The Overture to "Tannhäuser"

by E. F. Benson

The Overture to
"Tannhäuser"

By E. F. BENSON
Author of "Dodo"

LADY HAYES was looking extremely bored, but that was her normal condition, and had not necessarily anything to do with the fact that I was having tea with her. She was delivering herself of her opinions on the futility of existence.

“Nobody really seems to care about anything,” she was saying, “and I am sure I don’t. No one in London is ever enthusiastic, and there really seems no reason why they should be. How stupid it all is! To-night, for instance, what a programme! I go out to dinner, and every one will ask me if I enjoyed Ascot very much, and whether I have read the last inane three-volume novel, and I shall say that I detest Ascot and I don’t know what the last three-volume novel is. Then I go to a ball, and every one will say how lovely the flowers are, and how hot it will be in about an hour, and will I have an ice.”

“Where are you dancing?” I asked.

“At the Waldenechs.”

“Well, I will promise to show you some one who is enthusiastic, if you want,” I said.

“Who is it?”

“Reggie Davenport. I’m sure you have never seen him, and I’m sure you will agree that he is enthusiastic. He has just come back from India.”

“Oh, dear, I suppose he is enthusiastic about tigers and punkah and high temperatures. I don’t care about that sort of thing at all.”

I rose to go.

“Well, we shall see. I won’t promise anything for fear you should be disappointed. But he is enthusiastic.”

 

Reggie Davenport was my first cousin, and I know him very well, for, having lost both my father and mother when I was quite little, I had been brought up by my uncle. He was only just twenty-two, and was quite the most charming and infinitely the most susceptible young man I have ever seen. He fell in love on an average about once a fortnight. The intervals varied a little, but were very seldom longer than this. It was an inconvenient habit, because the charming young women with whom he fell in love—he never fell in love with any one who was not charming—often fell in love with him, and then there was trouble. But just at present we were leading a peaceful life, for he was engaged to one of his periodic raptures, and was to be married in six months. The girl was in love with him and he was in love with the girl. She lived in the country.

Reggie and I went to the dance that evening, and later on Lady Hayes appeared. She danced once with the Prince, and when he led her away at the end, she passed close to where I was standing.

“Well, where is your enthusiast?” she asked.

“He is here somewhere; shall we go and find him?”

She turned to Prince Waldenech.

“He has promised to show me an enthusiast,” she said; “do you think I shall enjoy it?”

“I have only met one enthusiast in all my life,” said he, “and that one was a missionary. He was also quite mad. Do you like missionaries? But there is no missionary here, as far as I know.”

“Oh, Reggie isn’t a missionary,” I said.

“He has just come back from India,” said Lady Hayes. “I am beginning to be suspicious. However, come and find him.”

Lady Hayes took my arm, and we went to look for Reggie. She had a habit of looking over people’s heads and not noticing any one. But Reggie was six foot four, and their eyes met.

Reggie stared until Lady Hayes began to laugh, and after a moment she turned to me and asked who that pretty boy was. Reggie also turned away and asked who the most beautiful woman in the world was.

Then I said, “Reggie, let me introduce you to Lady Hayes.”

And so the great loom clattered and shifted, and two more threads were laid side by side and woven into the garment of God. If you prefer the phrase you may call it a chance meeting, but it depends on what you mean by chance.

I left Reggie still at the dance when I came away about two o’clock in the morning, and Lady Hayes was still there too. Reggie came down to breakfast at half-past ten and plunged violently into a confession that was more exultant than penitent.

“And I am going to lunch with her,” he finished up. “She’s one of the nicest people I ever saw, and the most beautiful. I’m quite old friends with her already, and I told her all about Gertrude, and she wants to know her.”

Lady Hayes had been very nice to Reggie. She regarded him as a profitable investment which was likely to yield a large percentage of amusement. His confession of his young love, and the prospective marriage, seemed to her the most delightfully fresh and ingenuous thing she had ever heard. If the fiancée was as handsome as he they would be a perfect couple.

Two nights after this I received a note from Lady Hayes asking me to dine with her and go to the opera afterwards.

“Your charming young cousin,” she wrote, “who is the handsomest boy I ever saw, and with whom I have fallen entirely in love, is coming too. The opera is Tannhäuser. You were quite right about him, he is gloriously enthusiastic.”

Reggie was beaming with pleasure as we drove off from the house. He was very fond of music.

The overture to Tannhäuser is the most supreme expression of one of the greatest puzzles of life. In half an hour you are presented with the purest ideal of human existence and with all the subtlest seduction of pure sensuality. If that steadfast march of the pilgrims does not touch your heart you are lower than the beasts that perish; if the horrible loveliness of the army of Venus does not stir the devil within you, you are more than man. In that mystic golden rain of harmony and discord the wizard has shown us the bleeding, palpitating hearts of Galahad and Messalina, he has strung them together on his golden thread, and then the artist’s work being over he tosses them to us and says, “Choose.” He has given us all the factors which make up choice, he has shown us the living essence of the two warring principles swiftly and unerringly; and as Tannhäuser chose of old, so “chance” has ordained that each of us shall choose, and “chance” ordained that Reggie should choose that night.

We found Lady Hayes alone, looking like an incarnation of truth and beauty. She welcomed Reggie with evident pleasure, and I felt like a chaperone, though I was more nearly his age than hers.

“I am superintending Mr. Davenport’s education,” she said, “as he has got no one to do it for him—no one in town at least, and he doesn’t know any Wagner. To-night he shall eat the apple from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil——”

“Which Eve——” I began.

“On the contrary Augustus Harris offers it to him,” she interrupted. “It is very cheap even in the stalls, considering how valuable it is.”

She laughed charmingly.

“Have you heard from the real Eve to-day?” she asked Reggie. “She lives in Herefordshire, doesn’t she? There are very good apples in Herefordshire, but so there are in most places for that matter.”

I looked across at Reggie, and for the first time had a sudden feeling of uneasiness. He looked terribly in earnest.

“I have been listening to Reggie’s—you told me to call you Reggie, didn’t you?—to Reggie’s confessions,” she went on with an infernal consciousness of power. “He has told me when he is going to be married, and I am coming to the wedding, and am going to give the bride some hints on housekeeping; she has to have Reggie’s slippers warmed for him by half-past nine, because he is always going to be in by ten, and—ah! Reggie, don’t be angry with me, I talk nonsense only when I am happy, and I am very happy now. I look forward to a delightful evening.”

Dinner was announced, and she took Reggie’s arm, leaving me to follow. There was no one else there, and Lady Hayes kept up a sort of slow monologue, which, taken in conjunction with the expression of Reggie’s face, was nothing short of diabolical.

“You have never seen Tannhäuser, have you, Reggie? Well, it is a little difficult, and I will explain it to you. I shall give you the core now, and you will eat the apple afterwards. Tannhäuser goes to Venusberg, you know, and stays with Venus. Never go to Venusberg, Reggie, or, if you do, take Mrs. Reggie with you. I don’t suppose she will come, and if she won’t, you had much better not go at all. It is said to be very unsettling; they observe none of the proprieties at Venusberg, and there is no such thing as etiquette; you may dance with any one without being introduced, and all that sort of thing.”

Lady Hayes stopped a moment, and glanced at Reggie’s puzzled, half-protesting face.

“I’m awfully stupid,” he said with refreshing candour, “and I don’t think I understand what you are talking about.”

“You will understand soon enough when you hear the overture,” said she, “and it gets easier further on. Let me see, where was I? Oh yes, Tannhäuser is staying at Venusberg. Well, all the time the pilgrims are marching about to slow music, and when they come near Venusberg, the contrast between the two styles is very striking. You are a pilgrim, Reggie; domestic bliss is not incompatible with sandals.”

It was horrible. I suppose I uttered some angry exclamation, for she turned on me sharply.

“What is the matter?” she asked. “You know you will say to-morrow that you have been to Tannhäuser, and have enjoyed it immensely, and you will be quite conscious of all I have been saying, so why shouldn’t I say it? It is very moral, really; of course the Venusberg is only an interlude, and we all have our interludes, or we should not be human. Tannhäuser goes away very soon, and gets a pardon from the Pope, and though the pardon does not come quite in time, yet it is all right; you are certainly meant to feel that, and he dies in the odour of sanctity over the corpse of his young woman, who of course never goes to Venusberg at all.”

She paused again, and looked at Reggie.

“I always think it is just a little hard on Venus,” she went on. “You see Tannhäuser goes away just when she has got fond of him, and transfers his affections to Elizabeth, who has really nothing in the world to recommend her except her voluble piety—she is always singing long recitatives to the Virgin—and her fine soprano voice. Considering that half London always goes to hear Tannhäuser whenever it is on, it is wonderful to me how little sympathy she ever gets. But it is quite right, really, not to be sorry for her, she is not a nice person, and one shouldn’t consider her at all. Tannhäuser is usually performed on Saturday night, and Venus has to be put away altogether before eleven o’clock service on Sunday morning. You leave her at the church door. She wouldn’t go at all well with the Litany and the Penitential Psalms—in fact one prays to be delivered from her, and, poor dear, how they would bore her! And when you come out of church again, she is gone. She has not gone really, she has only gone elsewhere, and she often turns up again. And now I’m going to talk sense, although I have been talking sense all the time, really. Amn’t I a shocking old woman, Reggie? But I have been to Tannhäuser before.”

She laughed as an angel might laugh in the hallelujah meadow.

“I don’t know what you mean,” he said rather piteously. “I am awfully stupid, you know.”

“It is very easy to be incomprehensible,” I gave myself the satisfaction of exclaiming.

“And very unnecessary, is it not?” she added with the most disarming friendliness. “Yes, we won’t talk any more nonsense.”

Reggie brightened visibly, and confided to her that he had tried over the score of parts of the opera that afternoon, and could make nothing of it.

“There is a simple arrangement which you can get at most music shops,” said she. “Simple arrangements are much the best on the whole. It is very easy to be incomprehensible.”

She rose from her chair and went towards the door. “Adam has five minutes to smoke a cigarette, before the serpent—I mean the brougham—comes round to take him to the apple,” she said. “Ring for the coffee; I must go to get a shawl.”

We arrived at the opera house in good time, and had just taken our places when the overture began. The pilgrims’ march is given out first slowly, solemnly, the march of men walking steadfastly in perilous places, weary, yet undismayed. Then follows that strange chromatic passage of transition, without which even Wagner dared not show the other side of the problem, and then the great conflict between the warring forces begins. The great sensual animal began to stir, its heart beat with the throbs of returning life, and it rose up. The violins shivered and rippled and laughed as Venusberg came into sight, they rose and fell, gathering strength and rising higher with each fall, careless, heedless, infinitely beautiful. But below them, not less steadfast than before, moved the pilgrims.

The riot was at its highest, the triumph of Venus and her train seemed complete when Reggie suddenly got up, and, standing at his full, height, turned towards Lady Hayes. His face was very white and he tried to speak. At last the words came:

“You are a wicked woman,” he said; and the moment afterwards the door of the box had closed behind him.

Lady Hayes sat perfectly still for a long moment. Then with a sudden passionate gesture she sprang up, and took one step towards the door of the box. Then she stopped and turned round facing the rapidly filling house. The blaze of electric light shone on the great diamond star in her hair, on her tall white figure, on her incomparable beauty.

“He is quite right,” she said. “Ah, God! he is quite right!”

So Tannhäuser was performed twice that night.