The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2

e Germans call a Russian; the Russians, a German. He was the son of a well-to-do mining and military engineer, who believed in marriage and made three

chaikovski's moroseness, which bordered on morbidness and always hovered on the brink of insanity, made it perhaps fortunate for at least two women that his negotiations with them ended as they did. And so he drifted-not such a ba

mbled all night; so the husband was not the only gainer by the separation. Nikolai and Tschaikovski set up a ménage together for a time. Tschaikovski, however, had not learned that womankind was not

cared nothing for petticoats. He had written his sister a year ago that he was tired of life, and marriage did not tempt him; he was, said he, "too lazy to woo, too lazy

ures make her nearly beautiful, and who is recorded as a queen of grace and a queen of dramatic and lyric song. She was wit

r not writing his brother-he was all monopolised by the singer. So he went swirling into the current. He tried to keep away; they met by acciden

and her mother objected. She did not want to be merely the wife of her husband; nor he, merely the husband of his wife. He appealed

r has loved her. He has taste and talent, and would choose a wife of his own nature. The few years difference in age are of no moment. If your lo

hy worry whether you live at Moscow or St. Petersburg? She should not leave the stage, nor should you abandon your career. True, our future is known only to God, but why should you foresee that you will be robbed of your career? Be her servant, but an independent servant. Do you truly love her and for all time? I know your character, my dear

parting must have been cold, for in January, 1869, Tschaikovski wrote his brother a letter, excitedly referring to the acceptance of his opera, and coldly h

ngaged to a singer in her own troupe, the Spanish baritone, Padilla y Ramos, who was two ye

ained." He was still flirting desperately with grand opera. A year later

me many a bitter hour, and yet I feel myself drawn toward her with such

hat streamed down his cheeks. The two did not meet, however, for seven years, and then unexpectedly. He called at Nikolai Rubinstein's office in the Conservatory; he was told to wait in the anteroom. A

dol of the court and public. They met now as friends. He and

ctions of my sojourn in Berlin. The personality and the a

have lived happily ever afterward with a husband who won eminence equal to hers as a singer. As for Tschaikovsk

which was a riddle as late as the time Miss Newmarch's biography appeared in 1900; a solution was then hoped from a sealed document left by Kashkin, and not to be opened till the year 1927. Tschaikovski himself had looked over his own diary, and had been so t

recall;" and again: "The result of my thought is the firm resolve to marry with whomsoever it may be." His photograph at

n saw the couple together. Then Tschaikovski grew very distant to his friends and eccentric in his manner; a little later he fled

Ivanovna Miljukova. He said little of the girl, except that she was not very young and was very poor; she was free from scandal, however, and she l

The curious details of the courtship are told by the composer himself in a letter to Frau von Meek, a wealthy idola

n that the result of the letters was that I followed the wish of my future wife and called to see her. Why did I do this? Now it seems to me that some invisible power forced me to it. At our meeting I assured her that in return for her love I could give her nothing but sympathy and gratitude. But later I reproached myse

to be my wife. Naturally her answer was 'yes.' The fearful agonies which I have experienced since that night are not to be expressed in words. This is only natural. To live for thirty-seven years in congenital antipathy to marriage, and then suddenly to be made a bridegroom through the sheer force of circumstances, without being in the least charmed by the bride-that is something horrible! In order to get back my senses and accu

alled a honeymoon lasted a week in this case. In ten days the husband is writing his fellow-Platonist, Frau von Meck, that he is uncertain about his happiness, but positive that he

days more of this, and I sw

wife again; in his solitude he begins work on wh

with all clean and neat. For a few days, even a robbery by servants, and the necessity his wife is under to go to the police-court, do not disturb him, or, at least, so he writes. But hardly mor

gain. Alleging that a telegram had called him to St.

nd, leaving her forever, Tschaikovski fled to foreign countries barely in time to save his sanity. To the last he absolved the poor wretched woman of any slightest blame for his behaviour. His brother, in a biography, completely fran

Meck, with great secrecy, offered him an annual income of 6,000 rubles-about $4,500-purely in payment, she said, of the delight his

kovski would have died. He wrote to the benefactress: "Le

n, she; a true phenomenon-or a phenomena, as one would be tempted to s

children. A railroad investment brought them a sudden wealth, soaring into the millions. In 1876 she lost her hu

r. She planned schemes to fill his purse, ordering arrangements of music and paying for them munificently. Yet s

ess of Towers lived their hearts out in a dream-world. So Fr

for a composition. He had said he could not conscientiously degrade his art for a price. So she pa

his last years, after a period of travel, he lived almost a hermit, dying in 1893, only three years over fifty. Whatever posterity may do with his music, he has left a life-story of strange perplexities, in which apparent frenzies of e

d almost more harrowing is the vision of the composer, with womanish generosity, giving himself to the one that asked, and finding that love cannot follow the mere placing of a wedding-ring. So he sta