the blurred contents of the famous 
 notebook, remarked that this would have been the 
 course to pursue, moved by a simultaneous impulse, we 
 both rushed to the telephone book. . . . 
 
 Alas ! it was too late ! Seventeen years have elapsed 
 since that memorable interview, and Dr. Swyers is 
 probably dead. In any case, he is not on the tele- 
 phone which amounts to the same thing. 
 
 Paris. July 1920. 
 
 1 Mr. Edward Shanks.
 
 THE QUOTATION-FIEND 
 
 The most maligned man in history, one whose memory 
 I propose not only to defend but to extol, is the man 
 who complained that Hamlet was a boring play full of 
 quotations, thereby proving the soundness of his literary 
 instinct. Honour to this anonymous critic, whose 
 sensitive though unlettered brain, stunned into apathy 
 as one well-known phrase after another came booming 
 across the footlights, finally struck work, and failed to 
 perceive certain other features about a drama that 
 otherwise should have held the attention of so dis- 
 criminating a listener ! 
 
 To come to the point and speak seriously. The 
 habit some writers indulge in of perpetual quotation is 
 one it behoves lovers of good literature to protest 
 against, for it is an insidious habit which in the end 
 must cloud the stream of thought, or at least check 
 spontaneity. If it be true that le style cest Vhomme, 
 what is likely to happen if Fhomme is for ever eking out 
 his own personality with that of some other individual ? 
 
 Of such sinners there are two classes. And to 
 neither class belongs Montaigne, that wisest and most 
 adorable of authors, whose every page is literally packed 
 with quotations and who may be used as a weapon in 
 counter-argument. But with Montaigne it is a method, 
 a sort of game. One cannot think of him otherwise 
 than walled-in with leather-bound volumes, snowed 
 under by slips of paper, testifying with one piece of 
 
 134
 
 THE QUOTATION-FIEND 135 
 
 evidence after another to the universality of some 
 intensely Montaignesque sentiment he has just driven 
 into the bull's-eye with the shaft of his wit. No ; 
 Montaigne is in a class by himself, though possibly the 
 learned may tell us he was merely the supreme exponent 
 of a mannerism of his epoch. Even so, his selections are 
 those of genius naked and unashamed, and his mighty 
 hall-mark is on every one of them. Moreover, firstly 
 and lastly, that style is Montaigne. 
 
 Putting this giant aside, then, it may be said that 
 quoters either belong to the race of the timid, or else 
 are simply people bent on showing off their culture. 
 These latter are not worth arguing with. Through 
 their whole being runs a flaw that will for ever keep 
 them safely in the ranks of the second-rate. But hoping 
 perhaps to catch the ear of the other type of quoter, 
 it is worth while calling attention to a fact which I 
 think will be found indisputable, namely, that the 
 majority of critical, and plenty of uncritical, readers find 
 quotations a bore. If so, why ? 
 
 To begin with, the aspect of inverted commas is 
 unpleasant an eyesore on the page, a break to the 
 continuity of the line, a knot in the string, a foreign 
 body in the soup. Tripped up and thrown out of your 
 stride, this deadly symbol is, alas ! but the herald of 
 worse trouble to come. ' Who said that ? ' you ask 
 yourself (unless you happen to be Mr. Edmund Gosse, 
 or some such dread specialist). Good-bye to peace of 
 mind till you find the answer to that question. And 
 whether you find it or not, a still more insoluble riddle 
 follows close on the heels of the other : ' Why doesn't 
 the writer put the thing in his own language ? ' 
 
 If quotations are sparsely used and superlatively 
 rare in quality, their intrusion may perhaps be justifi- 
 able. But the odd thing is that even subtle and 
 fastidious writers not only abuse the habit, but are
 
 136 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 found employing the veriest tags that, for some obscure 
 reason, or perhaps by mere chance, have been caught 
 up in the cogs of language to become the halfpennies 
 and farthings of cultured provincial journalism. Phrases 
 such as ' 'Tis true, 'tis pity,' ' Small by degrees and 
 beautifully less,' and a hundred such. The quotation- 
 fiend suddenly presses a button, up jumps one of these 
 cliches, and the pen slips out of control. No need to 
 read the next few words it traces, for you can declaim 
 them with your eyes shut. 
 
 I am told there are writers, such as the late Andrew 
 Lang, who, though much addicted to quotation, rifle 
 pockets for the sake of some exquisite jewel only, and will 
 never drag up into the light of day a mere Palais Royal 
 gaud. But it is with the living that I am concerned, 
 among them an author far too deeply loved and admired 
 by me to pillory here, in whom of late I have detected 
 symptoms of this malady symptoms which, however, 
 disappear by magic as the current of the story 
 strengthens, the passion deepens, and the whole rushes 
 on to a fine and quotationless end. 
 
 Again, I am of course not referring to enlisted 
 phrases such as evoke in the memory of a normally- 
 lettered individual a whole situation, and crystallise 
 some state of mind we have all experienced under 
 similar circumstances. For instance, at the present 
 moment every one is sick of the question ' What is to 
 be done with the Kaiser ? ' ; and none of us would 
 blame the exasperated person who might quote on 
 this point the immortal remark of the debilitated cousin 
 in ' Bleak House ' : ' Better hang the wrong fella than 
 no fella.' But it is quite another thing being held up 
 every third line by mention of the rose that by any 
 other name would smell as sweet ; or the still more 
 tiresome fresh fields and pastures new which deserve 
 their usual fate of being inaccurately quoted.
 
 THE QUOTATION-FIEND 137 
 
 In my humble opinion the impulse to build some 
 one else's remark into your text is begotten of lacking 
 self-confidence, of laziness, or worse, of stagnation. No 
 doubt other writers have often put a thing more bril- 
 liantly, more subtly than even a very cunning artist in 
 words can hope to emulate, a supreme phrase being a 
 bit of luck that only happens now and again. And 
 inasmuch as the condiments and secret travail of human 
 nature are always the same, and that certain psycho- 
 logical moments must ever and ever recur, what more 
 tempting than to pin down such a moment with the 
 blow of a borrowed hammer ? 
 
 I say the writer must resist this temptation and do 
 his best with his own tools. It would be most con- 
 venient for us musicians if, arrived at a given emotional 
 crisis in our work, we could simply stick in a few bars 
 of Brahms or Schubert. Indeed many composers have 
 no hesitation in so doing. But I have never heard the 
 practice defended ; possibly because that hideous symbol 
 of petty larceny, the inverted comma, cannot well be 
 worked into a musical score. On the whole, given the 
 weakness of human nature, it is perhaps as well that 
 this particular temptation is out of our reach. 
 
 Often and often I turn over in my mind the excuses, 
 the justification of their evil practices, put forward by 
 quotationers if in this painful connection a painful 
 word may be invented. A good quotation, so they 
 maintain, is a shaft of light thrown into the dark places 
 of memory a welding of one's own humble thought 
 with that of great ones in the past a free present to 
 lovers of literary beauties and curiosities. These and 
 many other things do they maintain. 
 
 But all this seems to me as nothing compared with 
 the vital necessity of doing your job yourself. To seek, 
 and ^ not rest till you find an individual and adequate 
 garment^for^your elusive vision is bracing to the brain
 
 138 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 whereas the other procedure is enervating. And 
 though your own wording may give you less satisfac- 
 tion than the perfect phrase you are tempted to borrow, 
 the general quality of your work will certainly gain in 
 the end. 
 
 Finally : granted that to practise austerity on this 
 point would deprive many really sensitive and dis- 
 criminating writers of a subtle and exquisite pleasure, 
 surely, surely it must be better fun still to coin your 
 own quotations ? If you can. 
 
 February 1920.
 
 A WINTER OF STORM 
 
 If some people are right, artists are put into this world 
 not to practise their art, but to talk about it. And 
 judging by the flattering invitations many a humble 
 climber will receive to pontificate from the lowest rung 
 but one of the ladder, humanity is in a dangerously 
 receptive frame of mind, and artists a race devoid of 
 either modesty or sense of humour. 
 
 This does not imply that all need deprive themselves 
 of the pleasure, or, indeed, are exempt from the duty, 
 of pontificating. There can be nothing more delightful, 
 I should imagine, to one who has fought his way into 
 the heart of Central Africa than to relate his experiences 
 and nothing more right and proper than to do so. 
 He has gone there to encounter and overcome diffi- 
 culties, and there is no shame in talking about them. 
 That is part of the adventure. 
 
 The artist is in a different case. He is carrying 
 something in his bosom that is sacred to him, some- 
 thing like a lantern which, if kindled, will, he believes, 
 shed light. The wind and rain that quench his flame 
 and his hopes again and again are incidents that no 
 doubt lend themselves to comic treatment, but it was 
 death to him at the time ; and like the soldiers who 
 struggled back from Mons, he does not care to talk 
 about that part of his campaign. The story may be of 
 use to future fighters, but if it is worth telling, it is 
 for the fighter's friends, not for himself, to tell it. 
 
 139
 
 i 4 o STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 Let these describe, in as harrowing a style as they 
 command, the various Stations of the Cross, point the 
 moral, pontificate vicariously, and do all the things it 
 is repellent to the man himself to do. 
 
 If therefore this account of some six months spent 
 in Berlin, in the winter of 1 901-2, is woven around 
 the first performance of my opera Der Wald, it is 
 because that is the scaffolding and cannot escape men- 
 tion. But to the writer the interest lies elsewhere, as 
 I trust these pages will reveal. Having said which, 
 the scaffolding shall take its proper place on page 
 Number 1. 
 
 Early in 1901 I had played Der Wald to the 
 authorities at Dresden. It was not yet orchestrated, 
 but this was my second operatic attempt, and, if it 
 may be said without boasting, my first opera, Fantasio, 
 had satisfied the sternest critics in the matter of instru- 
 mentation. As far as I knew, Der Wald was accepted 
 at Dresden ; I was urged to get on with the full score 
 and send the whole to Schuch, the head conductor, 
 after which the terms of the contract would be drawn 
 up. It appeared that recently an opera had been 
 accepted in piano score only, being written by one who 
 everybody supposed must know how to orchestrate 
 effectively ; ' but,' said Schuch, ' this is how it sounded ' 
 . . . and he got up and sat down on the bass end of 
 the piano. After this experience Count Seebach the 
 1 Hof Intendant ' had declared, that never again, unless 
 in the case of old hands, was a contract to be signed 
 till Schuch had seen the instrumentation. 
 ||xj. This seemed reasonable, and by July my completed 
 score was in his hands ; but a few weeks later I got a 
 letter saying that after all Der Wald could not be pro- 
 duced in Dresden. As no reason was given I asked 
 whether they^were dissatisfied with my orchestration
 
 A WINTER OF STORM 141 
 
 or what ? but this and one or two other letters only 
 elicited the parliamentary reply that there was nothing 
 to add to the previous statement. There was a large 
 English contingent at Dresden, sedulous frequenters of 
 the Opera, whose interests, as I knew before I went 
 there, played some part in the drawing up of the 
 repertory, and who would certainly have been interested 
 in an English work ; moreover Der Wald was only a 
 one-act opera, which of course involves a minimum of 
 risk and outlay. Hence its rejection seemed incom- 
 prehensible. But my subsequent experiences were to 
 induce a belief that the Boer War had something to 
 do with it. 
 
 None, I think, except those who had the misfortune 
 of finding themselves on the Continent at that time, can 
 have any idea of the fanatical hatred of England that 
 then possessed other nations ; and truth to tell, it is 
 not surprising. Evidently nothing can save from 
 industrial exploitation a pastoral people, in the heart 
 of whose territory lie some of the richest gold mines 
 in the world. But the March of Destiny is not always 
 an edifying spectacle, and its instruments seldom play 
 a sympathetic part. It may have been President 
 Kruger's own fault if a process of infiltration turned 
 into warfare, but all that the world saw was a big nation 
 crushing a small one. 
 
 To give an instance of the prevailing state of mind, 
 I remember that at an International Exhibition that 
 was being held somewhere I think at Paris in 1900, 
 the Transvaal Section gradually became the scene of 
 daily Anglophobe demonstrations. On one of these 
 occasions, an Englishwoman, seized apparently with 
 dementia, walked up to President Kruger's bust and 
 spat upon it ; whereupon the crowd, after a moment's 
 bewilderment, began to treat her in like fashion ; and 
 eventually she was escorted out of the building by the
 
 1 42 STREAKS^OF LIFE 
 
 police to avoid being lynched. It so happened that, 
 the day after reading about this incident, Mrs. Robert 
 Crawshay and I went to see the Empress Eugenie, 
 and found her entertaining two mild old ladies in black 
 satin and white caps, who turned out to be the daughters 
 of a missionary in South Africa. Of course I took the 
 opportunity of telling my anecdote, and everybody 
 laughed except the two old ladies, who looked very 
 grave ; one saying, ' Oh, I don't at all approve of that ! ' 
 and the other adding, ' It was not at all ladylike ! ' 
 Whereupon Mary Crawshay remarked, ' Or even 
 gentlemanlike ! ' 
 
 Nevertheless, and in spite of the Dresden rebuff, 
 inasmuch as there was no outlet for English opera in 
 England, I again turned my thoughts to Germany 
 and decided to have a try at Berlin. There was no 
 English colony there, and the Opera was not up to the 
 Dresden level, but in England I had made great friends 
 with Muck, the first conductor at the Opera House, 
 whom I admired greatly as musician, who had dined 
 frequently at my sister Mrs. Charles Hunter's house, 
 and who had been genuinely struck by such parts of 
 Der Wald as I had shown him. Besides being a fine 
 musician he was the straightest of men, and I knew 
 his appreciation was genuine not merely a form of 
 acknowledgment for a good dinner. 
 
 In September, therefore, I went to Berlin, and 
 being well aware that in the opera world things are not 
 as they seem, and that the real and the apparent poten- 
 tates are seldom one and the same person, I proceeded 
 to reconnoitre the situation. Sir Frank Lascelles, our 
 then Ambassador, being a friend of my sister's, I was in 
 luck as to my basis of operations, and will say at once 
 that but for the kindness of himself and his daughter 
 Florence I doubt if I could have put through the 
 adventure that lay before me.
 
 A WINTER OF STORM 143 
 
 jThree powers are concerned in the running of a 
 Court Theatre. There is the Hof Intendant, generally 
 one of the great nobles of the State, whose relation to 
 the actualities of his opera are generally such as were, 
 in old days, that of the Master of the Buck-Hounds to 
 the Kennels. (There are exceptions to this rule men 
 like Count Seebach of Dresden and Herr von Hiilsen 
 of Wiesbaden who were really, and not only nominally, 
 at the helm but these were rare.) Then comes the 
 business manager, I think he was called Director in 
 those days, who, together with the third power, the 
 leading conductor, is really responsible for all things. 
 
 I soon found out that the supreme power at Berlin 
 was Director Pierson, a German Jew with an English 
 strain somewhere. He was a deeply musical individual, 
 a fine judge as to the worth, whether artistic or financial, 
 of the operas submitted to him, and supreme of flair as 
 regarded the capacities of young artists. He would 
 pick out talent, however deeply concealed under the 
 napkin of immaturity or shyness, and see that talent 
 through. Every thread in the web of corruption and 
 intrigue that then enwrapped the Berlin Opera was 
 held by him, and I was informed that the Hof Intendant, 
 Count Hochberg, a musical and most amiable grand 
 seigneur^ not unamenable to judicious flattery, was wax 
 in Pierson's hands. 
 
 Count Hochberg was still in the country, so I 
 forthwith went to Pierson and performed my opera at 
 the piano in true composer's fashion, which includes 
 a rendering of all the choral and orchestral effects as 
 well as the solo parts. The main idea of Tier Wald is 
 that the short, poignant tragedy which for a moment 
 interrupts the tranquil rites of the Spirits of the Forest 
 is but an episode, the real story being the eternal march 
 of Nature Nature that enwraps human destiny and 
 recks nothing of mortal joys and sorrows. I saw at
 
 i 4 4 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 once that this theme appealed to the dreaminess that 
 pairs so wonderfully with acute business instinct in men 
 of Pierson's race, and that them usical treatment of it 
 delighted him. 
 
 He at once declared himself willing to produce Der 
 Wald immediately after Christmas, at the same time 
 telling me frankly that owing to the Boer War frenzy 
 there would be difficulties also that the Press would 
 be merciless to an English opera written by a woman. 
 I saw, however, that, quite apart from his estimate of 
 the work itself, two things in the enterprise tempted 
 him ; firstly, the English blood that ran in his veins 
 spoke for me, and secondly, the prospect of an uphill 
 job appealed to the masterfulness of his temperament. 
 His plan was, that though of course a contract would 
 duly be made out, the whole thing was to be kept 
 dark till the moment came . . . then, suddenly, he, 
 Pierson, would demonstrate to an astonished world 
 what sort of work a woman, an English woman, could 
 turn out ! 
 
 1 We will mount it splendidly,' he said, ' you will 
 be satisfied ! ' He bade me play it to Count Hochberg 
 directly he came back, send the full score to Muck 
 ' now at once,' and go next day to Muck's house and 
 interview him on the subject. 
 
 I did so . . . and a remarkable interview it was ! 
 One of the things I liked about Muck was the chiselled, 
 Abb6-like profile, the frigidity, illumined now and again 
 by a charming smile, that masked the fire he infused 
 into the orchestras he conducted. I now found 
 frigidity enough, Heaven knows, but no smile. ' Your 
 work is good,' he said, ' I liked it in England in the 
 rough ; I like it now, and am willing to conduct it. . . . 
 But there can be no friendly personal relations between 
 us, for when I hear the word " England " I see red.' 
 His hands clenched convulsively and the veins stood
 
 A WINTER OF STORM 145 
 
 out on his forehead . . . here was the fire, unmis- 
 takably ablaze ! I knew that his wife adored England, 
 but as if he guessed my thought he went on : ' My 
 wife snatches the newspapers away from me . . . for 
 reading about this horrible war of yours deprives me 
 of appetite and sleep. . . . ' I then asked whether 
 his views would prevent his doing his best for me ? 
 He calmed down a little and said certainly not, that art 
 is art, etc. About the orchestration he was most 
 satisfactory, and trusting to his dear kind wife to help 
 me where she could (a trust that the event justified) 
 I went away, less dismayed, on the whole, than one 
 might expect. 
 
 These, and other negotiations which followed, can 
 be dismissed in a few words, though they took some 
 time to complete, also countless efforts of patience and 
 diplomacy on my part, and again and again I thought 
 all was lost. But in the meantime another source of 
 delightful human intercourse became available in the 
 person of Countess von Biilow, wife of the German 
 Chancellor, who came back from the country early in 
 October, bringing with her her mother, the well-known 
 Donna Laura Minghetti one of the great luminaries 
 I have met in my life whom I was accustomed to 
 see every winter in Rome. 
 
 To avoid confusion later on I will mention here 
 that Madame de Billow's father was not the great 
 statesman Minghetti, but her mother's first husband, 
 Prince Camporeale, who had held the post of Italian 
 Ambassador at various European Courts. When first 
 I took to wintering in Rome Count Biilow was German 
 Ambassador to the Quirinal, and consequently installed 
 in the beautiful Palazzo Caffarelli which the wise 
 Germans secured for their Embassy ; and as Donna 
 Laura had taken me there, I already had some slight
 
 146 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 acquaintance with her daughter, to know whom was at 
 once to fall under the spell of her charm. But I was 
 not expecting to see anything of her in Berlin, where 
 she was treated almost like Royalty ; except at great 
 functions she was invisible, and if you wanted to see 
 her you had to demand an audience. Nor had I known 
 that Donna Laura was to be in Berlin that autumn. 
 But one day, all unawares, I got a note from her bidding 
 me come to see her at the Chancellor's Palace that very 
 day ! 
 
 Donna Laura Minghetti died in the third year of 
 the war ; the kaleidoscope turns quickly, and since 
 her death the world has been shaken to its foundations. 
 But for many years to come, to mention her name to 
 any one who knew her will be to see that change that 
 comes over faces when a unique, unforgettable per- 
 sonality is mentioned.- 
 
 Let me tell one or two stories I was told about her 
 when first I met her in Rome ... to become one more 
 incandescent spark in the comet-like tail of her admirers. 
 No doubt these stories were completely legendary, but 
 they witness to the quality of their subject. 
 
 I was informed that when her first husband, Prince 
 Camporeale, was Italian Ambassador in London, he 
 was transferred elsewhere at Queen Victoria's special 
 request because the passions inspired by Donna Laura 
 in the hearts of certain of our ministers complicated the 
 task of the Government. It was even rumoured that 
 one prominent English statesman, sole though blameless 
 preoccupation of whose life the Queen had hitherto 
 believed herself to be, was now about to institute pro- 
 ceedings of divorce against the wife with whom he had 
 lived on terms of decent, peaceful, and implacable hatred 
 for years and years ! 
 
 Another legend told of her spirited action in the 
 matter of her daughter's matrimonial affairs. Madame
 
 A WINTER OF STORM 147 
 
 de Billow's first husband, Count X, by whom she had 
 a daughter, was a diplomat, an excellent man, and devoted 
 to his wife. But unfortunately he bored her, and, 
 what must have particularly provoked his mother-in- 
 law, there seemed but little prospect of his rising to 
 eminence in his career. One day Billow came along 
 and fell madly in love with the fascinating Countess X. 
 A clever, bold politician, a perfect man of the world, 
 member of one of the great North German diplomatic 
 families and certain to reach the topmost rung of the 
 ladder . . . this would indeed be a son-in-law after 
 Donna Laura's own heart ! 
 
 The next move she took was obvious ! . . . but 
 unfortunately the Pope refused to dissolve her daughter's 
 marriage. Minghetti had been, together with Cavour, 
 one of the founders of United Italy, and perhaps the 
 Head of the deposed Church was not inclined to oblige 
 Minghetti 's widow ; moreover, if Count X. was a 
 Protestant, so was Biilow. I forget what exact steps 
 were taken by Donna Laura to achieve her ends, but 
 at the eleventh hour it is said at the Church door 
 there was a hitch . . . and this is the moment at 
 which Donna Laura is stated to have forged a telegram 
 from the Pope ! ! 
 
 As I said, I do not for a moment believe this story, 
 but if it is not true it ought to be. And not only did 
 the marriage take place, but in due course, although 
 it is a stringent rule in the German diplomatic service 
 that no man shall be Ambassador in his wife's country, 
 Biilow became Ambassador to the Italian Government ! 
 His mother-in-law desired her daughter's presence in 
 Rome . . . and that settled the question. 
 
 I often think of my first meeting with Donna Laura. 
 I was singing at a rather dank Roman tea-party, when 
 in k came a very striking looking woman of about 65
 
 i 4 8 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 who rushed straight to the piano, sat down at my elbow, 
 and went into ecstasies over the Scotch song I was 
 singing. Again I sang it, and yet again . . . and 
 presently, in deep, emotional chest-notes, my new 
 friend was chiming in. The song was ' Here's a 
 health to one I love dear,' and she seemed ready to die 
 at the beauty of the lift of the final phrase one of the 
 exquisite things in music. Then came more and more 
 of our folk-songs, and I saw I had to do with one of 
 infallible musical instinct. Thus the tea-party ended 
 for me in a blaze of delight, and after Donna Laura's 
 departure our Ambassador's son, Captain Richard 
 Ford, who was passing through Rome, electrified the 
 company by saying in his slowest, clearest drawl : ' I 
 don't know who that old woman was that wouldn't 
 come away from the piano and kept on sayin' all the 
 time you were singin' : "Que c'est jolli ! . . . que 
 c'est bo ! ", but / thought it rather a bore . . . didn't 
 you ? ' 
 
 Donna Laura lived in a Palazzetto facing the Piazza 
 Paganica, part of the huge block that includes the 
 Palazzo Sermoneta, and Palazzo Antici Mattei, on 
 one floor of which lived my friend Henry Brewster 
 (' H.B.') ; and from a window of his apartment I used 
 to see her, day by day, on the stroke of 3, shoot out 
 of her house door and into her little brougham with 
 the extraordinary swiftness that characterised her both 
 physically and mentally. Her rooms were packed 
 with beautiful things though some of the pictures bore 
 hyper-optimistic labels, and one most Donna Laura-like 
 feature of her reception room was a fine old pulpit- 
 staircase draped in costly brocades that led . . . 
 nowhere ! 
 
 I never saw anyone more convinced of the shortness 
 of life and more determined not to be bored for one 
 single second. Every night she either dined out or
 
 A WINTER OF STORM 149 
 
 had a dinner party at home, after which she received ; 
 and everyone, in all the worlds, who passed through 
 Rome came to pay their court. She moved about 
 among her guests, making strangers acquainted with a 
 frank, rapid, and highly flattering sketch of their 
 respective personalities. Mine was generally, ' a great 
 musician and an artist all round ; an intelligent girl 
 too rather Bohemian but a lady ' ; and H.B. would 
 be introduced, to his great amusement, as ' un giovane 
 molto colto,' that is, * a very cultivated youth.' This 
 when the girl was over 40, and the youth what the Irish 
 call pushing 50. To sum up, Donna Laura went to 
 every ball, every concert, and every other place where 
 fun was to be had. And if she was bored out she 
 went, publishing the reason right and left if it was a 
 concert. 
 
 Sometimes she consented to lunch alone, and some- 
 times en tete-a-tete with a fervent admirer such as myself. 
 I may add that hers was the frank, discriminating 
 greediness which I venture to think is the crown of 
 culture. Every dish was specially recommended, as 
 beseems a creation that had been a matter of minute 
 technical consultation between her and her chef, and, if 
 it was a failure, the subject of a scene between the two 
 immediately after luncheon ; on her part dramatic, 
 inspired invective on his, bowings, implorings, and 
 protestations of willingness to die on the spot rather 
 than dissatisfy ' Eccellenza.' I never beheld such 
 wonderful scenes ; Italy at her best. 
 
 She was splendid to look at ; a profile from a 
 Pompeian fresco, young, beautiful arms and shoulders, 
 in the evening a dazzling vision ; for no one wore 
 magnificent toilette more magnificently. I think hers 
 was the most vivid personality I have ever met, the 
 incarnation of fire a very great lady who did every- 
 thing in her own way and on no recognised model.
 
 io STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 But one must not imagine she was merely a brilliant 
 figure in society ; she read everything worth reading, 
 adored poetry, worshipped beauty in every form, and 
 whether it was a question of art, literature, or human 
 beings, her intuitiveness amounted to genius. It 
 seemed as if she could not go wrong. 
 
 I am bound to confess that as regards music she 
 would go mad about a song for instance Lalo's ' La 
 Captive ' and for a time refuse to listen to anything 
 else ; ' pour le moment il n'y a que cela,' she would 
 say. And as likely as not, a year later, meeting the 
 same song in a heap of other music, she would cast it 
 aside with ' Ah non ! pas cette vieille machine-la ! ' 
 No laying of flowers on abandoned altars for Donna 
 Laura 1 
 
 But one of the qualities in her that chiefly enchanted 
 me is one many Italians possess though not often in 
 such superb company, not often blended with such 
 striking intellectual gifts I mean her peasant-like 
 nearness to nature. When I read out to her, from 
 notes taken at the time, a certain adventure of mine 
 related elsewhere, 1 she was lying on her bedroom sofa 
 and supposed to be ' souffrante ' but at one passage, 
 (which alas ! had to be omitted here) such was her 
 ecstasy, that she literally kicked her two agile legs high 
 in the air, and one of the Cinderella-sized bedroom- 
 slippers flew right over her head ! 
 
 And now that, thanks to her being in Berlin, I 
 came to know her daughter well, I often asked myself 
 which of the two I admired most, which I was fondest 
 of? The mother was the more brilliant personality, 
 but I think Madame de Billow's was the deeper nature ; 
 her friendship would probably be more dependable, her 
 kindness well up from a deeper spring. And I knew 
 1 ' An Adventure in a Train,' p. 119.
 
 A WINTER OF STORM 151 
 
 her character must be on noble lines, for years ago 
 when first I saw her I had instantly thought of the 
 Roman Campagna ! 
 
 She was now over 50 and had been very handsome 
 in her youth; and though nowadays she was only hand- 
 some occasionally, it was easy to credit all one had 
 heard about the passions she had inspired . . . and 
 in one or two cases reciprocated. People who have 
 been much loved retain even in old age a radiating 
 quality difficult to describe but unmistakable. Even 
 a stone that has been blazed on all day by a southern 
 sun will hold heat long after nightfall ; and Madame 
 de Biilow, who was far from being a stone and not 
 yet at the close of her day, had this warm radiance. 
 A sort of Creole charm was hers the laziness of an 
 Oriental, derived, perhaps, together with her instinct 
 for beauty, from her Sicilian ancestors, combined with 
 the subtlety of the Italian, the unworldliness of 
 S. Francis, (which is a quality quite compatible with 
 worldly knowledge) and a gift of unlimited kindness. 
 Besides all this she was an admirable musician, and in 
 every drop of blood in her body an artist, as was manifest 
 in the decoration of the Chancellor's palace. The 
 Emperor, who was devoted to them both, had given 
 her carte blanche, and the result was a magnificent 
 Roman palazzo in the heart of Berlin the only possible 
 setting, I often felt, for the lady of the house. 
 
 The first result of the return of these two ladies to 
 Berlin was a message from Donna Laura to Count 
 Hochberg. And lo ! the meeting with him which I 
 had been trying to achieve for three weeks instantly 
 took place ! But there were many details yet to be 
 settled before I could return to England, and it gradually 
 became an institution that I was to go and make music 
 with Madame de Btilow every day at 6 p.m. ; ' music 
 is the one bit of real life I have in the 24 hours ' she
 
 152 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 once said. On one occasion the Chancellor looked in 
 I suppose to take stock of this prot6ge of his women 
 kind and after that I was often asked to dine en famille> 
 and thus had ample opportunity to form an opinion of 
 the statesman who, they said, was responsible for the 
 foreign policy of the German Empire rather than the 
 Emperor. 
 
 In those early days I was not favourably impressed. 
 Obviously a remarkable man, he was also a polished 
 cynic, and I thought, rather overdid the part of villain 
 of the piece ; on the other hand he was too much of 
 a professional charmer to inspire confidence all of 
 which impressions were to merge, under the influence 
 of his extreme friendliness towards me, in qualified 
 admiration and unqualified personal liking, if one may 
 lay a humble tribute at so exalted a shrine. Mean- 
 while he struck me at once as being one of the few real 
 gentlemen and men of the world it had been my fortune 
 to come across in Germany, and whenever he either 
 looked at his wife or spoke to his dog I loved him 
 unreservedly. 
 
 Sir Frank Lascelles told me that ten or twelve years 
 ago when he and the Biilows were at Bucharest, he had 
 gained the impression which was to be mine later that 
 Biilow lived on two things only, politics and his wife, 
 and certainly I never saw a more devoted and adoring 
 husband. And no wonder ! Often, when I found her 
 lying back comfortably in the corner of her sofa lazy, 
 sunny, dreamy, sincere, and yet so light-hearted and 
 pagan I thought what a repose it must be to him just 
 to let his weary eyes rest on this intensely intelligent 
 woman with a child's soul ! Such was the burden 
 carried by the Chancellor of such a master, that he 
 seldom saw her for more than two hours in the day 
 often less. But one felt he could not have existed 
 without those two hours ; and she knew it, and was
 
 A WINTER OF STORM 153 
 
 proud of the fact as of her husband and his career 
 generally. 
 
 On the other hand she literally worshipped her 
 mother, who, in some ways, was even more childlike 
 than she herself ; hence the roles would sometimes be 
 inverted, and I used to say to myself that Madame de 
 Biilow was more like a mother to Donna Laura than 
 a daughter ! Meanwhile Donna Laura was old, and 
 not always in the best of health and Madame de Biilow 
 was the apple of her eye. Thus the Chancellor's wife 
 was torn between two human preoccupations and 
 duties, and on the day when she suddenly told me 
 all this she made a friend of me for life. 
 
 Donna Laura's relations with her son-in-law seemed 
 excellent, but I gathered from other sources that at 
 one time there had been difficulties. She belonged on 
 one side to the Italian branch of the Actons (founded 
 in Nelson's time), had a passion for England and English 
 ways, and I do not think that any chord in her nature 
 can have vibrated sympathetically to the German 
 touch. She did her best to keep this fact to herself, 
 of course, but in one so vivacious and impulsive it was 
 bound to leak out occasionally. I heard, too, that this 
 widow and confidant of a great statesman, this char- 
 meuse who still had influence in high places every- 
 where, sometimes found it hard not to put in her 
 oar in a matter which certainly did not concern her, 
 German statecraft, and that there had been friction 
 between her and her son-in-law on that account, in- 
 cluding very plain speaking on his part. But all this 
 was a thing of the past, and now they were capital 
 friends. 
 
 As I could safely utter all my thoughts to Donna 
 Laura, I did not disguise from her that I was not 
 attracted, so far, by Count Biilow, and she amused me 
 by remarking : ' ma fille me dit, pourtant, qu'il est
 
 154 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 plutot bon.' 1 Her handling of the marriage relation, 
 and indeed, of all questions, was delightfully uncon- 
 ventional and free from reserve. She told me, for 
 instance, that after her brilliant and restless career as 
 Princess Camporeale was brought to a close, she felt that 
 something more serious would now appeal to her . . . 
 ' so I looked round and decided to marry Minghetti, 
 who was many years older than myself.' 
 
 On the subject of German manners and customs I 
 remember an amusing little outbreak of hers one night 
 after dinner, when Count Biilow told us that we were 
 to leave the gentlemen to themselves when they came 
 in from the dining-room, as they had important matters 
 to discuss. Donna Laura tossed her head in scorn : 
 ' In my day,' she remarked, ' women were not pushed 
 into corners to talk chiffons among themselves when 
 serious matters were on the tapis ! On the contrary, 
 their opinions were sought, and listened to ... as 
 they are to-day in every civilised country ! ' . . . (This 
 last phrase in a low tone, for the benefit of her daughter 
 and myself.) Madame de Biilow looked at me with 
 the intensely amused, loving, indulgent smile these 
 outbursts of her mother would bring to her face : ' Ah ! ' 
 she said, ' vous connaissez bien Maman ! ' As we 
 moved off obediently to a remote spot, leaving the best 
 groups of chairs and tables for the serious half of 
 creation, I remarked to Donna Laura : ' You will 
 never get out of German heads that woman are, at best, 
 mere playthings.' ' Then, by all means,' she exclaimed, 
 4 let us be thankful that to keep out of the men's way 
 is the order of the day . . . car leurs jeux sont bien 
 lourds ! ' 
 
 But exciting and entrancing as was the privilege of 
 
 admission on such terms to the Biilow establishment, 
 
 1 Yet my daughter tells me that he is a good fellow on the whole.
 
 A WINTER OF STORM 155 
 
 my sheet-anchor, my sanctuary, both now, and during 
 the far more troublous campaign with the Opera 
 authorities that lay before me in the New Year, was the 
 British Embassy. 
 
 Sir Frank Lascelles, alas ! is dead ; not so, I am 
 glad to say, his daughter Florence, afterwards married 
 to Mr. (later Sir Cecil) Spring Rice, who was our 
 Ambassador at Washington during the war. But the 
 fact that she is alive need not prevent my saying that 
 these two, to whom, with Madame de Biilow, I owe 
 most of my peeps into Berlin life, were pure gold. The 
 reproach levelled against many Embassies, that only 
 the great ones of the world find entrance there, did 
 not apply to this Embassy. Not only were their 
 obscurest compatriots entertained by the Lascelles, but 
 endless trouble was taken to find out whom it would 
 amuse them to meet. As Florence was only a girl, Sir 
 Frank's sister Lady Edward Cavendish, one of the most 
 amusing of women, did the honours; and Sir Frank 
 was known to stand high in the favour of the Emperor, 
 whom I think he thoroughly understood and in many 
 ways admired and respected. Donna Laura informed 
 me that the Chancellor, too, had a great opinion of our 
 Ambassador, whereupon I said that, among other things, 
 he was the most absolutely disinterested of men. This 
 remark of mine elicited a reply which throws an amusing 
 flood of light on Italian conceptions : ' O, as to that,' 
 she exclaimed, ' I can say the same for my son-in-law. 
 Money does not exist for him ' ! . . . Explanations were 
 useless. 
 
 Throughout all these weeks of waiting I had one 
 great resource, golf. Sir Frank, who was an impas- 
 sioned golfer, had begged of the Kaiser, and rigged up 
 as golf course, part of one of the Royal Parks which 
 lay in the dreary sand-dunes that surround Berlin and 
 was about half an hour's drive from the Embassy. It
 
 156 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 was an amusing course, although, as may be imagined, 
 there was a good deal of niblick work even when you 
 were on the so-called ' pretty.' All the attaches were 
 golfers, which Sir Frank said was lucky, otherwise they 
 would all have been hounded off by me to South Africa 
 so intolerable to me was the idea of anyone not 
 volunteering for the war. For alas ! we seemed as far 
 off as ever from the end. 
 
 Those were times calculated to put a. strain upon 
 English Ambassadors all over Europe, but especially on 
 the one accredited to the Court whence the Kruger 
 telegram had proceeded. Day by day the German 
 newspapers were full of the supposed atrocities com- 
 mitted by the English troops in South Africa, and a 
 faked photograph of an English soldier twirling a Boer 
 baby on his bayonet went the round of them all. To 
 this incident I owe one of those phrases that sum up 
 a perennial state of mind, especially in the Fatherland, 
 and haunt one amusingly to the end of one's life. ' Do 
 you really believe,' I said to my old friend Johanna 
 Rontgen, 1 who had come over from Leipzig for the 
 day ' you, who have English friends, and know English 
 literature that our soldiers impale little children ? ' 
 Johanna's excited and convincing reply was : ' Es steht 
 ja in meinem Blatt ! ' that is, ' it is in my newspaper ' ! 
 And I happened to know that her newspaper was one 
 of the vilest, most heavily subsidised rags in Germany ! 
 Further, these stories were officially supported by a 
 remark made in the Reichstag by some responsible 
 person, to the effect that atrocities were only to be 
 expected of undisciplined mercenaries such as our 
 troops. Thereupon Mr. Chamberlain replied in the 
 House of Commons that our troops were as patriotic 
 and highly disciplined as the German or any other 
 1 See Impressions that Remained. (Longmans.)
 
 A WINTER OF STORM 157 
 
 army. Then the German Government threw the reins 
 on its own neck, and Billow begged, furiously and 
 officially, that the German army be not mentioned in the 
 same breath as what he implied were English savages. 
 
 Among many errors made in German statecraft 
 none was greater than this. Up to now the pro-Boer 
 party had been of some account, and as usual there 
 were many wobblers in the Liberal camp. But this 
 speech of Billow's changed the scene ; Sir H. Camp- 
 bell-Bannerman's remarks about ' barbarous methods ' 
 were to prove nails in his coffin (for they were never 
 forgotten) and Lord Rosebery came forth from his 
 tent with a trumpet call that restored the equilibrium 
 of the wobbling Liberals. Thanks, too, to Biilow, our 
 Government now saw itself healed of private dissen- 
 sions and uncertainties, the noble Lord's comments on 
 which I found thus trenchantly summarised in a news- 
 paper : ' Lord Rosebery did just give it Brodrick last 
 night, not 'alf ! ' remarks a bus-driver. ' What did 'e 
 say Vd do ? ' asks the conductor ' What did 'e say 
 Vd do ? . . . Why, 'e said that if 'e couldn't do 
 things better with 'is foot than Brodrick done with 'is 
 'eadpiece, 'e'd go an' drown 'isself ! ' And the end of 
 it was that the pro-Boer Mr. Lloyd George, to whom, 
 as much as to any one man, Europe owes salvation 
 to-day, made a picturesque exit from the Birmingham 
 Town Hall in the disguise of a policeman. 
 
 All this, which took place in the autumn of 1901, 
 will show among what shoals and quicksands the 
 British Ambassador was called upon to manoeuvre, . . . 
 and my own navigation in the treacherous waters of the 
 Berlin Opera House became hourly more difficult. 
 Nevertheless the cast and the approximate date of the 
 premiere were settled before I left Berlin at the end of 
 October. I remember that when I went to say good- 
 bye to Donna Laura she was not well and lying down
 
 158 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 on a sofa in her bedroom ; none the less she leaped up 
 to pull her Extract Book out of a drawer, and show 
 and explain to me some lines of Browning she had 
 just copied into it ! 
 
 I went home by Copenhagen in order to make the 
 acquaintance of the Benckendorffs, new and great 
 friends of a friend of mine, Maurice Baring, then 
 attached to the British Legation at Copenhagen. That 
 visit has nothing to do with this story, but a writer 
 may be allowed a passing reference to a good hour 
 the hour in which one of the most valued relations of 
 her after-life was began. 
 
 After a few days at Copenhagen I returned to 
 England, and spent a strenuous two months revising 
 the orchestral parts of Der Wald and seeing to the 
 thousand and one things that have to be seen to on 
 these occasions ; such as drawing plans of the stage, of 
 the action, of the lighting required, etc., to think out 
 which beforehand saves time. This, and training the 
 infant mind of a sheep-dog puppy of the Old English 
 tailless breed, named Pan, (successor to the beloved 
 Marco, deceased) occupied me fully till the day 
 dawned when I reluctantly packed up my scores and 
 once more started for Germany. 
 
 II 
 
 I got back to Berlin on December 29th, to discover 
 that after all there was no particular hurry, since Der 
 Wald could not come out as soon as Pierson had hoped 
 the usual fate of new operas, except in admirably 
 organised theatres like Dresden and Munich. I found 
 the air tense with the anticipation of the opening of 
 the Reichstag which was to be about the 10th January, on 
 which occasion the Chancellor was expected to make a 
 speech that would either lessen or increase the friction
 
 A WINTER OF STORM 159 
 
 between Germany and England. Sir Frank, who was 
 an old enough hand to gather information from all 
 available sources, no matter how humble, cross-ques- 
 tioned me as to my impressions concerning the state of 
 public feeling in England ; and he also told me, a day 
 or two before the opening of the Reichstag, that he 
 had been unofficially assured that the tenour of the 
 anxiously-awaited pronouncement would be soothing 
 and satisfactory. 
 
 I have reason to think he was as astonished and 
 horrified as outsiders like myself, when that speech 
 turned out to be one of the most offensive, even 
 threatening utterances that had ever issued from the 
 Chancellor's suave lips the kernel of it being that if 
 England tried to bully Germany she would find herself 
 ' biting on iron ' ! 
 
 I have not yet said that Madame de Biilow held 
 aloof completely from politics, and all the world knew 
 that political conversation bored her to death. This 
 attitude may have been inspired by what the Italians 
 call ' astuzia ' a prettier thing than astuteness for it 
 put a wall between her and possible intriguers who, 
 in spite of Bismarck's dicta on petticoat government, 
 might have hoped to work their ends through the 
 Chancellor's wife. But, myself, I think the repulsion 
 was sincere ; for Madame de Biilow was, above all, 
 an artist, and to people of the artistic temperament 
 nothing is more hateful than the political atmosphere. 
 Gentle, peace-loving, fascinatingly indolent, she was 
 the very antithesis of the sordidities and restlessness in 
 the midst of which the professional politician thrives 
 and herein, I am sure, lay one of the reasons of her 
 husband's devotion. I was a keen politician myself 
 just then as even artists become when their country 
 is at war but not a political word had ever passed 
 between me and Madame de Biilow.
 
 160 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 The day after the opening of the Reichstag I was 
 due, as it chanced, to make music with her at 5.30, 
 and my astonishment may be imagined when, after a 
 little desultory musical trifling, she suddenly asked me 
 what I thought of ' Bernhardt ' speech ? I replied that 
 of course England would be lashed to a greater pitch 
 of fury than ever and that one could only imagine that 
 this was the deliberate intention of the German Govern- 
 ment. She listened quietly, and I am certain without 
 the faintest surprise, to my elaboration of this theme, 
 and then said : ' Will you come to dinner to-night, 
 and repeat all you have said to me, to my husband ? 
 You know how large-minded he is . . . that anything 
 any one says to him is taken in good part. . . .' 
 
 This was absolutely true ; he listened, and listened 
 well, even to amateur politicians like myself ; no wonder, 
 therefore, that my previous sentiments were rapidly 
 turning into liking and admiration ! She told me that 
 no one was dining with them except Delbrtick and 
 one or two other people whose names I have forgotten, 
 and that I need not do anything elaborate in the way of 
 toilette. 
 
 That dinner was one of the most interesting 
 experiences of my life. The Chancellor was a delightful 
 talker gay, shrewd, witty, light in hand, and well 
 read, though when he got the time for reading I cannot 
 think, unless perhaps in his summer home at Nordeney. 
 And, as I remarked before, every time he looked at, 
 or spoke to, his wife, my heart warmed towards him. 
 Presently he said : 
 
 1 My wife tells me that you think my speech last 
 night will inflame all England. Now why should it ? ' 
 
 Never having had occasion to plumb the depths of 
 German ignorance of public opinion elsewhere, it 
 seemed to me inconceivable that a child should not 
 have known beforehand what the effects of that speech
 
 A WINTER OF STORM 161 
 
 would be ; and I listened in amazement while he 
 explained what, in his opinion, it amounted to ; why, 
 given German feeling, he could say no less ; and why 
 a calm, judicial nation like the English should under- 
 stand that nothing offensive was meant. I said my 
 say, as before in Madame de Billow's room, and I saw 
 that the other guests, who occasionally threw in a word, 
 were listening attentively. 
 
 Then came a dramatic moment ; enter a servant 
 with the first telegram from London, reporting the 
 reception of the speech in the English Houses of Parlia- 
 ment ! Btilow read it, and saying half jokingly, ' Well, 
 you were right ! ' he passed it round to his colleagues. 
 
 There are limits to the histrionic powers of ever so 
 clever actors. As that dinner went on and telegram 
 after telegram came in and was passed round the table, 
 faces lengthened, exclamations of astonishment and 
 something like dismay escaped the readers ; there was 
 no doubting the fact that the effect of that speech had 
 not been foreseen by these German statesmen ! 
 
 When Madame de Biilow and I left the dinner 
 table no allusion was made to all this, and we were 
 discussing Donna Laura, who was in Rome, and other 
 innocuous subjects when the gentlemen came in. I re- 
 member the Chancellor, his hand full of new batches 
 of telegrams, coming straight up to the sofa where I 
 was sitting and dropping down beside me like a tired 
 and rather exasperated man. 
 
 1 But what do you English want and expect ? ' he 
 said at once. ' Do you want us to like this war of yours ? 
 To look on and applaud while you are crushing a small 
 nation ? ' 
 
 One generally remembers one's own answers. Mine 
 was to the effect that if France, or some other Latin 
 people, plunged into this hysterical and abominable 
 Press campaign, one would say it was merely their
 
 1 62 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 excitable fashion of treating public questions ; but from 
 the Germans, a nation kin by blood to ourselves, we at 
 least expected justice. 
 
 * My own opinion,' said he, quasi-confidentially, 
 1 is, that all armies commit atrocities . . . and there's 
 not much to choose between them ' (a slight revision 
 of that other, publicly-expressed, theory that the 
 German army was sacrosanct and must decline to be 
 bracketted together with undisciplined mercenaries !) 
 I must have reproached him, as master of the Press 
 Bureau, for not putting a stop to the newspaper campaign, 
 as I very well remember his remarking : 
 
 1 The German Chancellor is not der Herr Gott ! . . . 
 he can't do everything. ... / can't muzzle the 
 Press 1 ' 
 
 At the time I took leave to doubt this although I 
 hope I did not say so exactly, but I came to see it was 
 the truth, though not in the sense he meant me to 
 understand. 
 
 The English never seem to me to have realised how 
 much more apparent than real was the power of the 
 Kaiser and consequently of his Chancellor. The 
 Prussian Junkers, beside being the chief representatives 
 of the agricultural interest, were, as the aristocratic 
 party, chief bulwark of the State, and a far greater 
 power than the Court ; the Army was their instru- 
 ment . . . and the Kaiser the puppet of the Army. 
 
 This was so even before the days of the German 
 Empire, as anyone who has read Bismarck's Memoirs, 
 and the account of the tussle between him and the King 
 of Prussia after Sadowa, can judge for himself. The 
 Austrians once thoroughly defeated, Bismarck wished 
 to spare them the humiliation of the German troops 
 entering Vienna, it being part of his plan, that when 
 the time came for crushing France, and uniting the 
 German States under Prussia, Austria should remain
 
 A WINTER OF STORM 163 
 
 neutral. But his old master insisted that to deprive 
 the Army of that spectacular triumph would wreck 
 his popularity even endanger his throne. Bismarck 
 describes how, seeing his slowly-built-up edifice for the 
 union of Germany about to crumble into dust, he was 
 standing at a window, weeping, when the Crown Prince 
 came in and asked him if he considered the matter of 
 such supreme seriousness ? for in that case he would 
 make one more effort to over-persuade the King. 
 Eventually the Prince, ' who had no reason to be my 
 friend,' remarks the memoir-writer, gained the day for 
 Bismarck, at the cost of a shattering two hours' battle 
 with his father. It took the old King weeks to forgive 
 his Minister, but the Army never forgave him ; and 
 the Head Quarters Staff refused to let him ride with 
 them during the Franco-Prussian War ! 
 
 Now at the time I was in Berlin Billow's position 
 was particularly difficult, chiefly owing to the dissatis- 
 faction of the almighty Junkers whose landed interests 
 were suffering under the rapid growth of industrialism. 
 Again, the violent disturbances in the Polish Provinces, 
 where the Junkers are large land-holders, affected them 
 disagreeably. The Polish Question has always seemed 
 to me Germany's Irish Question, with this difference, 
 that the indigenous population was increasing at a 
 rabbit-like rate, whereas the German colonists were not 
 thriving. It was impossible, however, to trample on the 
 Junkers as landlords have been trampled on in Ireland, 
 and I not only wished we had a Biilow to deal with 
 Irish affairs, but said so once to a very grand old gentle- 
 man . . . who turned out to be Prince Radziwill, 
 leader of the National Polish Party in the Reichstag ! 
 Such are the blunders of the amateur politician abroad, 
 and I never saw men laugh more than did Biilow and 
 Sir Frank over that incident 1 
 
 The Chancellor being, then, in a cleft stick between
 
 1 64 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 Agriculture and Industrialism, the only card he could 
 play with the, certainty of pleasing all parties was the 
 Anti-English card. Apart from the exigencies of 
 ' Welt Politik,' this was a great factor in his provocative 
 attitude one reason why he could not afford to muzzle 
 the Press but was rather obliged to egg it on. I think 
 he came to see that that speech of his was a mistake ; 
 and after Mr. Chamberlain's reply to it, which satis- 
 factorily exhaled the fury of England and caused the 
 Cabinet to rally round the speaker, the slandering of. 
 our troops died down. Chamberlain now became the 
 bete-noir of the German Press, and Btilow, who had 
 hitherto considered him a negligible quantity, began 
 to allude to him in private conversation as a power. 
 
 I have said what the Chancellor's private opinion 
 was as to the identical behaviour of all armies in warfare. 
 Another instance of the difference between a statesman's 
 public and private utterances occurs to me in the matter 
 of the Anglo-Japanese alliance which became a fact 
 about this time. It will be remembered how the 
 German inspired Press raged against ' this disgraceful 
 bond between Yellow and White,' . . . and no wonder, 
 for one day at dinner the Chancellor allowed that this 
 was a brilliant stroke of which he would not have believed 
 our feeble Government capable ! ' Yes,' he said, 
 nodding his head slowly, ' on that point I offer you my 
 congratulations ! ' a compliment that seemed wrung 
 out against the grain. ' No one in Germany will see 
 the importance of it,' he added, ' for Germans are bereft 
 of political instinct, and as for Foreign politics, not a 
 single soul here knows anything about them.' 
 
 Meanwhile, as before Christmas, the needle of my 
 fortunes veered hither and thither in sympathetic 
 response to the political weather. One of Sir Frank's 
 first actions when I came back to Berlin, had been to 
 ask Pierson to lunch a thing few British Ambassadors
 
 A WINTER OF STORM 165 
 
 would have done, for Pierson was not an official power, 
 and as a certain junior secretary remarked with disgust, 
 ' not quite up to Embassy form.' But Sir Frank was 
 one of those great gentlemen who are equally at ease 
 with crowned heads and understrappers. A little later 
 on, Pierson informed me that for many reasons the 
 production of Der Wald had better be postponed to 
 the middle of March, but when I asked whether he 
 would advise postponing the whole thing till calmer 
 times, he answered : ' Certainly not ; say nothing, and 
 when the moment comes, it will be put through all 
 right.' So I made up my mind to cultivate patience 
 and see as much as possible of Berlin life. 
 
 I found it absolutely odious, and should never have 
 believed that, even in military-mad Germany, human 
 beings could consent to exist on terms of such abject 
 subservience. The Kaiser was alluded to in an awed, 
 hushed whisper, and I noticed that anyone who pro- 
 nounced an unorthodox opinion, such as admiration 
 of modern pictures or music both of them among 
 his abominations would be marked ' dangerous * and 
 avoided by the discreet. In fact, those two words 
 ' der Kaiser,' swallowed up every other conception in 
 the Berlin brain, and distilled a brew of servility, terror, 
 snobbishness and moral cowardice that defertilised all 
 surrounding regions. Conversation was not possible, 
 but merely the interchange of guarded phrases, as 
 among people surrounded with spies : if you asked 
 your neighbour whether he liked his potatoes mashed, 
 he would qualify the reply lest some hostess in the 
 vicinity should recently have given him fried potatoes. 
 I used to speak freely to the Bxilows about all this and 
 rather gathered that the Kaiser liked the idea of all 
 Berlin trembling in its shoes, each man in terror of 
 the man above him, and all in terror of him ; a terror
 
 1 66 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 tempered with admiration in his case, but none the less 
 mortal dread. In fact, Berlin seemed to me what it 
 was, the capital of a huge slave-state rather than a 
 centre of civilised society. 
 
 It was a characteristic touch, too, that, even as in 
 mediaeval Courts the Jester afforded one spot of relief, 
 so in this manacled and hobbled world there was a 
 certain Baroness L., belonging to one of the great 
 families, who, as official and privileged enfant terrible, 
 was supposed to say and do anything she liked, even 
 to the extent of playing the cornet-d-piston to the Kaiser 
 at grand dinner-parties a painful manifestation, indeed, 
 of chartered liberty and licence. Yet the spectacle of 
 this young lady, as decolletee as was then permissible 
 and smothered in jewels, blasting away on her uncom- 
 promising instrument, was certainly amusing in a 
 milieu whose even surface of caution and restraint was 
 otherwise unruffled. The only really great lady except 
 Madame de Btilow whom I had the good fortune to 
 meet in these exalted regions, and who, though sincerely 
 admiring the Kaiser in many ways, dispensed with the 
 official attitude towards him, was Princess Antoine 
 Radziwill, sister-in-law of the Prince Radziwill to 
 whom I addressed the tactful remark quoted above 
 . . . and she was not a German, but a Frenchwoman, 
 nee Castellane ! 
 
 It seems unnecessary to say that all this was part 
 of the canker that was eating up Germany, militarism 
 gone mad a subject that has been discussed to satiety. 
 But one amusing result of it may have escaped mention, 
 namely, its effect on the success of the Embassy parties. 
 In response to a regimental invitation, some ten or 
 twelve officers would file in like animated ramrods, 
 click heels, mention their names to their hosts, click 
 again, proceed to make the round of the chief personages 
 present, (still in file), salute these similarly, then wheel
 
 A WINTER OF STORM 167 
 
 and stand in a row, backs to wall, for some specified 
 time. And when that time had elapsed they took 
 their departure in exactly the same fashion. Not for 
 them to make themselves agreeable ! They had 
 honoured the function by their presence, an item of 
 drill had been brilliantly performed, and that was 
 enough. One day an American girl remarked with 
 disappointment : ' I did think they'd either come in 
 or go out goose-stepping ! ' 
 
 But worst of all was the whole-hearted and bare- 
 faced pursuit, at all costs, of the interests of Number 
 One, that informed the bosoms of these Prussian Officers. 
 A magnificent old warrior of 1870, General von Loe, 
 a great friend of Countess Billow's and of her mother's, 
 used to assure me that this was not so in his youth, 
 when comradeship meant genuine fraternity. ' Now,' 
 he said, ' as far as I can judge, one young fellow would 
 actually refrain from pointing out a pitfall to another ! ' 
 There was a certain Colonel, a Saxon I had known in 
 Leipzig years ago, with whom I was on excellent terms, 
 and one day at dinner I asked him if this was true ? 
 He laughed. ' There are few of my young fellows,' 
 he said, ' who wouldn't walk over the body of their 
 own brother to preferment,' and addressing with 
 humorous condescension a Lieutenant who sat oppo- 
 site us, he asked him if that were not so ? Whereupon 
 the young man, galvanised into rigidity, uttered the 
 ritualistic formula : ' Zu Befehl, Herr Oberst ! ' ('At 
 your orders, Mr. Colonel ! ') the only reply a sub- 
 altern is permitted to make to a superior officer. But 
 'a smile of flattered vanity and charmed acquiescence 
 irradiated his correct, wooden, Leutnant-face. 
 
 For one result of the Kaiser Cult I was wholly 
 unprepared, and I confess it shocked me not a little. 
 Apparently the disease was catching, and it became 
 obvious that some of our own countrymen had caught
 
 r68 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 it. One day at the Embassy I overheard a certain 
 flower of the British aristocracy say to her daughter 
 after several minutes passed in a trance and her tone 
 was strangely languishing and ecstasied ' Alice, did 
 he wave his hand to us in the Thiergarten three times, 
 or was it jour ? ' But Alice, who was of a different 
 grain to her Mama, answered with extreme gruffness, 
 ' I really didn't count.' Another day, after I myself 
 had had the unhoped for honour and delight of meeting 
 the Kaiser, I remarked to one who was high up in the 
 diplomatic career and a gentleman too : ' By the by, 
 the Emperor spoke of you.' ' What did he say ? ' 
 asked my interlocutor, with a face . . . but one must 
 have lived in Berlin to realise what a transfiguration 
 came over that face . . . melted, hopeful, anxious ! 
 ' He said,' I went on, ' " Jack is a real good sportsman ! " ' 
 1 Did he call me JACK ! ! ' gasped my friend . . . and 
 for very anguish of bliss his voice had a dying fall. 
 
 I never obtained, nor, given the job I had to tackle, 
 did I seek to obtain, a glimpse into the Court ; but 
 one of the few English girls in Berlin who was invited 
 year by year to assist at the birthday tea-parties of the 
 Royal young people which functions were supposed to 
 be the last word of informality told me that all was 
 put through with military precision. Up to a specified 
 hour decorum and ditchwater-dullness prevailed ; then, 
 let us say at 6 o'clock, riotous behaviour was the pre- 
 scribed note. The young Princes now began solemnly 
 throwing bits of bread at the young ladies, who responded 
 according to schedule ; till, ten minutes later, punctual 
 to a second, the Kaiserin would come in quite unex- 
 pectedly, and say with indulgence : ' Aber Kinder, 
 nicht gar zu iibermutig ! ' (Not too wild, children !) 
 Thereupon the party broke off short like a dry twig, 
 and three minutes later the stage was empty. 
 
 My informant, a shrewd, amusing girl, a used to say
 
 A WINTER OF STORM 169 
 
 it was a great pity that Prince Eitel Fritz was not Heir 
 to the Throne. And as during the war the news- 
 papers loved to dwell on the Crown Prince's supposed 
 cowardice in the field, it is a special satisfaction to me 
 to say, that even in those early days he was conspicuous 
 for the physical prowess that no English officer who 
 came in contact with him in later years would deny for 
 a moment, whatever they thought of him otherwise. 
 
 I spoke of the admirable qualities of the Kaiser, as 
 extolled by Princess Antoine Radziwill and certainly 
 there was not a better and less biassed judge about his 
 Court. Among these qualities were a constant pre- 
 occupation it is impossible to question with the welfare 
 of his people, and a devotion to duty that made his 
 day a round of ceaseless labour. I believe it began at 
 5 a.m., and seem to remember Sir Frank being once 
 waked up by an early call from the Kaiser and having 
 to receive him in pyjamas, for the Monarch was, as 
 always, in a hurry. None ever accused him of sacrificing 
 duty to pleasure ; indeed such was his strenuousness 
 that I fancy he was past caring for pleasure in any form, 
 and neglected, as do many Germans, the margin of 
 relaxation and temporary indifference to the main 
 issue which a long sojourn abroad has taught me is 
 one of the strong points of England. It has a very 
 reverse side . . . but that is another matter. 
 
 On the whole I think he was popular ' then, and 
 though his subjects scoffed at his sabre-rattling I believe 
 they liked it. It made them feel menacing and self- 
 respecting, and certainly no ruler ever enjoyed doing 
 it more than he. One of his great points, according 
 to Princess Radziwill, was, that he thoroughly liked 
 being Kaiser . . . this in days when even our own 
 King Edward sometimes expressed, in private, a belief 
 that he would be the last of his line. And behold ! the
 
 170 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 gods, accepting this tribute to the uncertainty of things 
 human, have strengthened the roots of one dynasty and 
 uprooted the other ! But I do not think the Emperor 
 was ever forgiven for dropping the pilot ; for Bismarck 
 was still a god and no wonder. Count Biilow told 
 me he considered him infallible, and I have no doubt 
 applauded his suppression of those Liberal principles 
 which Bismarck considered the Emperor Frederick had 
 imbibed from his ' English wife.' I wonder what 
 Prince Biilow, I wonder what the German people, think 
 about that suppression to-day ? 
 
 The unfortunate thing was, that the Kaiser 
 dominated, and wished to dominate, in all fields. His 
 tastes in Art were reactionary beyond belief, and it 
 was about this time that he publicly thanked Heaven 
 for the Sieges- Allee ' a monument pure of the modern 
 art-Spirit.' I told in ' Impressions that Remained ' 
 how he would have abolished the ' Secession ' if he 
 had dared that is, the part of the National Museum 
 devoted to modern pictures and statuary and how he 
 caused these ' abominations ' to be exhibited on the top 
 floor, hoping that no one would face the endless stairs ; 
 how a magnificent Zoloaga was only saved from banish- 
 ment by unheard-of efforts ; how the leading German 
 sculptor Hildebrand was in disgrace at Berlin, because, 
 on being summoned thither to discuss the erection of 
 some public monument, he mercilessly criticised the 
 design which was first in the running and which 
 possibly was more or less the work of the only Art- 
 Authority the Berlin sycophants recognised, namely, the 
 Kaiser himself ! 
 
 For the Kaiser really had pretensions as an artist, 
 and I myself have seen his great picture ' The Yellow 
 Peril,' a reproduction of which he presented to Sir 
 Frank. The idea is a monstrous yellow dragon, 
 emerging in one corner from blue clouds and extending
 
 A WINTER OF STORM 171 
 
 its claws over the landscape below. And if I do not 
 venture to criticise it, it is because I remember Brahms's 
 remark : ' One cannot be too careful in expressing an 
 opinion of Royal compositions, for you never know who 
 they are by.' But there is one charming and authentic 
 anecdote of what the Emperor said to Strauss, when 
 that great composer, who every one agrees is one of the 
 most delightful of personalities, became first conductor 
 at the Berlin Opera House : ' It is a pity your music 
 is so detestable, for you are such a dear fellow ! ' (ein so 
 lieber KerJ). 
 
 Before quitting the subject of servility I must 
 record a striking impression of mine at the Opera. It 
 may be remembered that during the Boxer rebellion the 
 German Minister at Pekin, a detestable and most 
 unpopular personality, had been murdered, and a 
 delegation from China, at the head of which was one 
 of the greatest Princes of the Royal Family, was sent to 
 Berlin to apologise. The newspapers gloated over the 
 scene in the Throne Room, how these barbarians had 
 crawled in on all fours, kissed the steps of the Throne, 
 and gone through various antics expressive of abject, 
 soul-disintegrating terror at the aspect of the Great 
 White Emperor. That night I saw the Chinese dele- 
 gates seated in a large proscenium box, while opposite 
 
 them, on the other side of the house, sat Prince , 
 
 a near relation of the Kaiser's, and his suite. In the 
 one box rigid, inhuman, humiliating official etiquette 
 anything that can be described as traces of culture, of 
 the manners that makyth men, pared away by the sword ; 
 a row of uniformed automatons and a Fetish. In the 
 other box a group of grave-faced, high-bred gentlemen, 
 exquisitely attired, conversing softly and easily among 
 themselves, or bending forward with the most dignified, 
 courteous gesture possible when their Prince, who was 
 seated beside the Chinese Ambassador, addressed them.
 
 172 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 Whatever the formalities prescribed by Chinese ritual 
 for occasions such as brought these Orientals to Berlin, 
 one felt certain that they must have managed to keep 
 their dignity. 
 
 In the midst of the arid and glittering landscape I 
 have been trying to describe, there was one oasis the 
 group of intimates Madame de Billow gathered round 
 her occasionally at small evening parties of ten to twelve 
 people. Sometimes there was music. Her friend, 
 Madame ' Robbie ' Mendelssohn (daughter of the 
 Italian song-writer Gordigiani, beloved composer of 
 my youth) was a fine musician ; so too was her husband, 
 a Berlin banker, nephew of my old, old friend Lili 
 Wach, who herself was Felix Mendelssohn's daughter. 
 Anyone of distinction and refinement, whether musician, 
 author, or painter, (of the non-official breed) was wel- 
 come to these delightful, informal gatherings. Prince 
 Lichnowsky who when the great war broke out, was 
 German Ambassador in London, stood in close officia 
 relation to the Chancellor, worshipped the Chancellor's 
 wife, and was ' Hausfreund,' as they call it in Germany. 
 I would write ' tame cat,' if that term did not imply 
 another sort of individual to this best type of man of 
 the world, cultured, amusing, and absolutely inde- 
 pendent in spirit who always was of the party. 
 
 One I never saw on these occasions, but met once 
 or twice at my 6 p.m. musical meetings with Madame 
 de Bulow, was Count Philip Eulenburg, the Kaiser's 
 great friend, of whom it was said that he had been made 
 Ambassador at Vienna by his Sovereign as a reward for 
 knowing more about the Drama than anyone in Germany; 
 for about 1898 people used to reproach the Emperor with 
 being bored to death by things military and caring only for 
 the theatre ! Count Eulenburg was the most perfect 
 specimen of a grand seigneur I remember meeting a
 
 A WINTER OF STORM 173 
 
 magnificent looking man of about 53, like a Titian 
 portrait, with a wonderful smile and a hauntingly sweet 
 laugh. A more satisfactory person to play one's work 
 to, composer could not wish to find, and as both 
 Donna Laura and her daughter had, or seemed to have, 
 the greatest possible respect for his judgment, I was 
 glad that Der Wald appealed to him so strongly, both 
 as story and music. I myself was rather damped off by 
 the fact that he was a composer himself . . . after a 
 fashion ! and I could not help reproaching Madame 
 de Billow for expressing more admiration for his com- 
 positions than a musician of her calibre could honestly 
 feel ! But perhaps it was fantastic, even barbaric, to 
 expect in a place like Berlin any other attitude towards 
 the Emperor's supreme favourite ! 
 
 General and Excellenz von Loe, whom I have already 
 mentioned, was like all the adorable grandfathers, all 
 the brave old soldiers, all the polished, self-respecting 
 old courtiers of the world rolled into one. I have 
 never forgotten, though I may have neglected to act 
 on, a dictum he uttered one day, when Madame de 
 Bulow was urging me to be more diplomatic in my 
 dealings with the Opera authorities : ' One must be the 
 reverse of opportunist in one's aims, but not scorn 
 opportunism in one's means,' he said. 
 
 Sometimes I met Professor Harnack at that house, 
 a most interesting, charming man, with an eagle's face 
 framed in an aureole of wavy, greyish hair, and who, 
 as my hostess remarked, was more like an artist, both 
 physically and mentally, than like a theologian. It 
 gave me pain to read his name at the bottom of the 
 proclamation put forth by the leading lights of Germany 
 at the beginning of the war . . . and I was glad to 
 see that Strauss's name did not figure on that list. 
 
 But the most exciting of all the acquaintances I 
 was privileged to make, thanks to Madame de Bulow
 
 174 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 if I except One who will appear in these pages later 
 on was the great Greek scholar and poet Herr von 
 Wilamowitz-Moellendorff. About this time Professor 
 Gilbert Murray had given non-classical scholars like 
 myself an insight into Greek thought and poetry such 
 as we had never hoped to obtain, and Wilamowitz's 
 translations, which Madame de Biilow introduced me 
 to, are quite as fine. Once I dined quietly with 
 Wilamowitz, and he showed me an unknown poem of 
 Sappho's, of the Faynum series, which he had just 
 deciphered. Incidentally he informed me that in his 
 opinion Sappho was the most maligned of women, that 
 she was really a sort of High School Mistress, and the 
 famous passions merely innocent ' Schwarmerei ' between 
 her and her pupils. Luckily it is open to those who 
 have no Greek to reject this depressing reading of 
 4 burning Sappho.' 
 
 Ill 
 
 Saint-Saens, whom you would unhesitatingly class 
 among the spoiled darlings of Fate, were it not that an 
 effortless career is an illusion of perspective Saint- 
 Saens, great musician and homme d 'esprit, has said : 
 
 1 Quand on ne joue pas vos operas c'est mal . . . 
 mais quand on les joue c'est encore pire ! ' 
 
 This is literally true, even under the most favourable 
 circumstances, when you and your conductor see eye to 
 eye. Such are the lions in your path ; such the slowness 
 of stage carpenters and the pigheadedness of stage 
 electricians ; such the colds and coughs that lie in wait 
 in the wings for your troupe ; such the vanity, too, of 
 these dear people themselves (though to some I owe 
 large debts of gratitude, and to all a tribute of admiration 
 for embracing such a trying career) such, in a word, 
 are the terrors and complications of opera-production,
 
 A WINTER OF STORM 175 
 
 that half the time you long to catch up your score and 
 flee with it to the uttermost parts of the earth. 
 
 But never, I imagine, was opera produced under 
 less favourable circumstances than this work by an 
 Anglo-Saxon, and a woman, launched in the very place 
 whence the Kaiser's celebrated dictum about woman's 
 sphere had issued a place which had now become 
 the Head Quarters of an international anti-English 
 propaganda ! 
 
 As I said, the Press campaign had toned down, 
 but Anglophobia waxed all the fiercer for being deprived 
 of this outlet. Anti-English demonstrations were now 
 a daily occurrence, and one day the windows of our 
 Embassy were smashed by a mob, the Kaiser himself 
 calling next day to express his indignation. As time 
 went on, too, we English abstained from gazing into 
 shop-windows, lest our turned backs should present 
 too convenient a target for the patriotic but cautious 
 spitter ! Finally, as finishing touch to the situation, 
 my one rock of defence, the sole powerful friend I had 
 connected with the Hof Oper, was swept away in the 
 flood of misfortune, that, like the giant wave Neptune 
 sent hurtling against the shore to madden Hippolytus's 
 horses, now threatened to engulf me. 
 
 Pierson was a bit of a blackguard, perhaps, but also 
 a bit of a genius. A difficult man to deal with shifty 
 yet reliable, maddening yet likeable, ambitious yet 
 disinterested. Still though I guessed that he ' took 
 money ' I never doubted but that he would see me 
 through, and well through, albeit he realised that none 
 would be forthcoming from me. About the middle of 
 February, however, I thought the psychological moment 
 had arrived for his being asked to dine (not lunch) at 
 the Embassy to discuss matters, . . . but just about 
 then he suddenly began to look so desperately ill that 
 I was terrified. And Lady Edward Cavendish, who
 
 176 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 like the secretary I quoted, did not consider Pierson 
 ' up to Embassy form,' and had been casting about 
 for a reason not to ask him, finally said in desperation : 
 ' but from what you say he might die at table ! ' 
 
 Alas ! that invitation was never despatched. It 
 may have been a judgment on poor Pierson for 
 befriending me, for I afterwards heard that he was 
 actually filling in the rehearsal sheets, with a view to 
 the production of Der Wald on the 16th March, when 
 the pen fell from his hand ! He was carried home 
 unconscious and expired two days later. As I wrote 
 to H. B. ' You will not be surprised to hear that I have 
 killed Pierson.' 
 
 From that moment my position was desperate, for 
 not only had Count Hochberg never been called upon 
 to cope with the realities of theatre direction, or do 
 anything except ' represent ' Opera and the Drama at 
 Court, but he was totally unaware of the intrigues and 
 countless forms of corruption that underlay the whole 
 system of management to an extent which I myself 
 had only half realised, so far. I knew that certain 
 singers had grumbled as loudly as they dared at having 
 to incur unpopularity by taking part in an English 
 work ; but Pierson was a bold and clever man who had 
 every sort of hold on his team, and did not brook 
 opposition. Once he had disappeared from the scene 
 of action, however, I became aware of nothing less than 
 a fixed intention, on the part of the Company, to make 
 the production of Der Wald an impossibility. 
 
 My first intimation was a warning from a friendly 
 baritone that the youthful heroine an ideal Roschen, 
 with whom I had been studying the part for three 
 weeks was meditating throwing up her part. She 
 was a young American, not yet a member of the Hof 
 Oper but what they call a ' guest ' that is, on a trial 
 engagement ; and being so far a hot favourite with the
 
 A WINTER OF STORM 177 
 
 public (which is a great asset in a premiere) she was 
 averse to taking risks. On the other hand it was 
 rumoured that the Kaiser had been talking about Der 
 Wald ! For the moment, therefore, this particularly- 
 unblushing young thruster, who might have given a 
 Prussian officer points in the art of trampling over 
 anything and anyone to gain her own ends, was sitting 
 on the fence. Now as I knew that she was more or 
 less run by a rich old lady (I cannot recall whether 
 German or American) who had a ' Schwarmerei ' for 
 her, I thought it wisest to go straight to this patroness, 
 explain what was at stake for me, and make a bid for 
 her backing. 
 
 Never was enterprise a greater failure 1 My repre- 
 sentations were met with a shrug of the shoulders, my 
 implorings brushed aside with a slight wave of the 
 beringed hand ; her dear child's interests were the para- 
 mount consideration, she said, and that very morning she 
 had advised, nay, commanded her, to throw up the part ! 
 
 The role of Roschen's lover, ' Heinrich,' was in the 
 hands of a certain Herr Krauss, a stout, bellowing tenor 
 of the ' Siegfried ' type, who had a fine voice capable 
 of tender inflections and was not a bad actor ; and he 
 too was a great favourite with the public. This singer, 
 unable for some reason or other to wriggle out of the 
 part, confined himself to doing his best to make things 
 unpleasant ; and his best was pretty good, for besides 
 being of a vanity that made him take the suavest sug- 
 gestion as an insult, he was one of the greatest brutes 
 I have ever had the ill luck to meet. During the 
 nerve-racking weeks that followed I recall two Krauss 
 incidents. The first was when at a given moment, in 
 my anxiety to make him believe that no offence had 
 been intended, I rashly laid a hand on his arm ; there- 
 upon, with the voice and attitude peculiar to the stage- 
 Joseph, he exclaimed : 4 Bitte mich nicht anzurtihren ! '
 
 178 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 (please not to touch me). The second was when, at 
 some other crisis, he shouted : ' Das Frauenzimmer soil 
 die Buhne verlassen ! ' To translate this phrase : 
 ' Remove the female from the stage ' is the best I can do, 
 but no word in our language conveys the abominableness 
 of that much-used term ' Frauenzimmer.' 
 
 And so, more or less, with the whole cast. They 
 all had the length of Count Hochberg's foot, and would 
 craftily ask and obtain leave, one after the other, at 
 dates which practically wrecked a coming rehearsal or 
 possibly caused its postponement. This I would find 
 out, would rush to the bewildered Hochberg, show him 
 the real ' plan of hours ' as opposed to the one submitted 
 to him, and myself suggest what should be done for 
 he was as helpless as a babe. Obstacle after obstacle 
 was thus erected, discovered by me, and circumvented. 
 I often thought it fortunate I was a woman ; firstly 
 because I could pretend, as foolish, ignorant ' Frauen- 
 zimmer,' to believe that all this was the working of 
 chance, whereas a man would have had to kick or shoot 
 someone continually ; and secondly because I am certain 
 that only a woman could have stood the strain and 
 many another strain connected with similar enterprises. 
 
 Thus March wore on, and by the time that events 
 and I had proved to Hochberg that there really was a 
 plot a defiance of his authority which it was painful 
 to his dignity to contemplate the best part of the 
 season was gone. And even then it was past his power 
 to tackle the opposition effectively, for the working of 
 an Opera House depends on a thousand technicalities 
 of which he knew nothing. Strictly speaking they 
 were not his business, but most Hof Intendants dislike 
 seeming not to know the ropes. His position therefore 
 was both difficult and humiliating, and I hated being 
 forced by circumstances to complicate it still further, for 
 he was a lovable man and a gentleman.
 
 A WINTER OF STORM 179 
 
 If a question here suggests itself, ' Where was Muck 
 all this time ? ' the answer is that a conductor is not 
 bound to busy himself with the preliminary study of 
 an opera he is producing. Schuch and Mottl invariably 
 did so, and Muck was such a big man that I am sure 
 his usual practice must have been the same as theirs ; 
 but on this occasion the idea was to see as little of the 
 composer as possible. Also, to do him justice, he 
 reckoned me among the opera writers who are able to 
 drive their intentions into the souls of their artists, 
 though, as I have shown, this gift was of little use to 
 me here. I fancy, too, that knowing what I was up 
 against, he may have considered it improbable that Der 
 Wald would come up for performance at all which, 
 to tell the truth, it would not, but that the joy of battle 
 now possessed me . . . and also a fierce desire that 
 England should win in the end ! Finally, he knew, 
 and so did I, his power of coming in at the last moment 
 and pulling things together. But the last moment was 
 far off . . . and meanwhile I got little or no help from 
 Muck. 
 
 There are two classes of people connected with 
 opera-production whom I have always loved and got 
 on with, and who, if I may say so without vanity, 
 would, I believe, have a good word to say for me ; 
 namely, the Chorus and the Orchestra. 
 
 When I use a Chorus at all, I give it a vital part 
 in the drama an attention they thoroughly appreciate 
 and nothing touches me more profoundly than their 
 zeal and willingness. How anxious they are to enter 
 into your intention ! How far removed from the spirit 
 it must be so hard for the principals to keep clear of 
 ... a selfish, personal spirit that makes the fate of the 
 work in particular, and art in general, a matter of rela- 
 tive, or indeed positive indifference ! Even at Berlin 
 my work with the Chorus was always a delight.
 
 180 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 As for members of an Orchestra, these are people 
 who know what sort of ' stuff,' as they call it, they are 
 dealing with musicians, who respond to the musician 
 in yourself and with whom it is possible to get into 
 real touch. How splendidly the Berlin orchestra stood 
 by me will be related by and by, but meanwhile the 
 final stage, the day when I and they should come 
 together, seemed to recede farther and farther on the 
 dim horizon. 
 
 I think had an angel revealed to me at the time 
 of Pierson's death what the future had in store for me, 
 I should have gone straight back to England with my 
 score. But it was only by degrees that the situation 
 developed, and there was a great deal at stake. Dresden, 
 and one or two previous experiences connected with my 
 first opera, Fantasio, had taught me how hard it was, 
 as woman and foreigner, to get one's work accepted at 
 all ; and without the leverage of an ice-breaking foreign 
 performance I knew I might knock on the doors of 
 Covent Garden till my knuckles were raw. For there 
 is no money in a new English work produced in 
 England. Again, my own financial position was a 
 factor, for though I was generously helped by a rich 
 sister, you can't live for months in an hotel for nothing. 
 In fact I was in the situation of a mountain climber 
 who, having reached a certain point, must either go on 
 or else postpone that climb for an indefinite period 
 . . . perhaps for ever. 
 
 True, there came a phase in this ceaseless tug-of- 
 war when I spoke to Count Hochberg of throwing up 
 the sponge, but this was a political move rather than 
 anything else ; for I knew that to let me do it would 
 be to give himself away in the eyes of his dread master. 
 He was aware, of course, that Madame de Biilow, the 
 woman whom the Kaiser went more out of his way to 
 honour than any other ' Frauenzimmer ' in the German
 
 A WINTER OF STORM 181 
 
 Empire, was my friend and whether or no the Battle 
 of Berlin was worth fighting it never would have been 
 won but for that fact. The immediate result, there- 
 fore, of my suggestion was, that poor Count Hochberg 
 now made it clear to his subordinates that the thing had 
 to be put through. After which, though alas ! at the 
 eleventh hour, they settled down to their job ... it 
 can be imagined with what good grace. 
 
 The one thing that kept me out of the Infirmary, 
 or the Asylum, or both, was . . . golf. My neigh- 
 bour at home, the Empress Eugenie, used to say that 
 England's sons and daughters walked round the globe 
 hitting or kicking a ball in front of them, and never 
 was my share of this racial passion more of a god-send 
 to me than at Berlin. As for help of another kind 
 the support, strength, and consolation I found at the 
 Embassy no one but Florence Lascelles and myself 
 know what I owe to her and her father. It was impos- 
 sible for them to intervene ; even Madame de Biilow 
 could only help indirectly. But human kindness is 
 sometimes worth more than all the practical help in the 
 world . . . and from them I got it, in full measure, 
 pressed down, and running over. 
 
 One evening, on returning from golf, I found a 
 note marked ' urgent ' from Madame de Biilow, beg- 
 ging me to come round early next morning on important 
 business ; which I did, and learned to my inexpressible 
 joy and surprise that the Emperor desired to make my 
 acquaintance, and that I was to dine with the Biilows 
 that night to meet him ! ! I had heard of these informal 
 dinners at the Chancellor's palace, commanded by the 
 Kaiser, at which no woman except his hostess was 
 present only certain men whom he wished to meet in 
 a friendly, unofficial way. And it was said that on
 
 1 82 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 these occasions he really enjoyed himself and was at 
 his very best. 
 
 My wild excitement may be imagined, and also my 
 anxious preoccupations as to clothes, which matter was 
 discussed in theory with Madame de Biilow, and super- 
 vised in practice later by Florence Lascelles. As to 
 what happened that evening I will print verbatim a 
 letter of mine to my eldest sister, Alice Davidson. 
 Written at a time of storm and stress it is highly con- 
 densed, and might be the better for disintegrating and 
 serving up afresh. But as a means of making a reader 
 feel that your tale is true and not merely constructed 
 on vague recollections, I believe in giving a con- 
 temporary document and amplifying it afterwards if 
 necessary. So here it is ; and I will preface by saying 
 that at the time it was written Der Wald was still by 
 way of taking place on March 1 6th ; that the ' stiff pull ' 
 alluded to had been the matter of getting that date 
 fixed; and that though Pierson was dead, I had not the 
 faintest notion then what his death would involve. 
 
 ' Reichshof, Berlin. 
 
 March nth, 1902. 
 
 '. . . I have been ceaselessly plunged from uncer- 
 tainties and worries of all sorts into the exactly oppo- 
 site conditions ; but then I had to forge straight ahead 
 and deal with a hundred and fifty fidgetty little things, 
 which stopped my writing good letters to anyone. 
 Thus it is now nearly a week ago that I had the 
 celebrated meeting with the Emperor. 
 
 ' He sometimes announces himself to dine with the 
 Biilows, sans fafon, only ten or twelve men and no 
 ladies present. A list is submitted to him, or some- 
 times he suggests people. But on this occasion I 
 suspect that Madame de Biilow, who is my friend 
 Donna Laura's daughter, proposed me as a sort of
 
 A WINTER OF STORM 183 
 
 man ; for I've noticed that, without in the least making 
 a demonstration, she has quietly and steadily done 
 everything to lay the train in case I should want help 
 from above which however is not the case. 
 
 1 Well, I arrived, and found a galaxy of men ; and 
 the Chancellor (whom I'm rather under the spell of, 
 which is odd, as he isn't at all the sort of man I 
 generally like) told me I was to sit next to the 
 Emperor, and not next Professor Harnack a theologian 
 and poet combined, with a head like a bird of prey, 
 whom I delight in. Presently, with no sort of fuss, in 
 came the Emperor. He was in a sort of black mess 
 jacket, with aiguillettes, and looked extraordinarily like 
 a Sixth Form boy. He is very like the Royal Family, 
 but a much cleaner-cut, harder, browner face, and a 
 wonderful " outlook," though his eyes are not as good 
 as his mother's. His walk is splendid -just what you 
 would expect and the main effect is one of the greatest 
 conceivable quickness of intelligence, and, strange to 
 say, kindness and good manners. I don't know what 
 else to call it, but it is the acme of naturalness and 
 easiness. He said he heard I was doing great things 
 the usual sort of Royal beginning, only bereft of its 
 pro forma delivery for once. When he went on to 
 the next people Grafin Biilow said I was to be with 
 him exactly as with anyone else that he liked it ; so 
 I was. 
 
 ' Dinner was pleasant, only he said such incredibly 
 borne stupid, military things about Art, to a horrible 
 
 man, a certain Court Painter, Herr von W , that 
 
 I wheeled round and talked to my other neighbour, 
 feeling I should say something too awful if I listened. 
 
 ' After dinner he came straight up to me, and said 
 he had just had a letter from the Empress Eugenie. 
 We talked of her, of her nobility of character (which it 
 surprised me his knowing about), and he told me much
 
 1 84 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 about the relations between Napoleon III and " Grand- 
 papa " which was news to me. It concerned the 
 founding of the German Empire ; how, at a given 
 moment, " Grandpapa," baffled by the want of 
 patriotism on the part of the German Princes, whom 
 he had warned of the Emperor Napoleon's designs, 
 determined to unite Germany himself, and how much 
 ascribed to Bismarck was really due entirely to the old 
 Emperor. 
 
 1 He said it was a wonderful thing for Germany 
 having had an old, ripe ruler to give the thing shape, 
 and I then could say, with the fullest conviction, that 
 I thought it a capital thing they had a young and go- 
 ahead (I did not say unripe !) man to move them on. 
 To which he said, with absolutely winning frankness : 
 " Well, perhaps ! " (All this part of the conversation 
 was in English.) He told me that no one in Germany 
 but Btilow had the faintest conception of foreign politics 
 (Sir Frank chaffed me when I told him that I had made 
 that very remark to Billow himself the day before . . . 
 and it is true /). He then went on to complain of our 
 Government, which he thinks the worst of modern 
 times (? I wonder) and of how he tried to do his best 
 to make common interests with us, but was foiled at 
 every turn. 
 
 * " I ask Lord Salisbury to help me to get a coaling 
 station, and, my dear Miss Smyth, he laughs at me 1 " 
 (Here the Emperor whirled round and clapped his 
 thigh.) " Well, what do / do ? I take Kiau-Chau ! " 
 
 ' I then treated him to my theory of the slowness 
 of movement of a great body such as the British Empire, 
 and said that you could as well hurry up a glacier as it ; 
 that I was sure our statesmen must feel this and are 
 forced to go the pace of the mass just as a chorus- 
 leader does. (Privately I thought : Thank goodness 
 we are not a Central European Garrison, like Prussia,
 
 A WINTER OF STORM 185 
 
 to be wheeled about at the word of command !) And, 
 I said, if the Emperor was talking of inert statesmen 
 might I mention a name forbidden in Germany, 
 Chamberlain ! He struck me by his way of speaking 
 of Chamberlain, evidently full of recognition of the 
 man's size, which is an improvement on their previous 
 estimate (I am specially struck with Billow's altered 
 tone about him by the bye). But he went on to 
 say that all these lives were being sacrificed to "one 
 statesman's ambition " ! 
 
 1 I simply said that was a very unfair way to look 
 at it, (you can say anything to the Emperor) and 
 proceeded to make a slight excursion into history, 
 coming back via Jason, Hawkins and Drake, Clive, 
 Seely, Lord Rosebery, (as promoter of the Imperial 
 Federation idea), Rhodes, and Chamberlain ! ! I also 
 said my say as to whether the war was good or not 
 for the nation, and of the effect on character of going 
 calmly on with your task, without prestige and without 
 claque on the contrary, with every one praying for 
 your downfall. He is splendid to talk that sort of 
 talk to ; he stared and stared, and said : " It is fine what 
 you say, and I daresay you are right." I said : " I 
 know I am right ! " which must have amused him, as 
 I understand it is his own formula ! 
 
 1 Well, we went on to the reorganisation of the 
 English army, for which he has just completed a scheme. 
 When I tell you that by this time I had stood for one 
 and a quarter hours, and that his scheme took quite 
 half an hour more to develop, you will not be surprised 
 to hear that I was almost too leg-weary to retain details 
 of it in my head ; and great distinction though it was 
 to monopolise his eloquence for so long, I felt myself 
 wishing that something would happen to break the 
 thread of his discourse. (Madame de Biilow and every 
 one else sat down after half an hour or so, but the
 
 1 86 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 Emperor remained standing somewhat apart with me.) 
 The main point is, he wishes the Militia to be second 
 line of defence, eligible for foreign service. 
 
 1 Among general things he said which interested 
 me, were, that the Duke of Con naught was a first rate 
 soldier, the King very intelligent about taking up ideas, 
 and that he had " some hopes of being listened to now 
 and then " by him. At one time he said : "I am one 
 of those people who believe that as one would behave 
 in private life, so one must behave in politics " this 
 with tremendous emphasis and gravity. I can only 
 agree partially with this, inasmuch as . . . but, as 
 Lady Ponsonby would say, " don't let us go into that, 
 pray ! " And he also told me that the future of the 
 world has its roots in Asia Minor, for which reason a 
 large part of his private fortune is invested there. 
 
 * After my interview, which I am told lasted exactly 
 if- hours, the Emperor joined the others, and, thank 
 goodness, sat down at last. The conversation, mainly 
 between him and an architect and Professor Harnack, 
 was about the restoring of Heidelberg Castle, and he 
 talked a fair amount of sense about that. But I was 
 then deep in a really very interesting conversation with 
 Count Biilow, who was explaining that if he had been 
 disagreeable about Chamberlain it was because any 
 friendly word would have put up the back of Germany. 
 I am so much under the charm of Biilow that I actually 
 kept to myself the obvious rejoinder, that if he has now 
 slackened off it is because England showed her teeth and 
 alarmed them ! 
 
 4 While I write comes the news of Methuen's 
 capture, and Germany is of course full of glee. It 
 must be very unpleasant to be English Ambassador 
 here, or indeed anywhere, but on the other hand it is 
 nice to go on looking as if nothing were wrong. Thank 
 you, darling, for your congratulations. It was a stiff
 
 A WINTER OF STORM 187 
 
 pull, but I always thought it would come right in the 
 end. . . .' 
 
 Before launching into comment on this letter, and 
 endeavouring to describe the Emperor's style of tackling 
 political questions, I must just say that, ever since I 
 had been in Berlin the plucky way he never let his 
 infirm arm hamper him had roused my deepest 
 admiration. Sitting next him at dinner, much as one 
 shrank from seeming to watch, it was impossible not 
 to notice the dexterity with which he handled a com- 
 bined knife and fork, though I cannot remember 
 exactly how it was used. For as the best way to avoid 
 the semblance of doing a thing is not to do it, I kept 
 my eyes well off that plate. 
 
 Now to the letter ; and let the reader mark how 
 wise Madame de Btilow did not advise me to be 
 1 absolutely natural ' with the Kaiser, till she had gauged 
 what sort of mood he was in and how the first impact 
 with her -protegee went off ! 
 
 As regards the ' military ' things he said to the 
 Court Painter, I have already told that he considered 
 himself an art expert and have amply inveighed against 
 Berlin sycophancy. Nevertheless, that conversation, 
 from which I carefully abstracted myself by talking to 
 my other neighbour, the highly amused Prince Lich- 
 nowsky, was an eye-opener ! I remember that one 
 remark of the Kaiser's was to this effect : 
 
 ' One man is capable of painting a tree. Good ! 
 (schon). Another can paint a human figure. Better 
 still ! (noch schoner). But the real problem is to 
 combine man and tree on one canvas in an artistic 
 manner.' 
 
 Hereupon the Court Painter was too overwhelmed 
 with admiration to address the speaker directly, and 
 confined himself to murmuring, as in an ecstasy, to
 
 1 88 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 the ambient air, ' An amazing pronouncement ! The 
 whole function of art in a nut-shell ! ' Owing no 
 doubt to the matter of the restoration of Heidelberg 
 Castle, besides the architect I spoke of there were other 
 people present whose proclivities were artistic ; all 
 these chimed in with adulation, and I felt sorry for the 
 really intelligent man whom the exigencies of the System 
 decreed should thus be made a fool of. 
 
 As for the part of the conversation that referred to 
 the designs of Napoleon III, as far as I remember the 
 Kaiser told me that the French Emperor had hinted to 
 ' Grandpapa,' that if he would permit an extension of 
 the Eastern Frontier of France, France would not 
 oppose the Union of the German States in a Federation 
 of which Prussia should be the head. (I do not think 
 the word German Empire was mentioned.) Hereupon 
 ' Grandpapa ' informed the other German Princes of 
 the French Emperor's nefarious designs, but found 
 them indifferent to the menace (possibly because they 
 feared that joint action against him would end in their 
 own subservience to Prussia ! but the Kaiser did not 
 touch on that point !). ' Grandpapa ' then decided to 
 deal with France himself, and unite Germany on his 
 own lines all of which is a comment on the notion 
 entertained in France and elsewhere, prior to Bismarck's 
 own revelations as to the Benedetti telegram etc., that 
 the French Sovereigns forced on the Franco-Prussian 
 war for their own reasons. 
 
 When the Kaiser referred to the seizing of Kiau- 
 Chau his manner was gorgeously dramatic and fierce, 
 with a touch of child-like exultation, but his references 
 to the Boer War were moderate, and on the whole 
 tactful and sympathetic. I remember saying, which 
 was true at the time, that our young men were 
 too exclusively addicted to sport and rather bored 
 by soldiering ; that all this was changing now, that
 
 A WINTER OF STORM 189 
 
 patriotism was becoming an inspiration to action, and 
 that I hoped the war would not end till the lesson 
 had been fully learned this last phrase being a bit of 
 bravado, for the Kaiser's remarks on ' the pity of it * 
 had stirred the spirit of opposition. 
 
 * Ah,' he said, ' one sees that no one specially dear 
 to you is in the fighting line ! ' and my reply was : 4 My 
 only brother is.' 
 
 When he spoke of the young lives that were being 
 sacrificed, there was a sad, thoughtful look on his face 
 that I have never forgotten ; and if I am to be told this 
 was mere acting on his part, all I can say is I don't 
 believe it. Whether or not, during the late war, when 
 thinking of the young German lives sacrificed to the 
 Pan-German ideal, he permitted a similar feeling to 
 betray itself on his face, it certainly must have been in 
 his heart. 
 
 IV 
 
 I imagine it has been made clear that the worst part 
 of my difficulties came after this first of the two inter- 
 views I had with the Kaiser (the other taking place 
 some time after the goal had been reached) ; and it 
 may be asked how it was possible for the authorities to 
 behave so ill to one who evidently enjoyed favour in high 
 places, and why I did not invoke aid from above ? 
 
 The answer is that all German institutions are in 
 watertight compartments ; and as the Hof Oper was 
 supposed to be as impeccable and to run as smoothly 
 as the Post Office, an appeal to Caesar would have 
 spelt disgrace for Count Hochberg, whom I liked and 
 was sorry for. Besides which it would have opened 
 his master's eyes to unpleasant facts ; and to open 
 august eyes is an operation fraught with unpleasantness 
 to the oculist and all his friends who in this case were 
 people I was beholden to, such as the Billows and the
 
 i 9 o STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 Lascelles. Other reasons against such a course were, 
 that, as human being, I wanted to play my own hand ; 
 and that as musician, though I knew that in any case 
 the notorious Berlin Press would reserve its direst 
 thunderbolts for my opera, I did not wish them to say 
 it had got on to the boards through Court influence. 
 
 Nevertheless, the moment was to come when I all 
 but grasped at what H.B. called armes de luxe that 
 is, at weapons only to be used in direst necessity. It 
 was when an innocent-looking proposal was made by 
 Pierson's substitute to postpone for a couple of days 
 the ' Arrangir-Probe ' ; that is, the full stage rehearsal, 
 with piano accompaniment, that immediately precedes 
 the first Full Orchestral Rehearsal, when orchestra 
 and stage action combine for the first time. Even as 
 a special train upsets the ordinary service, so this post- 
 ponement would cut into the opera traffic, and I knew 
 that if it were permitted there could and would be no 
 Wald that season. 
 
 Then it was that I turned to Sir Frank, of whom, 
 as England's representative, it was more possible to 
 ask aid than of the Billows. There was not an instant 
 of time to be lost ; even before tackling Count 
 Hochberg one must have one's weapon ready to hand ; 
 and I always think it a marvellous proof of friendship 
 that, in spite of the extreme delicacy of Sir Frank's 
 position, he lent himself, albeit with comprehensible 
 reluctance, to my schemes. Together we drafted a 
 letter to the Emperor, which, if the abridged sketch 
 of the situation therein contained had been his own 
 unaided effort, would certainly have impressed the 
 All-Highest with our Ambassador's omniscience in all 
 departments, including that of opera management. 
 
 Whether Count Hochberg ended by understanding 
 the inner meaning of that projected postponement and 
 was willing to cancel it of his own accord, or whether
 
 A WINTER OF STORM 191 
 
 it became necessary to mention that I had a terrific stone 
 in my sling, I cannot remember. Anyhow the situation 
 yielded to treatment, the letter, much to Sir Frank's 
 relief, was torn into minute fragments, and, at the date 
 originally fixed, the sun really did rise on a stage and 
 orchestra set in order for the first Full Orchestral 
 Rehearsal of Der Wald. 
 
 That rehearsal is a dramatic and appalling memory. 
 Muck must have known, more or less, what to expect, 
 but even he was surprised, and gratifyingly horrified, 
 at the exact amount of ' preparation ' achieved, few 
 of the singers being note-perfect and the scenic 
 arrangements chaotic ! And after all, Muck was 
 morally responsible for this particular opera ! Count 
 Hochberg, who by this time was at bay and in a 
 satisfactory but belated state of wrathful zeal, went 
 clambering about among the rafters to see for himself 
 whether I was right in saying that the green lights he 
 had ordered to be repaired a fortnight ago were still 
 jammed ; and at one moment his eyeglass came crashing 
 down on to the stage, where its pieces were reverentially 
 swept up by the stage charwoman. 
 
 Of the following rehearsals I remember nothing, 
 except that at one crisis I dressed up a sack in a pillow- 
 case (lent me by that same charwoman, who was a great 
 friend of mine) and, swarming up ladders and across 
 beams, hung it up aloft myself, and begged Muck and 
 Hochberg to judge whether, illumined by the now- 
 mended green lights, it did not represent to perfection 
 a shadowy Spirit of the Forest sitting in a tree ? . . . 
 but a veil over these details ! 
 
 When, at last, the evening of the -premiere arrived 
 I think it was April 21st Count Hochberg said that 
 of course, as composers are wont to do on such occasions, 
 I was to sit in his box, whence there is easy access to
 
 1 92 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 the stage to take your calls. I remarked that there 
 might be none to take ! He laughed ; ' We produce 
 many operas here,' he said, ' and some of them have 
 been anything but successes, but I can recall no single 
 instance of a composer not being called to the front. It 
 is part of the ritual.' 
 
 I have some experience of the Opera public, and 
 throughout that performance, which went better than 
 one could have hoped, I could see that though there 
 had been some hissing when the curtain went up, the 
 audience were interested, attentive, and responsive to 
 my intentions. So musical are the Germans, that even 
 if they wish to, they cannot close their hearts and 
 intelligences to the musical appeal as long as it is 
 sounding in their ears ! But in cases such as the Boer 
 War frenzy, the deep, corporate feeling of a people 
 has the final word, and as the last notes were sounding, 
 strong, well-organised hissing and booing broke out in 
 three parts of the house (my friendly baritone told me 
 afterwards who had organised it). The curtain rose 
 once or twice pro forma and in spite of vehement 
 opposition on the artists, but if the composer had shown 
 herself, which is the last thing she wished to do, there 
 would have been a demonstration possibly rotten eggs ! 
 
 Five minutes later I went into the conductor's room. 
 Poor Count Hochberg was in the state of mind you would 
 expect in a Hof Intendant and a gentleman. But Muck 
 was the strangest study. I had always liked his ice- 
 sheathed violence, even when I myself was the sufferer ; 
 and now, there he sat at the table, white with rage, his 
 chin resting on his hands : 
 
 1 I never make a mistake,' he said, ' I know, I feel 
 it in my back when the public is interested . . . and I 
 swear this opera interested them from the first bar.' 
 
 No condolences with the composer, but what I 
 appreciated a million times more, the outraged sensibility
 
 A WINTER OF STORM 193 
 
 of a great musician ! And I rather wondered I still 
 wonder if he said to himself, that but for his political 
 bias, things might have turned out very differently. For, 
 as I truly wrote home : ' If Mottl, who is not a fanatic, 
 had been first conductor at Berlin, all this could never 
 have happened.' 
 
 As I left the Opera House that night, I met a friend 
 of old days, the young Leipzig music-publisher, Max 
 Brockhaus. He was indignant, frantic even, both as 
 musician and friend, at the scene he had witnessed, 
 but mainly preoccupied, as a publisher of operas would 
 be, by the thought of to-morrow's newspapers. ' O 
 these odious Berlin critics ! ' he exclaimed, ' I have 
 just seen a group of them laughing and sneering and 
 working each other up for the slaughter ! . . . My 
 poor friend, prepare yourself ! ' 
 
 But I was already more than prepared, and if next 
 day the Press did indeed put its best foot foremost, this 
 was the part of the whole thing I minded least in what 
 I hope no one imagines is a typical experience. True, 
 the methods employed were ugly, and I do not think 
 that beings like Herr Kraus exist in any other part of the 
 civilised globe ; otherwise my poor innocent Der Wald 
 was merely an excuse for an anti-Boer- War demon- 
 stration a convenient outlet for feelings I can well 
 understand. I have nothing to gain by flattering 
 Germany ; years must elapse ere an English work can 
 be produced there. But I owe too much to a country 
 that loves Opera enough to put it on the rates not to 
 confess, that at times I have said to myself I would 
 rather risk failure there, than score a certain success 
 elsewhere such is the profound musical culture of this 
 people ! 
 
 On the morning following the -premiere the usual 
 1 Strich Probe ' or ' Cut Rehearsal ' took place. Few 
 operas are not the better for cutting, and few composers
 
 i 9 4 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 blind enough not to perceive the fact in the fierce light 
 of a public performance. As regards this rehearsal, 
 alas 1 even dear Madame de Billow had rather let me 
 down, by insisting that Muck should conduct the music 
 at some grand entertainment (I think a Bazaar) she 
 was getting up. And although I told her that this 
 would prevent his taking the Strich Probe, I saw that 
 her mind was set, gently but tenaciously, on Muck. 
 As, therefore, the pariah I was could not ask any one 
 else to take the rehearsal, there was nothing for it but 
 to take it myself, though I had never conducted in 
 my life ! 
 
 With rather a beating heart I walked into the huge 
 Probe Saal, and as soon as I appeared, oh wonder ! 
 there was a burst of applause 1 Orchestras usually say 
 ' good morning ' by rattling on their desks, but there 
 was such marked warmth in this particular greeting 
 that I was emboldened to say, as I took up the stick : 
 
 ' Well, gentlemen, I don't believe you think my 
 opera is as bad as all that, in spite of the Press ! ' 
 
 Then came a tribute that redeemed the whole hideous 
 Berlin business. The leader of the second violins, a 
 very grumpy old gentleman as a rule, growled, in accents 
 of scathing contempt : ' Ach ! Die Presse ! 1 ' ; and 
 then, at the back of the room, up rose the Bass Tuba, 
 stout as are most Tuba players, and added, ' Your Opera 
 is simply splendid (einfach grossartig) as people will 
 gradually find out, in spite of the Press ! ' 
 
 I may add that they all helped my ignorance and 
 incompetence in every way, and that the Strich Probe 
 was got through more or less satisfactorily. 
 
 The rest of the adventures of Der Wald may be 
 quickly told. All I cared about now was to pull off 
 enough performances in the remnant of season that 
 remained to make it impossible for the Covent Garden
 
 A WINTER OF STORM 195 
 
 Syndicate to refuse me a London production, in spite 
 of my bad Press. 
 
 This was chiefly a point of honour with me, for what 
 composers care about most is the future of their work ; 
 and as I have shown elsewhere, 1 there can be no future 
 for a home-grown novelty where Opera is a financial 
 enterprise. Nowadays, as a matter of patriotism and 
 advertisement, our companies will occasionally produce 
 one, with a guarantee ; but as novelties never pay at 
 once, and as these companies cannot afford to lose 
 money, the new opera is dropped when the bonus is 
 exhausted. The morals of the Minotaur ! As many 
 virgins as you please . . . but no lasting relations. 
 
 Now a subsidised Opera can afford to wait ; nor 
 does a bad Press matter much, provided the work be 
 good and the conductor keen enough to push it. For 
 in Germany, if given time, a public will often form its 
 own opinion in the teeth of the critics. 
 
 But alas ! the season was now too far advanced for 
 a run of Der Wald such as might induce other German 
 theatres to take it up when the fury of Anglophobia 
 should have spent itself ; besides which, fortified by the 
 Press verdict, the enemy within the gates now reared 
 its head again with admirable audacity. Hochberg 
 would fix a day for the next performance ; someone 
 would surreptitiously obtain leave of absence from 
 Pierson's temporary and popularity-hunting substitute ; 
 postponement ; renewed fixture ; and the same thing 
 da capo. In fact, it was the usual demoralisation at 
 the fag end of a season, complicated by special male- 
 volence and lack of a strong hand on the reins. Among 
 other agreeable details I recall that my friend Kraus was 
 pleased, at the second performance, to take the love- 
 scene at such railway-speed that I had to re-arrange the 
 score for his pace ; which, however, was rather fun like 
 1 ' The Opera Fiasco.'
 
 196 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 cutting up an Empire tea-gown (as I wrote home) into 
 a golf costume, adapted to long, quick strides. 
 
 Then came the final disaster ; it appeared that Muck 
 had long since been promised a fortnight's leave in 
 April . . . and a conductor's leave means remunerative 
 work elsewhere ! 
 
 Thus, day by day, week by week, my chances 
 dwindled, and by this time poor Count Hochberg's 
 position had become so desperate all round, that I was 
 reluctant to worry him. Nevertheless, a third perform- 
 ance, conducted by the second (or third) conductor, 
 and at which the public began to testify to its interest, 
 had been successfully achieved, and I was busy plotting 
 and counter-plotting for a fourth and final performance, 
 when the second interview with the Kaiser took place. 
 
 On May 2nd I was to dine en famille with the Billows 
 at eight o'clock -just a boring female relation of theirs, 
 and five or six men. And as I was going to play golf 
 that afternoon, and as we seldom got back till 7.15, I 
 thought it wise to have my hair done beforehand by a 
 hairdresser, the erections of professionals being as a 
 rule solid, and likely to look better, in spite of the ravages 
 of wind and bunker-thumping, than the hasty improvi- 
 sations of an amateur. This proved to be nothing 
 short of an inspiration ; for when, precisely at 7.15, I 
 re-entered my hotel, I found awaiting me an official 
 letter, confirmed by various telephone messages, saying 
 that dinner was at 7.30, and that I was to come half 
 decolletee and in mourning which I knew meant a 
 Prince of the Blood at least. But it turned out to be 
 the Kaiser himself, who was leaving Berlin that night 
 at 11.45, an d wished to come in after dinner and while 
 away the time at the Biilows till his train started ! 
 
 But for the letter I have ventured to quote, I should 
 have remembered little about the first interview ; but
 
 A WINTER OF STORM 197 
 
 though the account sent home this time was brief, I 
 recall a good deal about the second, probably because 
 Der Wald was now off my mind. 
 
 ' He came straight up to me,' I wrote, ' with " Miss 
 Smyth, I am delighted to meet you again ! " and was 
 most tremendously cordial. And again he stood talking 
 to me for three-quarters of an hour, when Biilow came 
 up and joined in. The conversation now became 
 German, for Biilow doesn't speak English, and was all 
 about politics and shipping trusts and so forth. 
 
 ' Presently I think to prevent my telling the Emperor 
 what I think of Berlin, for the talk was veering in that 
 direction Biilow manoeuvred us most cleverly into 
 chairs among the general group, and then he, the 
 Emperor, Renvers, Madame de Biilow, my beloved old 
 General von Loe, and I, talked . . . but mainly the 
 Emperor and I. He was absolutely delightful and I 
 made him laugh (not a difficult task) till his chair nearly 
 gave way, and this is supposed to be the great thing to 
 do ! I'll tell you all about it when we meet, which, 
 O joy ! will be in three days' time ! ' 
 
 In a postscript to this letter, addressed to my sister 
 Mary Hunter, (a wonderful portrait of whom, by Sargent, 
 was then on view at the Winter Exhibition in the 
 Museum) I add : ' I amused myself by speaking of 
 Sargent for a second to the Emperor, who loathes all 
 modern painters, and told him there was a very fine 
 Sargent portrait of one of my sisters, in a corner of the 
 town I knew " His Majesty did not think well of " . . . 
 the Secession ! ! And he actually allowed that he had 
 seen one splendid portrait by Sargent ! I think it must 
 have been the Chilian Minister.' 
 
 When the Chancellor herded us into safety among 
 the other guests the Emperor had just remarked : 
 
 ' I want to make of Berlin a town like Paris or 
 London a place towards which every cultivated
 
 198 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 European gravitates naturally not merely the little 
 burgher capital which it would remain if most of its 
 inhabitants had their way ! ' (Indeed one of his ordin- 
 ances had been that, in the stalls and dress-circle, ladies 
 were to be ' ausgeschitten,' that is, show their necks ; 
 and on the night after this edict which escaped the 
 notice of several theatre-goers was published, wonderful 
 scenes were enacted in the ladies garderobe, gold- 
 braided officials in cocked hats producing pins, and 
 deciding whether a stuff gown turned in in a V would, 
 or would not, satisfy requirements.) 
 
 1 Can you tell me why more English do not spend 
 the winter here ? ' the Kaiser went on . . . and Biilow 
 no doubt saw the moment coming when I should say 
 to his master what I had often said to him, that nothing 
 would induce English people to pass months in a 
 Barrack, under military discipline ! 
 
 Another dangerous moment was already behind us ; 
 it was when the Emperor had said, immediately after 
 shaking hands with me and as one certain what the 
 reply will be that he hoped all had gone smoothly for 
 me ' at my Opera House.' After a moment's hesitation, 
 during which Madame de Biilow began to look anxious, 
 I said that Pierson's death had been an unfortunate 
 circumstance, explained a little, and wound up by 
 remarking that if the coachman dies on the box, of 
 course the horses are all over the place for a moment. 
 
 ' That should not be so,' said the Kaiser with a 
 touch of his photographic face a very different expres- 
 sion to the charming, friendly one it wore in private 
 life. ' If one of my Generals falls down dead on parade, 
 his place is instantly taken by another, and everything 
 goes on as before ! ' 
 
 To this I replied, as politely as I knew how . . . 
 but as I spoke my hostess's cheek paled visibly : ' Unfor- 
 tunately it is not like that in the world of Opera ! '
 
 A WINTER OF STORM 199 
 
 Great must have been her relief when the Kaiser 
 burst out laughing, and turning round to her, said : 
 ' Do you hear what she says ? That my Opera is a 
 pigsty ! ' {SchweinestalT). 
 
 In fact, though without a corn et-a-pis ton to carry off 
 the part, I had evidently slipped into Baroness L's 
 privileged cap and bells for the time being. 
 
 In the course of my duett with the Kaiser, which 
 became a trio when Biilow joined us, a previously formed 
 impression deepened, namely, that but for his incon- 
 ceivable vanity, nourished perpetually by gross, blatant 
 flattery such as no class of English people would indulge 
 in, the Kaiser would have been one of the most 
 remarkable of men. I was too unversed in political 
 history to judge of his ruling weakness, instability, but 
 again and again I was struck by his natural parts his 
 earnestness, his imaginativeness, the boldness of his 
 spirit, the quickness of his brain, the picturesque yet 
 incisive language he used, whether speaking English or 
 German. And it was impossible, too, not to believe he 
 was a good man. 
 
 Then, suddenly, would come a moment when you 
 realised that a mist of vanity would always hang between 
 him and the truth. For instance, he spoke luminously 
 and profoundly about the future of South Africa, of the 
 contest between the white man and the black, and paid 
 a magnificent tribute to Rhodes, incidentally giving a 
 resume of their interview that differed amusingly from 
 an account given me previously by Sir Frank, who had 
 been present part of the time. Then came the finishing 
 touch : 
 
 ' Do you know what Rhodes said to me ? ' he 
 remarked, and his eye gleamed. ' He said, " Ah, Sir, 
 if you and I had met ten years ago we would have 
 remodelled the world between us ! " ' 
 
 Of course Rhodes may well have said something
 
 200 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 of the sort, in jocular hyperbole, but he surely cannot 
 have meant, as I feel certain the Kaiser took him to 
 mean, that had they met sooner, Rhodes would have 
 been willing to put his services at the disposal of Germany 
 rather than England as did the renegade, Houston 
 Chamberlain ! 
 
 Again, he told me how, when Ladysmith was 
 invested, he had bidden his Head Quarters Staff draw 
 up the precise scheme they would adopt in our place, 
 and had forwarded the result to ' Grandmama ' (Queen 
 Victoria), all of which proved to be true in every detail. 
 But then he spoiled all by saying that he himself had 
 written to his old friend, Lord Roberts, recommending 
 him to go round and attack Kimberley. 
 
 1 And, my dear Miss Smyth ' (his invariable formula 
 in addressing English people, and evidently a point of 
 courtesy with him), ' the next thing was a telegram from 
 Roberts saying that he meant to pursue the course I 
 advised ! ' 
 
 Possibly this anecdote was merely intended to show 
 that his own strategical knowledge was on a par with 
 that of Lord Roberts an implication which would have 
 come more gracefully from someone else ; but, incredible 
 as it seems, my impression is, that the young, untried 
 warrior really believed that if the veteran Lord Roberts 
 made the Kimberley move, it was thanks to his advice ! 
 I may add that the above was one among many 
 instances cited by him to prove that he neglected no 
 opportunity of showing good will towards England; 
 notwithstanding which fact the inimicality of our 
 Government, against which he raged as before, but if 
 possible more vehemently, remained invincible, he said. 
 In my hasty scrawl home there is no mention of the 
 part of the interview which struck me most, but I 
 spoke about it to Sir Frank at the time, and since then 
 to many others ; namely, the strange ignorance of the
 
 A WINTER OF STORM 201 
 
 spirit of England displayed by Biilow, and, tacitly, by 
 the Emperor. I cannot now recall what point was 
 being discussed, but the Chancellor was propounding 
 some eventuality, either political or industrial. * We 
 shall do so and so,' he said, ' and of course England's 
 attitude will be thus and thus. I should reply in such 
 and such a fashion, and it is easy to say what your 
 Cabinet would then do. . . .' And so he went on, 
 crediting England with states of mind, forecasting 
 English lines of argument, which I should have thought 
 the barest knowledge of Mrs. Markham's ' History of 
 England,' the most shadowy acquaintance with English 
 Political History, would have shown him were not only 
 improbable but inconceivable. 
 
 As I listened, it is no exaggeration to say I could 
 hardly believe my ears. And there was the Kaiser, 
 who surely knew England, standing in a familiar 
 attitude his left hand on his sword-hilt, his right on 
 his hip listening in high approval, with a mildly 
 ferocious expression of countenance, to this fantastic 
 horoscope ! And occasionally he would nod his head 
 sharply, slap his thigh, and ejaculate : ' Exactly ! . . . 
 Very true ! ' 
 
 At last I so far forgot myself as to wheel round and 
 say : ' But the Chancellor knows nothing whatever about 
 England ! ' And as I spoke, my hand came down 
 with some energy on a table which had been affording 
 intermittent and blessed support during the last forty 
 minutes for the Kaiser never sat down if he could 
 help it. Whereupon he, who was evidently in a beam- 
 ing humour, said to the Chancellor, giving at the same 
 time an excellent imitation of my slap on the table : 
 
 1 You hear what she says, Bernhard ? That you 
 know nothing whatever about England ! ' and then he 
 added, turning to me : ' but you know the poor fellow 
 has never been there ! '
 
 202 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 Now the Chancellor was a man of big ideas a 
 really remarkable personality, bold, strong, astute, 
 intelligent, with greatest suppleness of mind, and not 
 devoid of imagination ; a polished man of the world, 
 and in every way equipped, one would have said, for a 
 big position. And yet any one of average intelligence 
 who knew England would have perceived that the 
 statesman responsible for the Foreign Policy of Germany 
 knew absolutely nothing about the English ! But as 
 Hermann Bahr, the Austrian playwright, journalist, and 
 thinker, remarks in his War-Diary, the Germans are 
 constructive idealists (which, I think, is the secret of 
 their musical genius) and incapable of perceiving reality. 
 And among the realities hidden from them is the 
 psychology of other nations. 
 
 After the Emperor's departure Madame de Biilow 
 and I commented on his charm, how easy he was to 
 get on with, how natural, gay, and bon garcon. She 
 also said : ' You must allow that Bernhard, at least, 
 doesn't flatter him ! ' and I replied, as truth compelled, 
 that if he did, it was so delicately and gentlemanly done, 
 that no one would like to give it such an ugly name. 
 She confessed to successive spasms of alarm and relief 
 in the matter of ' my Opera House,' and was satisfied 
 with my contribution to the gaiety of the evening. 
 And next morning, Lady Edward Cavendish, who was 
 celebrated for delivering shrewd little digs, with a 
 pensive expression and sideways droop of the head 
 that gave them inimitable point, remarked : 
 
 ' I hear you were a great success, and that the 
 Emperor spent the whole evening laughing with you 
 ... or at you ! ' 
 
 There is little to add to this story of an eventful 
 Berlin winter, unless to record the fact that the fourth
 
 A WINTER OF STORM 203 
 
 performance of Ber W 'aid, which took place on May 9th 
 (Muck still being absent on leave), was far and away 
 the best, strange to say ; and this time the audience 
 undisguisedly showed its approval. Heartrending 
 reflection ! for now it was too late ! True, Count 
 Hochberg had faithfully promised a fifth performance 
 (to complete the number stipulated for in my contract) 
 but ... he had also given my friend Krauss leave till 
 June 7th ! I had written home that * to put this sort of 
 thing through requires iron health and maniac persist- 
 ence,' but to hang about in Berlin for another four 
 weeks was more than I could face. So on the 1 oth May 
 I packed up my scores and started for England, where, 
 to this day, the Wald performances have achieved the 
 noble number of . . . three ! 
 
 Strange to say I never saw dear Madame de Biilow 
 again, though I and Donna Laura met once or twice 
 afterwards in Italy. By that time she had grown much 
 attached to Billow, who, when last I saw her, was at 
 the apex of his favour with the Kaiser, had been made 
 Prince, and eventually bought the beautiful Villa di 
 Malta at Rome. The Naval Power of Germany was 
 growing apace and it became more and more necessary 
 to see to the Italian joint in the Triple Alliance, for 
 which delicate task no one was better equipped than 
 Prince Billow. And Donna Laura was far too much of 
 a woman of the world not to mould herself to the 
 situation, and prune her sympathies, as no doubt she 
 did, in the direction of Germany. 
 
 I was not fated to meet her in the eight years that 
 lay between my last visit to Rome and the outbreak of 
 the war, but there is one incident I must record, for it 
 always amused me greatly. 
 
 In my conversations with the Empress Euge*nie I 
 had always gathered that, in the days of the Empire,
 
 2o 4 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 she and the brilliant Princess Camporeale did not hit 
 it off. Donna Laura would scoff when I spoke of the 
 Empress's originality and brain power ; and when I 
 raved about Donna Laura and enquired whether she 
 had not been most beautiful in her youth, I was assured 
 that she had been merely ' striking,' and generally given 
 to understand that in those days the Empress far from 
 approved of my Italian divinity. The year before the 
 war, however, travelling in Italy, the Empress paid a 
 visit to Donna Laura at her villa outside Bologna . . . 
 and if ever two old ladies, who had parted half a century 
 ago in something very like mutual antipathy, fell head 
 over ears in love with each other, it happened on that 
 occasion ! 
 
 Then came the war, and afterwards, when Italy 
 joined the Allies, I often thought with a pang of the 
 mother and daughter who loved and admired each 
 other so profoundly. The die once cast, Donna Laura 
 is reported to have said and it would be like her: 
 ' Now I am not Billow's mother-in-law but Minghetti's 
 widow ! ' I believe they met occasionally in Switzer- 
 land it would take more than a European war to 
 prevent Donna Laura seeing her daughter if she had a 
 mind to ! But when she died in 1 9 1 6 I believe that 
 poor Madame de Biilow arrived too late. I wrote to her, 
 writing all the more warmly because of the gulf that 
 lay between us of my deep affection for her mother, 
 my grief at her death, and of the feelings I cherished 
 and still cherish for my correspondent. I very much 
 doubt if the letter ever reached her ; anyhow, it was 
 not answered, and since Germany lost the war I have 
 not dared to write again. 
 
 The Kaiser I only saw once afterwards. I was 
 staying in Rome when he passed through on a two 
 days' visit, and by an extraordinary bit of luck I was
 
 A WINTER OF STORM 205 
 
 bicycling in the Campagna, when I saw a carriage 
 approaching at break-neck speed, preceded by the well- 
 known Imperial outriders. Hauling my machine on to 
 a hillock at the side of the road, I stood there, and as 
 the carriage passed made a profound curtsey, without 
 the bicycle collapsing on top of me no mean feat. 
 The Kaiser made a formal acknowledgment, then stared, 
 whirled round in his seat, half stood up, and waved his 
 hand in the friendly fashion that had so utterly over- 
 whelmed the high-born English lady in Berlin a few 
 years ago. 
 
 And needless to say, I was as deeply flattered and 
 gratified as would be ninety-nine out of a hundred 
 readers of these pages if it had happened to them 1 
 
 Drishane. September 1920.
 
 THE OPERA FIASCO 
 
 I 
 
 I cannot imagine that any sane person would be 
 tempted to ring changes on that old ancient theme, 
 ' Opera in England/ unless in the hope of serving 
 some useful purpose. Mine is to throw a shaft of light 
 on an obscure point, namely, the exact situation of the 
 English opera composer. And if this involves discus- 
 sion of the whole subject of Opera, I can at least claim 
 to have been up to the neck in it for the greater part 
 of my life, and to have seen things, not from the 
 Olympian point of view of the opera promoter, but 
 from that of one in the arena. 
 
 The chief fact to face is, that whereas Italy, France, 
 Germany, and Russia have distinctive schools of their 
 own, and mutually perform each other's work, England 
 is, operatically speaking, non-existent. What I wish to 
 demonstrate is the existence of certain circumstances 
 solid, inexorable, but apparently invisible to those who ex- 
 pound these matters in the Press which practically forbid 
 the materialisation of a school of British operatic writers. 
 
 This, I confess, is the part of the subject that 
 interests me most ; not from personal reasons, as I 
 hope the absence of bias in my remarks will show, but 
 because the true strength of a country lies in its pro- 
 ductive power. As long as our musical output is 
 negligible in the eyes of the world it is no use claiming 
 
 to be a musical people. 
 
 206
 
 THE OPERA FIASCO 207 
 
 When people point to the amount of operatic and 
 other music raging through these isles, and ask if we 
 are not getting on famously, I often think of some 
 fantastic planet, such as Swift might have described, 
 or even Charles Kingsley a planet peopled entirely by 
 bachelors and spinsters, who believe that by adopting 
 children tossed over to them from neighbouring planets 
 they prove themselves to be a productive community, 
 strong in family instinct. 
 
 If I did not believe that means exist for stimulating 
 the musical prolificness which once was a characteristic 
 of our race, it would be useless writing articles. But 
 since I do believe it, and know that most of these means 
 are left out of count altogether, it is worth while showing 
 how the present situation reacts on workers in the field 
 of art I know best. And possibly in clearing one bit 
 of ground a way out of the thicket may suggest itself. 
 
 Not long ago I read an article in the Manchester 
 Guardian^ written by that intelligent and cultivated 
 man Mr. Ernest Newman a study of the deplorable 
 and unhealthy state of music in England. Among 
 other things, he asks himself why there is no school of 
 British opera composers answering his question more 
 or less to his own satisfaction, as we all do in similar 
 cases. 
 
 Here are three of his remarks, between which a 
 portentous interconnection may be discerned by the 
 thoughtful reader : (1) ' How can we account for the 
 smallness of audiences ? ' (2) ' It is difficult to get 
 people to go and hear new works.' (3) ' Why cannot an 
 Englishman write an opera that is a success ? ' 
 
 This last conundrum I hope to solve ambulando. 
 At present I will only say that neither in this article 
 full of gentle lamentations on the subject of British 
 incapacity nor in many similar ones I have come
 
 208 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 across is there any reference to the hopeless circum- 
 stances in which such lunatics as attempt to achieve 
 something in their own country find themselves placed. 
 
 Has anyone ever asked himself how the breed of 
 horses would fare if racing were not a national passion ? 
 The German Government realised it, and did what I 
 believe was never necessary in this country sub- 
 sidised racing. Now Opera, as, alas ! it is only too easy 
 to prove, is not among our national passions, yet com- 
 posers are for ever being challenged to produce a Derby 
 winner. 
 
 Have our challengers never thought the matter 
 out, or is it that essentials are sometimes too dry and 
 commonplace to lend themselves to journalistic treat- 
 ment ? Of course, too, it is an easy and popular thing 
 to say to the public : ' I assure you it is wholly the 
 musicians' fault, not yours and mine, if things are 
 thus and thus,' whereas to make people face unpleasant 
 facts which no one but themselves can remedy is a less 
 grateful task. 
 
 In any case it is the business of the accused to draw 
 up his own defence. This, in all friendliness, is what 
 I shall attempt to do not by skimming over the sore 
 place with collodion, but by probing it to the core. 
 
 II 
 
 An operatic enterprise is one of two things. Either, 
 as on the Continent, it is subsidised and permanent - 
 an institution for which the public is willing to make a 
 small financial sacrifice, realising (as we do in England 
 in matters like drainage and water supply) that certain 
 vital issues should be put on a solid, reliable basis ; or 
 else it is a financial speculation like the old Covent 
 Garden Syndicate and other companies, which, though 
 making an occasional concession to English produc-
 
 THE OPERA FIASCO 209 
 
 tions, mount such works as pay in other words, old 
 favourites. 
 
 Later on came Sir Thomas Beecham, 1 who gave us 
 a third thing, and a delightful one, the only trouble 
 being that it was hailed for something it was not. At 
 present I will only say that his enterprises have not 
 differed from others in the essential characteristics of 
 living in short spasms and habitually going on tour, 
 thus lacking the element of stability whereby opera can 
 become a serious factor in the settling and development 
 of taste. 
 
 It is no one's and everyone's fault that things are 
 thus. If opera were a real need in English life, not only 
 would every large town have its rate-fed Opera House, 
 but round these houses a complex of industrial activities 
 would have sprung up, proving that our aesthetic desires 
 had struck sound business roots one of the great 
 tests of reality. 
 
 It is about this business-complex, which for con- 
 venience I will call ' the Machine,' and the effect of 
 its presence or absence on the upspringing of a race 
 of opera-writers, that I wish to speak first. If in so 
 doing you feel as might one who is explaining that you 
 cannot play lawn tennis without racquets, balls, and a 
 net, I can only plead that some such exposition appears 
 to be necessary. 
 
 It is easy to maintain that genius will make its 
 way, but much depends on whether the means exist 
 for bringing its output before the world. What could 
 the Renaissance painters have achieved had there been 
 no churches clamouring for altar-pieces, no art patrons 
 anxious to see themselves immortalised ? And where 
 would painters be nowadays without exhibitions and 
 picture dealers ? In the same way, but for publishers 
 
 1 This article was written before the retirement which one 
 hopes is only temporary of Sir Thomas from the opera arena.
 
 210 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 would not even ' The Scarlet Pimpernel ' have bloomed 
 in vain ? 
 
 To put the matter inversely, I doubt not that abroad 
 there are many foreigners capable of kicking a football 
 or hitting a cricket ball with energy and precision ; but 
 inasmuch as these two games are practically non-existent 
 on the continent, our laurels are not yet in jeopardy. 
 You are unlikely to raise even a handful of brilliant 
 performers under such circumstances. 
 
 It is the general level that counts. Mt. Blanc and 
 Mt. Everest do not spring out of flat plains, but are 
 the crowns of high-lying regions. And the complex 
 of public interest, middlemen, and other conditions that 
 I call the Machine is the outward and visible sign of a 
 living inward need. 
 
 The Machine is not a thing you can vamp up in a 
 year or two. It grows up gradually, in response to an 
 imperative demand, and among other items includes 
 in this particular case a vast army of skilled copyists, 
 publishers, abundance of schools for the exclusive 
 training of dramatic singers, and several subsidised 
 opera houses. 
 
 Finally, to insist once more on the chief point, all 
 this paraphernalia argues the existence of a keen, 
 critical, curious, and hungry public. 
 
 It is for the musical historian to treat of the incep- 
 tion and development of the Machine. My task is to 
 show : 
 
 (i) That no one depends more absolutely than the 
 musician on this factor, the very presence and functions 
 of which elsewhere seem, as we see, to have escaped 
 the notice of commentators. 
 
 (2) That without it, the operatic composer, especially 
 the beginner, may as well put up his shutters. 
 
 (3) To bring home the significant fact that nothing 
 of the sort exists in England.
 
 THE OPERA FIASCO 211 
 
 III 
 
 Let me endeavour to show how the Machine works. 
 
 A reading public, such as there has always been in 
 Great Britain, insists on the constant issue of new books; 
 similarly a really musical community is an inquisitive 
 community, and every Opera House is expected to 
 bring out new works every season ; indeed, this is 
 implicit in the subsidy contract. Some few of them in 
 the old days enjoyed a royal grant. To the rest, big 
 and small, an income is guaranteed by the municipality 
 such as will enable the director, who is elected for a 
 term of years, to show sport and also earn a livelihood. 
 
 Now, as there are over a hundred Opera Houses in 
 Germany and Austria, it follows that there is also a 
 vast crop of musical firms for ever on the look-out for 
 talent. The merest neophyte who has the good word 
 of a good judge has a fair chance of finding a publisher. 
 For instead of being, as he is here, a waif and stray 
 Japhet in search of a Father he is one bringing grist 
 to a busy mill. And though a pig in a poke is a mathe- 
 matical certainty compared to an operatic novelty, the 
 publisher is running no great risk, for his business, like 
 that of the Opera Houses he serves, is built up on 
 lines that allow a margin for failures. And a real 
 success is a gold mine both to him and the composer. 
 
 Many are the resources commanded by an enter- 
 prising firm in a country that insists on having opera 
 all the year round. Perhaps it holds rights in a classic, 
 or in some new work that failed at first but for which 
 its prescience divined a future ; and such rights it will 
 cede on easy terms in exchange for a promise to pro- 
 duce certain of its later acquisitions. Herein lies the 
 explanation of a phenomenon that surprises many 
 Innocents Abroad how it comes about that many
 
 212 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 an impossible opus will travel half round Europe before 
 finally expiring of its own dullness. 
 
 On the other hand, suppose some really good work 
 falls flat at first, it has many chances of showing its 
 true quality. Indeed, to score a success with a thing 
 that has failed elsewhere is a matter of emulation. 
 * Breslau did nothing with it,' a director will say, ' nor 
 Mannheim its real career began with us ! ' These 
 things being so, there is nothing miraculous or wildly 
 gratifying about a fact mentioned elsewhere ; that con- 
 tracts made in 19 14 by my publisher for two of my 
 operas included a minimum of three performances at the 
 two theatres in question and for several in other towns. 
 
 During this time, but for the war, these two works, 
 even if fated to disappear eventually below the horizon, 
 would have had a fair chance ; and both composer and 
 publisher would have been earning money. 
 
 Now, consider what all this means to one who has 
 yet a name to make consider it from the point of 
 view of mental wear and tear alone ! From first to last 
 the publisher is pushing your interests, seeing to every 
 appalling technical detail opera production involves 
 whether as to the material, or general wrestlings with 
 the authorities interviewing, advertising, collecting 
 your fees, and so on. 
 
 In fact, the whole thing is a matter of business 
 between people who desire, not only for aesthetic reasons, 
 that the venture shall succeed. No heart-breaking and 
 capricious postponements, no maltreated scores, no 
 mislaid or ruined vocal and orchestral parts, no evad- 
 ing on the part of the director of his obligations ! 
 In a word Heaven, because real business ! A queer 
 definition, perhaps, but a true one. 
 
 To sum up, the Machine performs two offices neces- 
 sary to the opera-composer's salvation ; (1) it publishes 
 your work ; (2) it tides it over the critical period when
 
 THE OPERA FIASCO 213 
 
 its fate is trembling in the balance and needs watching. 
 Of course, there have been instantaneous successes, 
 but in the case of an unknown composer these occur 
 once in a blue moon. The great Viennese director, 
 Gustav Mahler, who had studied the subject with the 
 passion and thoroughness peculiar to him, has said 
 that among operas that had come to stay, perhaps one 
 in ten could have dispensed with nursery attentions. 
 And a well-known Berlin publisher once told me that 
 only 5 per cent, of the operas actually produced live. 
 
 If, therefore, there were no machinery for the 
 safeguarding of promising fledglings, better stifle the 
 whole brood at its birth and have done with it ! 
 
 IV 
 
 I will now try to show what are the odds against a 
 new opera in a country where, the Machine being 
 non-existent, that sensitive plant begins life with its 
 roots in the air. 
 
 Let us run through our assets. There is the old 
 Syndicate, recently come to life again, its honest, divi- 
 dend-hunting countenance shyly hiding in the folds of 
 Sir Thomas Beecham's artistic mantle. Clasped in 
 loving embrace, one cannot help wondering which will 
 squeeze the other to death in the long run. 
 
 Further, we have Sir Thomas minus his partner 
 a big-hearted man who is willing to lose some ,25,000 
 a year, not on the racecourse, or at rouge-et-noir, but 
 over intermittent seasons in London and the provinces. 
 Further, there is the Carl Rosa Company, and opera is 
 played at the Surrey, the Old Vic, and elsewhere. All 
 of which activity is supposed to prove that a genuine 
 love of opera exists in England. 
 
 Well, if this be love indeed, I am inclined to demand 
 the traditional acid-test of serious intentions. If you
 
 2i 4 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 will not take opera to your bosom for better and for 
 worse, I don't think much of your passion. Anyhow, 
 the tragic fact remains that there is in all England no 
 permanent Opera House and as a natural consequence 
 not one single opera publishing firm. 
 
 I daresay that here and there an opera may have 
 been printed in London. A most sporting editor once 
 offered to publish my ' Wreckers,' but luckily for us 
 both the bargain was not consummated. For how 
 could he have pushed it ? Where could he have pushed 
 it to, unless into the cupboard ? With whom could he 
 have done business ? 
 
 As a matter of fact there is, there can be, no business 
 under our system. What fees can you ask or expect ? 
 How collect them ? What possibilities of a future has 
 a new English opera in England ? For the matter of 
 that, what present ? 
 
 At this point I should like to quote yet another 
 remark of Mr. Newman's, made in reply to a letter of 
 mine that appeared in The Times, in which I described 
 what befalls an opera pronounced by Producers, Press, 
 and Public to have been ' a great success.' ' I should 
 be surprised to hear,' he said, ' that Sir Thomas Beecham 
 would be foolish enough to keep an opera out of the bill 
 that was sure of filling the house.' 
 
 The obvious rejoinder is to ask how many brand- 
 new operas are sure of filling the house ? Or to point 
 out that some which are sure not to fill it have been 
 given again and again. The ' Coq d'Or,' for instance, 
 or ' The Fair Maid of Perth.' And pray why not ? 
 Shall not the man who pays the piper call the tune that 
 pleases him r 
 
 There are, however, purely technical reasons, matters 
 of scenery, cast, length, etc., which explain to those 
 who know the ropes why one work happens to fit in 
 with other items in a short and crowded season, whereas
 
 THE OPERA FIASCO 215 
 
 another does not. Apart from which it will be easy 
 to show that even a successful British work must be, 
 and is, an unmitigated nuisance to the management. 
 
 A British opera is produced partly by favour, partly 
 in response to a theoretical demand for native work. 
 Ripe or not ripe for production and a journey in Central 
 Africa is not more fraught with accidents and mis- 
 calculations than this particular venture it has to come 
 out on the appointed date. For the supreme virtue 
 in commercial enterprise is ' to keep faith with the 
 public.' . . . There was once a ' Wreckers ' perform- 
 ance in London, during the dress rehearsal of which 
 the heroine was still singing from her notes ! 
 
 English companies are small, and to launch a novelty 
 you want the pick of the troupe. But in a brief scheme, 
 drawn up with the rigidity of a holiday-traffic railway- 
 advertisement, these are perforce mortgaged up to the 
 hilt in the interests of the Old Favourites, on which 
 the success of the season hinges. Further, the seasons 
 being uncertain and spasmodic, the singers depend 
 mainly on concert engagements for a livelihood, a fact 
 that Mr. Vincent Crummies has to take into consideration 
 if he wishes to keep them fit. And to create a new part 
 is always a great strain. 
 
 How all this reacts on the mounting of novelties, 
 even in London, need not be pointed out. 
 
 The miracle having nevertheless been accomplished, 
 weeks may elapse before the second performance takes 
 place. Now modern music, if worth anything, is novel 
 in idea and technique. But there is no full rehearsal. 
 The hard-worked singers have forgotten their ' busi- 
 ness ' in some cases their notes and the orchestra 
 is practically reading at sight. Result, a triumph of 
 presence of mind in which I know not whom to admire 
 most conductor or executants ; in short, a scandalous 
 scramble.
 
 2i 6 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 Think of boots, worn now and again, at intervals, 
 but never re-polished ! Small wonder if the new opera, 
 which perhaps delighted all at first, is presently found 
 to be not wholly satisfactory. But whereas abroad a 
 trained Press and public know when an innocent is 
 being massacred, here no one seems to know or care. 
 
 Let us suppose that, nuisance or no nuisance, the 
 new opera has been presented to the London world, 
 had two or perhaps three performances there, plus a 
 promise alas ! for promises in financially conducted 
 enterprise ! to ' put it on the repertory.' 
 
 But first a word as to this initial production. Except 
 in the case of Sir Thomas Beecham a man able and 
 willing to make sacrifices for new ventures on a scale 
 of unexampled generosity the composer is obliged to 
 guarantee a certain sum to the producer, who, given 
 the cost of the many rehearsals necessary in the case 
 of novelties, stands otherwise to lose some hundreds of 
 pounds. Why this fact, of which the managers make 
 no secret, is hushed up by the Press, I cannot conceive. 
 
 What next ? The company goes on tour, and in 
 the provinces every difficulty I have enumerated is ten 
 times greater, because the opera-spasm is shorter and the 
 dovetailing of events a still more complex problem. 
 Can one wonder if some leading lady, who has but 
 three chances of securing the frenzied plaudits of the 
 house in certain favourite roles, such as Isolde or Madam 
 Butterfly, is averse to sacrificing one of these in the 
 interests of what she knows to be a * passing show ' ? 
 Who shall blame her ? Certainly not 1. 
 
 And in the provinces a new difficulty presents itself. 
 Modern works depend a good deal on orchestration, 
 but on tour the orchestra plays with maimed rites, being
 
 THE OPERA FIASCO 217 
 
 but a skeleton crew reinforced with local talent. Now 
 the Old Favourite, a hardy perennial, can survive a 
 good deal ; but a couple of violas versus four trombones 
 is not favourable to the delicate operation of getting a 
 new work across the footlights. 
 
 These are some of the domestic difficulties the 
 sort of thing the public cannot know that dog the 
 footsteps of a new work. Not one of them exists in 
 countries where opera is on a permanent basis, where 
 the companies are large (including, perhaps, three 
 equally gifted and competent ' dramatic sopranos '), and 
 where, instead of a cut and dried scheme 42 items long, 
 you have an elastic forecast for a few days only, and 
 nine months of open season before you. 
 
 Thus, if a new opera be a success, it can be produced 
 again and again at convenient intervals ; if it is a half- 
 night's piece, with some new stable-companion later on. 
 Thus you insidiously lure Mr. Z., who has heard the 
 novelty once, to hear it again. All of which takes 
 contrivance and goodwill but is also a matter of business 
 to the director, who possibly is bound by contract, on 
 the principle I spoke of, to work off a certain number 
 of performances. Meanwhile the novelty is ' catching 
 on.' 
 
 And I may add that if, all the world over, singers 
 have a predilection for their old roles, the creation of 
 absolutely new ones, in genuine premieres where there 
 is no model to go by, is worth their while. For are 
 not three powerful directors sitting in the stalls, having 
 hied hither to hear the novelty ? Quite a different 
 thing, this, to spending your nerve-tissue in flogging a 
 dead horse. 
 
 Yes, a dead horse, because, truth to tell, nine out 
 of ten of our opera goers don't want novelties. As I 
 said before, the test of cultured taste is curiosity ; but 
 financially-run opera bases on and flatters the dressing-
 
 2i 8 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 gown-and-slippers frame of mind bred of ignorance and 
 stagnation. ' Butterfly ' will fill the house night after 
 night for certain, but in two or three nights you will have 
 got through the handful of bold spirits capable of working 
 up a passing fit of curiosity. The others would remain 
 indifferent even though an angel were to proclaim from 
 the top of St. Paul's that in ten years' time that new 
 work would be the greatest financial success (I am putting 
 it strongly) of the twentieth century ! 
 
 Now though the munificence of Sir Thomas is a 
 byword, this basic fact cannot be ignored even by his 
 management. As for other companies, I can only 
 admire their public spiritedness in ever mounting new 
 works at all. To do so involves an unspeakable amount 
 of trouble. A couple of performances or so will hardly 
 cover expenses the bonus cannot pay for sufficient 
 rehearsal, let alone make good a possible deficit. And 
 yet, knowing all this, everyone applies himself to the 
 task as if there were a fortune in it ! 
 
 Wonderful ! Admirable ! Cest magnijique mats 
 ce rCest pas Vart I 
 
 VI 
 
 There is only one way to build up enduring success 
 for a new opera ; make it the first consideration ; 
 rehearse, regardless of dates, till it is perfect ; then 
 launch it, and keep it going with friendly kicks, like a 
 motor-bicycle, till it has acquired its own momentum. 
 This has never been, and can never be, done under our 
 system. 
 
 My reply, then, to M. Newman is : firstly, that 
 it is impossible to give a new work again and again ; 
 and, secondly, that in no case would it be worth the 
 resultant confusion, since no one would say thank you. 
 Nor can other companies take it up, because there is
 
 THE OPERA FIASCO 219 
 
 only one score and set of parts MS., of course in a 
 word, no Machine. (Think of Dr. Vaughan Williams, 
 who lost the only score of one of his finest works, where- 
 upon the disgraceful fact came out that it had never 
 found a publisher !) 
 
 To sum up, an English opera has not a dog's chance. 
 Nor has a critic, unless he be a man of fabulous intuition, 
 imagination, and experience, an opportunity of forming 
 an opinion worth pronouncing on such works as have 
 painfully struggled up to the light of day since 
 immediately after the premiere the thing falls to 
 pieces. 
 
 Meanwhile, good-bye to the illusion that opera is a 
 living issue in England. For living things put forth 
 shoots, but under these conditions the upspringing of 
 a native school is an impossibility. So it will remain 
 till we class opera with public pleasure grounds (including 
 the ducks in St. James's Park) as a luxury that a civilised 
 community demands, that cannot pay its way, and must 
 be subsidised. 
 
 The alternative is for the British composer to try 
 his luck abroad. I have spent many years doing it, 
 and on the whole have fared well. English musicians 
 do not rank high on the Continent ; the guild of operatic 
 composers is a jealous one, and it was trebly difficult 
 for a woman to force the door. On the other hand, 
 once you had done it all was plain sailing, for the 
 foreign critic is free from the no doubt flattering pre- 
 occupation with sex that besets his English colleague. 
 None of those eternal allusions to ' one of the foremost 
 women composers,' which so delightfully discount 
 encomium, safeguard male susceptibility, and betoken 
 a naivete of spirit to which neither French nor German 
 critics can aspire ! 
 
 (Perhaps the latter are too familiar with a certain 
 well-known German story ' I am third in my class,
 
 220 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 papa.' ' Well done, my boy, and how many are there 
 in your class ? ' ' Three, papa ' to indulge in this 
 particular brand of compliment. Or perhaps they 
 think it sounder to judge a composition on its own 
 merits, more especially since the public cares nothing 
 about your sex only about the quality of your work.) 
 
 ' I like abroad,' therefore, as an Irish lady once said. 
 But how many young people and it is of these I am 
 thinking have time or money to spend in chasing one 
 director after another over all Europe, till you find one 
 sufficiently keen on your opera to do the unpopular 
 thing of producing it ? 
 
 Then comes the publisher question, much com- 
 plicated by the fact that you have written to English 
 words. And if readers will reflect on English trans- 
 lations of foreign texts which have been inflicted on 
 them even in the case of masterpieces on which the 
 frenzied efforts of poets have been concentrated for 
 years they will gather that to turn out a translation 
 which shall read, sing, and declaim well is an almost 
 impossible achievement. 
 
 I have only met one individual who was musician 
 and poet enough to do it, and I believe he never finished 
 a whole opera, being invariably overcome with delirium 
 tremens (as happened when he was working for me) 
 before the Third Act was reached. None but a human 
 derelict would undertake such a thankless task. 
 
 But if, in the end, with everything against him, an 
 English composer does succeed in getting his work 
 played, he has at least some chance of seeing it fairly 
 launched on a living stream. For on the Continent 
 opera really is a living stream, whereas here it is, so to 
 speak, a succession of isolated puddles. Some of them 
 glittering ones, but . . . puddles for all that, and 
 liable to dry up untimely. 
 
 Unless circumstances alter, unpatriotic as it may
 
 THE OPERA FIASCO 221 
 
 seem, I should therefore advise the young opera com- 
 poser to shape his course for the foreign market, where 
 good work has a future. 
 
 VII 
 
 One word on a subject about which the general 
 public knows but little, and which is pertinent to this 
 inquiry. How comes it that even abroad, where 
 everything is in its favour, the launching of a new opera 
 is such a ticklish venture, its reception almost impossible 
 to forecast ? It is far too intricate a question to thrash 
 out thoroughly, but here are one or two elements that 
 make for uncertainty. 
 
 Where you have 300 people involved in an enter- 
 prise, a good deal depends on luck. A chance draught 
 may necessitate a substitute for the singer who carries 
 the piece, or even cause postponement till the best part 
 of the season (October to April) is over. Now the 
 whole committee of the Royal Academy, and half the 
 stafTs of all the publishing houses in London, might be 
 down with influenza without imperilling the fate of a 
 picture or a book. 
 
 Again, the house may be out of tune on the night 
 of the premiere. Account for it as you will, every 
 opera director is acquainted with this factor and also 
 with its reaction on the performers, than whom there is 
 no more nervous class of beings. Or perhaps that 
 opera's hour may not have struck ; the world is not 
 ready for it yet. 
 
 One of the most astonishing things in the history 
 of painting is to read of some innovation introduced by 
 such and such a painter, which at the time caused his 
 art to be condemned as unnatural, hideous, or what not. 
 Viewed at the distance of 400 years, it is hard for any 
 but an expert to perceive any great difference between
 
 222 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 his method and that of his contemporaries. But that 
 imperceptible difference estranged his generation. 
 
 So it is with music a much harder thing to make 
 friends with than pictures or books, for it will not 
 stand still to be stared at or re-read. On no other 
 hypothesis can we account for the fact so strangely 
 ignored by those who bid us prove our worth by scoring 
 an instantaneous success, that operas like ' Carmen,' 
 ' Faust,' ' The Barber of Seville,' and even some of 
 Verdi's most famous creations, began by falling flat. 
 I myself was in Germany when ' Hoffmann's Tales,' 
 howled off the stage during the composer's lifetime 
 and immured ever since his death, was triumphantly 
 brought back to the light of day by a conductor of 
 genius never to leave it again. Melodious, fantastic, 
 easy to grasp as it seems to us now, it was a new 
 departure and for that reason unacceptable. 
 
 The truth is, we are all peasants at heart and loathe 
 new departures, though very few of us are sufficiently 
 intelligent and humble-minded to allow it. And the 
 spot on earth where a new departure has least chance 
 of making its way in opera, at least is England. 
 
 Before leaving this part of the subject I should like to 
 speak of the only genuine success scored on the English 
 operatic stage during my lifetime Gilbert and Sullivan. 
 
 Here is a case not likely to occur again, the coming 
 together of two collaborators of genius. Neither did 
 great things by himself, but together they have worked, 
 I believe, for all time. I told elsewhere x how a sh^de 
 passed over Sir Arthur's face when I could not share 
 his opinion that ' The Golden Legend ' is his best 
 work. I now think it was perhaps that he would have 
 wished his masterpiece to be in the main a musical 
 triumph ; for no one knew better than he that in opera 
 the libretto is at least as great a factor as the music. 
 1 Impressions that Remained. (Longmans.)
 
 THE OPERA FIASCO 223 
 
 The story of the Gilbert-Sullivan combine, however, 
 does not affect the question of Grand Opera, which was 
 once thus stated in a letter to me by Mr. Delius, whom 
 I am certain it is not indiscreet to quote, since he 
 is not one who keeps straight talk for private life. 
 ' The position,' he writes, * seems very simple to me. 
 (1) Opera cannot be run anywhere on an artistic basis 
 without a subsidy ; (2) It cannot be run on a commercial 
 basis without degenerating.' 
 
 Remains the question : What is to be done ? And 
 the answer hinges on the existence or absence in English 
 hearts of a genuine love of opera. With all humility 
 I will give my impressions on this subject for what they 
 are worth in the concluding part of these reflections. 
 
 VIII 
 
 Whether we are, or are not, a music-loving race, 
 one thing is certain and I am grateful to Mr. Newman 
 for blurting out the unpleasant truth music is in a 
 very unhealthy state in England. Anyone who glances 
 at the exhibits in the music-shop window of any country 
 town can judge of the stuff turned out by the Machine 
 for the consumption of the lyrically minded. In fact, 
 I should think the level of musical taste here is as low 
 as anywhere in the world. And another melancholy 
 fact is that good music does not pay. 
 
 I believe it is an economic truth that if demand be 
 great, supply is cheap and plentiful. Certainly the 
 class of people who throng concert rooms and Opera 
 Houses in Germany and Austria prove the contention ; 
 for though the standard of performance is higher there 
 than anywhere, which always implies unlimited rehearsal, 
 the seats are low-priced. And yet music is a paying 
 concern ! 
 
 In London, whether because, music not being a
 
 224 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 genuine need, the musical unions are able to demand 
 uneconomic wages, or for some other reason, it is only 
 by pestering right and left for guarantees, and contriv- 
 ing somehow to fill the expensive seats, that concerts 
 are able to drag out a precarious existence. 
 
 As for opera, its finance roots in the boxes and 
 stalls ; and the result is, that in spite of Sir Thomas 
 Beecham's high aspirations and unexampled muni- 
 ficence, it is, as it always has been, partly a business 
 speculation, partly a social function. 
 
 Shades of Mahler and Schuch ! Your Opera 
 Houses were noble piles frequented by the great world, 
 a social focus, even an appanage of the Court. But 
 what if your plans had been indirectly settled by Society, 
 your destinies swayed by a class that thinks of nothing 
 but amusing itself, that is more superficial, less patient 
 of sound investments and slow returns (which is the 
 Gospel of Art) than any other class ! In short, a crowd 
 past praying for, artistically speaking, all the world 
 over ; and nowhere, unless perhaps in New York, more 
 musically ignorant, and consequently more absurd in its 
 easy assumption of a right to pontificate, than in London ! 
 
 I think there is more of the spirit of sham abroad 
 in our opera world than in the unregenerate days of 
 commercialism pure and simple. For one thing, in 
 that pre-war epoch whole German companies were 
 imported people with a traditional respect for music, 
 led by men like Richter and Mottl who would no 
 more have tolerated interference than they would have 
 forgone their lager beer after the performance. 
 
 Then as now money was needed. But whereas in 
 these later times duchesses have been bidden, tiaras 
 and all, to attend high-priced balls in order to start a 
 fund for the production of works by native composers, 
 in the old days the methods of raising the wind, if 
 crude, were sounder and infinitely more amusing.
 
 THE OPERA FIASCO 225 
 
 I remember a grave young Nonconformist engaged 
 in some capacity behind the scenes telling me, that at 
 one of these money-raising balls he had met a gentle- 
 man with three diamond shirt studs cantering down a 
 corridor on his shoulders a lady who apparently held 
 with Norah Creena that * nature's dress is loveliness.' 
 He intended to report this astounding incident to the 
 authorities, and in spite of my earnest entreaties may 
 have done so. Anyhow his services were dispensed 
 with shortly afterwards. 
 
 Again, we outsiders were regaled with lurid legends 
 of Countesses flying to the box-office when all was over, 
 and with bejewelled fingers sorting and counting up 
 piles of sovereigns. There was a frankness about all 
 this that rather appealed to me. It is the combination 
 of these realities with high artistic aims that I object to. 
 Art is good so is the business Machine. But you 
 cannot blend them in this particular way. 
 
 The truth is, that though in Vienna you will see 
 great ladies at almost any good local concert, as likely 
 as not sitting beside the music-mistress with whom they 
 play duets twice a week (which proves that the tradi- 
 tions of Beethoven's time still linger in the Viennese 
 great world) it most certainly is not in this class that you 
 will find a genuine love of music in England. 
 
 IX 
 
 On the other hand I believe * the common people,' 
 who, it may be remembered, heard Christ gladly, would 
 really love the best if given the chance a view which 
 was confirmed by friend after friend at the front, who 
 told me that the men thoroughly appreciated good 
 music ; it was, alas ! the officers who insisted on 
 having the last and vulgarest ragtime or music-hall 
 ditty.
 
 226 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 The best English opera public I ever saw were the 
 audiences collected in the suburbs by the Moody 
 Manners Company ; and even at Covent Garden and 
 Drury Lane the only genuine applause, the only applause 
 worth having, comes from the gods a place that plays 
 no great part in the box office. They are uneducated 
 up there, and in some ways undiscriminating. But 
 they do not pretend to admire music which bores 
 them because it is the right thing to do as happens 
 in the aristocratic zone below and on the whole 
 recognise an alive thing when they see it. 
 
 Probably the best way to raise the level of musical 
 taste all round would be to attend to the education of 
 the rising generation, and give their minds the right 
 twist in their youth. 
 
 But even adult taste can be trained, and, to return 
 to my own beat, whatever function our operatic system 
 fulfils, I do not believe in its educative value. You 
 cannot cultivate people by rushing them at top speed 
 through one spasm-season after another, but only by 
 setting up something serious and permanent, in which 
 a high standard can be struck and maintained. 
 
 Mr. Francis Toye wrote, not long ago, that he had 
 expected to see a steady improvement in the London 
 productions, and had hoped that they would gradually 
 work up to the reliable level of a big German provincial 
 Opera House, eventually touching that of Munich and 
 Vienna whereas nothing of the sort had occurred. 
 How could it, say I, under our system ? 
 
 And the worst of it is, that, without a standard of 
 reference, people get to accept haphazard productions 
 as they accept variable weather. A disillusioned enthu- 
 siast could not tell you what is wrong. Even as the 
 victim of a bad cook ascribes his loss of appetite to 
 dyspepsia a notion that a week of good cooking would 
 dispel he probably thinks it is his own fault ; that he
 
 THE OPERA FIASCO 227 
 
 does not care about opera as he once did. And so 
 to bed, without resentment. . . . But gradually the 
 attendance slackens. 
 
 I could tell these people what is wrong. It is 
 merely that, on the principle of working through the 
 six weeks' menu, as advertised, at all costs, there has 
 been no time for the extra rehearsal that would have 
 put on the polish, and resulted in an easy, clean, and 
 kindling performance. 
 
 How often, in a country where a marvellous faculty 
 for reading at sight the real British gift for impro- 
 visation is supposed to dispense with the necessity of 
 rehearsals, have I been assured that the public does 
 not perceive nuances ! Not consciously, perhaps, any 
 more than when a funny story is stupidly told you 
 realise that an opportunity has been missed. But in the 
 one case you have been defrauded of a laugh, in the 
 other of an artistic emotion. 
 
 No one would wish to deny that under present 
 conditions we sometimes get splendid performances, 
 equal to anything you could see on the Continent ; to 
 ignore the fact would be stupid and ungrateful. But 
 before attempting to point out where, in one's humble 
 opinion, salvation is to be found, it is a melancholy 
 necessity to insist on the fundamental rottenness of our 
 system, which is practically an appeal to the rich 
 eked out in one particular case by the unheard-of 
 sacrifices of a great musician and enthusiast. 
 
 X 
 
 There is no doubt whatever that, ere long, we 
 shall have subsidy in some shape or other first in 
 London, then elsewhere. Cultivated opinion is aware 
 of the necessity, and the public will come to see it in 
 time possibly, as in the matter of conscription being
 
 228 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 a necessary war-measure, is nearer seeing it now than 
 many people believe. 
 
 The only question is where should it be bestowed ? 
 How are we to get the best return for our money ? 
 
 To subsidise a West-End Opera House would be 
 a hopeless business. Even if this were the right 
 jumping-off place, such a gigantic income would be 
 necessary that, of course, the public would refuse to 
 entertain the notion. 
 
 I would begin at the other end. Establish and 
 endow an Opera House intended exclusively for the 
 class in which, I believe, a love of good music is latent. 
 A musical -pendant, in short, to the beloved Old Vic, 
 where the most expensive seats cost 35. 6d. ; which is 
 thronged daily by a keen yet independent audience ; 
 where you can see Shakespeare played without elaborate 
 decorations and clap-trap effects, yet holding the play- 
 goers in a vice ; a place out of which you step with a 
 new belief in human nature, saying to yourself : ' The 
 Real Thing ! ' 
 
 Probably there are not two Miss Lilian Baylis's in 
 the world ; but the tide that this particular moon drags 
 skyward overflows the boundaries of the Old Vic. 
 The South London soil is favourable to the right sort 
 of seed as the most promising operatic venture I have 
 heard of, the Miln-Fairbairn season, proved. 
 
 And here it is, I think, that the golden rain should 
 fall. Not in the form of a bonus once you have got 
 through a bonus you are as you were but an income 
 should be guaranteed for a term of years to the Surrey 
 Theatre, on the continental municipal lines. 
 
 The ideal would be to put the musical management 
 in Sir Thomas's hands, but would he accept it ? 
 Perhaps his freedom is too dear to him ; possibly he 
 would say that he can do better work as free lance. 
 The problem of the musical direction, however, is not
 
 THE OPERA FIASCO 229 
 
 a pressing one ; no doubt there are many who would 
 fill the post admirably. 
 
 The subsidy would have to be large enough to 
 maintain a first-class, absolutely independent, orchestra. 
 And the first office of the Institution I like this con- 
 tinental name for it would be to break up the vile, 
 insincere, commercially-conceived theory (and practice) 
 of rehearsing that prevails in England. 
 
 I would start with instrumentalists unknown to 
 fame, who would master the music (by dint of rehears- 
 ing it) from the inside not from the outside, as the 
 cracks do. And I would have many women in the 
 orchestra, because I think women more capable of 
 devotion to an ideal than men. For ideal there must 
 be ; through all must run the simple, warm, human 
 element you feel so strongly at the Old Vic, and which 
 is evidently compatible with business. 
 
 The great -point is that opera should be played there 
 continuously^ unless^ perhaps^ for a couple of months in the 
 summer. This in itself would alter the angle of pub- 
 lishing firms towards composers, put the training of 
 dramatic singing on a sound basis, establish a new scale 
 of fees (which are now, naturally, on a fancy level), and 
 generally bring order and stability into a scene where 
 all is feverishness, uncertainty, and confusion. 
 
 Next, the appointments of the theatre (a fine old 
 house just the right size) would remain exactly as they 
 are comfortable enough, but not luxurious. Thus, 
 situation and upholstery in alliance, the Surrey would 
 be as immune from an invasion of the Smart as the 
 Old Vic, and a moderate subsidy sufficient for its needs. 
 
 The effect of all this on the upspringing of a race 
 of English opera writers need not be insisted on. It 
 would be the difference between asphyxiation and fresh 
 air between death and life. The bare idea of it stirs 
 creative pulses in the veins. ... 1
 
 2 3 o STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 I know too well that the Press will not face the 
 subsidy issue ; but ideas have a way of germinating in 
 spite of being brushed aside as impossible. If a sober 
 facing of the real truth, which is that every artistically 
 conducted opera enterprise fails to pay, should result 
 in our putting our house in order now, at once, when 
 a strangely hopeful creative impulse is stirring in many 
 war-ravaged lands then one would go farther even 
 than ' the gloomy Dean ' (who maintains that ' nothing 
 fails like success '), and assert that nothing succeeds 
 like failure ! For then various box office tragedies of 
 which the public hears nothing, would not have happened 
 in vain. 
 
 Meanwhile, I have no quarrel with existing enter- 
 prises, many of which are doing good work. As for 
 Sir Thomas, who has stimulated and satisfied curiosity 
 on a scale none but he could attempt (and certainly 
 not a small subsidised house on its probation), who has 
 given us the Russians, Elektra, the Rosen-Cavalier, and 
 other things it is good and needful for us to hear, but 
 which otherwise we might not have heard for years 
 . . . but it seems an impertinence to speak of what 
 we owe him. 
 
 There are many mansions in the House of Art, 
 and I desire to destroy none of them merely to say 
 that the one to subsidise should be a house founded 
 on a rock. And by ' rock ' I mean a region where 
 there is a fund of unspoiled instinct, both human 
 and musical, to draw upon and ennoble, and which 
 a grant would place beyond the reach of those two 
 greatest enemies to art the un-Heavenly Twins, 
 Commercialism and Snobbery. 
 
 July 1920.
 
 AN OPEN SECRET 
 
 Assuming that readers of these pages agree with the 
 writer in thinking conundrums a bore unless the answer 
 follow instantaneously, I will at once say what the 
 secret is. 
 
 Newspaper columns are full of concert advertise- 
 ments, concert-halls are engaged weeks deep, but, 
 though no one alludes to the fact, there is a Slump in 
 Music ! 
 
 Some few years ago, in an article called ' England, 
 Music and Women,' of which, with the kind permis- 
 sion of the Editor of The English Review, I am borrow- 
 ing a few passages, I ventured to discuss the question 
 of music in this country. The general position at that 
 time (19 1 6) was, that having thrown off German 
 shackles, liquidated certain of their musical businesses, 
 purged our orchestras of Germans, and banished con- 
 temporary German music from our programmes, a great 
 English Renaissance was about to dawn. We lifted 
 our eyes to the hills and descried Sir Thomas Beecham 
 coming to our help a millionaire, in some ways a 
 genius, a man likely to take his own line, who had 
 begun his career in England by giving a series of some 
 of the most perfectly rehearsed concerts it has been my 
 good fortune to listen to. 
 
 The main contention of that article of mine was, 
 however, that music is a complex civilisation we once 
 possessed, have long since lost, and that nothing but 
 > 231
 
 232 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 a recovery of the state of mind whence great art springs 
 would give it back to us. Whether our attention were 
 turned to politics, the Church, or the Press, obviously- 
 all was not well with us, and on Marconi day even the 
 most self-complacent realised that something we fancied 
 an unalienable heritage had passed out of English public 
 life. And England said much . . . and did nothing. 
 
 Now I had always held that as long as qualities of 
 passion enthusiasm, moral courage, sense of duty, and 
 so forth play no part in the national scheme it is 
 vain to pray for the rebirth of a lost art. And as possibly 
 nothing short of tragedy could give back to us the 
 clean, simple things without which there can be no 
 sound life, the outbreak of war did not seem to me 
 the unmitigated evil it did to many. 
 
 The war is over. Every passional quality I have 
 named was necessary to the winning of it, and in none 
 of them was our country found lacking. Yet strange 
 to say there is no perceptible spiritualisation in our 
 outlook ; or if there be, it has not got into our music 
 life. 
 
 I know few places more depressing nowadays than 
 concert rooms, apart from their being too often half 
 empty when the free list is suspended. Programme 
 after programme is reeled off with scarce a semblance 
 of fervour (even the critics, the least critical beings in 
 the world, are beginning to notice it), and judging by 
 appearances the audience are derelicts putting in time 
 till something more interesting happens a tea party 
 perhaps, or, if it is an evening concert, bed. Of course 
 there are exceptions, but as a rule this is the situation. 
 
 It may be partly owing to war fatigue, and I fancy 
 another factor is the disappearance of the Germans and 
 German Jews who, whatever their faults, really do love 
 music and disseminated an attitude towards it that 
 counteracted our own fundamental indifference. But I
 
 AN OPEN SECRET 233 
 
 also believe that the commercial principles we carry 
 into everything, and which result in as many perform- 
 ances and as little rehearsing as possible, bring their 
 own Nemesis. Spiritual aridity, the mead of all who 
 industrialise sacred things, has overtaken languid per- 
 former and bored listener, and people who once cherished 
 illusions on this subject are beginning to ask themselves 
 whether we are a musical people in the sense that we 
 certainly are a sporting and an adventurous people. 
 The exterior equipment, perhaps a heritage of the past, 
 is there still beautiful voices, exquisitely fine ears, and 
 great natural technical facility ; but the fire within 
 burns low and capriciously. As Madame Blanche 
 Marchesi once said to me : ' Les Anglais aiment assez 
 la musique . . . mais Us s'en passent fort bien. y 
 
 There is no respect for music in this country, no 
 awe, no mystery ; and given the fatal genius of our 
 orchestral players for reading at sight, and their great 
 technical skill which enables them to skate brilliantly 
 on the surface of their art, I see a day coming when 
 that deep communion with the soul of a composer 
 which is the point of rehearsing, and by which alone 
 his message can be understood and delivered, will be 
 considered unnecessary and beneath the dignity of an 
 English orchestra ! 
 
 Meanwhile when you listen to players who under- 
 stand by the word rehearsing something more than 
 securing a fairly smooth performance; when, for 
 instance, a group of heaven-inspired artists to whom 
 music is religion, such as the Bohemian Quartett, are 
 among us playing of course to more or less empty 
 benches the pang, the wild joy of it, is almost too 
 violent for aesthetic enjoyment. 
 
 I do not say there are not some true musician-souls 
 
 among us souls capable of burning. But they are 
 
 ew in number, and if they were for ever struggling
 
 234 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 against the prevailing inertia they would die of fatigue. 
 Some of them have told me so . . . but I should have 
 known it without that. 
 
 Anyone who has really gauged the dimensions of 
 English music of the sixteenth and succeeding centuries, 
 music as unlike Bach as Chaucer is unlike Dante, must 
 ask himself how we came to lose this art ? 
 
 Myself I think it is perhaps the price we pay for 
 becoming the greatest colonising power the world has 
 seen except Rome. Gradually our gaze turned to 
 things external ; we took to fashioning new material 
 worlds and lost the knack of listening to inner voices 
 and building edifices of sound. Again it may be the 
 fault of industrialism, or perhaps because we have 
 evolved by degrees into a race remarkable for reserve 
 and understatement, which I cannot think was the hall- 
 mark of the Elizabethan Anglo-Saxon. And possibly 
 in the course of this evolution song froze to death. 
 
 It is not my intention to enquire into causes here, 
 only to register effects, and one of these is well worth 
 noting, namely, that though the tax-payer has no objec- 
 tion to subsidising the British Museum with an income 
 of 300,000 a year, no Minister has ever dared to ask 
 us to subsidise music in any form. And it may be said 
 here, for the hundred and first time, that America and 
 ourselves are the only so-called civilised nations that 
 have no national and subsidised Opera House. 
 
 Having treated this subject fully elsewhere I will 
 only call attention to the fact that the general idea of a 
 subsidy is to set up and maintain a standard of per- 
 fection such as cannot possibly be achieved when an 
 artistic enterprise depends on gate-money alone. But 
 the commercial principle, the one we are committed to, 
 is found quite satisfactory by a unanimous Press. 
 I cannot believe this is their true opinion, but, as
 
 AN OPEN SECRET 235 
 
 Mr. Delius has recently had the courage to say, music 
 life in England is shot through and through with 
 humbug. 
 
 The tragic part of it is that there is plenty of 
 creative talent in our midst, but how shall it fare in a 
 world where good new music, if native, has so little 
 hold that there are no publishers for such music ? 
 where, after the initiatory performance (for which too 
 the composer sometimes makes a special financial 
 effort) there is no extra rehearsing for what is perhaps 
 a new idiom ? . . . A flash in the pan, a splash in 
 the Press ; then . . . ' Next turn, please ! ' 
 
 There is no standard, no stability. I have heard 
 performances so perfunctory, scrambles-through so dis- 
 graceful, that it seemed as if the boards of the concert 
 floor must cry out. But no one cried out in the news- 
 papers next day. You may find all sorts of theories 
 ventilated there ; recently the musical (?) critic of an 
 ' intellectual ' weekly complained that he could not 
 enjoy Beethoven because that composer has so little 
 sense of form ! This was stated not as a theory of the 
 writer's, but as an incontestable fact. Yet no one 
 carries on a campaign against the habitual insufficiency 
 of rehearsal. * After all time is money ; the public 
 won't be any the wiser ' is the idea, I suppose that is 
 if anyone realises that it is not enough for a thing to 
 ' go well.' But though cheap Japanese goods can be 
 vamped up in no time, nothing on earth can replace 
 the patient hammer-hammer that gives old lacquer its 
 quality. Thirty years ago Tschaikovsky wrote to me, in 
 a letter I published in my Memoirs, what he thought of 
 our theories and practice as regards rehearsing. And we 
 have not changed our ways unless for the worse ! 
 
 On the other hand if it is the case of a personality, 
 some composer, conductor, or executant whom they 
 think will be a winning horse, there are no lengths of
 
 236 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 adulation to which our Press will not go. But for the 
 orgy of uncritical admiration in which Sir Thomas 
 Beecham lived, moved, and had his being, this remark- 
 able man, whom to know is- to become attached to, 
 might have been a turning point in our history. With 
 a quarter of the money he so generously lavished on 
 music he might have aimed at perfection. But alas ! 
 his obsession became, on the contrary, to show with 
 how few rehearsals a man of genius, served by the 
 pick of London's instrumentalists, could turn out the 
 maximum of operas in a given time ! It was even 
 notorious that the sport, the excitement of pulling half- 
 prepared productions out of the fire, appealed to him, 
 all of which indicated a lack of reverence for music 
 that augured ill for the fruition of our hopes concerning 
 our One Hope. 
 
 But none protested, none said : ' Wean yourself 
 from fireworks, abjure West-End influences, be as 
 serious and conscientious as you are gifted and generous, 
 and help us to better things.' Finally when he, to 
 whom Beethoven and Wagner were sealed books but 
 who once was the supremest of Mozart conductors, 
 was suddenly seized with the whim of conducting 
 everything, including Figaro and The Seraglio^ at such a 
 pace that the orchestra's task was one long acrobatic 
 feat, and the singers, unable to articulate, could only 
 gasp and squeak, all you could find about it in 
 the newspapers was an indulgent smile dissolved in 
 printer's ink. 
 
 This is what I mean by having no standard. A 
 continental audience would have howled the curtain 
 down. And thus it comes that despite his generosity, 
 enterprise, and brilliant gifts, I fear that his influence 
 on music in England has on the whole been disastrous 
 just because he had it in his power to give it an upward 
 lift.
 
 AN OPEN SECRET 237 
 
 Speaking as an artist, I agree with Mr. Newman 
 and other thoughtful writers in thinking our music-life 
 is in a very bad way superficial, low-pulsed, and 
 bolstered-up with make-believe. Years ago it seemed 
 to me in want of new blood, but now, owing to the 
 ' England for the English ' battle-cry that is so pertina- 
 ciously chanted on the fields of peace, and above all 
 on fields of art where nationality should have no voice, 
 that avenue is barred. 
 
 The one element of hope lies, I think, in the gradual 
 interpenetration of the life musical by women. I say 
 this in no fanatical feminist spirit, but in all calmness, 
 as the result of quiet and, I trust, sane observation of 
 things in general, and of what is going on under my 
 nose in particular. What is more, many thoughtful 
 knowledgeable men I know are saying the same ; not 
 openly, for moral courage is, I think, the rarest virtue in 
 the world, but in corners ! 
 
 Generally speaking I find women more capable of 
 enthusiasm and devotion, readier to spend and be spent 
 emotionally than men as I noticed in my dealings 
 with stage choruses long before the war. Their nerves, 
 too, seem nearer the surface, more sensitive to response 
 less deeply buried under that habitual resistance to the 
 emotional appeal which, as I said, is surely a post- 
 Elizabethan trait. I cannot conceive of music being 
 an Englishman's religion that is, a thing pure of 
 financial taint but in the case of an Englishwoman I 
 can conceive it. At this moment, too, women are the 
 keener, the harder-working sex. All the world over 
 men seem disinclined to put their backs into the job 
 war-weariness, it is called and the responsible states- 
 men of Europe are unanimous in ascribing the slackness 
 of trade in large measure to the slackness of the workers. 
 But during the war woman found out her powers, glories 
 in them now, and only asks to go on using them.
 
 238 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 The question is, will she be allowed to do so ? 
 
 As late as the autumn of 191 5, when the call for 
 her help in munition factories had been so splendidly- 
 responded to, there was still a strain of condescension 
 in male comment on the activities of ' the ladies.' In 
 the November of that year pressmen made a tour of 
 the factories in order to report officially on the output, 
 and it was discovered that in work never before done 
 by women, demanding both skill and strength, they 
 proved not only their equality but their superiority to 
 men {The Times, November 16) ; also in many cases 
 their output was rather more than double that of the 
 men {Manchester Guardian, November 16). 
 
 These facts rather a serious matter, I thought 
 were treated as a joke ; the women were patted on the 
 back, and patronised, and one halfpenny paper gave a 
 picture of girl grocer-assistants, with the remark beneath 
 it : ' These women can tie up parcels as neatly as men ' 
 just as you would talk of performing dogs or seals ! 
 
 Nowadays the tone has changed. Men have come 
 to recognise in woman a dangerous rival, and the Unions 
 are shouldering them out of engineering, printing, 
 engraving, and countless other trades which they have 
 mastered only too well ; in some cases playing that 
 useful card ' temporary substitute for fighting men,' in 
 others not troubling, or perhaps too honest, to play it. 
 
 But what touches me most nearly is what is happen- 
 ing in music. During the war it became impossible to 
 carry on without admitting women into the orchestras, 
 and few things more deeply impressed such as were 
 capable of dispassionate judgment than the increased 
 brilliance and warmth of tone. A new and refreshing 
 spirit, too, was perceptible in part the result, no doubt, 
 of sex rivalry of the right sort. Well do I remember 
 the transfiguration of a certain elderly violinist who 
 seldom used more than half his bow, and who now was
 
 AN OPEN SECRET 239 
 
 making it bite into the strings as it had not bitten for 
 years in honour of the extremely capable maiden who 
 was sharing his desk. But I think the main gain was 
 the infusion of un-warwearied feminine vitality, the 
 ' go ' of keen young talents for the first time allowed 
 scope. 
 
 It was generous-minded Sir Henry Wood, I think, 
 who first started mixed bathing in the sea of music, 
 and so successful was the innovation than many other 
 orchestras followed suit. True, the London Symphony 
 Orchestra, much to its disadvantage, in my opinion, 
 still remained an all-male body, except of course as 
 regards the harp (an immemorial concession, I imagine, 
 to aesthetic promptings . . . this solitary, daintily-clad, 
 white-armed sample of womanhood among the black 
 coats, as it might be a flower on a coal dump). One 
 hoped however that in time the L.S.O. would come to 
 see the error of its ways and that one more selfish 
 monopoly was a thing of the past. 
 
 But now, a bolt from the blue ; it appears that the 
 Halle orchestra at Manchester, true to its Hun origin 
 I suppose, has suddenly sacked its women members. 
 Not in order to make way for fighting men whose places 
 they had been occupying no woman that breathes 
 but gives way gladly in such case but merely because 
 of their sex ! 
 
 Asked to justify this proceeding, the Committee 
 give two reasons that remind one of the wonderful 
 excuses put forward for opposing female suffrage 
 excuses so feeble, so transparently bogus, that one 
 almost pities the gentlemen who, unequal to higher 
 flights of invention, imagine that this sort of thing 
 will do ! 
 
 The first excuse is, that when on tour it is not always 
 easy to find suitable hotel accommodation for ' the 
 ladies.' Very sad yet dramatic companies have not
 
 2 4 o STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 yet reverted to the Elizabethan practice of entrusting 
 women's roles to men on that account ! 
 
 But the second excuse is the supreme effort as 
 fine an instance of solemn pretentious humbug, in other 
 words cant, as I have ever come across. It is in the 
 interests of ' Unity of Style,' we are told, that the women 
 have been shown the door ! 
 
 Now will anyone bind a wet towel round his head 
 (yes, his head, for only a man can expound the deeper 
 workings of the male mind) and tell us what on earth 
 this means ? What, pray, is * unity of style ' in this 
 sense ? When Joachim and Lady Halle played the 
 Double Concerto in the very town whence issues this 
 precious pronouncement, did the fathers and uncles of 
 the members of that Committee hand in their resignation ? 
 Did Bach turn in his grave with horror (although it is 
 his own fault for not mentioning the sex question in 
 his score) ? Do the Soprani and Alti interfere with the 
 ' unity of style ' in a chorus ? Does the English 
 Quartett, that is led by Miss Hayward, lack it ? 
 
 No ! You can talk of unity of style between static 
 things, such as Italian violins, verses of a poem, houses 
 in a street, bank clerks, priests, etc., but not in the case 
 of a fluid force. Sex will not give it to 40 men of 
 different talent, temperament, habit, digestions and 
 schools ; that is the conductor's office. And two first 
 class artists of different sexes who respond subtly to 
 his intention can more easily be welded by him into 
 the ' unity ' he wants than a first rate and a fourth rate 
 male. 
 
 But a truce to poking about in the unsavoury 
 dust-heap of man's disingenuous reasons for doing 
 an ugly action. Let us rather see what that action 
 leads to. 
 
 Apart from the more spiritual element which I know
 
 AN OPEN SECRET 241 
 
 women will bring, as performers, to the making of music, 
 their admission on equal terms with men to our orches- 
 tras has another aspect. As I am never weary of pointing 
 out, orchestral playing is the finest training a young 
 composer can have, and the cheapest. The whole cf 
 musical literature passes across your desk ; you are 
 learning form and instrumentation automatically ; and 
 even though much of your time be spent in what must 
 be the hateful work of giving lessons, you are on the 
 crest of the wave of music, where strong breezes refresh 
 your spirit and keep it buoyant. 
 
 Finally, to wind up with a consideration of a practical 
 order, once you are member of a well-known orchestra, 
 you are entitled to ask good fees for private lessons. 
 
 All this was hitherto denied to woman ; no wonder 
 the sacred flame that burned in her bosom throughout 
 her student years too often flickered out. I have always 
 maintained that until we are in the rough and tumble 
 of musical life as men are, there cannot possibly be 
 many women composers worth talking about. Com- 
 petition, environment, and the sort of chance you get all 
 round, are to talent what sunshine and the less poetical 
 activities of the gardener are to a flower. In a word, 
 the general level of human circumstance determines what 
 stature one particularly gifted being can be expected to 
 attain, and if you have to hurl yourself upwards from the 
 sea-level you may become a Teneriffe, but improbably 
 a Mount Everest. 
 
 Bullying and cowardice, meanness and jealousy, are 
 not pretty qualities, and I wonder if men have a notion 
 with what contempt women view these attempts to 
 prevent them from earning their livelihood in any sphere 
 for which they can prove themselves fitted ? Mean- 
 while, as finishing touch, a certain group of young 
 intellectuals are busy shedding crocodile's tears in any 
 newspaper that will act as blotting paper over the paucity
 
 2 42 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 of female stars of the first magnitude, the equality of their 
 chances with men notwithstanding / . . . 
 
 The whole English attitude towards women in fields 
 of art is ludicrous and uncivilised. There is no sex in 
 art. How you play the violin, paint, or compose is 
 what matters. In countries where the aesthetic instinct 
 is strong and cultivated France for instance -judgment 
 is clean and objective, and a woman who practises art 
 is merely an artist among artists. Here, where that 
 instinct is feeble and untrained, a critic's first and last 
 thought in connection with her work is her sex. 
 
 I have often protested against the dragging in of 
 this King Charles's head in connection with myself and 
 have done so recently, 1 but the latest instance of it is 
 too funny to remain unchronicled. A critic, whom I 
 will not name because I believe he is a good fellow and 
 a good musician, in writing about me as ' Dr. Smyth,' 
 adds : ' or shall we drop that stiff, formal-sounding 
 title ? ' 
 
 Why ? If this gentleman can utter the prefix in 
 the cases of Drs. Vaughan Williams and Walford Davies 
 without shock to his nervous system, why not in mine ? 
 Whence this hankering after ' informality ' ? Young 
 ladies whom he has dealings with in private life may 
 perhaps be agreeably fluttered at so arch a frame of 
 mind, but isn't it rather silly to give way to it in your 
 professional capacity ? 
 
 I believe Englishmen to be congenitally incapable 
 of judging a woman's work at all. They may try, but 
 this sex-bogey is between them and it. If Selma 
 Lagerlof and Anna de Noailles, whom the whole civilised 
 world acclaims as two of the greatest living writers, had 
 been Englishwomen, every notice about them would 
 have carefully described them as ' among our greatest 
 x ' The Opera Fiasco.'
 
 AN OPEN SECRET 243 
 
 women writers ' ! And such men as recognised their 
 true dimensions would keep the awful knowledge to 
 themselves. (' The old girl's a wonder,' said Mr. 
 Bagnet, ' but I never tell her so. Discipline must be 
 maintained?} 
 
 An instance in our own literature occurs to me. 
 1 The Irish R.M.' having notoriously girdled the globe 
 with laughter, no man, I am glad to say, attempts to 
 patronise that work (unless by alluding to these pages, 
 in which an absolutely new type of humour with an 
 illimitable background to it has been evolved and 
 perfected, as ' Sketches '). But how many English men 
 realise the staggering dimensions of these authors' 
 supreme masterpiece ' The Real Charlotte ' ? 
 
 Some few dimly feel it, perhaps, but concluding 
 that since it is the work of two women it can't be so 
 epoch-making as all that, they confine themselves to 
 pointing out that it is not as ' pleasant reading ' as the 
 k.M. ! 
 
 As I write these lines I see on page 768 of The Times 
 Literary Supplement that there is ' a vein of feminine 
 irresponsibility ' in a book by a certain Major General, 
 and two contemporary Press cuttings praise a certain 
 musical composition as being ' of a strength we do 
 not expect to find in a woman's work.' 
 
 My comment on this last remark is that Art is 
 constructive action, that no one can build without 
 strength, and that the qualities of men and women of 
 this breed are probably identical. Anyhow all first-line 
 artistic or literary work by women has exactly the 
 characteristics of remarkable women all down history. 
 And whether names such as Caterina Sforza, S. Teresa, 
 Catherine of Russia, Florence Nightingale, Elizabeth 
 Tudor, Queen Victoria, Joan of Arc, Edith Cavell, 
 Elsie Inglis, and Mrs. Pankhurst suggest strength, or 
 1 feminine irresponsibility,' let man ask himself. For
 
 244 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 he is ' quite a fair beast if he gives himself time,' as a 
 small boy I know said of his house-master. 
 
 To sum up, there is, as we have seen, a slight dis- 
 crepancy between the theory and practice of men on 
 the subject of such women as in any way compete with 
 them for bread and butter, for honours or emoluments. 
 Theoretically we are inferiors ; practically we are, one 
 would imagine, superiors, or at least formidable com- 
 petitors, judging by the lengths men go to keep us out 
 of the arena. For as Mrs. Besant once said, to build 
 barriers is to show you are afraid. 
 
 Now I started by saying that as long as the public 
 life in your country, which includes its sanctioned 
 outlook, is unsound, there can be no artistic renaissance ; 
 I will go further, and remind my readers that when 
 Socrates was pondering the possible regeneration and 
 survival of Greece, one point that deeply troubled him, 
 as containing the germ of inevitable decadence, was the. 
 attitude in the Grecian state towards women. 
 
 During the Great War it looked as if the axe had 
 been laid to the root of a certain Prussian tree that 
 flourished in our midst, a determination to permit 
 women to do such work only as man did not wish to 
 do himself. 
 
 But I see signs of another spirit, a spirit of which 
 the incident of the Halle Orchestra is an illustration. 
 Men are not only slacking themselves, but are combining 
 to prevent women from earning their livelihood in this 
 and that sphere, notwithstanding the fact that if pros- 
 perity is to be restored to this country, every ounce of 
 its working power must be utilised. 
 
 I do not blame men too severely for clinging to 
 what have hitherto been considered male monopolies ; 
 alas ! it is human nature, though an ignoble part of it.
 
 AN OPEN SECRET 245 
 
 But since, as regards the questions we have been con- 
 sidering, it is a dangerous anachronism, there must be 
 no meek acquiescence on our part. Whether the Grecian 
 women had it in their power to arrest, by asserting 
 themselves, the downward trend of civilisation that so 
 painfully preoccupied Socrates, I do not know. But I 
 do know that in resisting tyranny, jealousy, and selfish- 
 ness, in refusing to take the dog-in-the-manger action 
 of these Trades Unions lying down, we are only doing 
 our duty to ourselves and to our country. 
 
 November 1920. 
 
 POSTSCRIPT 
 
 While writing the above I had an opportunity of 
 protesting from a London platform against the action 
 of the Halle" Orchestra, and will venture to give the 
 results of that protest. 
 
 (1) A disarmingly frank confession was elicited 
 from Mr. Hamilton Harty that he would ' rather be 
 attacked by women than men ' ! One could not refrain 
 from replying that women players being in a minority, 
 it is, no doubt, the safer policy to sacrifice them to the 
 strong party ! 
 
 (2) ' One connected with the orchestra ' remarked 
 to a Manchester reporter : ' this was always a man's 
 show and we mean to keep it for men if we can.' A 
 refreshingly honest individual, this ! 
 
 (3) Various brilliant creatures propose men's 
 orchestras and women's orchestras. Quite so. Why 
 not picture galleries, dinner parties, and anything else 
 on the same cheerful and natural lines ? Why not 
 break up the world into monasteries and convents ? 
 
 (4) Official Press comment has, on the whole, been 
 fair. Of course there is humorous allusion to Jeremiads.
 
 246 STREAKS OF LIFE 
 
 bombshells, hornets' nests, and ' poor ' Mr. Harty. 
 That much the writers owe their sex ! Also they tacitly 
 ignore the simple aspect of the question as ventilated 
 in (2) and gravely discuss it from the point of view 
 of * Art.' But tongues are obviously in cheeks, and 
 none of them are comfortable about this business. 
 Some mention names such as Suggia, Isolde Menges, 
 Daisy Kennedy, Margaret Fairless, Marjorie Hayward, 
 Madame Chenet, the Harrisons, etc., and doubt if this 
 boycott can be defended ; others openly condemn 
 the injustice and cruelty of deliberately breaking the 
 lives of two-thirds of the musical students in the country. 
 For that is what it amounts to. 
 
 In conclusion, someone remarks that it would be 
 interesting to learn the opinions of conductors other than 
 Mr. Harty. Here is what Sir Henry Wood, who has had 
 a more varied experience than any conductor in England, 
 recently said at Brighton : 
 
 ' I will never conduct an orchestra without women 
 in the future, they do their work so well. They have 
 great talent for the violin and wonderful delicacy of 
 touch. They are sincere ; they do not drink, and 
 they smoke less than men. In the Queen's Hall they 
 have given a certain tone to our rehearsals and a different 
 spirit to our performances.' 
 
 That is good enough ! Thanking Heaven for this 
 champion, who says straight out what others, perhaps, 
 feel, but have not the courage to proclaim, I think we 
 may leave it at that. 
 
 Coign. January 1921. 
 
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