Today’s blog post is on quite a niche subject. When I was writing a short biography of pianist Sophie Menter (1846-1912) for Women and the Piano, I mentioned some of the extravagant things her fans used to do to show their adoration. When she played in Copenhagen in the 1880s, her recital was so rapturously received that some of her fans rushed outside, unyoked the horses from the carriage waiting to take her back to her hotel, and insisted on pulling the carriage themselves.
I thought this was probably a unique instance. How would her fans even get the idea? How would they know how to uncouple horses from a carriage? And how would the horses behave when suddenly unhitched from the carriage shafts? Wouldn’t it be dangerous for a group of young men to pull a heavy carriage themselves, especially if there was any kind of downhill slope involved, when the carriage might accelerate and run them over? It all seemed quite unlikely.
However, the other day I picked up James Joyce’s Dubliners and read his wonderful short story ‘The Dead’. In this tale, a New Year party takes place at a home in Dublin. Mr Browne speaks longingly of the fine Italian singers who used to come to Dublin to perform at the opera.
‘Those were the days, he said, when there was something like singing to be heard in Dublin. He told too of how the top gallery of the old Royal used to be packed night after night, of how one night an Italian tenor had sung five encores to Let me like a Soldier fall, introducing a high C every time, and of how the gallery boys would sometimes in their enthusiasm unyoke the horses from the carriage of some great prima donna and pull her themselves through the streets to her hotel.’
Well! Was unyoking the horses in order to pull the carriage yourself a more common occurrence than I had imagined? Or had James Joyce maybe heard the tale of Sophie Menter’s Copenhagen triumph and incorporated it into his story, disguising a pianist as an opera singer?
I asked AI how common it thought such carriage-pulling was. It replied that, if it ever happened at all, it must have been extremely rare owing to the risks involved. As it commented, ‘The logistics, safety concerns, and practicalities of the time would have made it highly improbable as a frequent form of tribute.’
Brilliant ‘niche’ anecdote!
Well! Now you’ve started something! I remember that because I studied The Dead as one of my A level English texts and surely ifJames Joyce incorporates it in Dubliners and you came across it as an account in Sophie Menter’s Copenhagen triumph there must be something in it as a practise of its time? I would imagine AI would take the ‘health and safety ‘angle because it might miss the historical context where such things were less important. No safety belts for me when I was put on the boot shelf at the back of my parents Volkwagon Beatle as the littlest child of the three on our drives to Dublin to stay with granny and it was only 50yrs ago! How fascinating to stumble on an account which sheds light on a practise now long gone and forgotten that we can hardly know if true or not. Thanks for these little anecdotes. ( By the way, your books are providing great reading which I recommend. I’m on the letter K of ‘A Musician’s Alphabet’ and couldn’t agree more!
No seat belts for me or my sisters either, when we went on long car journeys from Edinburgh to visit relatives in England! It’s strange to recall. It didn’t occur to me that AI would have been trained to take a modern approach to health and safety issues!
It’s strange how stories can get hugely distorted or even wholly made up yet still go down as historical fact. I am curious to know the truth behind the origin of the Goldberg Variations, as it is still widely quoted that the insomniac patron commissioned them for his harpsichordist to lull him to sleep. However Sir Andras Schiff doesn’t seem to believe a word of it, pointing out that it’s unlikely the then-14 year old harpsichordist could play such music, and perhaps more clinchingly that the piece has no dedication and therefore could not have been a commission. Perhaps our taste for a good story trumps our respect for the truth…
Yes, I think the Goldberg ‘origin story’ has been questioned for a long time now, but it still seems to stick. It is a very pleasing story, after all, and there is no doubt that 14-year-olds can be excellent sightreaders! But you must be right that our taste for a good story sometimes gets in the way of the truth.
I once read somewhere that ‘The Dead’ is considered the greatest short story of all time (whatever that means!). I’m not particularly moved by James Joyce, though I do find his stories entertaining. Friends who grew up in Dublin, however, have told me that they absolutely love him as he evokes so brilliantly their own experiences of the Irish people, even today.
I must say I was very struck by James Joyce’s ‘The Dead’. Something about the way it starts with a jolly social gathering and a lot of more or less trivial or predictable conversation, but gradually becomes more melancholy and focused on the serious late-night exchanges of one or two individuals before fading into one single person’s quiet awareness of life and death as snow falls all over Ireland. I could imagine the story re-cast as a piece of music, or a scene from an opera.