Daniele Varè
Birthday in Berlin
First chapter of: Laughing Diplomat, 1938.

AN EMBASSY DINNER

12th of January 1900. A small dinner-party at the Italian embassy in Berlin. Fourteen people, most of whom were going on later to a Court ball; the men in uniform (all except myself) and the ladies wearing their finest jewels. Although I was then a very young man with no official position, the Ambassador often asked me to these dinners. I sat at the foot of the table, next to the Attaché, Don Attilio Serra, a Neapolitan with a melancholy ugly face, and a habit of frequently drying his eyes, for no apparent reason, with his pocket-handkerchief.

The Ambassador, Count Lanza, was not a diplomat by profession, but a general, whom King Humbert had chosen to represent him at the German court. The young Kaiser liked military uniforms even among foreign diplomats.

When I first arrived in Berlin, in the autumn of 1899, I regarded the the embassy suspiciously as one of those places where one went to receptions dressed up in one’s best clothes, and stood about uncomfortably in door-ways, while elder men with chests covered with decorations, and ladies with long trains that tripped one up, pushed past and saluted one another with a formal deference that, like charity, often covered a multitude of sins. Young as I was, I had some familiarity with official functions, my father having been in the government. Though he had been dead many years, his name was still remembered and carried with it a touch of the romance, which surrounds the Risorgimento. He was the companion in exile of Daniele Manin, after whom I had been called, and a friend of Mazzini.

General Lanza was so pleasantly hospitable that any feeling of shyness, as far as he was concerned, soon wore off, and I felt as much at ease with him as with the members of his staff (Melegari, Mattioli, Serra), not to mention Perugini, who in former days had been the General’s orderly and now accompanied him on his diplomatic mission in the quality of valet, or 'gentleman’s gentleman.'

I think that military men have more sympathy with youth than diplomats have. My extreme youth was possibly the reason why General Lanza was so kind to me and invited me so often to dinner. As my name did not appear in the Almanach de Gotha, a place could always be found for me at the tail of the procession. In this way I got to know as much of the political and social world of Berlin, as I knew of the musical world, which then centred round Joachim.

It was a happy coincidence that I should have been asked to dine at the embassy on the 12th of January, for it was my birthday — my twentieth birthday.

On the Ambassador’s right was the Princess Antoine Radziwill, and on her right again, the Prussian general Verdy du Vernois: a name that was reminiscent of the time when French Huguenots sought refuge in Brandenburg, after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes.

On the Ambassador's left was Lady Susan Townley, and next to her a thin nervous Italian, Edoardo de Martino, once a naval officer, and later 'Marine Painter to His Majesty, King Edward VII.' De Martino had come over from London for an exhibition of his pictures, that had opened the day before.

At the beginning of dinner, the conversation was about the exorbitant cost of flowers. The Ambassador told how, on the occasion of a ball at the Embassy, he had arranged for a railway-truck full of flowers to be sent to him from the Italian Riviera. He calculated that it would come cheaper than ordering plants and flowers from a shop in Berlin.

"And did it?” asked Lady Susan.

“It might have, if the flowers had arrived in time. But they turned up at the Anhalter station on the morning after the ball. That sort of thing always happens when I try to economize.”

Attilio Serra complained of the fruit in Berlin, and described the oranges that grew on his own fruit-farms at home. His hands made the gesture of holding something the size of a melon. A chorus of incredulity arose, but Serra refused to moderate his statement and offered to have some oranges sent to him, to distribute among those present. A chorus of thanks followed, slightly tinged with scepticism.

By the time we reached the entrée the talk had veered round to what seemed an inevitable subject of conversation at dinner-parties in Berlin, namely the Kaiser. Lady Susan spoke of a photograph she had seen of him, wearing an English uniform: the dark-blue 'parade coat' “of the Guards, probably of some regiment of which he was honorary colonel.

She said it was very becoming to him. General de Verdy muttered something in his beard about ‘that boy’ changing his uniform more often than his shirt. We all smiled, but nobody said anything.

De Martino told us that the Emperor had been to see his pictures and had held forth to him about a new idea of pouring oil on troubled waters. In future, all German battleships were to carry extra tanks of oil, to let out on to the sea when it was rough, so as to make it easier for the gunners to take aim. De Martino had his own ideas about this project. He said that, after every battle, one would be able to set fire to the ocean and make a fritto misto of the fishes.

The Princess Radziwill asked: "What did the Emperor say about your pictures?"

"I don’t think he liked the subject. Most of my pictures represent battleships of the British fleet. They reminded the Emperor that he wants more of his own. He says that Germany in the twentieth century must have a big navy.”

(Recalling this conversation in later years, I have wondered if de Martino and his pictures were not partly responsible for the great war.)

"By the way," said General de Verdy," what about the Emperor's decision that the new century should begin on the first of January of this I hear that in Paris and London they consider that the nineteenth tury will not end till next December.”

“It all depends,” said the Ambassador, “whether there was once a year 0, neither B.C . nor A.D.”

It was during the argument that arose on this subject that I ventured make my voice heard for the first time during dinner.

"What about me?” I asked. “I was born on the 12th of January 1880. Can I say that I am twenty years old to-day, or must I wait till next year?”

Nobody answered my question, but the Ambassador and General de Verdy raised their champagne glasses to drink to my health. The ladies followed suit and their eyes smiled at me over the sparkling wine. Attention was centred on my humble self, and somebody asked:

“Which is best? to be a Princess, a General, an Ambassador, or to be able to say — I am twenty years old to-day!”

Lady Susan wanted to know if it were true that I studied the violin with Joachim and that I meant to take up music as a profession.

“That was my idea when I first came here,” I answered. “ But I am beginning to have doubts. I am hesitating now between music and diplomacy.”

General de Verdy fixed me with a piercing blue eye.

“Young man,” he said, “let me give you a piece of advice. Don't become a diplomat, or you will lose your sense of humour among the formulas of official correspondence, and ruin your digestion among the courses of official dinners. Diplomats’ lives are made up of protocols and purgatives.”

“I don’t know about his sense of humour,” said the Ambassador, “ but it would be a pity if our young friend lost his appetite. At present il a un joli coup de fourchette !”

THE GRAND-NIECE OF TALLEYRAND

Then he turned to the Princess Radziwill and asked:

“What do you think of diplomacy as a career?”

“I think it lovely.”

General de Verdy interposed again:

“Careers are like women. They are lovely, while you love them.”

“Then you should love them always.”

“But again like women, they betray. In fact they are only interesting when they do.”

The Princess was shocked : “You of all people should not say that, General! One has only to look at all those stars and ribbons, to realize that your career has given you all that it can give.”

“Do stars and ribbons mean so much? And do the wrinkles round my cyes tell you that many women have given me all they had to give? Even so, it does not follow that I have not been betrayed.”

“And what might the moral be,” I asked, “for a young man who is thinking of becoming a diplomat?”

“This is the moral,” said the General. “Even after you have donned your livery, do not forget to laugh. Laugh at success and laugh at failure. Laugh at the way the world is governed. Laugh at others and above all laugh at yourself!”

The Princess glanced at me kindly. “There is a new character for you to create,” she said. “The Laughing Diplomat. Something like Der lachende Philosoph.”

“Or Franz Hals’s Laughing Cavalier,” said de Martino.

The Ambassador looked doubtful. “I am an old soldier, like the General, and I have not been long enough in diplomacy to know much about my colleagues as a class. But I have noticed that some of them, and some of their wives, take themselves very seriously indeed. Still you had better be careful,” he looked at me, “whom you laugh at, or you may get turned out of the service. If I were you I should be content to smile within.”

De Martino quoted the proverb: “Les heureux ne rient pas, ils sourient.”

“If you really are thinking of a diplomatic career,” said the Princess, come to see me some evening in the Pariser Platz. You know, I am the grand-niece of Talleyrand. All diplomats come to my house.” And turning to General Lanza: “Do they not, Monsieur l'Ambassadeur?”

With old-fashioned courtliness, the Ambassador took her hand and raised it to his lips. “Can you wonder?” he answered. “Diplomacy is in your blood. Beside you, we are nothing but amateurs."

I wondered at his saying that.

THE PHILOSOPHIC CABMAN

Dinner ended early, for the guests had to be more than punctual at the Court ball. Needless to say, I was not invited. From what I heard of Court balls in Berlin, I was not missing much. Everything was provided give you a good time, except gaiety.

Before leaving the Embassy, I waited till the other guests had got into their cartiages. My hat and coat were brought to me, not by one of the footmen, but by Perugini. And he had something to say:

“| do believe,” he exclaimed, “that you've been and bought yourself a fur coat!”

“One needs something of the sort in this climate,” I answered while he helped me on with the garment in question. Perugini seemed to think that he stood in loco parentis.

“How much did you pay for it?” he asked.

“Three hundred marks.”

“You might have done worse. The astrakhan collar is good. But the lining is mostly rabbit.”

“They told me it was bearskin.”

“They will tell you anything. Where are you going now? Home, or to some Tingel Tangel ?”

“Neither. I am going to Joachim’s. There’s a Quartet there to-night.”

“It’s lucky the dinner was over soon. Good night.”

“Good night.”

I stepped out into the Wilhelm Strasse and turned towards the Unter den Linden. It was beginning to snow, and a cold wind tossed the falling snowflakes. My fur coat was frogged, like a hussar’s dolman, and it buttoned up round the neck. Rabbit or not, it was warm and comforting.

Like Perugini, I was grateful for the fact that the dinner-party was over. An Embassy dinner was all very well to begin an evening with. A quartet at Joachim’s would fill up the time nicely till midnight. After that, I looked forward to something less exalted than the upper circles of diplomatic and musical society. Nymphs do not live on the summit of Olympus, but farther down the mountainside. And the night was young.

As I crossed the Pariser Platz to the Brandenburger Tor, I passed the house of the Princess Radziwill. Her doors would be open to me in future. On the opposite side of the square was the French embassy. An opulent-looking carriage waited, probably to take the Ambassador to the Court ball. I remembered that, if I were to arrive in time at my more humble entertainment, I must have a means of conveyance. Near the approach of the Thiergarten I found a 'taximeter', the predecessor of our modern taxi: a horse-drawn four-wheeler, with a mechanical box to tick out the fare.

The cabman was a seedy specimen of his kind, and the horse looked thin and miserable. There is something tragic about a horse and cab, waiting for a possible fare on a cold winter's night. If there had been hackney cabs in the Middle Ages, Dante might have put a line of them to shiver throughout eternity at the gates of hell.

I gave the address: “Bendler Strasse, siebzehn.”

To my surprise, the cabman looked down from the box and said:

“The house of the three musicians.”

“How do you know that?” I asked.

“I used to play the cello,” he said, as if that explained everything.

“And why did you give it up?”

“Because I was always drunk.”

“A very good reason. You are not drunk now, are you?”

“Not very. I cannot afford it.”

The cabman seemed to be a philosopher in his own way. But I had no time to go into his personal history. I got into the cab and we started down the middle avenue of the Thiergarten. The glass windows rattled abominably, ‘When we got to the Sieges Allee, he turned to the right.

I thumped on the window in front and shouted through the glass:

“Verfluchter Kerl! You are going the wrong way.”

He grunted and turned back. I could hear him talking to himself, but could not make out what he said. After about five minutes he set me down at Joachim’s door. The taximeter stood at one mark and forty pfennigs. I took some money out of my pocket-book.

"Sieh mal!” I began. “This is my birthday, and I am going to ask you to celebrate it. Here are thirty marks. You can get roaring drunk on that, and your horse can have an extra feed. He looks as if he needed it."

“He does, poor brute. And to-morrow he shall have a day’s rest while I sleep it off.”

The cabman had expressed no gratitude. He took everything in his stride. As he picked up the reins, he glanced at the windows of the house to which he had brought me. Tiny beams of light showed through chinks in the closed shutters.

“You are going to hear Joachim play?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“He is getting old and stiff in the joints. But he is better than most, even now. If I could play like him, there would be no need to get drunk. Wein, Weib und Gesang! I have tried them all, and now there is nothing left but wine, and not much of that. But to-night I shall drink deep: to your health, Jüngling!”

He was not respectful, that cabman! In the circumstances, most of his fellow-Jehus would have addressed me as Herr Graf at least. I stared after him as he whipped up his horse and started off. Someone came out of a doorway and hailed him, waving an umbrella to attract his attentlon. But the cabman took no notice. Icy gusts of wind, laden with a powdery snow, blew down the narrow street and made the gas-jets flicker in the street lamps. I ran up the steps and rang the bell.

VIOLIN LESSONS

When I first went to Berlin, my mother gave me an introduction to an old friend of hers, Baron von Keudell, who for many years was German was German ambassador in Rome. His career had been a strange one, made up of music, of soldiering and of diplomacy. Keudell had been a favourite of Prlnce Bismarck’s, on account of his exceptional talent as a pianist. There was a legend that, whenever Bismarck felt discouraged and depressed, he would ask Keudell to play the Apassionata of Beethoven. 'And lo, David played before Saul. And Saul was refreshed. And the evil spirit departed from him.' Keudell had accompanied Bismarck in the campaigns against Denmark, Austria and France. After that, he had been given various diplomatic missions. Since his retirement, he lived in the Bendler Strasse, in the same house as Joachim. They called it the house of the three musicians, for it had three floors, of which Joachim occupied the first, Keudell the third, and Markees the second. Markees was a younger man than the other two and a shining light in the musical world of Berlin. At that time he was the first violin in the orchestra of the 'Philharmonic'.

Following Keudell’s advice, I had placed myself in the hands of Markees, for the finishing of a musical education that had begun under Ettore Pinelli in Rome (himself a pupil of Joachim’s). What I learnt from my instructors in Berlin was a greater purity of tone, a greater simplicity and therefore more 'style'. Their aim was to eliminate all traces of the mechanical side of instrumentation, so as to give the impression of naturalness, likie that of moving waters. Joachim used to come in occasionally, in an old dressing-gown, and listen to me playing. He once remarked that I could do a thing with the violin that he had never attempted: I could play while wearing a high starched collar (they were the fashion in those days). This was the only compliment — supposing it was a compliment — that he ever paid me. But he was a dear old man, and never seemed to have enough of making music. He would play trios and quartets and duets, morning, noon and night. I believe it sustained instead of tiring him. And old as he was, there was a spontaneity in his playing, an unconscious youthfulness, that reminded me of the songs of Schubert.

I did not have an easy time of it, while studying with Markees. I used to go to him every morning for half an hour (not more — but I had to practise all day at home!), walking across the Thiergarten from my room in the Schadow Strasse, and carrying my violin in its case. Markees hat got it into his head that I held my violin all wrong. In order to train my wrist, he used to make me play, or attempt td play, with my left arm thrust through the back of the chair on which I was sitting. If any young violinist wishes to improve his style, I advise him to try this method. But it will drive him almost crazy at first.

A QUARTET BY BEETHOVEN

When I went to listen to the Quartet, on the night of my birthday, I found, to my surprise, that they were not playing in Joachim’s apartment but in that of Markees. The room hardly had space enough for the volume of sound that poured out from the four instruments, of which two were Stradivari of the best period. Joachim was playing second fiddle, and Markees the viola. The 'cellist was Robert Hausmann of the 'Joachim Quartet'. I looked with interest to see to whom they had given the part of first violin, and recognized Fritz Kreisler, recently returned to Germany having finished his military service in the Austrian army. They were playing Beethoven.

There were about ten people in the room and all the chairs were occupied. A couple of young students were sitting on the floor. I followed example and leant my back against the wall, near the fire-place.Close to me, in an armchair, was Baron Keudell. A young American girl who, like myself, was a pupil of Markees, sat in the middle of the room, her elbows on a small round table. She wore her hair in pigtails.

Markces’s apartment had nothing bohemian about it. No deep divans, no oriental touches, no busts of great musicians looming in the shadows. His furniture was in the usual style of Berlin flats at the end of the last century. The rooms were light and airy. In those conventional surroundings, the classic beauty of the playing was even more impressive. I remember thinking how innocent and pure is the finest German music, whereas the masterpieces of German literature, Faust and Tannhäuser, tell the tale of a lost soul.

As the last chords of the Finale floated through the air, I looked up at Baron Keudell. He had been both diplomat and musician. A sudden impulse came over me to ask his advice.

"Baron," I said, “I am beginning to have doubts about taking up music as a profession. I am thinking of the diplomatic service instead. Don't you think I'm right?”

He looked down at me and blinked, as though my question had brought him back to earth. Then he glanced at the musicians, who were standing and talking over the score that they had just played. The little American girl was still sitting there, sweet and solemn, with her chin cupped in her hands. Baron Keudell did not answer at once, and when he spoke it was to ask me a question.

"Have you ever read Wagner's essay on Beethoven?"

I answered that I had.

"Then you will remember what he says about the Pastoral Symphony: how it recalls the words of Christ — 'To-day thou shalt be with me in Paradise.'"

He paused, and I wondered what was coming. He made a gesture towards Joachim and Fritz Kreisler, and added:

"Not many of us, when they cease playing, leave their audience with a feeling of Paradise Lost. I think that you would do well to serve your country as I did."

It was a kind way of telling me that would never make a great musician. That being the case, I had better take up some other occupation. I remembered what the cabman had said: "If I could play like Joachim, there would be no need to get drunk!”

CHOICE OF PROFESSION

It was a quarter to twelve when I left the house in the Bendler Strasse and again took a cab, this time to the Pschorr Bräu in the Potsdamer Platz. The cabman was not drunk, nor was he philosophically inclined. Lenchen was waiting for me at our usual table, in the corner near the white porcelain stove.

Lenchen did not look like a German. She had a very white skin, dark hair and eyes and beautiful hands and feet. I believe she had Spanish blood in her veins. She once alluded to this possibility:

“My mother thinks (glaubt) that my father was a Spanish count!"

It was generally admitted that Lenchen’s mother was a thoroughly bad egg. But Lenchen herself was a good girl according to her lights, though these were occasionally rather dim.

She had a job at Wertheim’s, in the Gummi Waren department. I first met her when I went there to buy a pair of goloshes to keep out the mud and slush of the Thiergarten paths, on my morning walks to a from the Bendler Strasse.

The fact of being a few years older than I was, encouraged Lenchen to give me motherly advice. I told her how I had passed the evening and about my doubts as to the choice of a profession, What was best, music or diplomacy?

“I don’t quite know what diplomacy is,” said Lenchen. “What do you do exactly?”

"Sometimes you work at a Foreign Office, but mostly you live abroad, and write reports, and go to dinners and make love to pretty women."

"It does not sound very hard work. Could you not play the violin as well?"

I said that it might be possible.

Lenchen became reminiscent: "I had a friend once," she said, “who used to work in the offices of the Wagons Lits, in the Unter den Linden. In the evening he would go to Potsdam, to play the flute in a little orchestra."

"Like der Alte Fritz.”

"Lenchen did not seem to catch my allusion to the flutes of Sans Souci. She went on: “But of course, doing two things like that took up most time. I did not see much of him.”

""I must manage better. It is nice to be free at supper-time, to meet friends.”

"Lenchen agreed that it was so.

"When we had finished, I called the waiter and paid the bill. A few minutes later, Lenchen and I were walking home through the lighted streets. She put her hand in mine, inside the pocket of my fur coat. Snowflakes brushed our faces and lighted on our heads and shoulders. It was bitterly cold. Most of the people hurried along close to the houses, bending low to protect their faces from the wind, But Lenchen and I were indifferent to the weather. We joked and laughed, pressing close to each other.

"At a crossing of crossing of the Friedrich Strasse, a line of carriages passed us, the hoof-beats muffled in the snow. Coachmen and footmen wore bearskin capes, and the harness shone with burnished brass and silver. Through the carriage windows one caught glimpses of ladies’ opera cloaks and of men's uniforms. The guests were returning from the Court ball. I did not envy them their magnificence.

THE PRINCESS'S PROPHECY

Germany in 1900 gave the impression of a country growing steadily in prestige and in prosperity. Old men, like General de Verdy, like Joachim and like Keudell, represented the order that was passing. But others were there to take their place. And if the young Kaiser was restless and shallow-minded, such defects of character might well be tempered by advancing years.

Europe was not then divided into opposing camps, as it was later when France allied herself with Russia, and a Triple Alliance faced a Triple Entente. America had not yet experimented in foreign entanglements. Though the Kaiser had given a sensational warning against the Yellow Peril, people still regarded the Far East as a picturesque and distant world that furnished the willow pattern for dinner-services, and a colourful background for musical comedy.

Princess Radziwill was a cosmopolitan grande-dame of a type that has since disappeared. A Frenchwoman, married to a Polish nobleman with estates in Silesia and a high position at the court of Berlin, hers was the only salon that the Emperor himself frequented. She had a son in the Russian army and a daughter in Vienna (the beautiful Betka Potocka). Long before the word 'internationalism' became current among the smaller fry in Europe and in America, people like the Princess Radziwill possessed that broad-minded international outlook of people who are at home in every country.

A week after my birthday, General Lanza took me to see the Princess in her house in the Pariser Platz. When we arrived, there were no other visitors. Some people came in later, but for the first hour we were alone with her. She showed me a glass case, in which there were some relics of Talleyrand and of her ancestor, the Maréchal de Castellane. She asked me questions about my family and about Rome, and then turned to the Ambassador and talked to him while I sat by and listened. After a time, I think they both forgot that I was there. They spoke of people long dead and of days before I was born. I gathered that they were recalling the time of the Franco-Prussian war.

The Princess said that she had been horrified at the peace-terms imposed in 1870 on the country of her birth. At that time, her husband was aide-de-camp to old King William of Prussia and stood at his side when he was proclaimed Emperor of Germany at Versailles.

It was about some letters, written by the Princess to her husband at the army head­quar­ters, that she and the Ambassador were talking while I listened, though at first I was not much interested. It all seemed so very long ago. But when the Princess went and fetched one of those letters and read it to Lanza, I paid more attention.

Thirty years later, in the Club library at Rome, I came upon an extract from that same letter, quoted in a brief biography of the Princess, by Jules Cambon, in the Revue des Deux Mondes. When I read Cambon’s article the whole scene came back to me: the Princess with her lace and pearls; Lanza with his long moustache and kind smiling eyes; the clock on the mantelpiece, at which I glanced every now and then, calculating how much longer I must stay before joining Lenchen at the Pschorr Bräu. And then the Princess, reading aloud her own letter of so many years before:

"… One must have an absolute lack of knowledge of the French people, to wish to dictate a peace like that which Bismarck proposes! France will never give up the two provinces. It is not wise for Germany to awaken an unquenchable hatred in a people like the French. It is not wise to create the pretext for another war, which will not fail to break out someday, and which will turn in favour of France and of the allies, which jealousy of German power will have procured for her …"

No clearer forecast of the Great War was ever made; no wiser lesson was ever given, as to how peace should be negotiated, if it is to be peace indeed. And this letter was written by a young society woman, in September 1870, at the time when the first mistake was made (a mistake of which even then she foresaw the consequences), and half a century before the same mistake was repeated at Versailles.

No wonder that Lanza said to the Princess: "Diplomacy is in your blood. Beside you, we are nothing but amateurs.”