by Leo Tolstoy
‘But what about the Rigi song – that is not old, is it?’ I said.
‘No, that was composed about fifteen years ago,’ he said. ‘There was a German in Basle, a very clever man. He composed it. It’s a splendid song! You see, he composed it for the tourists.’
And, translating them into French as he went along, he began repeating to me the words of the Rigi song, which he liked so much:
‘If you would go up the Rigi
You need no shoes as far as Weggis
(Because you go that far by steamer)
But in Weggis take a big stick,
And upon your arm a maiden.
Drink a glass of wine at starting,
Only do not drink too much.
For he who wants to have a drink
Should first have earned …
‘Oh, it’s a splendid song!’ he said, as he finished.
The waiters, too, probably considered the song very good, for they came nearer to us.
‘Yes, but who composed the music?’ I asked.
‘Oh, nobody! It comes of itself, you know – one must have something new to sing to the foreigners.’
When the ice was brought and I had poured out a glass of champagne for my companion, he seemed to feel ill at ease, and glancing round at the waiters shifted uneasily in his seat. We clinked glasses to the health of artists; he drank half a glass, and then found it necessary to raise his eyebrows in profound thought.
‘It’s a long time since I drank such wine, je ne vous dis que ça.6 In Italy the d’Asti wine is good, but this is better still. Ah, Italy! It’s splendid to be there!’ he added.
‘Yes, there they know how to appreciate music and artists,’ I said, wishing to lead him back to the subject of his failure that evening before the Schweizerhof.
‘No,’ he replied. ‘There, as far as music is concerned, I cannot give anyone pleasure. The Italians are themselves musicians like none others in the world: I sing only Tyrolese songs – that at any rate is a novelty for them.’
‘And are the gentlefolk more generous there?’ I went on, wishing to make him share my resentment against the guests at the Schweizerhof. ‘It couldn’t happen there, could it, as it did here, that in an immense hotel frequented by rich people, out of a hundred who listen to an artist not one gives him anything?’
My question had quite a different effect on him from what I had expected. It did not enter his head to be indignant with them: on the contrary he detected in my remark a reflection on his talent, which had failed to elicit any reward, and he tried to justify himself to me.
‘One does not get much every time,’ he replied. ‘Sometimes my voice fails or I am tired. To-day, you know, I have been walking for nine hours and singing almost all the time. That is hard. And the great people, the aristocrats, don’t always care to hear Tyrolese songs.’
‘But still, how could they give nothing at all?’ I insisted.
He did not understand my remark.
‘It’s not that,’ he said, ‘the chief thing here is, on est très serré pour la police,7 that’s where the trouble is. Here under their republican laws you are not allowed to sing, but in Italy you may go about as much as you please, and no one will say a word to you. Here they allow it only when they please, and if they don’t please, they may put you in prison.’
‘How is that? Is it possible?’
‘Yes, if they caution you once and you sing again they may imprison you. I was there for three months,’ he said smiling, as though this were one of his pleasantest recollections.
‘Oh, that’s dreadful!’ I said. ‘What for?’
‘That is so under the new republican laws,’ he continued, growing animated. ‘They don’t want to understand that a poor fellow must live somehow. If I were not a cripple, I would work. But does my singing hurt anyone? What does it mean? The rich can live as they please, but un pauvre tiable like myself mayn’t even live. Are these the laws a republic should have? If so, we don’t want a republic – isn’t that so, dear sir? We don’t want a republic, but we want – we simply want … we want’ – he hesitated awhile – ‘we want natural laws.’
I filled up his glass.
‘You are not drinking,’ I said to him.
He took the glass in his hand and bowed to me.
‘I know what you want,’ he said, screwing up his eyes and shaking his finger at me. ‘You want to make me drunk, so as to see what will happen to me; but no, you won’t succeed!’
‘Why should I want to make you drunk?’ I said. ‘I only want to give you pleasure.’
Probably he was sorry to have offended me by interpreting my intention wrongly, for he grew confused, got up, and pressed my elbow.
‘No, no, I was only joking!’ he said, looking at me with a beseeching expression in his moist eyes.
Then he uttered some fearfully intricate, complicated sentence intended to imply that I was a good fellow after all.
‘Je ne vous dis que ça!’ he concluded.
So we continued drinking and talking and the waiters continued to watch us unceremoniously and, as it seemed, to make fun of us. Despite my interest in our conversation I could not help noticing them and, I confess, I grew more and more angry. One of them got up, came over to the little man, looked down on the crown of his head, and began to smile. I had accumulated a store of anger for the guests at the Schweizerhof which I had not yet been able to vent on anyone, and I own that this audience of waiters irritated me beyond endurance. Then the porter came in and, leaning his elbows on the table without taking off his hat, sat down beside me. This last circumstance stung my self-esteem or vanity, and finally caused the oppressive rage that had been smouldering in me all the evening to explode. ‘Why when I was alone at the entrance did he humbly bow to me, and now that I am sitting with an itinerant singer, sprawls near me so rudely?’ I was filled with a boiling rage of indignation which I like in myself and even stimulate when it besets me, because it has a tranquillizing effect, and gives, at least for a short time, an unusual suppleness, energy, and power to all my physical and mental faculties.
I jumped up.
‘What are you laughing at?’ I shouted at the waiter, feeling that I was growing pale and that my lips were involuntarily twitching.
‘I am not laughing; it’s nothing!’ said the waiter stepping back.
‘No, you are laughing at this gentleman.… And what right have you to be here and to be sitting down, when there are visitors here? Don’t dare to sit here!’ I cried turning to the porter.
He got up with a growl and moved towards the door.
‘What right have you to laugh at this gentleman and to sit near him, when he is a visitor and you are a lackey? Why didn’t you laugh at me or sit beside me at dinner this evening? Is it because he is poorly dressed and sings in the street? Is it? While I wear good clothes? He is poor, but I am convinced that he is a thousand times better than you, for he insults no one, while you are insulting him!’
‘But I am not doing anything!’ replied my enemy the waiter, timidly. ‘Do I prevent his sitting here?’
The waiter did not understand me and my German speech was lost on him. The rude porter tried to take the waiter’s part, but I attacked him so vehemently that he pretended that he, too, did not understand me, and waved his arm. The hunchbacked dish-washer, either noticing my heated condition and afraid of a scandal, or because she really shared my views, took my part and, trying to interpose between me and the porter, began to persuade him to be quiet, saying that I was right and asking me to calm myself. ‘Der Herr hat recht; Sie haben recht!’8 she said firmly. The singer presented a most piteous, frightened appearance and, evidently without understanding why I was excited or what I was aiming at, begged me to go away quickly. But my angry loquacity burned stronger and stronger in me. I recalled everything: the crowd that had laughed at him, and the audience that had given him nothing – and I would not quiet down on any account. I think that if the waiters and the porter had not been s
o yielding I should have enjoyed a fight with them, or could have whacked the defenceless young English lady on the head with a stick. Had I been at Sevastopol at that moment I would gladly have rushed into an English trench to hack and slash at them.
‘And why did you show me and this gentleman into this room, and not the other, eh?’ I asked the porter, seizing his arm to prevent his going away. ‘What right had you to decide from his appearance that this gentleman must be in this and not in the other room? Are not all who pay on an equal footing in an hotel – not only in a republic, but all over the world? Yours is a scurvy republic! … This is your equality! You dare not show those English people into this room – the very Englishmen who listened to this gentleman without paying him – that is, who each stole from him the few centimes they ought to have given him. How dared you show us in here?’
‘The other room is closed,’ replied the porter.
‘No!’ I cried. ‘That’s not true – it’s not closed.’
‘You know better then.’
‘I know! I know that you are lying.’
The porter turned his shoulder towards me.
‘What is the use of talking?’ he muttered.
‘No, not “what is the use …” ’ I shouted. ‘Take us to the other room at once!’
Despite the hunchbacked woman’s and the singer’s entreaties that we should go away, I had the head waiter called and went into the other room with my companion. When the head waiter heard my angry voice and saw my excited face he did not argue with me, but told me with contemptuous civility that I might go where I liked. I could not convict the porter of his lie, as he had disappeared before I went into the other room.
The room was really open and lighted up, and at one of the tables the Englishman with the lady was having supper. Though we were shown to another table, I sat down with the dirty singer close to the Englishman, and ordered the unfinished bottle to be brought me.
The Englishman and the lady looked first with surprise and then with anger at the little man who sat beside me more dead than alive. They exchanged some words, and the lady pushed away her plate, and rustled her silk dress as they went away. Through the panes in the door I could see the Englishman speaking angrily to the waiter, pointing in our direction all the time. The waiter thrust his head in at the door and looked towards us. I waited with pleasure for them to come to turn us out, and to be able at last to vent my whole indignation on them – but fortunately, though I then regretted it, they left us in peace.
The singer, who had before refused the wine, now hastened to empty the bottle in order to get away as soon as possible. However, he thanked me, feelingly I thought, for his entertainment. His moist eyes became still more tearful and shining, and he expressed his gratitude in a most curious and confused little speech. But that speech, in which he said that if everyone respected artists as I did he would be well off, and that he wished me all happiness, was very pleasant to me. We went out into the vestibule. The waiters were there and my enemy the porter who seemed to be complaining of me to them. They all looked on me, I think, as insane. I let the little man come up to them all, and then, with all the respect I could show, I took off my hat and pressed his hand with its ossified and withered finger. The waiters made a show of not taking any notice of me, but one of them burst into a sardonic laugh.
After bowing to me, the singer disappeared into the darkness, and I went up to my room, wishing to sleep off all these impressions and the foolish, childish anger which had so unexpectedly beset me. Feeling too agitated however for sleep, I went out again into the street to walk about till I should have calmed down, and also I must admit with a vague hope of finding an opportunity to come across the porter, the waiter, or the Englishman, to prove to them how cruel and above all how unjust they had been. But I met no one except the porter, who turned his back on seeing me, and I paced up and down the embankment all alone.
‘This is the strange fate of art!’ I reflected, having grown a little calmer. ‘All seek it and love it – it is the one thing everybody wants and tries to find in life, yet nobody acknowledges its power, nobody values this greatest blessing in the world, nor esteems or is grateful to those who give it to mankind. Ask anyone you like of all these guests at the Schweizerhof what is the greatest blessing in the world, and everyone, or ninety-nine out of a hundred, assuming a sardonic expression, will say that the best thing in the world is money! “Maybe this idea does not please you and does not conform to your lofty ideas,” he will tell you, “but what is to be done if human life is so constituted that money alone gives people happiness? I cannot help letting my reason see the world as it is,” he will add, “that is – see the truth.”
‘Pitiful is your reason, pitiful the happiness you desire, and you are a miserable being who does not know what you want.… Why have you all left your country, your relations, your occupations, and your financial affairs, and congregated here in this small Swiss town of Lucerne? Why did you all come out onto the balcony this evening and listen in respectful silence to the songs of that poor little mendicant? And had he chosen to go on singing you would still have remained silent and listened. What money, even millions of it, could have driven you all from your country and assembled you in this little corner, Lucerne? Could money have gathered you all on those balconies and made you stand for half an hour silent and motionless? No! One thing alone causes you to act, and will always influence you more strongly than any other motive power in life, and that is the need for art, which you do not acknowledge, but which you feel and will always feel as long as there is anything human left in you. The word “art” seems ridiculous to you. You use it as a scornful reproach; you perhaps allow love of the poetic in children and in silly girls, but even then you laugh at them; but for yourselves you require something positive. But children see life healthily, they love and know what men should love, and what gives happiness, but life has so enmeshed and depraved you that you laugh at the one thing you love, and seek only that which you hate and which causes you unhappiness. You are so enmeshed that you do not understand your obligation to this poor Tyrolese who has afforded you a pure enjoyment, yet you feel yourselves bound to humble yourselves gratuitously before a lord, without advantage or pleasure, and for some reason sacrifice for him your comfort and convenience. What nonsense! What incomprehensible senselessness! But it was not this that struck me most this evening. This ignorance of what gives happiness, this unconsciousness of poetic enjoyment, I almost understand, or have become used to, having often met it in my life; nor was the coarse, unconscious cruelty of the crowd new to me. Whatever the advocates of the popular spirit may say, a crowd is a combination possibly of good people, but of people who have come in touch merely on their base, animal sides, and it expresses only the weakness and cruelty of human nature. How could you, children of a free, humane nation, as Christians or simply as human beings, respond with coldness and ridicule to the pleasure afforded you by an unfortunate mendicant? But no, in your country there are institutions for the needy. There are no beggars and must be none, nor must there be any compassion, on which mendicancy is based. But this man had laboured, he gave you pleasure, he implored you to give him something from your superabundance for his pains, of which you availed yourselves. But you, from your lofty, brilliant palace, regarded him with a cold smile and there was not one among you hundred, happy, rich people who threw him anything. He went away humiliated, and the senseless crowd followed him laughing, and insulted not you but him, because you were cold, cruel, and dishonest; because you stole the pleasure he had afforded you, they insulted him.’
‘On the seventh of July 1857, in Lucerne, in front of the Hotel Schweizerhof in which the richest people stay, an itinerant beggar singer sang and played the guitar for half an hour. About a hundred people listened to him. The singer asked them all three times to give him something. Not one of them gave him anything, and many people laughed at him.’
This is not fiction, but a positive fact, which can be v
erified by anyone who likes from the permanent residents at the Hotel Schweizerhof, after ascertaining from the papers who the foreigners were who were staying at the Schweizerhof on the 7th of July.
Here is an occurrence the historians of our time ought to record in indelible letters of fire. This incident is more significant, more serious, and has a profounder meaning, than the facts usually printed in newspapers and histories. That the English have killed another thousand Chinamen because the Chinese buy nothing for money while their country absorbs metal coins, that the French have killed another thousand Arabs because corn grows easily in Africa and constant warfare is useful for training armies; that the Turkish Ambassador in Naples must not be a Jew, and that the Emperor Napoleon walks on foot at Plombières and assures the people in print that he reigns only by the will of the whole nation – all these are words that conceal or reveal what has long been known; but what happened at Lucerne on July the 7th appears to me to be something quite new and strange, and relates not to the eternally evil side of human nature, but to a certain epoch in social evolution. This is a fact not for the history of human actions, but for the history of progress and civilization.
Why is this inhuman occurrence, which would be impossible in any German, French, or Italian village, possible here where civilization, liberty, and equality have been brought to the highest point, and where the most civilized travellers from the most civilized nations congregate? Why have these developed, humane people, who collectively are capable of any honourable and humane action, no human, cordial inclination to perform a kindly personal action? Why do these people – who in their parliaments, meetings, and societies are warmly concerned about the condition of the celibate Chinese in India, about propagating Christianity and education in Africa, about the establishment of societies for the betterment of the whole human race – not find in their souls the simple elemental feeling of human sympathy? Is it possible that they do not possess that feeling, and that its place has been occupied by the vanity, ambition, and cupidity governing these men in their parliaments, meetings, and societies? Can it be that the spread of the sensible and selfish association of men called civilization, destroys and contradicts the need for instinctive, loving association? And is it possible that this is the equality for which so much innocent blood has been shed and so many crimes committed? Is it possible that nations, like children, can be made happy by the mere sound of the word equality?