Having learned in life both what riches can give and what poverty gives, I have always stood in favour of the poor. The levelling up process is the most important task of our politicians, and they should be classed according to the help they give to this reform of reforms.
But after the World War and the misery which the hateful so-called peace of Versailles has brought upon Europe, other fears for the future of humanity must invade the soul. Pity, that angel of the world, must be cultivated and taught, or life for us short-sighted, selfish animals will become impossible.
Will not some young noble-minded man start a new 'Sacred Band' that will struggle for humanity and the rights of man as valiantly as those Theban youths struggled for the liberty and safety of Greece? Or must we come to the despair sung by Sophocles in his Oedipus of Colonos:
Who breathes must suffer and who thinks must mourn And he alone is blest who n'er was born.
But, everyone is asking, does this rebirth of paganism, which is mainly due to the progress of science, hold any hope, any consolation, in presence of the awful mystery of death? It must be admitted that here the fates are almost silent. We no longer believe, it is true, as the Greek did, that it would have been better for us never to have been born. We are proud of our inheritance of life, can already see how it may be bettered in a thousand ways, but hope beyond the grave there is none. Yet we English and Americans have the highest word and the most consoling yet heard among men.
Meredith's noble couplet is higher than the best of Sophocles:
Into the breast that bears the rose
Shall I, with shuddering, fall?
These seventy years or so of life are all we've got, but, as Goethe says, we can fill them, if we will, with great deeds and greater dreams. Goethe and Meredith: I have compared them before: I love them both. … Both are cupbearers undying Of the wine that's meant for souls!
CHAPTER VII
I went by ship from Athens to Constantinople and admired, as every one must, the superb position of the city; like New York, a queen of many waters.
But I was coming away without having learned much when, as my luck would have it, I fell into talk with a German, a student of Byzantine architecture who raved to me of St. Sophia, took me to see it, played guide and expositor of all its beauties time and again, till at length the scales fell from my eyes and I too saw that it was perhaps as he said, 'The greatest church in the world,' thought I could never like the outside as much as the inside. The bold arches and the immense sweep of pillars and the mosaics, frescoes, and inscriptions on the walls give an unique impression of splendour and grandeur combined, a union of color and form, singular in magnificence.
Devout Turks were always worshiping Mahomet in the church and here and there on the pavement schools were being held; but on the walls the older frescoes representing the Crucified One were everywhere, showing through the Mahometan paint or plaster, and the impression left on me was that the Cross everywhere was slowly but surely triumphing over the Crescent. In time I came to see that St. Sophia was a greater achievement even than the Parthenon, and learned in this way that the loftier Spirit usually finds in Time the nobler body.
My German friend took me too, to the Church of the Saviour, which he called 'the gem of Byzantine work,' and indeed the mosaics, at least of the fourteenth century, were richer and more varied than anything I have since seen, even in Palermo.
We had a wild passage through the Black Sea and neither Varna nor the Danube wiped out the sense of discomfort.
But Belgrade with its citadel pleased me intimately, and Buda with Pesth across the great bridge caught my fancy, its fortress hill reminding me of the Acropolis; but Vienna won my heart. The old Burg Theatre with actors and actresses as good as those of Paris, the noble Opera-House with the best music in Europe, and the Belvedere with its gorgeous Venetian pictures, and the wonderful Armoury, all appealed to me intensely! Then too there was the Court and the military pageants of the Hofburg, and the great library, and above all the rich kindly life of the people in the Wurstelprater, the stout German carpet, so to speak, illumined with a thousand colours of Slav and Semite, Bohemian and Polish embroidery, till even the gypsies seemed to add the touches of barbarism and superstition needed to fringe and set off the gorgeous fabric. In many-sided appeal, Vienna seemed to me richer even than Paris; and Pauline Lucca, exquisite singer at once and beautiful charming person, became to my imagination the genius of the city, with Billroth, the great doctor, as symbol of the science on which the whole life was builded. I find it hard to forgive the barbarian Wilson for maiming and impoverishing a nobler corporate life than he and his compatriots are able to produce. It takes a thousand years to make a Vienna and fortunately for us no one man can utterly destroy it.
After spending some months in Vienna, I realized that the Danube was the great patrimony which the Viennese had left unexploited. Vienna should be the greatest port in south-western Europe, but the Austrians haven't dredged and developed the noble stream as they should have done. Will they now, in poverty and misery, repair the fault? It is still time-always time, thank goodness!
Why did I leave Vienna? Because I had met a girl who attracted me, a cafedancer who was returning for a rest to her home in Salzburg, and who talked to me so much of Salzburg, the birthplace of Mozart-'the most beautiful city in the world,' she called it-that I had to go and visit it with Marie for guide.
Marie, Marie Kirschner was her real name, and I have tried to sketch her in my story, A Mad Love, for indeed she was the best type of German, or perhaps I should say Austrian. To me she represented Vienna and its charms quite exquisitely. She had a perfect girl's figure, kept slight and lithe with constant exercise, for she danced at least an hour every day to keep up to the mark, as she said. Marie had a piquant, intelligent face with a nez retrousse as cheeky as her light hazel eyes; best of all, she was curiously frank about her sexual experiences and won my heart by telling me, one of the first evenings, how she had been seduced willingly enough, because of her curiosity, by an old banker of Buda-Pesth when she was barely thirteen. 'He gave my mother and me enough to live on comfortably for six years or more and let me learn dancing. Otto died in his sleep or he'd have done more for us; he was really kind and I had grown to care for him, though he was a poor lover.
However, he left us the house and furniture and I was already earning a fair living-'
'And since then?' I asked.
Marie tossed her head. 'Qui a bu, boira,' she said. 'Isn't love a part of life and the best part? Even the illusion of love is worth more than anything else, and now and then hope tempts me, as I believe I tempt you. Oh, if we could see Salzburg and the Berchtesgaden and the Geiereck together; what a perfect summer we might have, in most lovely surroundings!'
'It's impossible,' I said, 'to give you an unforgettable memory; you've had so many lovers!'
'Never fear a number,' she replied, smiling. 'The great majority leave us nothing worth remembering; men know little about love. Why till now, my old banker's the best memory I have: he was really affectionate und hatte mich auf den Handen tragen mogen (he would have carried me in his hands)'-a German expression meaning 'he took every care of me'
'He taught me a lot too; oh, Otto was a dear,' and with this assurance I took Marie to Salzburg.
I had never even heard Salzburg mentioned before among the beautiful cities of Europe, but I found by chance that Wilkie, the Scottish painter, had used something like the right words to describe it. He said that 'If the old town of Edinburgh with its castle on a rock were planted in the Trossachs and had a broad swift river like the Tay flowing between the houses of the town, it might resemble Salzburg.' Salzburg itself is set amongst mountains and nearby are numberless scenes of romantic beauty: the Traunsee to the east, and the Chiemsee with the King of Bavaria's wonderful palace to the west; while to the south across the Bavarian border is Berchtesgaden, one of the most beautiful regions in Europe. Here is the Untersberg, nearly 7000 feet in height, with the famous Kolowrat caverns containing ice-masses that look like great waterfalls suddenly frozen; and on the eastern side, the Geiereck with the cliffs and precipices that have earned it its name. Marie was an incomparable guide, of the sweetest temper, a born companion and as good a lover as a man. Better indeed in that she made all the preliminaries of love fascinating: Marie was the first to tell me that my voice was musical-a delight to hear-exceedingly powerful,
