Part 35 (1/2)
They had laughed at that, and so had she, but she had been grimly in earnest just the same.
She shook her head now at Fenger's suggestion. ”Imagine Mrs. Fenger's face at sight of Mizzi, and Theodore with his violin, and Otti with her shawls and paraphernalia. Though,” she added, seriously, ”it's mighty kind of you, and generous--and just like a man.”
”It isn't kindness nor generosity that makes me want to do things for you.”
”Modest,” murmured f.a.n.n.y, wickedly, ”as always.”
Fenger bent his look upon her. ”Don't try the ingenue on me, f.a.n.n.y.”
Theodore's manager, Kurt Stein, was to have followed him in ten days.
The war changed that. The war was to change many things. f.a.n.n.y seemed to sense the influx of musicians that was to burst upon the United States following the first few weeks of the catastrophe, and she set about forestalling it. Advertising. That was what Theodore needed. She had faith enough in his genius. But her business sense told her that this genius must be enhanced by the proper setting. She set about creating this setting. She overlooked no chance to fix his personality in the kaleidoscopic mind of the American public--or as much of it as she could reach. His publicity man was a dignified German-American whose methods were legitimate and uninspired. f.a.n.n.y's enthusiasm and superb confidence in Theodore's genius infected Fenger, Fascinating Facts, even Nathan Haynes himself. Nathan Haynes had never posed as a patron of the arts, in spite of his fantastic millions. But by the middle of September there were few of his friends, or his wife's friends, who had not heard of this Theodore Brandeis. In Chicago, Illinois, no one lives in houses, it is said, except the city's old families, and new millionaires. The rest of the vast population is flat-dwelling. To say that Nathan Haynes'
spoken praise reached the city's house-dwellers would carry with it a significance plain to any Chicagoan.
As for f.a.n.n.y's method; here is a typical example of her somewhat crude effectiveness in showmans.h.i.+p. Otti had brought with her from Vienna her native peasant costume. It is a costume seen daily in the Austrian capital, on the Ring, in the Stadt Park, wherever Viennese nurses convene with their small charges. To the American eye it is a musical comedy costume, picturesque, bouffant, amazing. Your Austrian takes it quite for granted. Regardless of the age of the nurse, the skirt is short, coming a few inches below the knees, and built like a lamp shade, in color usually a bright scarlet, with rows of black velvet ribbon at the bottom. Beneath it are worn skirts and skirts, and skirts, so that the opera-bouffe effect is complete. The bodice is black velvet, laced over a chemise of white. The head-gear a soaring winged affair of stiffly starched white, that is a pa.s.s between the Breton peasant woman's cap and an aeroplane. Black stockings and slippers finish the costume.
Otti and Mizzi spent the glorious September days in Lincoln park, Otti garbed in staid American stripes and ap.r.o.n, Mizzi resplendent in smartest of children's dresses provided for her lavishly by her aunt.
Her fat and dimpled hands smoothed the blue, or pink or white folds with a complacency astonis.h.i.+ng in one of her years. ”That's her mother in her,” f.a.n.n.y thought.
One rainy autumn day f.a.n.n.y entered her brother's apartment to find Otti resplendent in her Viennese nurse's costume. Mizzi had been cross and fretful, and the sight of the familiar scarlet and black and white, and the great winged cap seemed to soothe her.
”Otti!” f.a.n.n.y exclaimed. ”You gorgeous creature! What is it? A dress rehearsal?” Otti got the import, if not the English.
”So gehen wir im Wien,” she explained, and struck a killing pose.
”Everybody? All the nurses? Alle?”
”Aber sure,” Otti displayed her half dozen English words whenever possible.
f.a.n.n.y stared a moment. Her eyes narrowed thoughtfully. ”To-morrow's Sat.u.r.day,” she said, in German. ”If it's fair and warm you put on that costume and take Mizzi to the park.... Certainly the animal cages, if you want to. If any one annoys you, come home. If a policeman asks you why you are dressed that way tell him it is the costume worn by nurses in Vienna. Give him your name. Tell him who your master is. If he doesn't speak German--and he won't, in Chicago--some one will translate for you.”
Not a Sunday paper in Chicago that did not carry a startling picture of the resplendent Otti and the dimpled and smiling Mizzi. The omnipresent staff photographer seemed to sniff his victim from afar. He pounced on Theodore Brandeis' baby daughter, accompanied by her Viennese nurse (in costume) and he played her up in a Sunday special that was worth thousands of dollars, f.a.n.n.y a.s.sured the bewildered and resentful Theodore, as he floundered wildly through the billowing waves of the Sunday newspaper flood. Theodore's first appearance was to be in Chicago as soloist with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, in the season's opening program in October. Any music-wise Chicagoan will tell you that the Chicago Symphony Orchestra is not only a musical organization functioning marvelously (when playing Beethoven). It is an inst.i.tution.
Its patrons will admit the existence, but not the superiority of similar organizations in Boston, Philadelphia and New York. On Friday afternoons, during the season, Orchestra Hall, situate on Michigan Boulevard, holds more pretty girls and fewer men than one might expect to see at any one gathering other than, perhaps, a wholesale debutante tea crush. A Friday afternoon ticket is as impossible of attainment for one not a subscriber as a seat in heaven for a sinner. Sat.u.r.day night's audience is staider, more masculine, less staccato. Gallery, balcony, parquet, it represents the city's best. Its men prefer Beethoven to Berlin. Its women could wear pearl necklaces, and don't. Between the audience and the solemn black-and-white rows on the platform there exists an entente cordiale. The Konzert-Meister bows to his friend in the third row, as he tucks his violin under his chin. The fifth row, aisle, smiles and nods to the sausage-fingered 'cellist.
”Fritz is playing well to-night.”
In a rarefied form, it is the atmosphere that existed between audience and players in the days of the old and famous Daly stock company.
Such was the character of the audience Theodore was to face on his first appearance in America. f.a.n.n.y explained its nature to him. He shrugged his shoulders in a gesture as German as it was expressive.
Theodore seemed to have become irrevocably German during the years of his absence from America. He had a queer stock of little foreign tricks.
He lifted his hat to men acquaintances on the street. He had learned to smack his heels smartly together and to bow stiffly from the waist, and to kiss the hand of the matrons--and they adored him for it. He was quite innocent of pose in these things. He seemed to have imbibed them, together with his queer German haircut, and his incredibly German clothes.
f.a.n.n.y allowed him to retain the bow, and the courtly hand-kiss, but she insisted that he change the clothes and the haircut.
”You'll have to let it grow, Ted. I don't mean that I want you to have a mane, like Ysaye. But I do think you ought to discard that convict cut. Besides, it isn't becoming. And if you're going to be an American violinist you'll have to look it--with a foreign finish.” He let his hair grow. f.a.n.n.y watched with interest for the appearance of the unruly lock which had been wont to straggle over his white forehead in his schoolboy days. The new and well-cut American clothes effected surprisingly little change. f.a.n.n.y, surveying him, shook her head.
”When you stepped off the s.h.i.+p you looked like a German in German clothes. Now you look like a German in American clothes. I don't know--I do believe it's your face, Ted. I wouldn't have thought that ten years or so in any country could change the shape of one's nose, and mouth and cheekbones. Do you suppose it's the umlauts?”