The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World Before the War, 1890-1914

by Barbara W. Tuchman

  HELFFERICH, KARL, Germany’s Economic Progress and National Wealth, 1888–1913, Berlin, Stilke, 1913.

  HOFMANNSTHAL, HUGO VON, Selected Plays and Libretti, ed. Michael Hamburger, New York, Bollingen-Pantheon, 1963.

  HUNEKER, JAMES, Overtones, New York, Scribner’s, 1904.

  JEFFERSON, ALAN, The Operas of Richard Strauss in Britain, London, Putnam’s, 1963.

  KARSAVINA, TAMARA, Theatre Street, London, Constable, 1948.

  KESSLER, COUNT HARRY, Walter Rathenau, London, Howe, 1929.

  KOHN, HANS, The Mind of Germany, New York, Scribner’s, 1960.

  LAWTON, MARY, Schumann-Heink, New York, Macmillan, 1928.

  LEHMANN, LOTTE, Five Operas and Richard Strauss, New York, Macmillan, 1964.

  LOWIE, ROBERT HARRY, Toward Understanding Germany, Univ. of Chicago Press, 1954.

  MAY, ARTHUR J., The Hapsburg Monarchy, Harvard Univ. Press, 1951.

  MILLER, ANNA IRENE, The Independent Theatre in Europe, 1887 to the Present, New York, Long & Smith, 1931.

  NEMIROVITCH -DANTCHENKO, VLADIMIR, My Life in the Russian Theatre, Boston, Little, Brown, 1936.

  NEWMAN, ERNEST, Richard Strauss, London, John Lane, 1908. (With a valuable Memoir by Alfred Kalisch.)

  NIJINSKY, ROMOLA, Nijinsky, New York, Simon & Schuster, 1934.

  POLLARD, PERCIVAL, Masks and Minstrels of New Germany, Boston, Luce, 1911.

  *ROLLAND, ROMAIN, Correspondance; Fragments de Journal (No. 3 in Cahiers Romain Rolland), Paris, Albin Michel, 1951.

  ——, “Souvenirs sur Richard Strauss,” in Les Œuvres Libres, Nouv. Serie, No. 27, Paris, 1948. (Much of this duplicates material in the Correspondance and Journal and parts of both appear in Rolland’s Musicians of Today, New York, Holt, 1914.)

  ROSENFELD, PAUL, Musical Portraits, New York, Harcourt, 1920.

  ——, Discoveries of a Music Critic, New York, Harcourt, 1936.

  SCHOENBERNER, FRANZ, Confessions of a European Intellectual, New York, Macmillan, 1946.

  SHAW, GEORGE BERNARD, The Sanity of Art (originally published 1895), New York, Boni, 1907.

  SHAW, STANLEY, William of Germany, New York, Macmillan, 1913.

  SOKOLOVA, LYDIA, Dancing for Diaghilev, New York, Macmillan, 1961.

  SPEYER, EDWARD, My Life and Friends, London, Cobden-Sanderson, 1937.

  *STRAUSS, RICHARD, and HOFMANNSTHAL, HUGO VON, tr., Correspondence, London, Collins, 1961.

  STRAVINSKY, IGOR, Autobiography, New York, Simon & Schuster, 1936.

  TERRY, ELLEN, The Russian Ballet, London, Sidgwick, 1913.

  THOMAS, ROSE FAY, Memoirs of Theodore Thomas, New York, Moffat, Yard, 1911.

  THOMPSON, OSCAR, Debussy, Man and Artist, New York, Dodd, Mead, 1937.

  TOVEY, DONALD FRANCIS, A Musician Talks, 2 vols., Oxford Univ. Press, 1941.

  VAN VECHTEN, CARL, “The Secret of the Russian Ballet” and “Igor Stravinsky: A New Composer,” in Music After the Great War and Other Studies, New York, Schirmer, 1915.

  WERFEL, ALMA MAHLER, And the Bridge Is Love, New York, Harcourt, 1958.

  WOOD, SIR HENRY, My Life of Music, London, Gollancz, 1938.

  WYLIE, I. A. R., The Germans, Indianapolis, Bobbs-Merrill, 1911.

  *ZWEIG, STEFAN, World of Yesterday, New York, Viking, 1943.

  Notes

  All biographical facts about Strauss not otherwise identified and all quoted comments about him by German critics and musicologists are from Finck. Separate references for comments or anecdotes by Rolland, Beecham, Newman, Mme Mahler (Werfel), Speyer, Stravinsky and others whose works are listed above are given only when the source is not obvious. By good fortune the celebration by major orchestras of Strauss’s centenary in 1964, the year in which this chapter was written, enabled me to hear all his major works within the space of several months. Many of the program notes for these concerts, though ephemeral and therefore not listed in the Bibliography, were useful.

  1 “Tremble as they listened”: Rolland, Journal, 125.

  2 Frankfurt’s musical life: Speyer, 79.

  3 Bayreuth: Stravinsky, 60; Beecham, 55; Ekman, 125.

  4 Shades of evening fell three times: Grove’s Dictionary of Music, “Program Music.”

  5 “Oh, they are only imitators”: q. Speyer, 143.

  6 “Stop Hanslick”: Werner Wolff, Anton Bruckner, New York, 1942, 103.

  7 “So young, so modern”: q. Current Biography, 1944, “Strauss.”

  8 “Positive horror of his countrymen”: Brandes, 113.

  9 Rodin on Nietzsche: Anne Leslie, Rodin, New York, 1937, 200.

  10 “Too much music in Germany”: Souvenirs, 232–33.

  11 Brunhilde’s horse: Haskell, 156.

  12 Philip Ernst: Current Biography. 1942, “Max Ernst.”

  13 North and South Germans: Wylie, 29–38.

  14 Max Liebermann on statues: Frederic William Wile, Men Around the Kaiser, Philadelphia, 1913, 168.

  15 Berlin Landlady’s bill: Zweig, 113.

  16 “Extremely rough”: Chirol (see Chap. 5), 266.

  17 Berlin women: Wylie, 192–93.

  18 Seven meals a day: However unlikely, this was the report of the American Ambassador, James W. Gerard, My Four Years in Germany, New York, 1917, 56.

  19 Number of university students in Prussia: Charles Singer, el al., A History of Technology, Oxford Univ. Press, 1958, V, 787–88.

  20 Barnum and Bailey’s circus: Dexter Fellows, This Way ta the Big Show, New York, 1936, 22; H. L. Watkins, Barnum and Bailey in the Old World, 1897–1901, 45. (I am indebted for these references to Mrs. Janise Shea.)

  21 Kaiser at the Moscow Art Theater: Nemirovitch-Dantchenko. Material in this and the following four paragraphs is chiefly from the chapter “The Kaiser and the Arts” in the book by Stanley Shaw. The prize to Wildenbruch is from Lowie, 41; the Rhodes scholars from the Letters of Cecil Spring-Rice, II, 119; the adventure with Peer Gynt from Finck’s Grieg, 145–46.

  22 “Bismarck has broken”: q. Kohn, 187–88.

  23 Strauss’s interview with the Kaiser was told to Rolland, q. Del Mar, 280–81.

  24 Strauss becomes engaged: ibid., 121–22.

  25 Frau Strauss, character and habits: Lehmann, chaps. 2 and 3.

  26 “Screaming like hell”: Del Mar, 182.

  27 Toast at the Speyers’: Wood, 216.

  28 “Jetzt gehst componieren”: q. William Leon Smyser, in The New Book of Modern Composers, ed. David Ewen, New York, 1961, 396. “Put down that pencil”: q. F. Zweig, Stefan Zweig, New York, 1946, 103.

  29 “Neroism is in the air”: Journal, Jan. 22, 1898, 118.

  30 “Arbeitsmann” as Socialist anthem: Pinson (see Chap. 5), 262.

  31 Made critics pay for seats: Huneker, in NYT, Nov. 24, 1912.

  32 Debussy, “If people insist”: Thompson, 183.

  33 Sibelius, “Play the record again”: Told by William Golding, q. Maurice Dolbier, in New York Herald Tribune, Apr. 21, 1964.

  34 Debussy on Strauss: Thompson, 182–83.

  35 Strauss on Debussy: Caesar Searchinger, “Richard Strauss As I Knew Him,” Saturday Review of Literature, Oct. 29, 1949.

  36 Sargent and gypsy band: Mount (see Chap. 1), 217.

  37 Thomas, “the greatest musician”: Thomas, 502.

  38 “Big, broad, ample and simple”: Charles Moore, The Life and Times of Charles Follen McKim, Boston, 1929, 85.

  39 Tiffany’s house: Werfel, 47–48.

  40 “A day in my family life”: Gilman, Harper’s Weekly, Mar. 9, 1907.

  41 “All the sacred elephants in India”: Beecham, Delius, 129.

  42 Grieg to Delius: ibid., 129.

  43 “Lack of courtesy” at Strasbourg: Rolland, 213.

  44 “Tyrian purple and tired silver”: Wilde to Frances Forbes Robertson, Feb. 23, 1893, Letters (see Chap. 1), 333.

  45 Salome denounced by The Times: q. ibid., 335 n.

  46 Beardsley’s drawings: ibid., 344, n. 3.

  47 “See life as ferocious and sinister”: to A. C.
Benson, June 29, 1896, Henry James: Letters to A. C. Benson, London, 1930, 35.

  48 “A torrent of sex”: Horace B. Samuel, Modernities, London, 1914, 135.

  49 Star of Bethlehem: Del Mar, 281.

  50 Kaiserin’s hats: Mary Ethel McAuley, Germany in War Time, Chicago, 1917, 183; double bed: Palmer (see Chap. 5), 222; canceled Feuersnot: Del Mar, 236.

  51 Kaiser on Salome and Strauss’s reply: Del Mar, 281.

  52 Salome in New York: Outlook, Feb. 9, 1907; Gilman, Harper’s Weekly, Feb. 9, 1907; Aldrich, 172–79.

  53 Salome in London: Beecham, 161, 168–73.

  54 Von Hofmannsthal: Zweig, 46–48; Hamburger, xxvii; Bertaux, 95.

  55 “Capua of the mind”: Bertaux, 92.

  56 “Es gibt nur eine Kaiserstadt”: May, 309.

  57 “Affably tolerant” and Franz Joseph never read a book: Zweig, 19, 21.

  58 Roosevelt on the “Austrian gentleman”: q. Wharton (see Chap. 1), 277.

  59 Karl Luger: Zweig, 105; May, 311.

  60 Hofmannsthal’s notes on Greek themes: Hamburger, xxxii. The common assumption that Hofmannsthal’s Elektra was influenced by Freud is historical conclusion-jumping for which there is no evidence. Ernest Jones, Freud’s biographer, points out (Freud, I, 360, and II, 8) that the publication of The Interpretation of Dreams in Nov., 1899, awakened no interest in Viennese intellectual circles. Although Hofmannsthal owned a copy, there is no evidence when he acquired it and his correspondence does not discuss it. Hamburger, xxxiii.

  61 “Summit of contemporary fame”: Dukes, 68.

  62 Eulenberg affair: Baumont; Wolff (see Chap. 5).

  63 Hulsen-Haeseler’s death: Zedlitz-Trutzschler, Robert, Graf von. Twelve Years at the Imperial German Court, New York, 1924. The episode is discussed in every biography of the Kaiser.

  64 Rhodes Scholars: Spring-Rice, II, 119.

  65 Professor Simmel: Schoenberner, 55–56.

  66 University of Berlin centenary: ibid., 58.

  67 Strauss’s income in 1908: Finck, Success in Music, 14.

  68 Elektra rehearsals: Schumann Heink (Lawton, 322–25). According to this version, Strauss said, “I still can’t hear the Heink’s voice,” meaning, presumably, that he was addressing his “Louder!” to her. Finck, on the other hand, who says he obtained the story directly from Schumann-Heink herself, gives it the other way around, and his version is the one generally repeated. To the present author, it is a puzzle why Strauss should have wanted to drown out the singer’s voice in a part he himself had composed, but since I am not the first to find his actions occasionally baffling, I have given the accepted version of the incident.

  69 Premiere of Elektra: Arthur Abell, in Musical Courier, Feb. 17, 1909; Hermann Bahr’s article, q. Rosenfeld, Discoveries, 141–42.

  70 Elektra in London: Finck, 252–53; Beecham, 147; Jefferson, 22; GBS in the Nation, Mar. 19, 1910.

  71 Strauss’s explanation for female Octavian: Lehmann, chap. 2.

  72 Comtesse de Noailles, “something new”: q. Haskell, 184.

  73 Rodin, “classical sculpture”: q. Albert E. Elsen, Rodin, New York, Museum of Modern Art, 1964.

  74 “A soaring of feelings” on Blériot’s triumph: Zweig, 196.

  75 Quoted descriptions of Rubinstein, Pavlova, Karsavina: Haskell, 188.

  76 Bakst jumped on a chair: Grigoriev, 39.

  77 Schéhérazade: Terry, 41–44.

  78 Karsavina, vice “with verisimilitude”: Van Vechten, 81.

  79 Premiere of Firebird: Unless otherwise stated, Stravinsky is the source for this and other performances of his works for the Ballet.

  80 “It was exciting to be alive” and “night after night entranced”: Leonard Woolf, Beginning Again, New York, 1963–64, 37.

  81 Premiere of Faun: Nijinsky, 172–74; Cladel, 218–21; Le Gaulois, May 30; Le Temps, May 31; Figaro, May 29–31; Current Lit., Aug., 1912, “The Faun That Has Startled Paris.”

  82 Incident in Vienna: Nijinsky, 194–95.

  83 Kaiser on Cleopatra: Stravinsky, 67.

  84 Premiere of Sacre: Stravinsky, 72; Nijinsky, 202; Figaro, May 31; Le Temps, June 3; Le Gaulois, June 1, 1913; Van Vechten (q.v.) was the American who was hit on the head.

  85 Kessler, “too scrupulous an accuracy”: q. Lit. Digest, June 20, 1914.

  86 Crown Prince’s book: q. The Times. May 1, 1913.

  87 “Muss-Preussen”: Ford (see Chap. 1), 402–3.

  88 Rathenau’s “Festal Song”: Zukunft, Oct. 26, 1912, 128–36. The poem was signed “Herwart Raventhal.”

  89 Zabern, “finis Germaniae” and “Keep it up!” (Immer feste darauf!): Wolff (see Chap. 5), 341–44. Full accounts of the Zabern affair are given by J. Kaestlé, l’Affaire de Saverne, Strasbourg, n.d., and Charles D. Hazen, Alsace-Lorraine Under German Rule, New York, 1917.

  90 Gilman in January: North American Review, Jan., 1914.

  91 Ballet’s London season of 1914: Annual Register, Part II, 73.

  92 Night of the performance at Drury Lane: Siegfried Sassoon, The Weald of Youth, 245.

  93 Strauss at Oxford: The Times, June 25, 1914.

  7. Transfer of Power

  Bibliography

  (in addition to those listed for Chapter 1)

  BIRKENHEAD, EARL OF, Contemporary Personalities, London, Cassell, 1924.

  BIRKENHEAD, SECOND EARL OF, F. E., Earl of Birkenhead, by his son, London, Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1960.

  BIRRELL, AUGUSTINE, Things Past Redress, London, Faber, 1937.

  BROCKWAY, FENNER, Inside the Left, London, Allen & Unwin, 1942.

  BRYCE, JAMES, VISCOUNT, The Hindrances to Good Citizenship (Yale Lectures), Yale Univ. Press, 1909.

  CLYNES, JOHN ROBERT, Memoirs, Vol. I, London, Hutchinson, 1937.

  FULFORD, ROGER, Votes for Women, London, Faber, 1957.

  GARDINER, A. G., Portraits and Portents, New York, Harper, 1926.

  HEARNSHAW, F. J. C., ed., Edwardian England, 1901–10, London, Benn, 1933.

  HOBSON, JOHN ATKINSON, The Social Problem, London, Nisbet, 1901.

  HUGHES, EMRYS, Keir Hardie, London, Allen & Unwin, 1956.

  HYNDMAN, HENRY M., The Record of an Adventurous Life, New York, Macmillan, 1911.

  JENKINS, ROY, Mr. Balfour’s Poodle, London, Heinemann, 1954.

  JONES, THOMAS, Lloyd George, Harvard Univ. Press, 1951.

  *MASTERMAN, C. F. G., The Condition of England, London, Methuen, 1909.

  MASTERMAN, LUCY, C. F. G. Masterman: A Biography, London, Nicholson, 1939.

  *MENDELSSOHN, PETER DE, The Age of Churchill, 1874–1911, London, Thames & Hudson, 1961.

  NICOLSON, HAROLD, King George the Fifth, London, Constable, 1952.

  NOWELL -SMITH, SIMON, ed., Edwardian England, 1901–14, Oxford Univ. Press, 1964.

  PANKHURST, E. SYLVIA, The Suffragette, New York, Sturgis, 1911.

  ——, The Suffragette Movement (re-issue), London, Longmans, 1932.

  POPE -HENNESSY, JAMES, Lord Crewe: The Likeness of a Liberal, London, Constable, 1955.

  SAMUEL, HERBERT, Grooves of Change (English title: Memoirs), Indianapolis, Bobbs-Merrill, 1946.

  ——, Liberalism, London, Richards, 1902.

  SOMERVELL, D. C., The Reign of George the Fifth, New York, Harcourt, 1935.

  SPENDER, J. A., Life of H. H. Asquith, 2 vols., London, Hutchinson, 1932.

  TROTTER, WILFRED, Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War, London, Allen & Unwin, 1916 (also Oxford Univ. Press, 1953, with a Foreword by F. M. R. Walshe).

  ULLSWATER, VISCOUNT (JAMES LOWTHER), A Speaker’s Commentaries, 2 vols., London, Arnold, 1925.

  WALLAS, GRAHAM, Human Nature in Politics, Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1909 (also 3rd ed., New York, Knopf, 1921).

  WEBB, BEATRICE, Our Partnership, London, Longmans, 1948.

  WELLS, H. G., Experiment in Autobiography, New York, Macmillan, 1934.

  WILLIAMS, MRS . HWFA (FLORENCE), It Was Such Fun, London, Hutchinson, 1935.

  Notes

  (For all sources not l
isted above, see Chap. 1)

  1 Chinese Slavery: Lyttelton, 320–21; Pope-Hennessy, 69; Wallas, 127; Hearnshaw, 94.

  2 Yellow press: the phrase was in use in England at that time: Lucy Master-man, 216.

  3 “Outdoor relief for the aristocracy”: q. Cecil, I, 167.

  4 Education Act, “greatest betrayal”: q. Adams, 123.

  5 Economist, a matter of £.s.d.: q. Adams, 103.

  6 One water faucet and one privy: This and subsequent facts about the living conditions of the poor are from the chapter “Domestic Life,” by Marghanita Laski, in Nowell-Smith.

  7 Contract labour in British Guiana: Alfred Lyttelton speaking in the House of Commons, March 21, 1904, demonstrated that these contracts, negotiated under Gladstone and Rosebery, were for longer duration (five years as against three) and more severe conditions than the South African contracts. (Hansard, IV series, v. 132, 283 ff.).

  8 Cries of “Rat!”: Mackintosh, 222.

  9 Balfour on Tariff issue: Fitzroy, I, 191, 220; Spender, C.-B., II, 102.

  10 Cust quoted: Sir Ronald Storrs, Memoirs, 37.

  11 “Not to go out of office”: Young, 232.

  12 “In chronic poverty”: Hobson, 12.

  13 Conditions at Shawfield Chemical Works: Hughes, 91.

  14 Hauled off to a day in gaol: Gompers (see Chap. 8), 29–30.

  15 Army lowered minimum height: Nowell-Smith, 181.

  16 Wells depicted it: Autobiography, 550.

  17 A’s and B’s: Lord Beveridge, Power and Influence, 66–67.

  18 William Morris, “gradually permeating”: Hunter (see Chap. 8), 97.

  19 Beatrice Webb contemplated marrying Chamberlain: Margaret Cole, Beatrice Webb, New York, 1946, 21.

  20 “I could not carry on”: q. Hesketh Pearson, Shaw, 68; “A slave class”: Hyndman, 397.

  21 Hyndman, a Socialist from spite: White (see Chap. 5), I, 98.

  22 Clemenceau, “a bourgeois class”: q. Hyndman, 300.

  23 “Eternal verities irritate him”: Hunter, 120.

  24 Keir Hardie: Hughes, passim; Brockway, 17–18.

  25 “Well fed beasts” and “Every day in Rotten Row”: Hunter, 230.

  26 “Religious necessity” and strikes as “outlet”: Clynes, 83, 85.

  27 “If Burns with 80,000 men”: q. Webb, 23.