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Chapter 23Vienna Exhibition — The “Friend of the Czechs”WIENER AUSSTELLUNG — DIE »TSCHECHENFREUNDIN«

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In the old “Kunstverein” I set up my quarters. The presentation was very stately: I also had with me my portrait painted by the Empress Frederick. The house porter recognised it at once, but remarked: “That'll be madam, I suppose, when you were older!” (And yet it had been painted in my tenderest youth!) The German ambassador of the day, von Wedel1, opened the exhibition for me. The custodian of the Kunstverein, Hofrat T., made it quite burdensome for me, but in the end it began to flourish. I also gave readings of my poems there and came more and more into Viennese society. Old Princess Pauline Metternich2 was very interesting to me, the famous “belle laide” from the days of the third Napoleon. —

I came closer to infinitely many new people, such as the lyric poets Anton Lindner, Leo G. and the novelist Emil Marriot3. Lindner and G. paid court to me. Lindner had something infinitely melancholy about him and made a certain impression on me. Until one day he confessed to me: if he came so often to see me at the exhibition, it was only because he had a deep, unhappy love and sought, in conversation with me, a palliative against his pains. —

With G. I made an excursion to the Kahlenberg. There, to my pain, I had to recognise that he was after nothing more (thank God in vain, though) than an adventure with a “lady.” No gratifying experiences.

And then I had another great upset with the Bohemian Ludvig L., my friend from Sylt4. He had come to Vienna expressly to get to know my art, and in his excitable way was infinitely taken with it; but found that the Viennese public behaved far too coolly towards it. So he resolved to remedy that.

One morning, after he had tried the evening before to get himself secretly locked in, which had miscarried, I found him in front of my Circe, a revolver in his hand. He meant to take his own life before it, to create a sensation for the exhibition.

Only with difficulty did I bring him back to reason, or believed so at least. — A few days later there suddenly blazed on every advertising pillar blood-red giant posters: “Hermione von Preuschen, the German woman of greatest genius, has an exhibition in the Vienna Kunstverein. It is a disgrace how little the Viennese interest themselves in it — she should come to Prague, there she would be better understood. A Czech in Vienna.”

When I first discovered it I was horrified, for I said to myself that my enemies would take this for a publicity trick on my part. I rushed to the poster office; the bills had been paid for eight days; I paid double to make them disappear. Meanwhile spiteful articles against the friend of the Czechs5 appeared in all the papers. Until at last the Viennese “Zeit” took pity on me and reported that a Herr Ludvig L. had been at its editorial office and had asked to run the same text as an advertisement, which it had refused. That it had evidently been a mentally disturbed man who, as it had just learned, was lying gravely ill with inflammation of the brain. That rescued me to some degree. All the same I received dozens of spiteful letters every day, in one of them, typewritten, even the threat to give me a sound lesson to remember on my departure.

My Viennese successes were somewhat soured for me by this, and I departed under an escort of friends and with a pounding heart.

That was in spring. — In the autumn I meant to go to Corfu and Athens, but received an invitation to recite poems in the Bösendorfer Hall in Vienna. I thought the Czech affair long forgotten, and accepted. My poems were the last of the evening. An agitated scraping of feet received me. After the second poem a hellish din suddenly arose, on keys and whistles, and agitated shouts: “Shut your mouth, silly goose, shut your mouth, friend of the Czechs!”

Then I drew myself up taller and spoke the poem I had just begun:

My Soul Now she breaks her bonds, Spreads her wings out wide And flies through lands of death Out into unending life. The ends of her wings trail Long behind her in the mire — —

(With a gesture of the hand towards the shouters)

The tips, though, reach Up into the red of dawn.

Then I swept out of the hall. It really was a brilliant exit. Outside, the agitated committee ladies embraced me, and the journalists assured me they meant to hush the unpleasant affair up. — “Why?” I asked proudly, “I beg you for the opposite.” — But they: “That is impossible — for it is too great a disgrace for the Viennese.” —

The next day my room looked like a prima donna's: the most glorious flowers and wreaths had been sent me, as a sign that one did not belong to the scandal-makers. The affair had given me much pleasure, and I often thought of it under the Greek sky. — Poor Ludvig L. was in due course, after his recovery, transferred to an asylum. From there he wrote to me that he wanted to buy the Circe. Some years later I received a postcard from him from the Caucasus. “I have inherited from my uncle and live here amid the most glorious nature. If only you could see it and paint it.” I wrote back to him, but after some weeks my letter came back as “undeliverable.” After that I never heard from him again. — —