A stiff climb

Thursday, July 16th., Oesterreichischerhof, Salzburg.

Salzburg from the Kapuzinerberg

Walked up to the top of the Kapuzinerberg yesterday afternoon. The entrance begins only about three minutes from this hotel, and the distance of climbing is only about a mile I should think. But it is very stiff work indeed. The path is stepped and tended and signposted with great Teutonic care and thoroughness. Some English say it is too well done. How absurd! (In the war we copied everything but German thoroughness - I mean in the press) These signposts indicating distance in time are most useful. At the top (it took me an hour with frequent rests) a cafe, tout arrange, for tourists, with 'fine' views of the Alps. These aussichts of Alpine stuff leave me definitely rather cold. Visited the Kurhaus on the way back to the hotel. Vast and gloomy - especially the restaurant where an 'Alpine evening' was to take place last night. Feared it and avoided it, and dined at the Mirabell Garden Restaurant where I had also lunched. At lunch, Jerskny, director of the Blue Bird troupe had a table with several of his artistes; they were extremely jolly and giggled like anything.

At night: music. Waltzes and operatic selections. Electric light; hence theatrical trees; dogs playing with each other; outsiders staring; girls carrying beer all the time; a girl wheeling round and round a thing like a perambulator containing all sorts of confectionery; she did this for two hours and was still doing it when I left.

I finished Hamsun's "Segelfloss Town" last night. It does not hold together very well, and is inferior to his best work; the interest is allowed to shift too much from character to character. The characters are apt to appear and then fade. But it contains four really splendid things, and some fine humour and ditto wit. There is a tirade against actors and actresses which is devastating funny and true. The translation is very good indeed.

Additionally for July 16th., see 'Home from the front'

I returned home from the Front yesterday, after two nights in London at the Savoy. By the evening I had dealt with all the arrears.

So German

Thursday, July 9th., Salzburg.

As soon as we had got into Germany (Kehl I think, about 4.30 a.m. yesterday) the country began to be German, quite conventionally. 

There is no doubt you can get a more intimate and romantic view of a strange country early in the morning. You then know when people actually get up, and what they look like when they are up. Putting bedclothes out at windows. Pensive girls at windows. Men and boys loitering in lanes, and waiting to begin to work. A curious softness and humanness over everything.

Sudden increase in Germany of official uniforms. The railways seem to have got back to decency and efficiency. Munich. Great lakes and mountains east of Munich. Wonderful to regard; and, with thin tapering spires of churches, quite conventionally German. The German of opera scenery. Sunday when we got into Salzburg - Tyrolean hats and garments. It seemed comic - nature imitating art.

To think that only ten years ago I was at the Western Front, looking across to the German lines and damning the whole nation to hell. Such is human nature.

Additionally for July 9th., see 'Parisiennes'

Speaking of 'Parisiennes', I took a turn through the Parc Monceau to the Etoile, and back through the Champs Elysees on Friday night between 9.30 and 11 in order to clear off a headache. Honest lovemaking in the Parc Monceau. In the Champs Elysees, I saw four girls aged 14 or less - one didn't seem more than 11 or 12 being taken about by older women for the excitement of senile appetites. Some day soon there will be a tremendous outcry concerning this procuring of children. The police will become suddenly active in arrests - and then things will settle down again.

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.

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.

Busy in Salzburg

Wednesday, July 15th., Salzburg.

Saturday night we went to the Stadt Theatre, and saw a Viennese 'schnurre', a farce of military life. Couldn't understand it, but it seemed to be pretty well put together. The production was far far better than our average West End production. It was more naturalistic, less conventional, and more continuously alive. Some of the acting was very good.

The scenery around is wonderful. There must be about a dozen 10,000 ft. mountains in the region. But we soon tired of this imposing, picturesque scenery. It is as if it was done on purpose - some tour de force of a creator. Sunday was a fete day here - the fete of the fire brigades. They came from all around including adjacent Germany. The cafe-restaurants were full of firemen, in poor ill-fitting uniforms, at lunch. Procession very long. Full of engines and ladders, and one very old engine, and banners and bands. One brigade was headed by a girl in white; at least she seemed to be a girl; but she might have been the wife of the huge, framed, glittering man who was walking by her side. The affair had a certain medieval or renaissance quality, but lacked both vitality and efficiency. After it we drove in a little victoria to see the castle (Lustschloss) at Hellbrun, a few miles off, along a monotonous road, chiefly quite straight. This castle has lovely gardens; but the 'practical joke' quality of the fountain-work (designed to soak the king's guests by surprise) and the childishness of the working, water-driven models in the garden, gave you a sinister insight into the mind of a foolish king.

In 1612, only a few months after ascending the throne, Salzburg's Prince Archbishop Markus Sittikus von Hohenems commissioned a country residence to be built at the foot of the well-watered Hellbrunn Mountain. A lover of Italian art and culture, Markus Sittikus commissioned the famous Cathedral architect, Santino Solari, to design a "villa suburbana", a summer residence matching the elegance and spaciousness of the magnificent Italian architecture with which he was so obsessed. Within a relatively short period of time an architectural masterpiece was created just south of the city that remains one of the most magnificent Renaissance buildings north of the Alps: the Lustschloss ("pleasure palace") of Hellbrunn with its spacious park and its unique Wasserspiele (trick fountains). Water was the central theme in the palace's design. The numerous sources in Hellbrunn Mountain gave the estate effervescent life. Hidden in the shade of bushes and trees or jetting out from unexpected hiding places - the world-famous Wasserspiele have been the main attraction at Hellbrunn for almost 400 years.

Much work in mornings. I am reading Hamsun's "Segelfoss Town". It is not his best work but contains some very fine things indeed, and is never sentimental. I read some of Robert Bridges's poems again, including the one containing the line "The horses of the strong south west", which has remained in my mind for many years. It is a superb short poem.

Who has not walked upon the shore, 
And who does not the morning know, 
The day the angry gale is o'er, 
The hour the wind has ceased to blow? 

The horses of the strong south-west 
Are pastured round his tropic tent, 
Careless how long the ocean's breast 
Sob on and sigh for passion spent. 

The frightened birds, that fled inland 
To house in rock and tower and tree, 
Are gathering on the peaceful strand, 
To tempt again the sunny sea ; 

Whereon the timid ships steal out 
And laugh to find their foe asleep, 
That lately scattered them about, 
And drave them to the fold like sheep. 

The snow-white clouds he northward chased 
Break into phalanx, line, and band: 
All one way to the south they haste, 
The south, their pleasant fatherland. 

From distant hills their shadows creep, 
Arrive in turn and mount the lea, 
And flit across the downs, and leap 
Sheer off the cliff upon the sea ; 

And sail and sail far out of sight. 
But still I watch their fleecy trains, 
That piling all the south with light, 
Dapple in France the fertile plains.

Yesterday was what I call a full day, after a rotten night. I didn't get up till 8 o'clock; then breakfast; by 11.15 I had written 950 words of the novel. I then dressed and went out to recover, to reflect, and to find a new restaurant. We lunched at the new restaurant. Back to hotel to sleep, read and tea. Then by the giant lift to the Cafe-Wein Restaurant on the Monchberg; walked on the said berg for a long time (acutely picturesque). Then descended by the lift and to St. Peter's Keller for dinner; place crowded. Then to hotel for tickets for theatre, and to "The Blue Bird" (Russian troupe as in London) at Stadt Theatre. Some of it very good; a little of it magnificent.

The Mönchsberg, at 540 meters (1,770 ft) above sea level, is one of the five mountains in the city of Salzburg, Salzburgerland, Austria. It is named after the Benedictine monks of St Peter's Abbey at the northern foot of the mountain. The Mönchsberg plateau offers a small-scale change of forests and meadows and therefore is a popular local recreation area for the Salzburg citizens and tourists.