I may have told Sarah that I longed for children when she told me she did, but none had come. But I’m certain I never revealed that, since the time of his first serious illness in Saratoga, Robert had no capacity for the conjugal act. We had believed that illness to be a kind of pox, because of the terrible rash. When the scaly patches formed on his back and legs, I finally persuaded him to have the doctor inspect it.
Robert saw him alone in his offices: it was not the pox. The Saratoga Springs physician, Dr. Holmes, did not really know what it could be, Robert reported to me after the examination, but he prescribed a smoothed lump of sulfate of copper to be applied to the afflicted areas. I rubbed them carefully (painfully for poor Robert), but it did no good. Some of the areas became ulcerated and oozed a rank yellow pus. The doctor instructed me to apply a yeast poultice. On the worst places I placed, again at his instruction, a pack of crystals of acetate of soda. Robert would cry out in pain at these applications.
“What is it?” I asked the doctor on the one occasion I was in the examining room with Robert, who had grown weak and nervous under the ailment and could hardly walk alone.
I noticed he looked at Robert speculatively. Robert shut his eyes, and then the doctor said, “It is very hard to say.” But the strange rash receded, taking with it his old, occasional desire for me and some of his thick, dark-red hair, which came out on his pillow and his shoulders in broom-like segments. It seemed to me he showed more concern for his loss of hair than for his connubial failure.
None of this did I tell Sarah. Even to myself I have not rehearsed these elements of my marital life, until now. Because to the musical world Robert was a much beloved figure. But this public man, this famous man, was important also to me, who needed private love so much. His indifference and discontent with me seemed at the time of no great moment beside his fame. He was renowned, a talented musician, “a composer of genius,” many critics had already written. My contributory existence and auxiliary services, like my small, thin physique, were of no account in his light. History must be full of such alliances between famous men and their satellite, serving wives. Their true persons and their inner lives are rarely known or described in the painful and almost faithless detail I have given here.
And Sarah would go on and on with her logorrheic talk: “He spent this morning making special food for his warblers (although, he said, peregrines were said to be fond of it, too), roasting bread crumbs in the baking oven, and then mixing in the seeds of pumpkins. When I tried to enter the kitchen he told me I would confuse his recipe, so I left him alone. I’m sure he prefers his birds to me. I think he would like to live in a house under the eaves with them if only he could construct one large enough to hold them all.
“One died early this morning. Apparently its neck was broken as it flew head-on into the multiple apartment dwelling that hangs from the back roof. It lay on its side on the floor of the veranda. It was a finch, I think (I don’t know the birds well, and I was afraid to ask Gordon). Its purple head was turned entirely backward as though (Gordon said) it had been examining its past in its last moments: a classical bird. Its beak was red with its own blood. The Professor wept and sat still on the veranda all morning looking at it and would not pick it up to dispose of it, and its blood sank into the wood. I sent the maid to him and he told her, politely, mournfully, to go away. I think he’s quite mad.
“Did I tell you that last summer he discovered there were pigeons living in our attic above the maids’ quarters? The maids said they would not stay if they were not removed. But the Professor lectured them, told them the pigeons had come there to find a shelter against the neglect and cruel treatment by the villagers, who find them dirty and offensive and try to poison them. Once I found him on the stairs climbing to the attic carrying a loaf of freshly baked bread and one of my down pillows. He said, ‘They are nesting.’
“They are still there, although in the winter they seem quieter. One maid left in August, saying birds over her head frightened her. The other two, I think, have grown used to the rush of wings and the scratchings of feet and beaks on the boards above their heads.
“Flight. That is all he now talks to me about. Mad! Only organisms capable of flight are entirely alive, he believes. Walking creatures, weighted to the earth, are half dead, their feet turned and moving one after the other down into the full, dry dirt of the grave. ‘Flight,’ he says, ‘is life, the climate and reminder of eternity, of ascent, not deathly descent, of triumph over the Fall. Not until men fly,’ he says, ‘will they be immortal. Some insects and birds are without mortal restraints. I have studied them, day and night. I know.’
“Nastily, I asked him about the dead finch, despising him and his madness and wanting, I suppose, to hurt him, to strike at his crazy creed.
“He never listens to me, he never hears me. He doesn’t answer.”
I go on too long about Sarah. But her stories about the Professor (who died peacefully in his sleep, I remember, at the age of eighty-six, long after Sarah had drowned in Lake George, thrown from a boat during a storm, they said) occupied and entertained me in those years. She introduced me to the life of the town, and through her I made friends with a few wealthy summer residents who came for the races: Anne Rhinelander, Cecily Lorillard, the Leland sisters, Emily Chisolm. They were later to form the core of the Maclaren Foundation, from which the Community grew. I have always been grateful to poor Sarah for that, and pitied her for her ripe, charming middle age wasted upon an aging, obsessed husband. I have always held to the private belief that she drowned herself, went downward into the cold blue water of Lake George to escape the Professor, or to provide him with further proof of his aeronautical metaphysics. But of course I do not know.
On the thirtieth day of August, 1904, Paderewski died. I will never be able to eradicate the memory of that day.
He was twelve years old, but for him it was extreme old age. He seemed to have come to it long before his appointed canine span. His sight had almost gone under the weight of cataracts in both eyes, we were told. His last months were noisy. His body was subject to attacks of ague. During them his trunk would shake, and his tail, independently agitated, would thump hard against the bare floor where he always lay because he hated the heat and texture of our oriental rugs. Most of the day he slept, breathing heavily, each long, hard breath ending with a penetrating snort, often so loud that it could be heard in the rooms at the other side of the house.
His nights were sleepless. We were never able to discover what disease it was that aged him so early and drove him so inexorably into senility and sickness. Sometimes in his deep internal distress, he would hoist himself painfully onto his thin legs and withered paws and move about the dark house, walking almost blindly, stumbling into chiffoniers and chairs, sideboards, and piano legs.
What was he searching for in those black rooms among the lifeless dark furniture, down at the edges of the tasseled heavy drapes? Was it Robert, the young, brisk, charming man with loving hands and bright smile, the soft, cocked way of listening, the gentle, amorous voice? I do go on here unpardonably, but I, too, remember Robert in this way. He had long ago exiled the aged dog to my quarters because his heavy, long-haired pelt gave off an odor not unlike mold and was offensive to him. Paderewski’s pounding tail and snores during the day were disturbing to his work.
I have said it was late August, a very hot summer noon. The air was heavy, oppressive, with the promise of rain. My rooms, so close to the eaves over the south end of the house, were warm; it was hard to breathe the thick, still air. I thought I would walk out into the woods that stretched behind the house. Deep within them were cool, pine-walled, and needle-carpeted pockets, almost small rooms, where I used to sit in the months of the heat to read.
Paderewski was asleep, as usual, on the stone floor before the hearth. I remember starting out, and then returning for a shawl to sit upon. I don’t remember, but yes, I must have done so: I left the side door ajar. Robert was certain that I had. He t
old me I had become forgetful, and perhaps he was right. It was from being alone so much, I came to believe, and having no markers, no hitching posts, in the long silences for my memory to fasten upon. But I do remember I was gone two hours during the hottest part of the noon and after. When I returned to my room, Paderewski was not in his sleeping place.
I searched the downstairs, knowing he could not have climbed the stairs. Desperate to find him, I disturbed Robert in the only place I had not been, the music room. Robert was resting on his couch at that hour, his eyes closed. But he was not asleep.
“Of course he is not here,” he said, sounding irritated. I knew he hated to be disturbed during the day. He once told me he listened in his head, during his afternoon rest, to what he had written that morning. But he was upset enough at Paderewski’s disappearance to come outside in his shirt sleeves to help me search.
We walked around the house, calling his name. Never, until that day, had that tributary name seemed so unsuitable for a dog. To be calling for a renowned, middle-aged pianist in the steaming Saratoga woods: I felt foolish. But he was nowhere near the house. We started to walk down the long, dusty Farm road—the road that was later to be given Robert’s surname by an edict of the town council. But I think I may have already written this.
We rounded the bend in the road from which it is possible to see the avenue beyond. Coming toward us were two men, carrying on a board between them what we could tell at once was the bloodied fur and crushed head of Paderewski. They were evidently summer visitors. Their straw boaters, white duck trousers, and striped linen jackets marked them apart from the native men who rarely dressed this way in midafternoon. Robert ran ahead to them.
“What happened?”
“Is this your dog?” one man asked.
“Yes. Yes.”
The man—we were later to learn his name was Henry Huddleston Rogers—his face troubled and solemn, said, “It was entirely my fault. Entirely. I did not see him standing in the road until the horses were almost upon him. I shouted. I tried to rein them in, but it was too late. I am entirely to blame. What can I say?”
Robert seemed stunned, yet ready to agree with the poor contrite fellow, I thought. I intervened: “No. Don’t think that. He never leaves the house. He must have wakened and been confused by a dream, or something like that. He’s never done this before. Usually I’ve had to half carry him out.” I knew I was rattling on foolishly.
“Oh, be still, Caroline.”
Robert pushed me aside. He lifted the dead dog from the board into his arms, staggering under the weight. Somehow he managed to turn and walk back to the house, bearing Paderewski in his arms.
The man who had not spoken tipped his hat to me and started back down the road to the avenue, carrying the bloodstained board.
Mr. Rogers said, “This is terrible. I wish I could do something.”
In the distance we could hear the roar of the crowd. Down the hill at the track the first race of the afternoon must have started.
“I’m Mrs. Maclaren.”
“The composer’s wife?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, I’m so terribly sorry for this. That must have been the … your husband. This is terrible. Will you tell him again how sorry I am?”
“I will. But don’t blame yourself. The dog was old and almost blind.” I put my hand out. “Good-bye, Mr. …”
“Rogers.”
“Mr. Rogers. Good-bye.”
I almost ran back. Robert had taken the massive burden into the house: the front door was open and there was a light smear of blood on the middle panel where he must have brushed against it. I found them in the music room. Robert had put the dog down on the top of the closed piano, where he lay, already stiffened, his blind eyes opened to a new dark, his once-handsome coat suffused and beaded with blood and dust. Around him the piano cover, at that time, I remember, a fringed shawl I had brought back from Frankfurt, lay in contrasting splendor to the mangled Paderewski. Already he seemed to have shrunken, a mass of confused hair, paws, ears. Only his fine long narrow aristocratic muzzle remained intact.
Robert insisted on keeping him there for one whole day. I was reminded of Professor Watkins and his finch. Uncharitably, I thought of how anachronistic his attention to the dead dog was: for several years he had not allowed the animal in that room. Robert did not work the rest of that day but walked about the room, his hands behind his back, circling the piano, his eyes often on the now redolent carcass. I mourned Paderewski alone in my room, remembering all the haptic pleasures of that silken fur, the firm softness of his long, sleek, sensitive head and ears and nose.
Robert was more silent than ever at dinner that evening, and I suppose I, too, was absorbed in my own grief. I was full of it, ready to break down at the thought of losing the companion of my solitude, my walks and rests, in all those years since Germany.
On the second day Robert called our groundsman, Edward Collins, to remove the dog. Edward had dug a grave on a grassy little hill at the far end of the property. He brought a wooden box he had made to convey the body in. Robert would not watch the removal and conveyance. He refused to see Paderewski buried. I followed the farm wagon to the grave and stood at the side of the small, deep trench as Edward put the box into it, covered it with dirt and placed squares of sod over the raw spot.
“Will we want a marker for it, ma’am?”
“I’ll ask Mr. Maclaren tonight what he wishes done.”
“Very good.”
But somehow Robert and I never mentioned Paderewski to each other again. Ida told me she had been unable to remove the bloodstains from Robert’s shirt even after three washings, so I gave the shirt to Edward, who seemed very glad to have it. Robert did not ask after it. The piano shawl had to be disposed of.
The grave was never marked. I walked often to the place after that. From it there was a lovely view of the Adirondacks to the west, and the wooded hills of Highland Farm on the other side. I thought Robert had forgotten the place—he rarely walked that way alone that I was aware of, and surely never with me. But he must have remembered it. For later, in a cubbyhole in his desk, Anna Baehr found a small piece of staff paper on which he had written:
We did. Robert lies there now. We did not disturb the small box Edward uncovered when he dug Robert’s grave. The granite marker, elaborate and imposing, was put in place by the Maclaren Foundation in the years when it had the money to do that sort of thing. It is imposing, with Robert’s name and dates, and my name and birth date. Only the final date is missing. Soon it, too, will be chiseled into the stone. Then we shall both lie beside our dog.
The letter said:
The trustees and the President of Columbia University are pleased to inform you that the University wishes to bestow upon you the honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters at the Commencement on June 5, 1905,
and went on to give the details of the time and the arrangements that would be made for the comfort of those to be honored.
Robert showed it to me at dinner one evening and wondered if he ought to go. “Of course you must go. It is a great honor. You will enjoy yourself, and it’s been so long since we have been to the city.”
“But, Caroline, so long a trip? How will we travel? How much time will we have to spend in New York?” He was full of anxiety, his voice so low I could hardly hear him.
“A week, perhaps. Oh, Robert, you will enjoy it, I’m sure. We can hear some music and visit the galleries. Some of your former pupils live there, and your friends, friends from Hoch and Boston. Churchill teaches at Columbia. We can see him. Oh, Robert, let’s go.”
I watched him struggle to decide. He seemed worn out and very tired: The dog’s death has diminished him, I thought. His work, all the copying it required, seemed to take him longer and longer, he stopped earlier than he used to. More and more often when I came to call him to dinner I would find him stretched out on his couch, exhausted. Lately, he said, he would lie down to rest at three. When I came at six,
he was still there, inert and half-asleep.
How old and frail he looked to me now! His hair was more gray than russet, and very sparse. After that strange illness it had never returned to its full, thick, youthful growth. No trace of the old, charming smile remained, for he never smiled now. Looking at him, I was reminded of Paderewski, for Robert was like him: prematurely old at thirty-three, spent and lusterless, a used-up man.
Our preparations for the trip took almost a week, the packing of the grips, the arrangements made for a landau to convey us to the railroad depot in Saratoga Springs, the purchase of our tickets. For Robert it would have been a wearying series of chores, so I spared him everything but his actual presence at the departure. For me it was a great delight.
The season was just beginning. The arriving trains were full of stylish-looking visitors. Outside the depot the roads were crowded with omnibuses, dogcarts, and phaetons waiting to take travelers to the Grand Union and the United States hotels. I remember that the bells in the depot cupola rang as a train approached or departed. Robert disliked the racket and cringed against the terrible noise, but I enjoyed it all: the bells, the sounds of cars and horses, the shouts of Negro porters, train whistles, all making a fine cacophony of active, alive sounds.
We took a Pullman room. But Robert hardly slept. I stayed awake with him while he went over and over his short acceptance speech. He was trying to commit the ten or so sentences to memory, but he seemed unable to do it. I felt an uneasy surprise at this, at Robert who, a few years ago, could conduct the Brahms Fourth and the Beethoven Seventh symphonies together in one evening’s program without the scores.
In those agonizingly long hours, traveling through the dark state along the Hudson River, past the dim, sleeping river towns (for Robert would not permit me to draw the shades over the windows: he said he felt very confined in the small room allotted to us), I realized for the first time how much he had failed. In our house at the Farm surrounded by familiar objects and secluded by the custom and routine of our quiet lives, I had not noticed, or perhaps I had not looked closely. My own days and nights were of an unchanging sameness which I must have extended to his. Now in this unfamiliar, moving place I could see how far down he had gone. Can I be blamed for my blindness? When he was sick he would not tell me until it was unavoidable, as though there was a shame in admitting to bodily weakness. And even then, he resisted having a physician called to see him. He must have hidden his symptoms and his debility to have grown so old, so quickly, so soon.
Chamber Music Page 8
