Part 21 (1/2)
As a companion I would choose Mozart--generous, unaffected, kind--rather than any other musician who ever played, danced, sang or composed--excepting, well, say Brahms.
South Bend: We take an interest in the lives of others because we always, when we think of another, imagine our relations.h.i.+p to him. ”Had I met Shakespeare on the stairs I would have fainted dead away,” said Thackeray.
Another reason why we are interested in biography is because, to a degree, it is a repet.i.tion of our own life.
There are certain things that happen to every one, and others we think might have happened to us, and may yet. So as we read, we unconsciously slip into the life of the other man and confuse our ident.i.ty with his.
To put yourself in his place is the only way to understand and appreciate him. It is imagination that gives us this faculty of transmigration of souls; and to have imagination is to be universal; not to have it is to be provincial. Let me see--wouldn't you rather be a citizen of the Universe than a citizen of Peoria, Illinois, which modest town the actors always speak of as being one of the provinces?
As I read biography I always keep thinking what I would have done in certain described circ.u.mstances, and so not only am I living the other man's life, but I am comparing my nature with his. Everything is comparative; that is the only way we realize anything--by comparing it with something else. As you read of the great man he seems very near to you. You reach out across the years and touch hands with him, and with him you hope, suffer, strive and enjoy: your existence is all blurred and fused with his.
And through this oneness you come to know and comprehend a character that has once existed, very much better than the people did who lived in his day and were blind to his true worth by being ensnared in cliques that were in compet.i.tion with him.
Elkhart: I intimated a few pages back that I would have liked to have Mozart for a friend and companion. Mozart needed me no less than I need him. ”Genius needs a keeper,” once said I. Zangwill, probably with himself in mind. We all need friends--and to be your brother's keeper is very excellent if you do not cease being his friend. And poor Mozart did so need a friend who could stand between him and the rapacious wolf that scratched and sniffed at his door as long as he lived. I do not know why the wolf sniffed, for Mozart really never had anything worth carrying away. He was so generous that his purse was always open, and so full of unmixed pity that the beggars pa.s.sed his name along and made cabalistic marks on his gateposts. Every seedy, needy, thirsty and ill-appreciated musician in Germany regarded him as lawful prey. They used to say to Mozart, ”I can not beg and to dig I am ashamed--so grant me a small loan, I pray thee.”
Yes, Mozart needed me to plan his tours and market his wares. I'm no genius, and although they say I was an infant terrible, I never was an infant prodigy. At the tender age of six, Mozart was giving concerts and astonis.h.i.+ng Europe with his subtle skill. At a like age I could catch a horse with a nubbin, climb his back, and without a saddle or bridle drive him wherever I listed by the judicious use of a tattered hat. Of course I took pains to mount only a horse that had arrived at years of discretion, matronly brood-mares or run-down plow-horses; but this is only proof of my practical turn of mind. Mozart never learned how to control either horse or man by means of a tattered hat or diplomacy: music was his hobby, and it was long years after his death before the world discovered that his hobby was no hobby at all, but a genuine automobile that carried him miles and miles, clear beyond all his compet.i.tors: so far ahead that he was really out of shouting distance.
Indeed, Mozart took such an early start in life and drove his machinery so steadily, not to say so furiously, that at thirty-five all the bearings grew hot for lack of rebabbitting, and the vehicle went the way of the one-horse shay--all at once and nothing first, just as bubbles do when they burst.
At the age which Mozart died I had seen all I wanted to of business life, in fact I had made a fortune, being the only man in America who had all the money he wanted, and so just turned about and went to college. This I firmly hold is a better way than to be sent to college and then go into trade later and forget all you ever learned at school.
I had rather go to college than be sent. Every man should get rich, that he might know the worthlessness of riches; and every man should have a college education, just to realize how little the thing is worth.
Yes, Mozart needed a good friend whose abilities could have rounded out and made good his deficiencies. Most certainly I could not do the things that he did, but I should have been his helper, and might, too, had not a century, one wide ocean, and a foreign language separated us.
Waterloo: Friends.h.i.+p is better than love for a steady diet. Suspicion, jealousy, prejudice and strife follow in the wake of love; and disgrace, murder and suicide lurk just around the corner from where love coos.
Love is a matter of propinquity; it makes demands, asks for proofs, requires a token. But friends.h.i.+p seeks no owners.h.i.+p--it only hopes to serve, and it grows by giving. Do not say, please, that this applies also to love. Love bestows only that it may receive, and a one-sided pa.s.sion turns to hate in a night, and then demands vengeance as its right and portion.
Friends.h.i.+p asks no rash promises, demands no foolish vows, is strongest in absence, and most loyal when needed. It lends ballast to life, and gives steadily to every venture. Through our friends we are made brothers to all who live.
I think I would rather have had Mozart for a friend than to love and be loved by the greatest prima donna who ever warbled in high C. Friends.h.i.+p is better than love. Friends.h.i.+p means calm, sweet sleep, clear brain and a strong hold on sanity. Love I am told is only friends.h.i.+p, plus something else. But that something else is a great disturber of the peace, not to say digestion. It sometimes racks the brain until the world reels. Love is such a tax on the emotions that this way madness lies. Friends.h.i.+p never yet led to suicide.
Toledo: Yes, just at the age when Mozart wrote and played his ”Requiem,”
getting ready to die, I was going to school and incidentally falling in love. I was thirty-four and shaved clean because there were gray hairs coming in my beard. Love has its advantages, of course, and the benefits of pa.s.sionate love consist in scarifying one's sensibilities until they are raw, thus making one able to sympathize with those who suffer. Love sounds the feelings with a leaden plummet that sinks to the very depths of one's soul. This once done the emotions can return with ease, and so this is why no singer can sing, or painter paint, or sculptor model, or writer write, until love or calamity, often the same thing, has sounded the depths of his soul. Love makes us wise because it makes room inside the soul for thoughts and feelings to germinate; but pa.s.sionate love as a lasting mood would be h.e.l.l. Henry Finck says that is why Nature has fixed a two-year limit on romantic or pa.s.sionate love. ”War is h.e.l.l,”
said General Sherman. ”All is fair in Love and War,” says the old proverb. Love and War are one, say I. Love is mad, raging unrest and a vain, hot, reaching out for n.o.body knows what. Of course the kind which I am talking about is the Grand Pa.s.sion, not the sort of sentiment that one entertains towards his grandmother.
”But it is good to fall in love, just as it is well to have the measles,” to quote Schopenhauer. Still, there is this difference: one only has the measles once, but the man who has loved is never immune, and no amount of pledges or resolves can ere avail.
Just here seems a good place to express a regret that the English language is such a crude affair that we use the same word to express a man's regard for roast-beef, his dog, child, wife and Deity. There are those who speedily cry, ”Hold!” when one attempts to improve on the language, but I now give notice that on the first rainy day I am going to create some distinctions and differentiate for posterity along the line just mentioned.
Elyria: As intimated in a former chapter, I was a successful farmer before I went to college. I was also a manufacturer, and made a success in this business, too. I made a fortune of a hundred thousand dollars before I was thirty, and should have it yet had I sat down and watched it. If you go into a railroad-car and sit down by the side of your valise (or ma.n.u.script), in an hour your valuables will probably be there all right.
But if you leave the valise (or the ma.n.u.script) in a seat and go into another car, when you come back the goods may be there and they may not.