“Somebody wants to see you.”
A beautifully groomed, handsome, middle-aged man lifted his hat and after a cheerful “Good morning all around,” said: “Could you please announce me to the Baroness?”
Goodness—the camp manager! This camp kitchen was the last place in the world in which I wanted to meet him, but there he was, and there I was, and in that attire! Too late. Here was the precious man on whom the entire success of our camp would depend, as I had been told. But let’s hope for the best, for his imagination, for his sense of humor—after all, there is a war going on, and the camp will be finished in ten days, because it must.
Courageously I stepped forward to greet and introduce him. My apologetic remarks he took most graciously, and said:
“Never mind, never mind. Could you kindly show me the camp now?”
“But this is the camp!” the girls chorused in amusement.
“And this is the camp kitchen!” little five-year-old Johannes cried at the top of his voice. “It isn’t quite finished,” he added.
“Not—quite—finished—! You—don’t—mean—!”
I saw plainly that he needed a change of atmosphere, and suggested:
“Let’s go over to the recreation hall.”
Hedwig stopped me.
“No, Mother, I’m sorry, I’m painting there.”
Where else could we go? The dormitories were out of the question, the future chapel looked like a log cabin inside out, and as for the many lovely places under the trees and at the brook—the rain was pouring down. The taxi was still waiting outside. Soon I discovered why. The chauffeur wanted to know what to do with the two elegant pig skin grips, the tennis racket, and the set of golf clubs.
I suggested that he drive up to the farm for a cup of tea. Once at the farm I changed into my best with monkey-like speed and, trying to be charming as never before in my life, I painted a picture of the future camp in ravishing colors.
He listened politely, and then he suddenly discovered that for some important reason—how silly that he hadn’t thought of it before, he would have to go back to Boston on the next train!
“But you will come a few days before the camp opens, won’t you?” I repeated that question now, for the fifth time at least.
“If I can possibly manage it, I shall, of course. I shall write you a note first thing when I reach Boston.”
Two days later I held his letter in my hand. Among other things, he said—and I still have his letter:
“I had no idea you were not ready to operate. When I think of obtaining, shipping, installing and testing out equipment only for your kitchen by July 10—this is absolutely impossible. I strictly advise you to return your deposits and wait for next season to start RIGHT. To be perfectly honest, Madam, I doubt whether it is in your line to operate a camp….”
Return the deposits? Impossible, Sir; every cent was spent already.
What a blow! But I couldn’t get into real mourning merely for lack of time: the cook had arrived in Waterbury! This time it was a beautiful, sunny day. The lady cook showed much more understanding and real imagination than the well-groomed manager. The kitchen was freshly painted, and the stoves were just being cleaned with kerosene. After I had showed her around, continually explaining what this and that place would look like in eight days, we finished our business talk on the new benches under the trees at the brook. The gracious lady consented to come for seventy-five dollars a week under the following conditions: that she and her husband be given a three-room apartment close to the kitchen, that she have a large electric dough mixer, an electric meat cutter, a stainless steel coffee urn, a stainless steel sink, a gas baking oven, so and so many aluminum pots and pans….
I was so grateful that she was willing to come at all, that without looking at the list, I promised that everything would be ready. Overnight I went down to New York and spent the whole next day around Cooper Square, that paradise for kitchen equipment. I didn’t ask for prices any more. The main thing was—I got it all. Footsore and exhausted, I fell on my seat in the train the same evening to go back to Vermont, feeling as if I deserved the Purple Heart and the Congressional Medal.
Every day I grew prouder of my family. The girls started to paint and hammer as early as five o’clock in the morning, and worked through the day and evening until ten o’clock or later. If I wasn’t in New York or Boston or Montpelier in one of the offices, or on the train, I looked over the camp anxiously and counted the objects which hadn’t arrived yet. There were only five days more to go, and the beds hadn’t come. Pillows and blankets had arrived, but there were no beds to put them on; and the china was standing around because the kitchen cabinets were not yet ready.
Georg was busy at the farm; the haying season was in full swing, and plumbers and electricians were working in the house. He couldn’t help me much now, or so he thought; but the tight clasp of his hand once in a while and the reassuring twinkle of his eyes were the greatest help at that moment.
Father Wasner had his hands full, fixing the chapel and sacristy, ordering and copying music, numbering one hundred folders, making programs for the singing sessions of each day, and trying to obtain recorders.
The different houses at the camp had to be named. The girls suggested names of composers, the great masters. Johanna, who was very good at lettering, wrote the signs in white paint on green boards: “Mozart Hall,” “Palestrina,” “Schubert,” “Beethoven,” “Stephen Foster,” “Haydn,” and “Brahms Hall.” Then we came to the naming of the dining room. Father Wasner opposed violently our calling it “Johann Sebastian Bach Hall” that was a disgrace in his eyes. But it had to have a name. After the day’s work was done, the girls went through a music encyclopedia, and with howls of triumph they found out that Rossini, the composer of The Barber of Seville, had been a baker and a cook. Not even Father Wasner could find any objection to calling the dining room “Rossini Hall.”
Two days before the camp opened, half the beds were there. Two early guests came. Hastily we put them up on the farm.
July 10: The guests were expected on the evening train. The Governor of Vermont, the Selectmen of Stowe, our friend, the State Forester, and everyone from the village who cared to, were invited for the formal opening of the camp at seven o’clock in the evening, and still, half the beds hadn’t come. It wasn’t funny any more. Eighty-four people expected to sleep this very night, and I was still many beds short.
Among the guests who had arrived by different buses earlier in the day, there was a gentleman who noticed that I was alarmed about something. As I was running over the campus, he stopped me, put his hand on my shoulder, and said in a warm tone:
“All that matters now is that your boys and our boys come home safely. Isn’t that right?”
That saved the day for me. Not only that day, but very often afterwards when I was in trouble, I repeated those words, and they worked every time.
The plumbers had gone, the carpenters had gone, the electricians and painters, too. The dormitories and private rooms looked lovely, shining with cleanliness. The chapel was finished; it even had a little steeple. In the recreation hall was the small camp store, equipped with toothbrushes, pencils, stamps, and postal cards. And last but not least, that problem child, the kitchen, had emerged from the state of an ugly larva into a most beautiful butterfly. In the shiny kitchen floor were mirrored scores of stainless steel pots and pans and ladles. There was the coffee urn, the baking oven, an oversized dough mixer, an electric meat cutter, a brand-new kitchen table seven by seven feet, and a brand-new kitchen cabinet. The large refrigerator was stuffed with hams, ducks, chickens, and veal, and the pantry looked like a medium-sized country store. In the cellar you couldn’t walk any more. And in the center of the kitchen dwelt the most imposing object of all—the lady cook, with a tall, snow-white cap and the air of a Dowager Empress. Her husband was unpacking their luggage in the newly created three-room apartment furnished with maple furniture, according to their wishes.
Four girls waited on the Empress. Oh, it was a delight to look into this well-run sanctuary. The heartpiece of the camp was secure.
If only that second shipment of beds would come. One couldn’t even call, because they had been shipped by truck, and the truck was “on its way.” For heaven’s sake! During the formal opening ceremonies, while we were singing the National Anthem, Georg was supposed to raise the flag slowly—and we had forgotten to buy a flag! It was five o’clock, too late for the stores. Georg rushed down to Stowe and borrowed the one from the high school for this night.
My secretary was busy writing names on little white cards to be tacked to the room doors and over the beds in the dormitories. The express office called to tell us that a few huge packages were waiting for us. Thus the three dozen white aprons came just in time for the young waitresses, who had started to set the tables for the first meal.
Around six o’clock Governor Wills came. How I would have liked to stay with him, looking relaxed and cheerful; but a lady was looking for her luggage, which she had sent a week ago, and in the kitchen they had discovered that I had forgotten to purchase a can opener—what about the tomato juice then?
Little Johannes, sitting on a tree, watching the highway down in the valley, suddenly yelled:
“The buses are coming!”
Our guests had arrived. My husband, the girls, and I welcomed them. Then Governor Wills in his inimitably winning way opened solemnly and formally the Trapp Family Music Camp. Everyone joined in singing “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and slowly the flag rose over our camp for the first time. The Governor addressed the guests and welcomed them in the name of the State of Vermont. The Selectmen followed in welcoming them in the name of the town of Stowe, and my husband welcomed them in the name of his family.
After the opening ceremonies we ushered the guests into the dining room.
“Dear Lord,” I prayed most fervently, “and here they are going to stay until You have sent the remaining beds” and I asked the waitresses to be very, very slow.
The incredible happened again. Before the juice glasses were taken off the tables, the truck arrived, and everyone helped to put the beds up; and when the guests left Rossini Hall, strengthened and refreshed, everything was ready. Camp guests and townspeople grouped themselves on the lawn around the flagpole, and we gave them a little welcoming concert under the stars. We couldn’t help thinking back to that first starlight performance in the same place two years before, and as we looked up into the sky, we saw flashes of green and golden light darting upwards—northern lights. It reminded us of that crisp winter day when it all had started, and we felt as if we were still standing under the rainbow.
When I came out next morning, my secretary was already waiting with big eyes.
“I’m so sorry to disturb you—but we have no water in the camp. The spring has run dry; the water supply is not enough for all the people.”
The guests were already streaming into the dining room. I had only two minutes’ time, and then I had to “say something.” With a knife I tapped on a glass, and then I announced cheerfully:
“Ladies and gentlemen, will you please get your music and also your towels ready. We want to give you this morning the sensation of a shower in the wilderness. The buses are on their way. We shall have a picnic at Bingham Falls.”
And so we did. While the whole camp was enjoying a hot summer day at the cool waterfalls, making up for the lack of a morning bath, Mr. Steele, the ever-helpful, brought an electric pump, made a temporary pipeline from the brook into the houses, and supplied the bathrooms with brook water, leaving the spring water for wash bowls and kitchen.
From then on things went smoothly.
Every morning and every afternoon we sang with our guests the immortal music of the old masters down in the grove near the brook. We sang rounds and folk songs of many nations. We sang choral works of the classical masters, and it was pure joy to witness how persons who had never before sung to any extent, could derive such deep satisfaction out of learning those wonderful pieces. Every night we all danced folk dances on the lawn. For a whole day we took them up the highest mountain in the State of Vermont, Mount Mansfield; on another day we showed them one of the loveliest lakes of the neighborhood, carrying along music and food. Every excursion was a success. Every night after Benediction was over in the chapel, we sang a few motets and hymns to give those hearts present a little more chance to enter into the spirit of prayer. There was so much to pray for. So many of us had loved ones in danger: sons, husbands, brothers, fiancés. Saint James says: “Is any of you sad? Let him pray. Is he cheerful in mind? Let him sing.” Many of those souls hadn’t prayed for a long time. There, music acted as a magic key, to which the most tightly closed heart opened. In these moments we felt the heartpiece of our most noble vocation, as Longfellow once expressed it:
God sent his Singers upon earth,
With songs of sadness and of mirth,
That they may touch the hearts of men,
And bring them back to heaven again.
XVII Snapshots of the Camp
THE first camp summer was over. Everything had been done now once for the first time, and we could witness how the foundation of a tradition is laid. The arrival of the guests for every Sing Week, the picnics, the typical camp routine, and the last evenings would repeat themselves year after year, until some day somebody would say: “We always used to do it this way.”
The ending of the camp was very touching. There were funny surprises during the last evening meal. Little groups performed short scenes from camp life. After that, Maria’s recorder class gave a short concert, showing what could be done in just nine days of teaching. We all laughed to tears when the beginners, shaking and trembling with stage fright, produced out of pure nervousness funny little shrieks while playing “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”
It showed again that the recorder is the ideal instrument for any adult whose childhood musical education has been neglected. If someone discovers on his fiftieth birthday that he should have taken piano or violin lessons while in school, he will hardly want to start then, for fear of not getting very far; but he will always miss it—to be able to “make music” himself. That’s where the recorder comes in handy. After six weeks of faithful practicing, even the oldest pupil can play folk tunes very nicely. The combination of soprano, alto, tenor, and bass recorders gives a lovely, mellow sound. There is no limit to the literature which can be played, beginning with easy, four-part settings and going through the vast realm of madrigals and motets. One or the other player will get even more ambitious and find out for himself about the wonderful literature written for the recorder: sonatas by Telemann, arias by Bach, etc., real virtuoso literature, too. There are untold riches in that little instrument, which can be had for less than twenty dollars.
And it really happened. People who had started out with “Mary Had a Little Lamb” in that first camp summer, and who came back year after year, are now playing Bach and Telemann, to Maria’s pride and joy. They themselves have spread the enthusiasm among their friends, and the forgotten recorder is enjoying a revival all over the States.
After the recorder concert by Maria’s class, we all went down to the chapel. Once more we prayed together in thanksgiving, and then we sang for our guests once more by candlelight their favorite songs: “The Children’s Blessing,” “The Lord Is My Shepherd,” “The Virgin’s Lullaby.”
After that we went over to the little dell where we had given that historic concert for the soldiers, and a huge bonfire was lit.
Next morning three big buses came to take our guests to the train. When the buses were filled, they lined up abreast, facing us, and for the last time, the campus resounded with the round: “Viva, Viva la Musica!” each bus taking a part. Many a tear was shed. Everyone was sorry that the Sing Weeks were over.
The Trapp Family Music Camp had turned out to be the answer to the question which had been asked hundreds of times backstage after a concert, at parti
es, in letters:
“How could we do what you are doing: sing in our family?”
In that ten-day course we try to make the people acquainted with as much musical literature as possible, from easy beginnings to complicated cantatas and fugues. The excuse, “We couldn’t possibly sing—we have no piano,” is being discarded, as we usually sing down at the brook or under the old butter-nut trees outside of the recreation hall. Besides the singing, we also try to revive those beautiful old folk dances from all nations, and we try to show our friends at the camp that the best recreation is the kind where one does things oneself with others joining in: singing, dancing, playing games, telling stories, reading aloud, enacting those wonderful old folk customs throughout the year, following the word: “A family which sings together, plays together, and prays together, usually stays together.”
Our age has become so mechanical that this has also affected our recreation. People have gotten used to sitting down and watching a movie, a ball game, a television set. It may be good once in a while, but it certainly is not good all the time. Our own faculties, our imagination, our memory, the ability to do things with our mind and our hands—they need to be exercised. If we become too passive, we get dissatisfied.
The Story of the Trapp Family Singers Page 29
