146 Mr. George Henschel [June 2, 



when Brahms said, " No, this is no woman." I went into the hall to 

 look and found he was right. " Yes," he said, " in this respect I am 

 hardly ever mistaken ; and it is by no means easy to distinguish, by 

 sense of hearing alone, a feminine man from a masculine woman." 



July 15. — Yesterday morning I took Brahms the orchestral score 

 of Wagner's " Gotterdammerung," In the afternoon he said to me, 

 " Why did you bring it to me ? " (He had particularly asked me for 

 it !) " The thing interests and fascinates one, and yet, properly 

 speaking, it is not always pleasant. With the ' Tristan ' score it is 

 different. If I look at that in the morning, I am cross for the rest 

 of the day." 



I well remember my wondering at the time just what meaning 

 Brahms intended to convey by these words. My old friend, Herr 

 Max Kalbeck, Editor of the Neues TagUatt, in Vienna, who pub- 

 lished excerpts from my diary in that paper some years ago, makes 

 the following comment on them : — 



" This sentence needs an explanation, as it could easily be inter- 

 preted as meaning that 'Tristan,' in contrast to the 'not always 

 pleasant ' ' Ring of the Nibelungs,' had pleased Brahms very 

 much, so much, indeed, that it made him cross, out of envy. We 

 know, from personal experience, that Brahms, though warmly ac- 

 knowledging the many musical beauties of the work, had a particular 

 disHke for ' Tristan,' and as to envy, he never in his life envied 

 anyone. In Wagner he admired, above all, the magnitude of his 

 intentions and his energy in carrying them out. The Bayreuth 

 Festival Theatre he hailed as a national, aU-German affair. We 

 believe the chief reason why Brahms never went to Bayreuth is to be 

 found in the circumstance that the performance always happened at 

 a season when he, after long and arduous creative work, was wont to 

 give himself up entirely to the recreation of an out-of-door life in the 

 country." 



In celebration of the sixth anniversary of the declaration of 

 war between France and Germany, we ordered a bottle of champagne. 

 Brahms had talked himseK into a tremendous patriotism, and told 

 me that his first thought, when the war was declared, was to go to 

 Mme. Schumann, who resided, without the protection of a man, at 

 Baden-Baden. 



" So great was my enthusiasm," he said, " that I was firmly 

 resolved to join the army, after the first great defeat, as a volunteer, 

 fully convinced I'd meet my old father there to fight side by side 

 with me. Thank God I it turned out differently." 



Yesterday I was with Brahms from noon until eleven at night 

 without interruption. He was in excellent spirits. We had our 

 swim in the sea together, and again amused ourselves and each other 

 by diving for little red pebbles. After the midday dinner, Brahms 

 was lying in my room, in the hammock which I had secured between 

 window and door, while I read to him Meilhac's amusing comedy, 



