The Story of the Trapp Family Singers

by Maria Augusta Trapp

  Late in the afternoon I was called down to the library. From the garden I could hear the happy laughter of the children throwing snowballs with their father. It cut my heart, and quite helplessly I thought to myself: “No, I can’t say good-bye to any of them. I will simply leave.”

  Then I opened the door of the library. There was the Princess and a strange priest in a brown habit with a long, gray beard. I hesitated at the door.

  “This is Father Gregory,” the Princess said, “my confessor. I have turned to him to help us out, and he will tell you now what he thinks you should do.”

  The elderly Father came over to me and, taking my hand, led me over towards the table, and very kindly started to explain.

  “You must understand, my dear child, that there is nothing to the kind affection the Captain feels towards you, as you are quite popular with his children; but you must also understand that there is a great danger of kindling this emotion into more than merely a fatherly affection if you should leave now, abruptly, and therefore, I counsel you to do as the Princess wants you, and…”

  “Father, this I cannot do,” I interrupted, and looked at him imploringly.

  “But my dear child, this is the Will of God,” the kind old voice stated.

  Now I was cornered. It had become second nature through my training at the convent to look for and to carry out to the best of my ability—the Will of God. I was silent.

  Happily the Princess said: “You see, Father, I told you, she is quite a sensible girl.”

  The old priest took my hand again and said: “Now promise me that you will stay here until the Baron and the Princess have been wed.”

  Tonelessly I repeated: “I promise I shall stay, but only until the thirtieth of June, on which day I shall be received into the Benedictine Abbey of Nonnberg.”

  With a kind, “All right, my child, go in peace,” I was released.

  My hands were shaking still as I put all my things back into the drawers again. I was utterly and thoroughly bewildered. Wasn’t it already like Schiller and Shakespeare? But, my God, how could it go on now? What was coming next?

  The Princess had left, and we resumed our daily routine again. But life wasn’t the same, because I had become self-conscious. The heavy burden of my new knowledge followed me through the day. I avoided the Captain whenever I could, and when he wanted to join our games or singing evenings in the nursery, I felt how I stiffened and, at the first possible moment, broke up whatever was going on. I wasn’t supposed to mention anything to him of what had passed between me and the Princess, so he absolutely could not make out why I had suddenly changed. Good-naturedly he blamed the spring at first for what he called “moodiness,” but after a while I noticed how hurt he looked when, for instance, I declined politely to have him accompany us on a hike or when he wanted to join a game of volley ball. If, however, he jokingly insisted on taking part, it wouldn’t be long until, after one excuse or another, I would slip out. One day we happened to meet in the house doorway. When he stretched out his hand to open the door for me, I stopped him, saying: “Thank you very much, I can open it myself.”

  This was just a little too much. He walked away brusquely, leaving me very miserable and bewildered. How I hated myself for acting so, and still, I couldn’t help it.

  Baroness Matilda had gone to the wedding of her brother when, on a beautiful morning in May, I was asked to see the Captain in the library.

  “Think what happened,” he greeted me. “Baroness Matilda has broken her leg, and it is such an ugly fracture that she won’t be with us any more for the rest of the year. What are we going to do? Could you take over the household affairs until I find another lady?”

  I laughed right out: “Oh, Captain, I understand nothing at all about keeping house. You see, in boarding school and then in the novitiate I learned many other things, but not that. I hardly know how to hold a broom.”

  “But couldn’t you learn it out of a book?” he asked after a little hard thinking. “The other day I saw in the window of Hoellriegel’s Bookstore a book on housekeeping.”

  In my heart of hearts I had the greatest doubts as to whether this science could be learned out of books, but he looked so eager and expectant that I said: “Well, there’s nothing like trying,” earning a sigh of relief and a grateful look from his fine eyes. For a moment it was like old times. There was the air of confidence again between us, and I ventured to speak.

  “Captain, now I have done something for you; may I ask you to do me a favor?”

  “Certainly, go ahead.”

  “Will you please get engaged to the Princess right away?”

  With a sharp swing he turned around and, facing me eye to eye, asked slowly: “Am I doing you a favor by that?”

  I was already retiring towards the door, mumbling something about the approaching end of the school year—motherless children—reception at the convent…

  The same evening the Captain gathered the eight servants in the library and introduced me as their temporary housekeeper, from whom they would have to expect, for the time being, all orders.

  He left the next day.

  When he said good-bye, he asked: “Would it be too much for you to send me a daily report on how things are going?”

  With these words he handed me a book. Glancing down, I read: The Golden Book for Housewives: A Guide Through the Year, Together with Five Hundred Recipes and One Thousand Advices.

  I had never in my life thought about how a household is run. In the boarding school where I had spent most of my young years, the food was always ready on the table at meal-times, the rooms were always tidy and clean, the windows washed, the laundry taken care of; but it all happened somehow backstage, quite noiselessly. You never saw anybody doing it; you only saw the result and took it for granted. In the convent there were those lovely, humble, quiet lay sisters with a white veil, who did the cooking, washing, and cleaning. But we of the novitiate were not supposed to talk to them, so again I heard no details of how it all was done.

  When the Captain introduced me as temporary housekeeper, I had noticed an exchange of glances between the cook and the gardener, the first and second chambermaids; glances half amused, half knowing. There was also some good-natured mockery in the somewhat super-submissive air with which mighty Donna Resi asked on my first evening in office: “Is Fräulein Maria coming downstairs after supper to give orders for tomorrow?”

  “What orders?” I asked, and wanted to bite my tongue immediately after. Oh, what a neophyte I was! But if she knew, the cook didn’t show it, but continued almost respectfully:

  “Well, whatever you want us to do tomorrow; me and the two girls in the kitchen, the two chambermaids and the gardener, the chauffeur, and the laundress.”

  I almost said: “Oh, please, do what you want, all of you,” but, fortunately, remembered in time that Baroness Matilda had spent a considerable time every evening in the servants’ quarters. “Yes, I’ll come” and with this I ran upstairs and consulted The Book.

  But nowhere in the eight hundred pages could I find any indication of what to say to the servants in the form of today’s orders for tomorrow.

  When I was confronted later with the eight expectant faces, I tried to solve the problem diplomatically, and asked: “What did you intend to do tomorrow?” or “What do you suggest comes next?” That worked fine, and I almost patted myself on the back for this good idea; that gave me time to devour The Book, and in a few days I would not have to ask anybody for suggestions any more.

  I started in Praises, and spent many hours every day in serious study on how to become a good housekeeper.

  Every evening a little note went out, saying: “Dear Captain: We are all well, and everything in house, garden, and farm is going all right. Sincerely yours.”

  Three weeks had passed, and we had heard little from the Captain. The children and I received postal cards with greetings; that was all. Time was getting short. Only a little over a month lay between me and the con
vent. So I ventured in one of my notes to add after the “all well”: “And when will you get engaged?”

  By return mail a letter came back which said: “…I wish I could see your eyes when you read the announcement of my engagement.”

  The moment I read that, something flared up within me. I sat down immediately and, without any salutation, I put my one strong feeling down on paper: “My eyes are none of your business. I thought you were a man and kept your word. I am sorry, I was mistaken.”

  No “sincerely yours” softened this very essence of my wrath. After all, what did he think? Still hot with anger, I ran out and mailed this document, registered.

  On a beautiful May morning the Captain and the Princess had seated themselves on an old stone bench in the dense woods which led into the famous and ancient park of Castle G——. In many long talks the Captain had tried to convince the Princess that it was time to forget the various obstacles to the engagement, for instance: she had to wait until she had assisted her sister in childbirth, or until she had purchased an entirely new outfit, or she had to carry out a promise she had given her roommate in boarding school way back and visit her in her castle somewhere in the Balkans—well, all these obstacles had now been overcome: the dresses were bought, the child was born, and she was back from the Balkans. This very morning he had made up his mind not to come back from the walk unengaged.

  “Yvonne…” he started; and then they heard footsteps.

  Charles, the old butler who had faithfully served three generations, came down the path hurriedly. On a silver platter he carried a letter.

  He said apologetically: “Baron, I thought it might be important. It’s a registered letter.”

  Looking at the letter, the Captain said: “Excuse me, Yvonne, but this comes from home. I hope none of the children is sick,” and broke open the letter. He stared at the three lines with no heading and no greeting; after quite some time he put the letter into his vest pocket. He got up from the bench and seemed deeply moved.

  “Well, what’s the matter?” the Princess asked. “Anybody sick?”

  “No, nobody is sick,” he answered slowly; and then, taking both her hands, he added: “but I know now I cannot marry you, Yvonne; I love somebody else. I am sorry, but you let me wait too long. You should have taken me when I asked you three years ago.”

  In deep silence the couple went back to the castle, and the Captain departed immediately for home.

  The very same evening the telephone wires carried the message from one castle and palais to another that Maria, the young teacher of the Trapp children, was expecting a baby and the Baron, in his loyalty and knightliness, had resolved to marry her. That was why he had had to break off his near-engagement to Princess Yvonne. Because this must have been the content of that letter which had made the Captain change his mind, mustn’t it?

  Who starts such a story? Nobody. It doesn’t start as a story; it starts as an inflection of the voice, a question asked in a certain tone and not answered with “no” a prolonged little silence, a twinkle in the eye, a long-drawn “w-e-e-ell—I don’t know.” These are the fine roots of the tree whose poisonous fruits are gossip and slander.

  The Captain had come home and had almost immediately vanished into his private quarters. The family saw very little of him; even for meals he stayed in his study now. All we knew was that he was writing his memoirs and didn’t want to be disturbed. Ever since I had cooled off after mailing that poisonous little note, I had had an awful feeling in my stomach. What was worse, I couldn’t make out what had happened. He didn’t look engaged, to me, at least, not according to my conception of a happily engaged man. But there was something unusual in his bearing in the rare moments when he was visible, and I did not dare ask any questions.

  One night I tenderly consulted my private calendar, “time eaters” we had called them at school, and it showed only thirteen more days in exile. The next morning I started spring cleaning. Under my direction the maids were taking down the curtains and proceeding to brush the walls, when I saw the three youngest children knock on the door of the study. It didn’t take long and out they came again.

  Running over to me as I stood on a ladder washing a big crystal chandelier, they yelled from afar: “Father says he doesn’t know whether you like him at all!”

  “Why, of course I like him,” I answered, somewhat absent-mindedly, because I had never washed a chandelier before. I noticed only vaguely that the children disappeared behind the study door again.

  That same night I was arranging flowers in several big, beautiful oriental vases. This was the last touch, and then the spring cleaning was over, and it had been really successful. When I had arrived at the last vase, the Captain came in. Stepping over to me, he stood and silently watched what I was doing with the peonies.

  Suddenly he said: “That was really awfully nice of you.”

  An altogether new tone in his voice, like the deep, rich quality of a low bell, made me look up, and I met his eyes, looking at me with such warmth that I lowered mine immediately again, bewildered. Automatically I asked what was so nice of me, as I only remembered that awful letter.

  “Why,” he said, astonished, “didn’t you send word to me through the children that you accepted the offer, I mean, that you want to marry me?”

  Scissors and peonies fell to the floor.

  “That I want to—marry—you?”

  “Well, yes. The children came to me this morning and said they had had a council among themselves, and the only way to keep you with us would be that I marry you. I said to them that I would love to, but I didn’t think you liked me. They ran over to you and came back in a flash, crying that you had said, ‘yes I do.’ Aren’t we engaged now?”

  Now I was out of gear. I absolutely did not know what to say or what to do; not at all. The air was full of an expectant silence, and all I knew was that in a few days I would be received into my convent, and there stood a real, live man who wanted to marry me.

  “But Captain,” I started out, “you know that in a very short while I shall go back to my convent; and one cannot enter a convent and marry at the same time.”

  The beautiful eyes saddened.

  “Is this your very last word? Is there absolutely no hope?”

  “Well”—I had an idea—“you know,” I said eagerly, “I have something that you don’t have. I have a Mistress of Novices. Whatever she says I’d consider as coming from God. It is the Will of God. Let me go and ask her.”

  And in my eagerness to leave, I did not wait for an answer, but started right away, heading for Nonnberg. It was a short hour’s walk, and I was happy to have found an excuse to visit this beloved place in the middle of the week.

  “Now I know,” I mused to myself while speeding along the bank of the Salzach, “that he isn’t engaged. What could have happened?” I felt sorry for the poor man, but quite relieved for the children. Whenever I thought of that motherless little flock, a pang went through my heart. But all I could do was pray even harder now that God might send them a good second mother; and why not start right away? So I began to say the rosary.

  With a sigh of relief I dropped on one of the old oaken chairs in the community room where the postulants lived.

  “Oh, it’s so good to be home,” I sighed, and took a deep breath of that incomparable smell of herbs, incense, and simply old age, within the old walls.

  At this the door opened, and Frau Rafaela, my Mistress of Novices, entered the room.

  “Maria, what are you doing here in the middle of the week?”

  That made me remember, and I repeated to her the whole “incident.”

  “And you see, if you tell me now that I cannot marry him because I shall enter here, then the Will of God is made clear, and that must help him, too.” Frau Rafaela’s old, motherly eyes rested on me, but she didn’t say a word. Suddenly she got up and went out of the room. In an hour she returned to tell me that Reverend Mother was expecting me.

  I felt quite h
onored, and lightheartedly I walked through the open galleries, through the cloisters, and up the stone stairs, but this time with no bad conscience at all. The same old oaken door, the same squeak when it opened—oh, here I was surrounded by good old friends, and very soon I should be with them forever. With these thoughts I was already kneeling at Reverend Mother’s feet and kissing her ring. She took both my hands in hers and looked at me lovingly and long without saying a word, until I felt rather uncomfortable. Finally she spoke.

  “Frau Rafaela has told me your story. As you came home to find out the Will of God in this most important moment of your life, I assembled the community in the Chapter Room. We prayed to the Holy Ghost, and we held council, and it became clear to us”—here her hands pressed tighter—“that it is the Will of God that you marry the Captain and be a good mother to his children.”

  Minutes had passed, and I was still kneeling, trying to understand. I knew this was final, and no argument was possible. Yes, it was true, I had wanted to know the Will of God; but now when I met it, I refused to accept it. All my happiness was shattered, and my heart, which had so longed to give itself entirely to God, felt rejected. Heavy waves of disappointment and bitterness swept over it. With dry eyes I stared down at the large ring on the Abbess’ hand, and mechanically I read over and over again the engraved words around the big amethyst: “God’s Will Hath No Why.” Reverend Mother’s silence showed that she had learned from long experience that words are of no help when will meets will in a world beyond words. When, still dazed, I looked up, I saw her lips move soundlessly in prayer, and the beloved eyes were filled with tears of compassion. That broke the dam and melted the stubborn resistance. In true sincerity of heart I asked:

  “What does God want of me now, Reverend Mother?”

  “He wants you to serve Him well where He needs you most, and serve Him wholeheartedly and cheerfully.”