Overwhelmed

Monday, May 2nd., Hotel Petit Palais, Athens.

Arthur Rubinstein

We left the yacht at 9.30 about, and after landing drove to this hotel. Not an attractive city; but a very good and very small hotel. The first person I saw was Arthur Rubenstein, in a bath-gown, just out of his bath. He joined us at lunch and talked all the time. Kommer called him a 'traveller in music', and enlarged on this definition very well indeed. 

We went to the National Museum. The pre-Phidias things were the best, especially some of the finds from Mycenae. I made up a theory out of this which I shall use. We then drove to the Acropolis. Dust. Great heat. The Acropolis and the Parthenon fully sustained their reputation. The spectacle was really overwhelming. Also the Anterior Room in the Parthenon Museum was equally overwhelming. The blue sky, and the seascape, and the sunshine were simply wonderful. What sensations! Extreme exhaustion. But after tea, despite this, Kommer and Dougherty and I went out shopping, but didn't get all the photos we wanted. They don't exist in Athens, being out of stock. We were recommended to get them in Florence!

Doughery did though manage to buy some pornographic postcards. One of the consequences I find in travelling with a group of men is that attention soon turns to women and sex. We were discussing the difference between pornography and eroticism. Between tea and dinner, as a sort of contribution to the debate I wrote the first chapters of a sensual, pornographic story. Only for fun. It is now destroyed. I made the point that it is really impossible, in my view, to write adequately about the sex act; simple description is not enough (just pornography), but any attempt to 'elaborate' simply becomes clumsy and embarrassing. Eroticism on the other hand is well within the scope of literature. I told them that my favourite example of eroticism came, surprisingly, from Thomas Hardy. His short story "On the Western Circuit". In that there is a scene where a young man is flirting with a ladies maid at a fair. The maid's mistress appears and they are thrown together in a press of people. The mistress finds her hand being grasped (in mistake for the maid's) and the young man slips two fingers inside her glove and strokes her palm. That, to me, is erotic!

 

All at sea

Saturday, April 28th., Flying Cloud R.Y.S., at sea.

Flying Cloud

I arose at 5.45, not needing any more sleep, and ate two apples and one orange on the poop deck, talking to the officer of the watch. Neither the Captain or the other two officers are really interesting. The Captain is young and energetic but a bit boastful. Having eaten the fruit I returned to my stateroom  and wrote up my impressions of the previous day in due form for printing. It is really very easy. Shaving and bathing and so on is a great nuisance and consumer of time. Breakfast at 9.

Rudolf is usually in his dressing gown; so is David Gray, the playwright; so is Kahn sometimes. Of course they have been up later than me playing their infernal cards. I am always dressed. The meal is very plenteous. The difficulty is not to eat too much. Cigarettes are always offered before the end of each meal. There are two or three stewards to look after us. I alone have a cigar after breakfast.


The 'Boss' (as they call him, except me I always call him 'Commodore' and he always calls me 'Vice Commodore') announced the time at which he proposed to leave for an excursion, but he will alter the time if asked. Today we went ashore at Candia. Motor cars were waiting; they always are, and we drove off instantly 3 miles to Knossos, the seat of Minoan civilisation. Three palaces, one above another. Very interesting, but not big enough for my taste. Then we drove back to the museum which is far more interesting artistically than the palaces. That said, when you examine the designs closely it becomes apparent that they are largely conjectural. A lot has been made out of not very much. I feel a bit disturbed by the authenticity issue. I liked the 'Snake Goddesses' - they would cause a 'stir' in Kensington!


We returned to the quay where the launch was waiting; it always is, and we were back on the ship at 12.15. I decided to bathe and then lay on the deck in the sun to dry. It did me good. A steward came round and asked what cocktail I wanted. Kahn won't have one. Then lunch. The talk at meals is very good. It is occasionally obscene startling, and even bawdy, but very intelligent. A good group of travellers (except for the card obsession!). All have been educated by experience.

Jo Davidson

I had a sleep after lunch and then we went back into the town. Intensely hot. Met Jo Davidson and Paul Dougherty in the port. We were ferried back in instalments for tea on deck. The tea is terrific. Then more card playing. I went down to my cabin to write a bit. Kahn reads a lot and writes in his stateroom. I am reading a book by him. Full of sense. 

At 6 p.m. we weighed anchor for Santorini. Lovely dusk and night. I emerge from my cabin at intervals to tease the card players, and sometimes go out on the poop to see how the ship is getting along. Dinner at 8. very plenteous, too plenteous. I didn't eat half of it. I devoted most of my evening to a fine cigar. More cards! Drinks come round, but very little alcohol is drunk. I read a bit and walked around and at 10.30 said goodnight to Kahn and nodded to the others, and settled to write this. I shall probably sleep sometime after 11.

 

In Greece

Monday, April 25th., at Nauplia, on board Flying Cloud, R.Y.S.

Flying Cloud R.Y.S.

First glimpses of Greece yesterday at 7.30 a.m. Grey day, overcast, no sun. Lovely coastline: medieval castles on it, and snow-topped mountains in the distance. At noon we had turned into the Marathon Gulf, and dropped anchor off Getheon. As soon as lunch was over we went ashore and saw the town. Crowds and crowds gathered to inspect us. The Chief of Police came to greet us on the quay. We must seem very alien to them. Lovely landscpaes and seascapes all dominated by Mount Taygetus, apparently the place where the Spartans exposed children they wanted to die.

Otto Kahn

I must say that Kahn is a man of terrific energy, also highly nervous. I suppose the two things go together. He is by far the best-dressed man on board. I am not in it. He has brought fifty two suits and six overcoats. He has six pairs of the most chic yachting shoes and appears daily in a fresh uniform with stock to match. But he hasn't got a gilt-buttoned blue blazer like mine, and much regrets the sad fact. I reckon his income at about £1,000,000 a year, so of course expenditure is nothing at all to him. Good job because the hire of the yacht is £1,000 a week, and the miscellaneous expenses must come to at least £100 a day.

Social relations are perfect so far. Kommer and Kahn pretend to quarrel at bridge. Kommer is easily the best player on board. He is a very idle man who wouldn't come with us to Epidauros this morning; he would stay on the yacht and play bridge all day if left to himself. 

He missed a treat because Epidauros is simply the best-preserved theatre in Greece. In fact it strikes me as a perfection in theatres. We calculated that it can hold 12,000 people. You can hear perfectly words spoken in an ordinary tone in the centre of the 'stage'. I was quietly calculating in my head the potential revenue from a performance. I could see something in that!

A 'Miracle' in Salzburg

Monday, August 10th., Salzburg.

I wrote 1,300 words of novel on Saturday and 2,300 words yesterday before 3.30 p.m. This constituted an enormous effort. At 10 p.m. we went on to a rehearsal of "The Miracle" at the Residenz. Reinhardt left at 10.45 to go to an 11 p.m. dinner at Leopoldskron. Whereupon Rosamund Pinchot (the Nun) had an attack of nerves because he wasn't there to direct her, and her mother was upset. I told her it was the most ordinary thing in the world and not worth thinking about.
See also, 'Sightseeing from Salzburg' - August 2nd.,
http://earnoldbennett.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/sightseeing-from-salzburg.html

Max Reinhardt (1873 – 1943) was an Austrian-born American stage and film actor and director. Born Maximilian Goldmann, an Austrian Jew, from 1902 until the beginning of Nazi rule in 1933, he worked as a director at various theatres in Berlin. From 1905 to 1930 he managed the Deutsches Theatre ("German Theatre") in Berlin. By employing powerful staging techniques, and harmonising stage design, language, music and choreography, Reinhardt introduced new dimensions into German theatre. After the Anschluss of Austria to Nazi-governed Germany in 1938, he emigrated first to Britain, then to the United States. Reinhardt opened the Reinhardt School of the Theatre in Hollywood, on Sunset Boulevard. In 1940 he became a naturalized citizen of the United States.

I only had three and three-quarter hours sleep on Saturday night, and yet wrote 2,300 on Sunday.

At 4 p.m. took the railway up to the summit of the Gaisberg. Too misty and sunshiny to see clearly but it was all very impressive. A damn fine lump of mud, the Gaisberg, 4,200 feet.




Kommer gave a 2.15 p.m. lunch, at which we met Hugo von Hoffmansthal and wife. He is a very jolly fellow, about 45 I should say, and looking younger. Three children practically grown up, I understood. Just bought his first car, of which he was most naively and charmingly proud. he said that of course I, being a novelist, wrote all the year round and that he, being a dramatist, worked only in the autumn. I was delighted with H. von H.; also with his wife.

Hugo Laurenz August Hofmann von Hofmannsthal (1874 – 1929), was an Austrian novelist, librettist, poet,dramatist, narrator, and essayist. He began to write poems and plays from an early age. In 1900, Hofmannsthal met the composer Richard Strauss for the first time and later wrote libretti for several of his operas. In 1901, he married Gertrud "Gerty" Schlesinger, the daughter of a Viennese banker. Gerty, who was Jewish, converted to Christianity before their marriage. They settled in Rodaun, not far from Vienna, and had three children, Christiane, Franz, and Raimund. During the First World War Hofmannsthal held a government post. He wrote speeches and articles supporting the war effort, and emphasizing the cultural tradition of Austria-Hungary. The end of the war spelled the end of the old monarchy in Austria; this was a blow from which the patriotic and conservative-minded Hofmannsthal never fully recovered. Nevertheless the years after the war were very productive ones for him; he continued with his earlier literary projects, almost without a break. In 1920, Hofmannsthal, along with Max Reinhardt, founded the Salzburg Festival. On July 13, 1929, his son Franz committed suicide. Two days later, Hugo himself died of a stroke at Rodaun. He was buried wearing the habit of a Franciscan tertiary, as he had requested.

This is the third day of very hot stifling weather, with sun all the time.

Leave tomorrow, Tuesday, 11th., at 5.30, by the Orient Express. I shall have been here 33 full days, and I estimate I have written over 35,000 words despite chronic and acute neuralgia.

Austrians

Wednesday, August 5th., Salzburg.

Another 1,000 words of "Lord Raingo" yesterday afternoon, between 5.15 and 7.15, after a bad night.
Kommer joined us late at lunch in the Mirabell Garden, among the wasps.

The Mirabelle Palace was built by Prince Arbishop Wolf Dietrich in 1606 for his mistress, Salome Alt, and her children. The central axis of the garden is aligned on Hohensalzburg, the castle on the other side of the River Salzach. It has a central fountain, an outdoor theatre and a marvellous sculpture collection. Mirabelle has a key position in the town, near the river and between the old town and the commercial new town. It is also, as Jellicoe observed, draws upon the surrounding landscape. It is a beautiful place, always full of people and more redolent of the atmosphere of a Court Garden than most of old Europe's extant Hofgartens.

Cafe Corso

After dinner we went to the Cafe Corso, to hear the Hungarian musicians - Zigeuner Kapelle.





These Austrians are gayer than the English. They laugh easily and have pleasant faces and eyes, though grace is not always one of their qualities - except of manner. The men generally have a little thing like a small feather duster, brush up, at the back of their hats. Pants are more and more often embroidered. I saw two country well-off lads on Sunday with a string of silver coins round their waists. The bow-neckties are rather good - bright and with nice patterns, and small. Knapsack carrying, and also by girls, is very common, and pretty heavy knapsacks too. The passers-by are now much less dowdy than a month ago, and one sees that fashion binds after all the whole female sex of Western Europe together - when the money will run to it.

Sightseeing from Salzburg

Sunday, August 2nd., Salzburg.

On Friday I was still suffering so much from the effects of neuralgia that I could do no work. Shopped in the afternoon, and went to see a German film in the evening; it was very bad, as bad as the weather. Yesterday also I was suffering, and so I decided to go out for the day.

Through Hallein to Golling, a large village full of medium hotels. Lunch at the Alte Post, whose proprietor, Steinach, told me that the hotel had been in the hands of his family for 111 years. Began lunch with the largest trout I have ever seen - caught two hours earlier. Golling and other villages near have a character of their own. The gables of the houses face the street; wide eaves, sometimes a balcony under the eaves with a tiled roof of its own. brightly painted window frames and shutters, and plenty of flowers on the sills. Plenty of visitors. At the Alte Post were four rooms fairly full of lunchers; we lunched on the terrasse.

After lunch took a two-horse carriage to see the waterfalls. The car couldn't go, because the bridge over the Salzach is forbidden to cars. About 10 minutes drive, and then about 50 minutes to climb steps and things in order to see the three waterfalls, one above another. The waterfalls were fully up to descriptions thereof and really most impressive. I have never seen anything to beat this drive for grandeur of scenery. At Werfel we stopped at 4 p.m. for coffee at an outwardly unassuming hotel and had superb coffee and cakes, very well served by a smart, slim, sparkling waitress. Within I saw the kitchen and a chef in a chef's white cap making pastry. It was strange to see this perfection in a village lost in the mountains.

On the way home, between Hallern and Salzburg, we came upon a motor accident, collision; the road was unnecessarily blocked for a long time during palavers between the respective owners and drivers and the gendarme. The chief words repeated 1,000 times, were "mein lieber herr". Everybody nervously excited but very polite and restrained.

After dinner Kommer came along to the hotel with Rosamund Pinchot and two German journalists. He introduced Rosamund. A day or two ago he had told me the astounding story of how Reinhardt had seen this society girl on the tender, going to America, and had instantly said: "Here is the girl who can play the nun" ("The Miracle"), and had ultimately engaged her, though she had no experience whatever of the stage, nor any longing to go on the stage.

In 1923, Rosamond Pinchot was a 19-year-old with lots of opportunities in life. Tall and golden-haired, she lived in a townhouse on East 81st Street and attended exclusive Miss Chapin’s School. Then, on a ship, she had a fateful encounter. She was returning to New York from a trip to Europe with her mother when theatre bigwig Max Reinhardt spotted her. Reinhardt wanted her as the lead in a play he would be directing on Broadway, The Miracle, about a nun who leaves her convent. With no dramatic experience, she accepted the offer, skipping her official debut into society in favour of the stage. Later that year, the play opened at the Century Theatre on Central Park West. Rosamond blew everyone away. Dubbed the “loveliest woman in America,” Rosamond became an It Girl of the 1920s and the toast of Hollywood. She played the part for three years and took roles in other productions, until 1926, when she quit acting to do “serious” work. She tried her hand at a variety of things: She studied history in college, sold real estate, then returned to the stage several times and made her only film appearance in 1935′s The Three Musketeers. She also got married in 1928 to the grandson of a former Massachusetts governor and had two sons. The marriage didn’t last—and her separation from her husband in 1936 “deeply affected” her. Rosamond made her last theatrical appearance in 1937. The next year, at age 33, she committed suicide by poisoning herself with carbon monoxide in her garage on her estate in Long Island. A note was left behind, but the contents were never divulged.

http://ephemeralnewyork.wordpress.com/2013/07/08/the-tragedy-of-the-loveliest-woman-in-america/

I finished "The Kellys and the O'Kellys" yesterday morning: Trollope's second novel, written at the age of 34. This novel is consistently excellent, and Algar Thorold's introduction to it is absurdly trifling and inadequate. The characterisation is admirable, strong, true, and sober.

Dining at the Horn

Tuesday, July 28th., Salzburg.

Kommer came at 6.45 and we were to have gone to a rehearsal of "The Miracle", but there was to be no choir that night, he found, so we didn't go. I was determined to dine one night at the Horn Hotel with the golden sign, and we went there last night. The food was excellent and cheap and the wine excellent. We talked about the organisation of the people's pleasure. Kommer quoted Chesterton as saying that since Dickens no one in England had cared for the people's pleasure because the Tories hated the people and the Liberals hated pleasure. Kommer pointed out how in Continental cities a young man could get decent civilised pleasure for almost nothing, especially in Berlin, Paris, and also in the smaller cities such as Salzburg. But not in London. When he was young in London there was nothing. Everything closed earlier (it closes earlier now) and there are only the night clubs even now, and they are not for the poor. We have the loveliest river, and it is not organised. The restaurants and cafes are rotten, and not accueillants, no choice of food and the food bad, little music, and it is so difficult to get to the places - you have to change and do all sorts of things. In places like Vienna, Berlin and Paris, all such places are easy to get to (especially in Teutonic countries) and the entire population goes out to them on Sundays.

See also, 'Adrift in Austria' - July 17th., http://earnoldbennett.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/friday-july-17th.html

As regards the stage, Kommer said that young actors were not supposed to live on their salaries. Parents tried to stop their children going on the stage, because of the hazardous nature of the career; but once children were there they helped them to make a start. The profession had a good social standing. He said that Geman (not Austrian) actors were impossible creatures to live and work with. Outrageous. He said they had twelve German actors in the "Miracle" at New York, and they caused far more trouble than all the rest of the 350 to 400 in the company put together.

I wrote another 1,000 words of "Lord Raingo" yesterday morning.

Adrift in Austria

Friday, July 17th., Salzburg.

I did no actual writing of my novel, and damned little thinking about it. I just lay about and re-read Hardy's "The Trumpet Major". I wanted to see if my poor impression of this work, from my first reading, was sustained on a re-visit. It was. Occasionally it contains a line of description, or a section of dialogue, that is worthy of the great man but overall it is lightweight and uninteresting. Of course it would never have been published had it not Hardy's name attached, but I suppose the same could be said of some of my lesser works!

I went out and bought some cigars. About 4.30 went up to Hoher Salzburg. A very Margate-ish crowd; indeed the same sort of crowds everywhere. They stream into the town daily. Coming home, I met Kommer; or rather he stopped me and offered me a piece of paper. For a second I didn't know him. He had inquired at all the hotels for me (including this one) without success. He had then gone to the police, who informed him at once that E.A.B. was staying at the Oesterreichischer, and gave him a bit of paper to that effect; this was the paper he was exhibiting to me in the street.

Kommer told us that when he was producing "The Miracle" in Cleveland (staggering success) he could never get any eatable food there. He said that when he and Diana Cooper dined at the house of the richest millionaire in Cleveland, the ices were actually bought at a store - not made in the house. He said that the modesty of Asquith's country house "The Wharfe" was one of the things that struck him most. Said it couldn't happen anywhere else. Asquith had been PM for eight years. He said that in any other country a man who had been PM for eight months would retire rich.

He said he was now working on the German version of  "The Great Adventure" and that Reinhardt would do it in both Berlin and Vienna. Probably some delay as there was a great row between German managers and German stars. The managers had decided that no star should get more than £15 a night and the stars had struck. He said that the actor who took Ilam Carve made as much as £100 a night because he took 25% of the receipts. When I told him the plot of my "Flora", he said it was a sign of a wholesome public that such a plot, so simple, should be certain to arouse protest. He said that in Berlin, if you wanted to make a scandal in a theatre, you had to have a mother committing incest with two sons; one wasn't enough.

Rudolf K. Kommer (1886 in Chernivtsi - 1943 in Manhattan ) was a journalist and impresario , a long time associate of Max Reinhardt. Dr Rudolf Kommer, was the right hand man of the theatre producer Max Reinhardt, in whose production of "The Miracle" Diana Cooper, Duff's wife, starred for ten years between 1924-33.

Sailing east

Saturday, April 23rd., "Flying Cloud", between Sicily and Cape Matapan.

I didn't have a great deal of sleep, but felt that I had had enough sleep.
Sore throat which I might have cured if I could have stopped smoking; but I couldn't. The thing would have been much more serious to make me give up this habit even for a time.
I thought about an article on Syracuse; so soon I was determined to write it today.
I was chatting with the Chief Officer on the poop before 6 a.m. Perfect morning. Saw one sail, a brig, about ten miles to the north going westward. Saw nothing else all day. There was a slant of wind, and I reckon that the ship was making 3 or 4 knots under sail only. Four sails set, 2 topsails, 1 top stay-sail, the sky sail and three jibs.
Bridge has been played nearly the whole day. And it has been a simply magnificent day.
Captain Davies said that he was not a yacht-captain but a captain in a yacht. Well, the yacht shows it.

I find that I know all the party on the yacht except one (David Gray - part author of The Best People). Only I had forgotten that I knew them. Jo Davidson the sculptor & Dougherty the painter both reminded me of a previous meeting. Frank Crowninshields of course I knew. Kommer, as usual, seemed to know half the people in the hotel at Syracuse.

Rudolf K Kommer (1888-1943) is best known for his association with Max Reinhardt whom he persuaded to produce The Miracle in London and in America (1923). He was also translator of many American and English plays for German production. An Austrian by birth he became the London correspondent of the Frankfurter Zeitung, a member of the United Press Bureau in Central Europe, and later head of its Geneva office. He lectured in America during 1914 and became a diplomat in the Austrian Government. He lived in America during the last ten years of his life.

I like all the party. I feel sure they are all extremely decent, as they are certainly intelligent.  Jo Davidson has a bushy black beard, & at first I thought he was a Frenchman. He speaks French very fluently. 

Jo Davidson (March 30, 1883 – January 2, 1952) was an American sculptor of Russian-Jewish descent. Although he specialized in realistic, intense portrait busts, Davidson did not require his subjects to formally pose for him; rather, he observed and spoke with them. He worked primarily with clay, while the final products were typically cast in terra-cotta, marble and bronze.

Further, though it is a bit early to conclude thereupon, I think Otto is a very good host. he is bright, doesn't boss (though they all call him 'boss'), & is in favour of everyone feeling perfectly free. Kommer is a great advocate of freedom. When I said to the fellows that I hated sightseeing there was a great outburst of applause.