When I think of these good comrades of mine I cannot but wonder what the
war has done to them. The Hun element seemed to be in very few of them,
but I can remember it in one. This impossible person, frightfully
conceited, lacking absolutely in humour, annoyed and goaded me through
two long years with his boorish manners, low ideas of American life,
loudly expressed, and crass ignorance of all ideals of living. I came to
rehearsal one day and found the colleagues assembled in the green room
looking very grave over something. This man H---- said "Ah, here she
is!" Then he proceeded to hand round to every one a clipping, which
seemed to hurt and annoy them all. He would not show it to me,
insinuating that I knew all about it. This I stood for an hour and a
half; finally I insisted on seeing the clipping which was from the
leading paper of a neighbouring city. The critic reviewed a _première_
we had just given, slating every one but myself, and saying that I
belonged on the world-stage. This had been sufficient grounds for my
persecutor to explain the bad criticisms of my other colleagues to them,
by telling them that I had an affair with this to me of course, utterly
unknown, unheard of critic. When I realized just what he meant, I saw
black, seized a property crook stick that lay on the table, and struck
him violently on the arm. I then came to, and rushed to the window to
cool off. He took the blow without a word, and when I finally turned
back from the window ready in a revulsion of feeling to tell him that I
was sorry to have hurt him, I found the others all smiling broadly, in
relief that I had cleared the matter up. Of course none of them had
believed for a second what he had tried to make them believe.
We gave the whole of Goethe's "Faust" in four evenings. We had Lassens'
music and I sang two angels and an archangel, a sphinx and a siren
during the performances. The mechanical part of the production with its
flying witches, flying swings for _Faust_ and the devil, traps, dark
changes, built-up effects reaching from the footlights to almost the top
of the proscenium arch at the back of the stage, and a thousand and one
details were managed without a hitch.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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