Elbert Hubbard - "Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Volume 14"

Nathaniel Hawthorne - "The Dolliver Romance"

G. A. Henty - "At Agincourt"

Various - "Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 24, 1892"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Volume 14

E >> Elbert Hubbard >> Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Volume 14




One day this week, when we were with Liszt, he was in such high
spirits that it was as if he had suddenly become twenty years
younger. A student from the Stuttgart conservatory played a Liszt
concerto. His name is V., and he is dreadfully nervous. Liszt kept
up a running fire of satire all the time he was playing, but in a
good-natured way. I shouldn't have minded it if it had been I. In
fact, I think it would have inspired me; but poor V. hardly knew
whether he was on his head or on his feet. It was too funny.
Everything that Liszt says is so striking. For instance, in one
place where V. was playing the melody rather feebly, Liszt suddenly
took his seat at the piano and said, "When I play, I always play
for the people in the gallery, so that those people who pay only
five groschens for their seats also hear something." Then he began,
and I wish you could have heard him! The sound didn't seem to be
very loud, but it was penetrating and far-reaching. When he had
finished, he raised one hand in the air, and you seemed to see all
the people in the gallery drinking in the sound. That is the way
Liszt teaches you. He presents an idea to you, and it takes fast
hold of your mind and sticks there. Music is such a real, visible
thing to him that he always has a symbol, instantly, in the
material world to express his idea. One day, when I was playing, I
made too much movement with my hand in a rotary sort of a passage
where it was difficult to avoid it. "Keep your hand still,
Fraulein," said Liszt; "don't make omelet." I couldn't help
laughing--it hit me on the head so nicely. He is far too sparing of
his playing, unfortunately, and like Tausig, sits down and plays
only a few bars at a time generally. It is dreadful when he stops,
just as you are at the height of your enjoyment, but he is so
thoroughly blase that he doesn't care to show off before people and
doesn't like to have any one pay him a compliment about his
playing. In Liszt I can at least say that my ideal in something has
been realized. He goes far beyond all that I expected. Anything so
perfectly beautiful as he looks when he sits at the piano I never
saw, and yet he is almost an old man now. I enjoy him as I would an
exquisite work of art. His personal magnetism is immense, and I can
scarcely bear it when he plays. He can make me cry all he chooses,
and that is saying a good deal, because I've heard so much music,
and never have been affected by it. Even Joachim, whom I think
divine, never moved me. When Liszt plays anything pathetic, it
sounds as if he had been through everything, and opens all one's
wounds afresh. All that one has ever suffered comes before one
again. Who was it that I heard say once, that years ago he saw
Clara Schumann sitting in tears near the platform during one of
Liszt's performances? Liszt knows well the influence he has on
people, for he always fixes his eyes on some one of us when he
plays, and I believe he tries to wring our hearts. When he plays a
passage and goes pearling down the keyboard, he often looks over
at me and smiles, to see whether I am appreciating it.

But I doubt if he feels any particular emotion himself when he is
piercing you through with his rendering. He is simply hearing every
tone, knowing exactly what effect he wishes to produce and just how
to do it. In fact, he is practically two persons in one--the
listener and the performer. But what immense self-command that
implies! No matter how fast he plays you always feel that there is
"plenty of time"--no need to be anxious! You might as well try to
move one of the pyramids as fluster him. Tausig possessed this
repose in a technical way, and his touch was marvelous; but he
never drew the tears to your eyes. He could not wind himself
through all the subtle labyrinths of the heart as Liszt does. Liszt
does such bewitching little things! The other day, for instance,
Fraulein Gaul was playing something to him, and in it were two
runs, and after each run two staccato chords. She did them most
beautifully and struck the chords immediately after. "No, no," said
Liszt; "after you make a run you must wait a minute before you
strike the chords, as if in admiration of your own performance. You
must pause, as if to say, 'How nicely I did that!'" Then he sat
down and made a run himself, waited a second, and then struck the
two chords in the treble, saying as he did so, "Bravo!" and then he
played again, struck the other chord and said again, "Bravo!" and
positively, it was as if the piano had softly applauded.

Liszt hasn't the nervous irritability common to artists, but on the
contrary his disposition is the most exquisite and tranquil in the
world. We have been there incessantly and I've never seen him
ruffled except two or three times, and then he was tired and not
himself, and it was a most transient thing. When I think what a
little savage Tausig often was, and how cuttingly sarcastic Kullak
could be at times, I am astonished that Liszt so rarely lost his
temper. He has the power of turning the best side of every one
outward, also the most marvelous and instant appreciation of what
that side is. If there is anything in you, you may be sure that
Liszt will know it. On Monday I had a most delightful tete-a-tete
with Liszt, quite by chance. I had occasion to call upon him for
something, and strange to say, he was alone, sitting by his table
writing. Generally all sorts of people are up there. He insisted
upon my staying for a while, and we had the most amusing and
entertaining conversation imaginable. It was the first time I ever
heard Liszt really talk, for he contents himself mostly with making
little jests. He is full of esprit. Another evening I was there
about twilight and Liszt sat at the piano looking through a new
oratorio which had just come out in Paris, upon "Christus." He
asked me to turn for him, and evidently was not interested, for he
would skip whole pages and begin again, here and there. There was
only a single lamp, and that a rather dim one, so that the room was
all in shadow, and Liszt wore his Merlin-like aspect. I asked him
to tell me how he produced a certain effect he makes in his
arrangement of the ballad in Wagner's "Flying Dutchman." He looked
very "fin" as the French say, but did not reply. He never gives a
direct answer to a direct question. "Ah," said I, "you won't tell."
He smiled and then immediately played the passage. It was a long
arpeggio, and the effect he made was, as I had supposed, a pedal
effect. He kept the pedal down throughout, and played the beginning
of the passage in a grand sort of manner, and then all the rest of
it with a very pianissimo touch, and so lightly, that the
continuity of the arpeggios was destroyed, and the notes seemed to
be just strewn in, as if you broke a wreath of flowers and
scattered them according to your fancy. It is a most striking and
beautiful effect, and I told him I didn't see how he ever thought
of it. "Oh, I've invented a great many things," said he,
indifferently--"this, for instance"--and he began playing a double
roll of octaves in chromatics in the bass of the piano. It was very
grand and made the room reverberate.

"Magnificent," said I.

"Did you ever hear me do a storm?" said he.

"No."

"Ah, you ought to hear me do a storm! Storms are my forte!"

Then to himself between his teeth, while a weird look came into his
eyes as if he could indeed rule the blast, "Then crash the trees!"

How ardently I wished that he would "play a storm," but of course
he didn't, and he presently began to trifle over the keys in a
blase style. I suppose he couldn't quite work himself up to the
effort, but that look and tone told how Liszt would do it. Alas,
that we poor mortals here below should share so often the fate of
Moses, and have only a glimpse of the Promised Land, and that
without the consolation of being Moses! But perhaps, after all, the
vision is better than the reality. We see the whole land, even if
but from afar, instead of being limited merely to the spot where
our foot treads.

Once again I saw Liszt in a similar mood, though his expression was
this time comfortably rather than wildly destructive. It was when
Fraulein Remmertz was playing his "E flat concerto" to him. There
were two grand pianos in the room; she was sitting at one, and he
at the other, accompanying and interpolating as he felt disposed.
Finally they came to a place where there was a series of passages
beginning with both hands in the middle of the piano, and going in
opposite directions to the ends of the keyboard, ending each time
with a short, sharp chord. "Pitch everything out of the window!"
cried he, and began playing these passages and giving every chord a
whack as if he were splitting everything up and flinging it out,
and that with such enjoyment that you felt as if you'd like to bear
a hand, too, in the work of demolition! But I never shall forget
Liszt's look as he so lazily proposed to "pitch everything out of
the window." It reminded me of the expression of a big tabby-cat as
it sits by the fire and purrs away, blinking its eyes and seemingly
half-asleep, when suddenly--!--! out it strikes with both its
claws, and woe to whatever is within its reach!



[Illustration: BEETHOVEN]

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN


Melody has by Beethoven been freed from the influence of Fashion
and changing Taste, and raised to an ever-valid, purely human type.
Beethoven's music will be understood to all time, while that of his
predecessors will, for the most part, only remain intelligible to
us through the medium of reflection on the history of Art.

--_Richard Wagner_


LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN

Music is the youngest of the arts. Modern music dates back about four
hundred years. It is not so old as the invention of printing. As an art
it began with the work of the priests of the Roman Catholic Church in
endeavoring to arrange a liturgy.

The medieval chant and the popular folk-song came together, and the
science of music was born. Sculpture reached perfection in Greece,
painting in Italy, portraiture in Holland; but Germany, the land of
thought, has given us nearly all the great musicians and nine-tenths of
all our valuable musical compositions.

Holland has taken a very important part in every line of art and
handicraft, and in way of all-round development has set the pace for
civilization.

Art follows in the wake of commerce, for without commerce there is
neither surplus wealth nor leisure. The artist is paid from what is left
after men have bought food and clothing; and the time to enjoy comes
only after the struggle for existence.

When Venice was not only Queen of the Adriatic but of the maritime world
as well, Art came and established there her Court of Beauty. It was
Venice that mothered Giorgione, Titian, the Bellinis, and the men who
wrought in iron and silver and gold, and those masterful bookmakers; it
was beautiful Venice that gave sustenance and encouragement to
Stradivari (who made violins as well as he could) up at Cremona, only a
few miles away.

But there came a day when all those seventy bookmakers of Venice ceased
to print, and the music of the anvils was stilled, and all the painters
were dead, and Venice became but a monument of things that were, as she
is today; for Commerce is King, and his capital has been moved far away.

So Venice sits sad and solitary--a pale and beautiful ruin, pathetic
beyond speech, infested by noisy shop-keepers and petty pilferers, the
degenerate sons of the robbers who once roamed the sea and enthroned her
on her hundred isles.

All that Venice knew was absorbed by Holland. The Elzevirs and the
Plantins took over the business of the seventy bookmakers, and the
art-schools of Amsterdam, Leyden and Antwerp reproduced every picture of
note that had been done in Venice. The great churches of Holland are
replicas of the churches of Venice. And the Cathedral at Antwerp, where
the sweet bells have chimed each quarter of an hour for three centuries,
through peace and plenty, through lurid war and sudden death--there
where hangs Rubens' masterpiece--that Cathedral is but an enlarged
"Santa Maria de' Frari," where for two hundred years hung "The
Assumption," by Titian.

In these churches of Holland were placed splendid organs, and the
priests formed choirs, and offered prizes for the best singing and the
best compositions. Music and painting developed hand in hand; for at the
last, all of the arts are one--each being but a division of labor.

The world owes a great debt to the Dutch. It was Holland taught England
how to paint and how to print, and England taught us: so our knowledge
of printing and painting came to us by way of the apostolic succession
of the Dutch.

The march of civilization follows a simple trail, well defined beyond
dispute. Viewed in retrospect it begins in a hazy thread stretching from
Assyria into Egypt, from Egypt into Greece, from Greece to
Rome--widening throughout Italy and Spain, then centering in Venice, and
tracing clear and deep to Amsterdam--widening again into Germany and
across to England, thence carried in "Mayflowers" to America.

That remark of Charles Dudley Warner, once near neighbor to Mark Twain,
that there is no culture west of Buffalo, was indelicate if not unkind;
and residents of Omaha aver that it is open to argument. But the fact
stands beyond cavil that what art we possess is traceable to our
masters, the Dutch.

It must be admitted that the art of printing was first practised at
Mayence on the Rhine, leaving the Chinese out of the equation; but it
had to travel around down through Italy before it reached perfection.
And its universality and usefulness were not fully developed until it
had swung around to Holland and was given by the Dutch back to Germany
and the world. And as with printing, so with music. Germany has
specialized on music. She has succeeded, but it is because Holland gave
her lessons.

* * * * *

During the fore part of the Seventeenth Century, there lived in Antwerp,
Ludvig van Biethofen, grandfather of the genius known as Beethoven. A
life-size portrait of him can be seen in the Plantin Musee, and if you
did not know that the picture was painted before Beethoven was born, you
would say at once, "Beethoven!" There is a look of stern endurance, as
if the artist had admired Rembrandt's "Burgomaster" a little too well,
yet that sturdiness belonged to the Master, too; and there are the
abstracted far-away look, the touch of proud melancholy, and the
becoming unkemptness that we know so well.

The child is grandfather to the man. Beethoven bore slight resemblance
to his immediate parents, but in his talent, habits and all of his
mental traits, he closely resembled this sturdy Dutchman who composed,
sang, led the military band, and played the organ at the Church of Saint
Jacques in Antwerp.

Being ambitious, Ludvig van Biethofen, while yet a young man, moved to
Bonn, the home of Clement Augustus, Archbishop-Elector of Cologne.

The chief business of elector was, in case of necessity, to elect a
King. America borrowed the elector idea from Germany. But our "electoral
college" is a degenerate political appendicle that is continued,
because, in borrowing plans of government, we took good and bad alike,
not knowing there was a difference. The elector scheme in the United
States is occasionally valuable for defeating the will of the people in
case of a popular majority.

In justice, however, let me say that the original argument of the
Colonists was that the people should not vote directly for President,
because the candidate might live a long way off, and the voter could not
know whether he was fit or not. So they let the citizen vote for a wise
and honest elector he knew.

The result is that we all now know the candidates for President, but we
do not know the electors. The electoral college in America is just about
as useful as the two buttons on the back of a man's coat, put there
originally to support a sword-belt. We have discarded the sword, yet we
cling to our buttons.

But the electors of Germany, in days agone, had a well-defined use. The
people were not, at first, troubled to elect them--the King did that
himself, and then as one good turn deserves another, the electors agreed
to elect the successor the King designated, when death should compel him
to abdicate. Then to fill in the time between elections, the electors
did the business of the King. It will thus be seen that every elector
was really a sort of King himself, governing his little State, amenable
to no one but the King.

And so the chief business of the elector was to keep the people in his
diocese loyal to the King.

There have always existed three ways of keeping the people loving and
loyal. One is to leave them alone, to trust them and not to interfere.
This plan, however, has very seldom been practised, because the
politicians regard the public as a cow to be milked, and something must
be done to make it stand quiet.

So they try Plan Number Two, which consists in hypnotizing the public by
means of shows, festivals, parades, prizes and many paid speeches,
sermons and editorials, wherein and whereby the public is told how much
is being done for it, and how fortunate it is in being protected and
wisely cared for by its divinely appointed guardians. Then the band
strikes up, the flags are waved, three passes are made, one to the right
and two to the left; and we, being completely under the hypnosis, hurrah
ourselves hoarse.

Plan Number Three is a very ancient one and is always held back to be
used in case Number Two fails. It is for the benefit of the people who
do not pass readily under hypnotic control. If there are too many of
these, they have been known to pluck up courage and answer back to the
speeches, sermons and editorials. Sometimes they refuse to hurrah when
the bass-drum plays, in which case they have occasionally been arrested
for contumacy and contravention by stocky men, in wide-awake hats, who
lead the strenuous life. This Plan Number Three provides for an armed
force that shall overawe, if necessary, all who are not hypnotized. The
army is used for two purposes--to coerce disturbers at home, and to get
up a war at a distance, and thus distract attention from the troubles
near at hand. Napoleon used to say that the only sure cure for internal
dissension was a foreign war: this would draw the disturbers away, on
the plea of patriotism, so they would win enough outside loot to satisfy
them, or else they would all get killed, it really didn't matter much;
and as for loot, if it was taken from foreigners, there was no sin.

A careful analyst might here say that Plan Number Three is only a
variation of Plan Number Two--the end being gained by hypnotic effects
in either event, for the army is conscripted from the people to use
against the people, just as you turn steam from a boiler into the
fire-box to increase the draft. Possibly this is true, but I have
introduced this digression, anyway, only to show that the original
office of elector was a wise and beneficent function of the Government,
and could be revived with profit in America, to replace the outworn and
useless vermiformis that we now possess in way of an electoral college.

* * * * *

When Kings allowed Church and State to separate they made a grave
mistake. With the two united, as they were until a more recent time,
they held a cinch on both the souls and the bodies of their subjects.

In the good old days in Germany the elector was always an archbishop.
Our bishops now are a weakling lot. With no army to back their edicts
the people smile at their proclamations, try on their shovel hats, and
laugh at their gaiters. Or if they be Methodist bishops, who are only
make-believe bishops, having slipped the cable that bound them to the
past, we pound them familiarly on the back and address them as "Bish."

Clement Augustus, Elector of Cologne, maintained a court that vied with
royalty itself. In his household were two hundred servants. He had
coachmen, footmen, cooks, messengers, a bodyguard, musicians, poets and
artists who hastened to do his bidding. He patronized all the arts, made
a pet of science, offered a reward for the transmutation of metals,
dabbled in astrology and practised palmistry.

Into this brilliant court came the strong and masterful Ludvig van
Biethofen.

In a year his gracious presence, superb voice and rare skill as a
musician, pushed him to the front and into favor with the powers, with a
yearly salary of four hundred guilders. The history of this man is a
deal better raw stock for a romance than the life of his grandson.

From Seventeen Hundred Thirty-two, when he entered the court as an
unknown and ordinary musician with an acceptable tenor voice, to
Seventeen Hundred Sixty-one, when he was Kapellmeister and a member of
the private council of the Elector, his life was a steady march
successward. Strong men were needed then as now, and his promotion was
deserved. Various accounts and mention of this man are to be found, and
one contemporary described him as he appeared at sixty. The only mark of
age he carried was his flowing white hair. His smoothly shaven face
showed the strong features of a man of thirty-five; and his carriage,
actions and superb grace as an orchestra-leader made him a conspicuous
figure in any company.

Ludvig van Biethofen had one son, Johann by name. This boy resembled his
gifted father very little, and his training was such that he early fell
a victim to arrested development.

If a parent does everything for a child, the child probably will never
do anything for himself. It is Nature's plan--she seems to think that no
one needs strength excepting the struggler, and being kind she comes to
his rescue; but the man who puts forth no effort remains a weakling to
the end.

Johann placed success beyond his reach very early in life by putting an
enemy into his mouth to steal away his brains. His marriage to a
daughter of a cook in Ehrenbreitstein Castle did not stop his
waywardness, or give him decision as was hoped. Marriage as a scheme of
reformation is not always a success, and women who lend themselves to it
take great chances.

Mary Magdalena was a widow, and some say possessed of wiles. That she
was beneath Johann in social station, but beyond him in actual worth,
there is no doubt. And whether she snared the incautious man, or whether
the marriage was arranged by the elder Biethofen as a diplomatic move in
the interests of morality, matters little. The end justifies the means;
and as a net result of this mating, without putting forward the
circumstance as a precedent to be religiously followed, the world has
Beethoven and his work.

* * * * *

A plate affixed to Number Five Hundred Fifteen Bonngasse, Bonn, gives
the birth of Ludwig van Beethoven as December Seventeenth, Seventeen
Hundred Seventy. He was the second-born child of his mother, and after
him came a goodly assortment of boys and girls. Two of his brothers
lived to exercise a sinister influence over the life of the Master, and
to darken days that should have been luminous with love. Little Ludwig
was the pet and pride of the grandfather. The grandfather had even
insisted that the baby should bear his name. Disappointment in his own
child caused him to center his love in the grandchild. This instinct
that makes men long to live again in the lives of their children--is it
reaching out for immortality? And as the grandfather virtually supported
the household, he was allowed to have his own way, and indeed that
strong, yet cheery will was not to be opposed. The old man prophesied
what the boy would do, just as love ever does, and has done, since the
world began.

But only in his dreams was Ludvig van Biethofen to know of the success
of his namesake. When the boy was scarce four years old, the old man
passed away. The place in the orchestra that Johann held through favor
was soon forfeited, and times of pinching poverty followed, and sorrows
came like the gathering of a winter night.

Have you never shared the mocking shame and biting pain of a drunkard's
household? Then God grant you never may. When the world withdraws its
faith from a man through his own imbecility, and employment is denied;
when promises are unkept; when order and system are gone, and foresight
fled, and loud accusation, threat and contumely vary their strident
tones with maudlin protestations of affection, and vows made to be
broken, easily change to curses; when the fire dies on the hearth, and
children huddle in bed in the daytime for warmth; when the scanty food
that is found is eaten ravenously, and blanching fear comes when a heavy
tread and fumbling at the lock are heard in the hall--these things
challenge language for fit expression and cause words to falter.

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