“JUST LOOK AT that boy’s buttocks!” Maillol cheerfully shouts. He and Harry Kessler are standing on the rail of their ship, having arrived in Naples that same morning. Maillol can hardly believe the beauty of the youngsters, one of whom has lost his bathing suit diving for the coins that passengers are tossing from the deck. Kessler is inwardly amused, along with feeling a trace of envy. With what ease, he thinks, does the sculptor—safely famous for his depictions of the female body—revel in the graceful athleticism of adolescent males. Whereas I, their true patron, must admire in silence.
Out loud he says, “Your praise is immodest, Aristide. After all, they’re just ordinary boys.”
“Modesty is a sentiment I do not recognize,” Maillol replies, as they move down the rail towards the gangplank to disembark. “That’s why I had my wife pose naked in front of my student, Claude, so he could get used to not thinking about it.”
“Yet not even you can portray subjects too far beyond public acceptance.”
“True. I’d like to sculpt men and women fornicating, but Christians”—he spits the word out—“would denounce such naturalness.”
“Christianity, fortunately, is nearly dead,” Harry replies with a laugh.
“Is Hofmannsthal joining us in Stromboli?” Maillol asks.
“No, he arrives the day after tomorrow. He’ll meet us in Athens.”
“I don’t like poets and playwrights. Not that it matters.”
“I don’t care for him all the time myself. Nor his verse plays.”
“Verse?—that’s bad. Hurts the ears. I will not like this man. He’s probably witty.”
Kessler laughs. “Come, come Maillol. Give the fellow a chance. Mind you, he does have his faults.”
“You see. I know.”
“And can be very agreeable, too! Charming. You’ll see.”
With his father’s death in 1905, Kessler has come into a considerable fortune, and, though he’s already traveled widely, is eager to do more. When he suggests the 1908 trip to Greece to von Hofmannsthal and Maillol, Kessler doesn’t know either man well, but he thinks the combination might prove interesting—he’s become adept at putting together potentially creative partnerships.
Kessler first met Hofmannsthal through an old college friend from the University of Leipzig, and initially found him (as he wrote in his diary) “thoroughly nice and natural in manner.” He soon developed a more nuanced view. While director of the Weimar Grand Ducal Museum, Kessler had invited any number of artists to come for extended stays—among them, André Gide, the playwright Gerhart Hauptmann, the theatrical innovator Gordon Craig and—on separate occasions—both Maillol and von Hofmannsthal. During Hofmannsthal’s stay, his vanity soon became apparent, and Kessler considered it unwarranted, given the failure of his recent plays. He also developed doubts about Hofmannsthal’s character, at one point acidly characterizing him as having “a sharp eye for the superficial depths of life.” What also became obvious to Kessler over time was that Hofmannsthal took pride in his nervous sensitivity and his quicksilver change of moods. At the time of the trip to Greece in 1908, the Austrian poet was in his mid-3os, Kessler five years older, and Maillol six years older than that.
When at Weimar, Maillol had made a strong initial impression on Kessler, and he’d soon become the sculptor’s foremost patron, a relationship that would last more than 30 years. He’d paid his first visit to Maillol in the summer of 1904 at his small house in the last French village on the coast before the Spanish border. When he knocked on the front door, Kessler was startled to see a woman appear on the balcony above, glance down at him, and then shout “Aristide! Aristide!” in the direction of the fruit orchard that surrounded the house. Maillol, in his early forties, soon appeared, his long, untrimmed black beard draped over the front of his blouse, a peasant’s broad-brimmed hat on his head, luminescent blue eyes drawing attention away from his gaunt frame, and (as Kessler described it) “a long eagle’s nose of a pronounced Spanish type.” Maillol considered Catalonia, not France, his true homeland.
On that first visit, Maillol led Kessler to his studio, a small building in the middle of the orchard that, aside from the tools of his trade, contained nothing but a solid wooden table and two chairs. Maillol showed Kessler some recent sketches, as well as the model he’d made of a crouching woman. Kessler immediately bought the model for 800 francs, and, in looking over the sketches, was particularly struck by one of a squatting female figure. He proposed to Maillol that he sculpt it life-size in stone, and purchased it in advance.
Over the next few years, there had been many visits to Maillol. On one occasion Kessler asked him why he never did male figures. “Because, unlike Rodin,” the sculptor replied, “I cannot afford models, and the young boys in town won’t pose for me in the nude. For women figures I can use my wife; if you put your hand up her skirt,” he chortled, “you will feel a block of marble. I would like to do a male figure. I find the body of the man much more beautiful than that of the woman.” Kessler decided on the spot that he’d send his young lover, Gaston Colin, to pose in the nude for Maillol.
From the very beginning of the trip to Greece, Maillol, carrying the little he needs in a small sack, has seemed entirely at home. But when Hofmannsthal meets them in Athens on May 1, 1908, the mood changes. Hofmannsthal seems depressed. At dinner that first night, he confesses that, although he’s traveled through Corinth on his way to meet them, nothing that he’s seen so far interests him. What is it, he wants to know, that everyone adores so much about Greece?
“It’s simple,” Maillol responds, “It’s the place in the world where everything I love was created. When I saw the figures of the Erechtheion,” he tells Hofmannsthal, “I became so emotional I embraced one of them—until a guard pulled me away.”
Greece, Kessler adds, represents a world view “in which all feelings and thoughts have their place; nothing has been banned or excluded.”
Hofmannsthal shakes his head in disagreement. “No, no, I don’t see it,” he insists. “I don’t grasp it. Perhaps that’s why my plays, Electra and Oedipus, have failed. I cannot get a firm grip on this place.” He seems far more upset, more deeply frustrated, than the situation warrants.
“My dear Hofmannsthal,” Kessler says in an attempt at comfort, “you have only just arrived! Give yourself time. You’ve barely had a chance to look around.”
As if not hearing Kessler, Hofmannsthal grows more, not less, agitated. “Venice! Venice is where I feel at home, not here! It is my misfortune, as I well know, my inadequacy, but nothing in this landscape crystallizes for me. Everything is in contradiction to everything else! Barrenness—the barrenness of the country oppresses me, jangles my nerves. I need woods, and rivers, and green fields—these are my life’s blood, the source of my inspiration!”
He seems to the contained Kessler inordinately upset, nearly beside himself with wanton sadness. It’s tragicomedy, Kessler thinks to himself, a form without appeal to me. He tries to soothe and reassure Hofmannsthal but he seems tempestuously, willfully, out of reach. Maillol lapses into complete silence, his disapproval manifest.
The next morning Hofmannsthal speaks more calmly, yet it’s clear he remains unhappy. Maillol abhors the dandified, decides that Hofmannsthal embodies it, and proceeds to ignore him. Such detachment proves a red flag to a young poet who automatically assumes he should be the center of attention, and his anxiety heads towards petulance. Kessler has all his life learned to respond to turmoil with urbane poise, and he serenely announces that what they all need is to wend their way up to the Parthenon. Hofmannsthal replies testily that he prefers to read, and promptly retires to his hotel room.
Kessler and Maillol make their way to the Acropolis, Maillol stopping now and then to touch the marble columns lying haphazardly along the road. “It feels like the buttocks of a woman,” he murmurs happily. “Here, feel them,” he says, bringing Kessler’s hand down on a column, “heated by the sun, it feels like flesh. You could sleep with these columns. You don’t need women in this country—you have the columns.” Maillol’s eyes shine with happiness.
“It’s the most beautiful day of my life,” he tells Kessler.
Later that night, Hofmannsthal knocks on Kessler’s hotel room door. Kessler opens it to find Hofmannsthal on the verge of tears. “I have never in my life wanted to leave a place so urgently!” he blurts out. “I wish I had never come. I feel I’m in prison, prison!”
Startled though he is, Kessler calmly invites Hofmannsthal into the room and pours him some cognac. “As I’m sure you know, my friend, you can leave whenever you wish. And our friendship will survive it, I
promise you.”
Hofmannsthal eases himself into a chair. A sip of the cognac seems to calm him. “I’ve tried to figure out what’s wrong, but I cannot. I don’t know why I feel so wretchedly out of sorts . . . I’m a mystery to myself . . .”
“My guess,” Kessler offers, “is language.”
“Language?”
“The fact that we’ve had to speak French the whole time, since Maillol knows no German. Its been a matter of politeness to use French. You’re a writer, Hugo! The German language means everything to you! To strip you of it is like stripping off your skin!”
“You’re right! By God, I do believe you’re right!” The touch of hysteria in Hofmannsthal’s voice doesn’t reassure Kessler. Emotional exhibitionism, even the threat of it, always brings out his defensive reserve.
“Now, now,” he says distantly. “I feel sure that tomorrow’s excursion to Delphi will prove just the right tonic, will put you back into relationship with the Greece you once loved.”
“How I wish that you and I, just you and I, could go by horseback through the Peloponnesus. How wonderful it would be to break camp at five in the morning and ride out into the beautiful mountain landscape.”
Good heavens, Kessler thinks to himself. The dear boy really is overdoing his role as Romantic Poet.
“We cannot desert poor Maillol,” Kessler finally says.
“And ‘poor Maillol’ does not ride, of course.” There’s more than a trace of rancor in Hofmannsthal’s voice. “He refuses even to mount a horse. He says”—here Hofmannsthal adopts a coarse French accent—“it would break my ass.”
“Mimicking one’s friends isn’t becoming, as you well know, Hugo.” Kessler keeps his tone neutral. “Maillol is a decent fellow, though a little primitive for your—for our—taste. But do try and be kind to him. He is, as I say, a good man. And a great artist.”
“Your specialty! It’s all very well to collect us, but why insist that we socialize together?”
This is appalling, Kessler thinks. “Is it my turn, then, to be attacked?” he calmly asks. There’s a pause, during which Hofmannsthal internally berates himself for being unfair. “I don’t know how you put up with me, Harry,” he says quietly.
As the needy little boy resurfaces; Kessler, a thoroughly agreeable man, feels his sympathy for Hofmannsthal returning: “That’s not difficult,” he replies, “you can be very loveable, Hugo. You’re a person of many fine qualities. We all get to feeling down-and-out.”
“Not Maillol.”
Hofmannsthal does decide to stay. The next day, the three men board a ship at Piraeus and sail along the coast to Salamis. Once in the gulf, the waters grow rough, and both Hofmannsthal and Maillol become seasick; it’s a bond of sorts. Kessler remains serenely alone on deck, glad for the respite from his two singular companions.
Hofmannsthal lasts another week, but not contentedly. On departing, he insists that overall he’s had a splendid time. Everyone knows better. That same morning, on entering his own room, Kessler finds Hofmannsthal rummaging through his luggage, in the process actually opening a wrapped package—all on the pretext of looking for something to read. Kessler is horrified: “I felt,” he writes in his diary, “like I was being slapped for letting someone, who was so far from a gentleman, come close to me.” To Hofmannsthal he simply says, “I am astonished”—a rebuke from on high. That’s enough to produce from Hofmannsthal a sobbing, overwrought apology hardly welcome to a man of Kessler’s impeccably subdued manners. To forestall any extension of the uncongenial scene, he assures Hofmannsthal that he’s already forgotten the matter. The friendship will survive. They will later even become collaborators on Der Rosenkavalier—though during that joint effort, Hofmannsthal will give Kessler additional grounds for remaining on his guard.
Left alone with Maillol, Kessler finds himself less taken with him. The vivid tales Maillol recounts over meals about his unhappy childhood, replete with sexually predatory priests, become less picturesque when accompanied by his habit of eating with his fingers and spitting out fish bones on the floor. Nor is Kessler pleased when it becomes clear that Maillol has a thousand tricks for disappearing when it comes time to pay for anything, even when just a few pennies are at issue. Not that the fastidious Kessler would dream of mentioning the matter, especially since he finds Maillol’s cunning dodges somewhat comic. He’s less amused at the impossibility of civilized conversation. Maillol has a habit of stating an opinion, often picturesque but usually narrow-minded and rigid, and then patronizing any contrary view as “stupid.” A discussion, a conversation, is out of the question.
Kessler is relieved when the trip draws to a close. He’s something of a genius at friendship and at introducing likely companions to each other. His experiment with Maillol and Hofmannsthal is among his rare failures.
To shake off his lingering disappointment, Kessler decides on a long tour through Normandy, partly by bicycle, with his young lover Gaston Colin. The trip is a kind of idyll, soothing compensation for the turbulence of the month in Greece. Gaston, a professional rider, is careful to adjust the pace to the older man’s stamina—though Kessler himself is trim, and a bit vain about his appearance. The landscape south of Cherbourg enthralls him: “Large groves of trees,” he writes in his diary, “green meadows, white chateaus, and on the lawns, apple trees, thick with red fruit and beautiful, fat cows, picturesquely spotted.” It’s a landscape, he feels, “only possible in Europe. Biking along the coast to Mont-Saint Michel, the scene becomes “unbelievably fairy-tale-like, the most mysterious, unfathomable landscape perhaps in the world . . . In this dream world with the castle rising sharply, the entire North, the entire northern Middle Ages, seems to be summed up, as the Parthenon, in its glowing, clearly defined seascape, does for the antique South.”
The experience puts Kessler in a meditative mood about the role of art—his guiding passion—in the contemporary world. The times, he feels, are currently focused on politics, industry, science, and finance. Great art continues to be produced, but the sense that it’s needed has diminished. Art has become a luxury, a plaything, a badge of prestige for the privileged. Few, to his despair, any longer feel that art is intrinsically necessary to daily life—in the sense that church architecture had been during the Middle Ages.
Being close to Gaston reminds Kessler of the curious contradiction in his own nature—his self-conscious restraint in regard to most matters, in contrast to his uninhibited enjoyment of sex.
He says as much to Gaston one day, who good-naturedly laughs; “I’ve noticed,” he says.
“Don’t you think it strange that most people equate sexual restraint with morality?”
“No, Harry,” Gaston says with matter-of-fact maturity, “most people don’t inhabit their bodies.”
“True. And are therefore startled by the bodies of others. Whereas in Plato’s world, no sensual feeling or activity is shameful or—”
“—no, no, Harry!” Gaston smiles indulgently, “no more lectures about the glories of ancient Greece!”
Kessler laughs. “I promise. That is, after I make one final, remarkably astute comment. Namely: The idea that sexual inhibition is somehow superior ethics is the besetting sin of Protestantism.”
“Not bad. Fortunately, I’m Catholic!”
When the pair reach Le Mans-Auvours, they happen upon Wilbur Wright, the pioneering American aviator. He shows them the “machine” he’s been tinkering with and tells them that he’s scheduled to actually fly it the following day at the Aero club—should it not be too windy. It isn’t, and Harry and Gaston appear promptly on the field at 3:00 p.m. to watch the promised ascent. Wright actually manages three flights that day, and Kessler is enchanted with the plane’s majestic and graceful arcs. Flying seems to him entirely safe—more so, he feels, than driving an automobile.
When they reach Paris, it’s time for Gaston to take his leave; thanks to Harry providing the funds, he’s off to participate in bike races in Spain, Africa, Italy, and the Tour de France. After parting, Gaston writes Harry devoted letters. “I am enormously bored without you,” reads one. “Tell me what you are doing . . . All the time I think of you. I only live for you.” Lest Harry take that last too literally, Gaston adds that he’d been “amusing himself nicely” with an English girl. That’s fine with Harry: He recognizes bisexuality as a real phenomenon, not a strategy for evasion, and he recognizes, too, that any expectation of cross-generational monogamy is foolishness.
Indeed, within a few years Gaston will marry, and Harry will now and then send the couple money. The two men will continue to see each other occasionally, and as late as 1928 Gaston sends a note commemorating the 20th anniversary of their meeting: “I recall especially many days of happiness.”
When Gaston departs for the races that day in 1908, Kessler consoles himself with visiting the numerous friends he’s already made in Paris’s artistic circles. By now he’s added to his sumptuous list of friends and acquaintances Pierre Bonnard, Matisse, Degas, and Rodin—plus a host of others working in different media, like Richard Strauss and Rainer Maria Rilke.
Kessler has decided preferences among them but in general deplores the limited “breadth of spirit” he finds among Frenchmen, including most of those he ranks as artistic geniuses. He thinks them doctrinaire, insufficiently “connected,” limited in their sympathies. When he first meets Degas, who looks—as he writes in his diary—like “an elegant grandfather,” Kessler is astonished to learn that the painter dislikes fresh flowers. During one evening at the painter’s house, when talk turns to the Bernheim family—the Belgian owners of a trend-setting Parisian art gallery—Degas bursts out, “How can you chat with people like that? With a Jewish Belgian who is a naturalized Frenchman! It’s as if one wished to speak with a hyena, a boa. Such people do not belong to the same humanity as us.”
The remark appalls Kessler (who isn’t Jewish), but worse is to come. When talk later turns to a young painter named Chaplin, Degas and his other guests mock the man as a tapette—a homosexual. From there Degas flies into a rage against the popularization of art, the increase in exhibitions and artists; it’s part and parcel, he says with disgust, of everyone being expected to have taste. From there Degas launches into a denunciation of the notion that everyone should be educated—“It’s the Jews and the Protestants,” he shouts, “who do that, who ruin races through education. Compulsory education is an infamy, voila!” Summing up the unpleasant evening, Kessler describes Degas as “a deranged and maniacal innocent.”
Dining on another occasion at the home of the avant-garde dealer Ambroise Vollard, along with Bonnard, the publisher Louis Rouart, Odilon Redon, the Degas protégé Jean-Louis Forain, and others, Kessler finds the conversation mostly “malicious gossip”—though Redon, Kessler acidly notes, manages to maintain the silent, “ecstatic solemnity of one of his mystical and biblical lithographs.” Forain, oppositely, gives free rein throughout to his caustic wit. When Bonnard brings up the subject of Max Harden (the first trial has just concluded) Kessler says that in his opinion “Moltke is certainly innocent but Harden”—Kessler had been impressed at his demeanor throughout the trial—“has acted in good faith.”
Forain’s immediate response is a question: “He’s a Jew, Harden?”
“Yes,” Kessler replies.
“And you believe that he has acted in good faith?” Forain smirks—“Go on, then! I hope that one will fleece him, your Harden. One doesn’t calumniate people like that. After all, it’s no one’s business what Messieurs Moltke and Eulenburg do. One doesn’t persecute a journalist. One despises him or buys him off.”
Vollard manages to change the subject, telling the others that he’s recently seen some paintings by the young artist Picasso: “He, like other young artists, is returning to Negro art—bigger than life-size heads, naïve in a Negro way, made of wide, square surfaces, almost like parquet pieces, brown, yellow, and black.”
A look of disgust on his face, Bonnard turns to Kessler: “This will remain as a document of our artistic corruption. That a man like Picasso who has all the skill, all the range of colors, should feel the need to come back to this.”
Kessler’s reply is a diplomatic defense of sorts: “Clearly he believes that he’s discovered power in such completely primitive things.”
“Nonsense,” Bonnard replies sharply. “Picasso has all the means of expression and nothing to express.”
Louis Rouart shifts the subject sideways but not the tone of hidebound certainty. “What is absolutely essential,” he announces, “is the need to preserve French culture from foreign influences—from the Negro certainly, but more important still, because more immediately threatening, from the flooding of the intellectual market by Jewish productions.”
“I don’t understand,” Kessler replies, with calculated innocence. “Do you wish to bar their influence in science as well? Many of our leading scientific figures are Jews. I trust you’ve heard of Max Planck. Or perhaps Fritz Haber, or Einstein? They have opened up an entirely new way of understanding the universe.”
“What they’ve opened up is maximizing the influence of the State,” Rouart heatedly replies. “‘The universe’, you say—the universe! The only counterweight to the leveling tyranny of the state and its elevation of the Jews is—Catholicism!”
Seeing that polemics, not mutual discussion, is the order of the day, Kessler tries to steer it into quieter waters. “I might agree that extreme nationalism poses a threat to all of Europe, but”—to his own surprise, Kessler suddenly drops the ceremonial tone—“I fail to see that debate over the divinity of Christ is central to the matter.”
An agitated Rouart jumps to his feet, in the process knocking over his chair. “The truth of Christianity is proven by the fact that it has been the chief source of French culture for nineteen centuries! This isn’t a matter of debate!”
“Perhaps discussion, then,” Kessler smoothly responds. “Is it not true that Buddhism has proven its truth even more forcefully, since it has been the chief source of Chinese culture for twenty-five centuries?”
Rouart loses his temper, goes red in the face: “To compare . . . to compare French culture with, with Chinese culture is, is—well, the height of absurdity! If you cannot see that, then there is no point continuing this discussion!” Rouart curtly bows to the other guests, fails to thank his host—and abruptly leaves the room.
For Kessler, the two chief exceptions to his reservations about the human qualities of most French intellectuals and artists are Monet and Renoir. On his first visit to Monet’s home in Giverny in 1903, Kessler finds a man of “simple and clear” speech and gestures, lacking any trace of bitterness towards those “who did him a bad turn” in the past—in all, “a beautiful, open character.” With Renoir—already nearing 70 when Kessler meets him and suffering from rheumatism, his hands and fingers thickening with knob-like growths—he has but to speak, Kessler writes in his diary, and he becomes “a kind of ‘Prince Charming,’ enchantingly fresh and youthful: the spirit, tempo, voice of a twenty-year-old, and always—no matter what he says—the palpable proximity to women and love that colors and warms all of his utterances.” Renoir’s only complaint to Kessler is that the recent moralistic turn away from the nude figure “will soon make it impossible to find models.” Kessler falls deeply and permanently under the spell of Renoir’s personality.
In England, Kessler uses—just as he has in Paris—his initial contacts with gallery owners and art critics to gradually broaden his access to many of the leading figures in the world of English painting, theater, music, and dance. And because he’s himself a splendid companion—knowledgeable, charming, and sensitive—access often leads to genuine friendship. Among the longest-lasting of his connections is his friendship with Gordon Craig, the path-breaking theater designer and director, whose 1903 production of Ibsen’s Vikings Kessler thought remarkable.
The young painter Augustus John is another early acquaintance. Though rarely given to hyperbole, Kessler pronounces John “the most important painter of English art,” worthy of comparison with the 18th-century French painter Chardin—one of his few overestimates. Somewhat diffident and modest himself, Kessler is drawn to John’s compensating forcefulness (which others see as mere bluster). He even accompanies John to a boxing match in Whitechapel, though he saves some of his reactions to the event for his diary: “The boxers fought naked, or almost as good as naked, in swimming trunks and shoes. A few magnificently slender and thoroughbred young fellows among them.”
Kessler keeps his personal tastes regarding sexual attraction mostly to himself, and rarely introduces his part-time lover, Gaston Colin, to anyone in his social set. Yet he has strong views on the subject. When Kessler meets the English writer Arthur Symons, who co-edits with Aubrey Beardsley the “decadent” journal Savoy, he finds him dry and gaunt—ascribing his appearance to repressed homosexuality.
As a younger man, Harry Kessler’s political views are much less adventuresome than his taste in art—and not predictive of his later emergence as a socialist sympathizer. In his mid-20s, he’s still conservative enough to question whether “the democratic impulse is the friend or enemy of high culture,” and he expresses doubt in his diary as to whether the masses have sufficient patriotic “fanaticism” to sustain a functional government. The state, in his view, requires a large number of civil servants to function well, and Kessler doubts if the masses are morally and intellectually up to the job (not that the Kaiser is offering it to them). “The mistake of the democratic principle,” Kessler writes, “is an overestimation of the sum of intellect and an underestimation of the sum of character that is necessary for the fulfillment of civic duties.”
The youthful Harry Kessler shows little awareness that his wide range of opportunities places him among the fortunate few, nor does he demonstrate any marked sympathy for the vast multitude who lack his options. The aesthetic young man who, on a visit to Oxford, adores its “little Gothic windows” and “hundred-year-old roses,” also describes “one of the chief pleasures” of a trip to the Derby at Epsom as “tossing a pin at a live Negro. He sticks his head through a hole and for a penny anyone who wishes can throw a ball at his skull; who hits the target gets a prize.” Such off-handed racism is common in Europeans of the day—which doesn’t prevent them from deploring the fact that in the United States black men are routinely lynched.
Harry’s youthful loyalties are primarily directed to his prestigious (noblemen only) Third Guard Lancers of the Prussian army, and his sympathy for the starving multitude is confined largely to starving artists—a number of whom, including Edvard Munch, he does help to support. Harry as a young man places most of his confidence in the handful of aristocrats who stand at the apex of the governing class which bases its behavior—so young Harry chooses to believe—on familial traditions of honor; though Kessler wants them thoroughly monitored by a free press and public opinion.
Fortunately for his character, Harry is homosexual—the one vantage point available to him for understanding what it’s like not to belong, to reside among the despised. And the glimmers of empathy he shows as a young man for the less fortunate will expand dramatically over the years—ultimately earning him the soubriquet of “The Red Count.” Even when still in his teens, he deplores the fact that “it is very cheap fun to exult over people who are too weak to hurt you.” And by age 21 he’s ascribing the common view that “a straight nose is more beautiful than a hooked or even a flat one” to “certain prejudices of race and education.” When in Japan in 1892 as part of the standard “finishing school” grand tour for young male aristocrats, he finds the image of Buddha, eyes half closed, “meditating in blessed calm,” more worthy of emulation than the hysterics of Christianity’s martyrs or the bloodthirsty zeal of its warring crusaders.
Nor does Kessler, even as an essentially apolitical young man, regard with any great awe the notion of a powerful leader, and certainly not the “All-High” Kaiser Wilhelm II. When presented at court in 1895, the glittering spectacle of brocaded gowns, muted candlelight, embroidered uniforms, satin-jacketed pages, and fearsomely rigid sentries, does dazzle Kessler—but does not persuade him of their worth. As for the Kaiser, gaudily gotten up to outshine all others, his two predominant moods, it seems to Kessler, are glazed discomfort and nervous excitability. The whole scene reeks to him of “affectation” which—even as a young man—he deplores in all its guises.
The Kaiser’s third posture, tactless effusion, has recently been embodied in his decision to line the boulevard surrounding Tiergarten park, Berlin’s largest, with a row of third-rate, kitschy statues depicting his Hohenzollern ancestors. The sight of them is so repellent to Kessler that to avoid seeing them he always makes a point when crossing the Tiergarten of taking an indirect, time-consuming path.
Returning to Germany late in 1908 after some nine months of traveling abroad, Kessler, like most true cosmopolites, isn’t particularly pleased to be back—though he has no wish to separate himself permanently from Berlin, or from Weimar (where he’s retained a home). Both cities serve, as he puts it, as “a sort of mythical background, approximately like ‘heaven’ for Christians.” Central to Kessler’s sense of place is the superb apartment in Berlin that his friend Henry van de Velde—the pioneering Belgian designer and future founding member of the Bauhaus—has created for him at 28 Kothnerstrasse. Its uncluttered, understated elegance perfectly mirrors the personality of its owner—just as its walls, covered with Kessler’s large and growing collection of Impressionist and post-Impressionist art, reflects his passionate involvement in contemporary culture.
His second home in Weimar is also a temple to art, its white bookcases filled to the brim, its walls and tabletops covered with small sculptures and large multicolored canvases—the whole somehow managing to combine a sense of restless intensity with absolute equilibrium. Kessler’s celebrated “at homes” include delicately blended meals, musical performances of virtuoso excellence, and a Rilke or a Gerhardt Hauptmann reading from one of their recent works while leaning against the fireplace or standing in front of the ancient bronze Chinese vessel that the artists of three nations have presented to Kessler in gratitude for his understanding and support. It’s a setting of privileged perfection, in his case a reflection less of snobbery than of refinement of spirit.
If as a young man Kessler primarily isolated himself in the world of the aesthete, by the time he reaches his mid-30s he’s become increasingly absorbed in political issues—not least because of his developing friendship with Walther Rathenau. When the two men first meet at Cornelia Richter’s salon, Kessler is immediately struck by Rathenau’s imposing physical presence—tall, with fierce, anguished eyes, measured movement, and a deep voice seemingly projected from a great distance, as if the speaker is covered by a wall of glass. His conversation is mesmerizing; he speaks with equal fluency and insight about the Kaiser (“His misfortune is that he came to the throne too young, before he had learned about the resistance of the world”), and the rivalry between Germany, England, and America (“England has all the preconditions for world domination . . . Germany’s trump card is its enormous efficiency and conscientiousness”). Kessler decides at once that Rathenau is “someone with whom it pays to come together.” They soon start to see each other with increasing regularity.
Walther Rathenau’s father, Emil, established the family fortune when he bought the European rights to Edison’s patent, formed the Allgemeine Elektrizitätsgesellschaft (AEG), and over time became widely known as “the (Jewish) Bismarck of Germany’s industrial empire.” Emil was a hardworking, shrewd man—and a tough taskmaster to his son. Dismissive of Walther’s philosophical bent and artistic gifts, he made him work for years in the company’s trenches, from which he gradually ascended to the AEG hierarchy. On Emil’s death in 1915, Walther will not only become head of the company, but will be simultaneously serving on the boards of no less than 86 German companies.
Rathenau, like Kessler, develops a large number of acquaintances in a wide variety of fields. Unlike Kessler, he has few real friends, prefers solitude, and can be overbearing and disdainful. The genial Kessler comes to regard Rathenau’s imperious side as a shield against intimacy—with acute loneliness its end product. He isn’t intimidated by Rathenau’s hauteur, as are many others; he’s seen worse, far worse and with far less reason, among the dullards of the aristocracy—none of whom, in Kessler’s opinion, can match Rathenau’s acute political instincts and conversational brilliance.
Within the strict guidelines that he imposes on closeness, Rathenau is drawn to Kessler’s easy sociability, exquisite manners, and artistic sensibility—drawn precisely to those qualities he feels lacking in himself. The two soon become close enough to dine together with some frequency. For Kessler these occasions are true feasts—of the intellect. He regards Rathenau as a superb guide and mentor through the confusing thicket of current political intrigue, and their dinners together often go on for hours, with Kessler usually deferring to Rathenau’s deeper knowledge of public affairs—and to his loftily authoritative intellect and spellbinding voice. But Kessler’s intelligence is also keen, though oriented more toward people than politics, and he sometimes enjoys tweaking Rathenau with an arch insight or interjecting a witty aside to gently puncture one of his more Delphic pronouncements.
Invited to dine at Rathenau’s one evening at his spacious home—a small palace, really—in the Freienwalde, along with Hugo von Hofmannsthal and the theater director Max Reinhardt, Kessler deliberately arrives a bit early; he wants the chance to get Rathenau’s opinion on the shift in attitude he sensed on his recent trip to London.
The Freienwalde house had been built a hundred years earlier for Queen Louisa, the Princess of Prussia, and as a servant ushers Kessler into the salon, he’s struck again at the beauty of its white and silver décor, as well as the adjoining room with its Chinese rice-paper paintings on the walls and embroidered yellow chairs. Kessler considers the house “a jewel of decorative art, light, alive, and feminine”—so curiously at odds with Rathenau’s formidable exterior.
Rathenau appears almost at once and the two adjourn to his study, a rather overstuffed room (in Kessler’s opinion) with bookshelves and uncomfortably large leather chairs—a more obvious reflection of its owner’s personality than the entryway salons. After the usual pleasantries, Kessler surprises himself with the naïve-sounding way he formulates his quandary to Rathenau: “I don’t think as well of the English as I once did. Am I wrong?”
Rathenau seems surprised at the question. “If you refer to our deteriorating relationship with England, I wholly blame the Kaiser.”
“No, I meant the comment more generally.”
“You’ll have to explain. Aren’t you, by the way, descended from Irish-English stock—on your mother’s side, I believe?”
“I am. And as a youngster I spent two years at St. George’s at Ascot. What’s more, I’ve haunted English museums since my twenties and go back and forth to London frequently. I still go into raptures over the William Blakes at the South Kensington Museum.”
“Then what are you referring to? I don’t understand.”
“I can’t quite explain it, but I feel a decided decline in enthusiasm for all things English. Perhaps I’m maturing politically.” Kessler smiles: “That sounds foolish, I suppose. If my politics have ‘matured,’ I hold you to blame.”
“A charming indictment. I accept it willingly.”
“It’s the damned English ruling class. It’s so brutally restrictive and closed-minded.”
“Compared to what? The German Junkers are positively paranoid in their obsession with blood lines. Surely you know that King Edward, when still the Prince of Wales, introduced Jews into his own social set.”
“You mean Lord Rothschild and Baron de Hirsch.”
“Of course that’s who I mean. And now that he’s King, they’re still his intimate friends. A cardinal sin in the Kaiser’s eyes.”
“But Bertie’s his uncle!”
“We don’t refer to the King any longer as ‘Bertie,’” Rathenau says in an admonishing tone. “He’s King Edward VII.”
“You admire the King?”
“You don’t?” Rathenau’s raised eyebrows forecast a thunderclap.
“But all those dissolute years of womanizing and . . . and frivolity . . .”
“How would you like to wait around for six decades for the chance to rule?! And all the while, your mother is looking down her nose at you as if you’re an incompetent fool. It’s a wonder King Edward has turned out so well.”
Kessler is genuinely surprised; he’s never heard Rathenau speak favorably of anyone in power. “I see . . .” he says tentatively, with no idea of how to continue.
Rathenau helps him over the awkward spot. “When the King agreed to meet with the Kaiser at Kronberg to discuss the naval race, Wilhelm spent half their time together railing against the French as ‘a female race, a bundle of nerves,’ and the other half utterly declining to modify the pace of German shipbuilding to any extent. Is it any wonder that Edward made the decision then and there to build up the British navy still further?”
Kessler mumbles something about “how confusing the whole topic is for me . . . the naval race, I mean . . . I need to sort it out better.”
“You’re not alone in your confusion. Most of Germany is confused—thanks to the Kaiser’s appalling inability to recognize that he might be at fault to any degree.”
“I should add,” Kessler says, recovering his aplomb somewhat, “that I do still admire the English political system. I wish the Reichstag had the same power as the House of Lords to place limits on the Emperor’s wishes. On the other hand, I do think that the German working class is better off than the English—has more security, better living conditions.”
“I agree with you,” Rathenau responds—again surprising Kessler. “Though not nearly as well off as it should be, as it has a right to be.”
“On my last trip to London, I found myself wandering around the docks and I was struck at the vast wasteland of tiny, bare, houses. They look like endless prison cells. And not only that: look at how the English treated the Dutch during the Boer War—rounding them up into concentration camps with an appalling loss of life from disease and starvation.”
“Oh I see.” Rathenau’s tone is mocking. “It’s imperialism that bothers you so much about the English! My dear Kessler, every European country is racing to grab colonies; what sets the English apart is their overwhelming success at it! That’s precisely what enrages the Kaiser—he wants a larger share of the pie!”
At that point, Rathenau’s valet announces the arrival—precisely on time, to Kessler’s mixed feelings of relief and regret—of both Hofmannsthal and Reinhardt. As he rises to greet them, Rathenau suggests to Kessler that they “pick up the topic again after dinner, when we have two more opinions on the subject.” Kessler again feels ambushed: he’s never known Rathenau to require more than one opinion—his own.
Over supper—an exquisitely prepared and served meal of saddle of venison, along with a superb Burgundy—the conversation is largely confined to a benign exchange of surface gossip—about Bernard Shaw’s amusing run-in with Vienna’s Burg Theater; about whether Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche’s claim that her life is as “heroic” as her brother’s only demonstrates that she matches him in insanity; and so on. The conversation briefly takes a serious turn when Hofmannsthal praises Max Harden for refusing to back down in his attacks on Prince Eulenburg. The comment rouses Reinhardt to an uncharacteristically lengthy response (ordinarily he prefers to listen—listens with such keen intensity that someone once dubbed him “the master of the art of creative listening”).
Not this time. Reinhardt has already heard enough and dissents vigorously from Hofmannsthal’s view. “What I find often to be the case,” he says, “is that within a small circle of intimate friends, social forms are developed that, seen from the outside, appear to permit all kinds of conclusions, but that mean nothing to the participants.”
“In general I might agree,” Hofmannsthal replies, “but in this instance the language employed is so effusive as to be unmistakable. I consider Kessler a close friend—though we quarrel often enough—but I’d never dream of referring to him as ‘Beloved Soul’, or some other extravagant expression that the Liebenberg Circle seems to trade in.”
“Perhaps,” Kessler suggests, “they’re simply more emancipated than we are, more expansive in expressing their intimate feelings, their sense of connection.”
Reinhardt laughs. “Well, my dear Kessler—perhaps! But even I—who find Harden so distasteful—have to admit that when I hear someone say ‘Beloved Soul,’ I have the feeling here”—Reinhardt vigorously rubs his tummy—“that the other person is coming too near to me. Among us actors, if one uses a phrase like that, we call him ‘sweet’—a ‘sweet man.’ I can’t believe it’s different among military men.”
“Oh but it is!” Kessler interjects, with a bit more animation than he intended. “I can vouch for that from my own experience. During my days in the Garde du Corps, the officers would make a young cadet named Pfeil—a boy as pretty as a picture—drunk, and then demand that he strip off his clothes.”
Rathenau pushes back his chair loudly from the table and announces that cognac awaits them in the study. He hasn’t said a word during the discussion of Harden, but as soon as the four men reassemble in the study—and as if to guarantee no repetition of the subject—he steers them strongly on a different course.
“Before the two of you arrived, Kessler and I were discussing how serious the antagonism between England and Germany has become. In my view, the peculiarities of the Kaiser, his vanity and indiscretion, are in large part to blame. Whereas Kessler finds considerable fault with the English. Can we have your views on the subject?”
Both Hofmannsthal and Reinhardt are taken aback; neither man is particularly political and both know better than to cross swords with Rathenau, especially on a subject dear to his heart.
Hofmannsthal decides it’s best to begin with a question, preferably an irrelevant one. He hears himself asking, “Wasn’t the Kaiser’s mother the eldest daughter of Queen Victoria?”
Kessler glimpses the impatience in Rathenau’s eyes and jumps in to soothe the waters: “Indeed yes. It’s widely believed that ‘Vicki’ was her mother’s favorite. A tragic figure. Failed in her hopes for liberalizing Germany.”
Hofmannsthal presses on: “And isn’t the Kaiser somewhat justified in feeling that England consistently rebuffs his many gestures of friendship?”
Rathenau’s patience has run out. “The Kaiser is unable to grasp the simple fact,” Rathenau sternly announces, “that his accelerated shipbuilding has fed England’s suspicion that he’s intent on challenging her supremacy on the sea.”
“Eulenburg,” Kessler suggests, “did try to modulate the Kaiser’s imperialist ambitions—but Prince Eulenburg, alas, is no longer at court.”
“Even when he was,” Rathenau adds, “he encouraged the ‘All-Highest’ to pursue a foreign policy of personal diplomacy. At which his talent is deplorable.”
“Isn’t that why he ousted Holstein?” Hofmannsthal asks. “It seems to me Holstein had an independent mind.”
“Quite so,” Rathenau says, “and his successor, von Bülow, doesn’t have the spine to contradict a single word Wilhelm says. Every time the Kaiser has an impulsive thought, Bülow hurriedly elevates it into a policy! He gives groveling a whole new dimension.” Rathenau’s tone is angrily dismissive.
To lighten the mood, Reinhardt proceeds to offer his imitation of Bülow: “‘It gives me the greatest joy, it is the focus of all my thoughts, all my cares, all my efforts, my dearest Majesty, to smooth the way for your fame, happiness, and well-being.”
The others laugh and applaud. “You ought to put yourself on the stage, Reinhardt,” Kessler says.
Reinhardt laughs. “I’m always on the stage! Don’t you know theater people?!”
“There is one person Wilhelm listens to,” Rathenau says. “An Englishman, in fact.”
“His uncle, King Edward VII?” Hofmannsthal asks.
“Hardly!” Rathenau snorts. “Edward has made every effort at reconciliation, but Wilhelm seems bent on estrangement. No, the chosen one is Houston Stewart Chamberlain, son-in-law of Wagner and more than his match as an anti-Semite.”
“Of course—that book of his. What was it called?” Kessler asks.
Rathenau spits out the title: “The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century. Modest, no?”
“I’ve heard of it,” Reinhardt adds.
“Of course you have,” Rathenau replies sternly. “It’s been a runaway best-seller. It lists the Jews as one of the ‘un-German races.’ The Kaiser devoured it. Quotes from it frequently.”
“How do you know such things? Hofmannsthal asks.
“At AEG we hear most of the gossip. Some of it turns out to be true—including the Kaiser’s admiration for Chamberlain. Did you know that Jesus wasn’t a Jew, but rather a blond Aryan?”
Kessler cuts into the laughter: “It would be more amusing, it seems to me, if Wilhelm didn’t actually believe such nonsense. I find the question of national character an interesting one, a valid topic for discussion. In my view national differences are real but unconnected to race. There’s no such thing as a pure race; we’re all mongrels of one sort or another. I myself would much prefer being seen as a good European than a good German.”
“The Kaiser would strenuously disagree,” Rathenau responds. “I’m told that in an attempt to flatter King Edward, Wilhelm recently characterized the ‘male’ races of Anglo-Saxons and Teutons as greatly superior to the ‘female’ French. When you combine Wilhelm’s ineptness at diplomacy—the man gets into a rage if his terms aren’t met instantly and in full—with his insistence on an ambitious policy of fleet-building, is it any wonder Germany scares her neighbors and finds herself in isolation?”
Hofmannsthal looks puzzled. “But the Kaiser claims his sole aim in building up the fleet is to protect German commerce.”
“Of course he does,” Rathenau shoots back. “When the English express skepticism, Wilhelm screams ‘Nonsense! Balderdash!’” He gets extremely vexed—but never remorseful, oh never remorse! He’s like the truant boy who gets caught with his hand in the cookie jar and screams, ‘I’m not even hungry!’”
“I believe Holstein had it right,” Reinhardt throws in. “Building more and more ships is popular with those in the armor-plating business—and with career naval officers. For the rest of Germany it’s a disaster.”
Kessler feels called upon to mention that “Holstein played an ugly role in the Eulenburg affair,” but then agrees with the others that “the man did have common sense.”
“I don’t understand these matters very well,” Hofmannsthal says. “but doesn’t Germany already have a powerful fleet, an impressive number of battleships and cruisers?”
“What you don’t understand, Hofmannsthal,” Rathenau acidly responds, “is that our dear Kaiser’s aspirations are as grandiose as his eccentricities.”
“I blame the situation on Admiral Tirpitz and his bloody Plan,” Reinhardt throws in.
“You’re quite wrong,” Rathenau instantly replies. “Tirpitz wants a strong navy, yes, but doesn’t delude himself with thinking he can successfully challenge the British. If anything, it’s the Kaiser who’s pushing Tirpitz. It’s the Kaiser who wants to throw down the gauntlet—even as he claims, in that wounded tone of his, that his overtures of friendship to England are unappreciated. You bet they are; the English understand the Kaiser’s real intentions very clearly. They understand that nothing less than control of the seas and the European balance of power is at stake. Which is precisely what makes the situation so dangerous. Instead of modifying his shipbuilding program, the Kaiser insists on accelerating it.”
The conversation ends with all four men agreeing that the serious deterioration in Anglo-German relations has become alarming. “I read that interview the Kaiser gave to the London Daily Telegraph,” Kessler says. “Good grief! If that’s his notion of a ‘conciliatory’ gesture, we’re headed straight for war!”
That interview in the Telegraph has caused consternation in circles far wider than the confines of Rathenau’s dinner party. Wilhelm’s version of soothing the waters is to declare to the Telegraph reporter that “the prevailing sentiment among large sections of the middle and lower classes of my own people is not friendly to England.” He follows up by expressing resentment that his support of England during the Boer War isn’t sufficiently appreciated. Indeed, the Kaiser storms, “I have grown weary of having my overtures of friendship belittled: To be forever misjudged, to have my repeated offers of friendship weighed and scrutinized with zealous, mistrustful eyes, taxes my patience severely.”
As for the Kaiser’s refusal to slow German naval construction, the Telegraph interview quotes him as saying that the growing size of his fleet is in no sense designed to challenge British supremacy on the seas but is intended instead to help win the looming future struggle against the “Yellow Peril”—Japan and China—in the Pacific. For toppers, the Kaiser gratuitously, goofily, adds that the English are “mad, mad, mad as March hares” in their suspicions of him.
The interview has a disastrous international effect. Coming as it does only a few years after the Russian Revolution of 1905 has forced at least a partial constitution on the Tsar, Wilhelm’s insistence on autocratic personal rule is widely seen as increasingly anachronistic. In Germany reaction to the Telegraph interview is, if anything, more tumultuous than even in England. Several high-ranking officials remember with a shudder that just two years previously, in response to a bomb attack against the King of Spain, the Kaiser had ranted against “those bastard anarchists” who he blamed for the attack, and had suggested that the best safeguard against future assassination attempts was to round up every known anarchist and have them beheaded on the spot.
During the uproar over the Telegraph interview, Max Harden publishes three articles in Die Zukunft that rage against the Kaiser’s misrule, declare that “this monarch will never change,” and actually propose a forced abdication. In the Reichstag, too, a two-day debate takes place during which views never before publicly uttered are given a remarkable airing, speaker after speaker from all five parties taking to the floor in a storm of protest and—risking arrest under the charge of lèse-majesté—freely venting their indignation at the Kaiser’s autocratic rule, his gratuitous affront to English sensibilities, and his inept interference with the work of his own ministers. Germany has become “a laughing-stock” in the world, one Reichstag member declares; another demands “secure guarantees” to curtail the Kaiser’s future power; a third insists that Wilhelm “submit to the criticism of the representatives of the people.”
Wilhelm’s response is to take to his bed and threaten abdication—though he soon enough allows his son, the Crown Prince, to talk him out of it. The Kaiser shows no recognition—just as Harden predicted—that he’s erred in any way, learned anything from his mistakes, or might henceforth mend his ways.
Kessler’s heightened interest in politics isn’t at the expense of his longstanding devotion to the arts—and to its practitioners. Maillol, with his epic self-centeredness, makes more demands on his time than anyone else. He constantly complains to Kessler about his wife’s extravagant jealousy, claiming that on the rare occasions when he risks hiring a female model, Mme. Maillol invariably stations herself behind the door to his studio, listening intently for any sign of “impropriety.” Sensing her presence, Maillol claims, he’s taken to angrily throwing open the door, toppling her from her perch. Screams and shouts follow, the ugly scenes usually ending with Mme. Maillol momentarily persuaded of her husband’s innocence, or cowed by his insults, and swearing in future to curtail her suspicions. The vow rarely lasts beyond the next posing session.
“What can I do?” Maillol cheerily asks Kessler. “The woman is madly in love.”
Kessler’s response is cautiously tangential: “I, for one, have always preferred to live alone. But artists, I suppose, need someone to take care of them.”
Kessler is patience itself with Maillol, but in truth the focus of his admiration and partisanship has shifted somewhat to the explosive developments taking place in the world of dance. Initially, he became intrigued with the careers of the astonishing trio of American women who were currently pioneering modern dance: Loie Fuller, Isadora Duncan, and Ruth St. Denis. He’d first seen Loie Fuller dance as far back as 1897 in Paris; the “continual darkness” of the performance, the “arbitrary lighting” and “wild colors” had put him off. He never develops a taste for Fuller’s work, and after seeing her dance the Tragedy of Salomé 10 years later (when she was 45), he casts her out with uncharacteristic severity, calling her “old, fat, and not flexible.”
Initially, he’s no less dismissive of Isadora Duncan. On his first exposure to her work in 1903, he sums her up as a sentimental amateur: she “has only one movement,” he writes in his diary, “which she repeats until it’s painful, dances without rhythm and without passion.” He thinks her performance is so conventional that he likens it to academic art, his bête noire, and further decries what he calls her penchant for drawing attention to herself “through robes of a monstrous, Pre-Raphaelite style, confusing art and life.”
Isadora learns of Kessler’s negative opinion from the theater designer Gordon Craig, her lover at the time and one of Kessler’s close friends. Realizing how widely regarded he is for impeccable and adventurous taste, Isadora becomes determined to change Kessler’s mind. She invites him to her place at Neuilly, gives him a private demonstration of her technique—and manages to win his admiring applause. By temperament, to be sure, Kessler is a diplomat manqué, the soul of discretion, but his change of heart is genuine. Three years later, when he visits Duncan’s school in Grunewald, he watches her students, varying in age between four and eight, move in their loose-limbed Liberty dresses with “great freshness and grace,” following the lines of the music exactly.
In the years that follow, Kessler stays in occasional touch with Isadora, and, in 1913, when her two young children are killed in a monumentally tragic auto accident, Kessler attends the funeral. In his diary he describes the event as “the most moving ceremony I have ever been to” and admiringly recounts Isadora’s behavior—“she is really heroic, encouraging the others, saying there is no death, really great in her terrible grief.”
The third American, Ruth St. Denis, becomes Kessler’s special favorite; he finds her dancing striking and contemporary. By 1906 he’s met her personally, and the two start to see each other with some frequency. She confides to him that Max Reinhardt wants to present her in Salomé but she thinks the play too “literary.” Kessler suggests that she meet instead with Hugo von Hofmannsthal as a possible collaborator, and promptly arranges a lunch to bring them together. (His role as artistic matchmaker goes some way toward muffling his disappointment at not having been blessed with special gifts himself; besides, he’s good-willed). He offers St. Denis his services as a guide to the wonders of Berlin; given the depth of his knowledge and the range of his acquaintances, she pronounces him a learned and delightful companion.
A mere two years later, Ruth St. Denis and modern dance have disappeared from Kessler’s horizon—swept away by the tsunami-like wave of acclaim that greets the debut in 1909 of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. If the discovery of Ruth St. Denis had been the equivalent for Kessler of stumbling onto an unexpectedly good book, seeing Diaghilev’s troupe is more like uncovering an entire, previously hidden library. The Paris premiere of Sylphides—Kessler invites the Maillols as his guests—is among the troupe’s more memorable events. Even Maillol, miserly with compliments to other artists, finds the combination of Nijinsky and Pavlova the absolute embodiment, as he puts it, of Amor and Psyche, of “passion and refinement” united.
Kessler’s interest focuses on Nijinsky—“handsome like a Greek god”—and he decides to invite Diaghilev and Nijinsky to lunch; given Kessler’s reputation as an artistic entrepreneur, Diaghilev accepts for both of them. Kessler is aware that the two are lovers, but at lunch he’s surprised at the way the pot-bellied impresario takes for granted his vassal’s submission. The power of Nijinsky’s physical presence astonishes Kessler—his “Mongolian” face and hesitant, modest manner remind Kessler of the Japanese. Nijinsky knows only a few words of French, and Diaghilev, ever on top, serves as interpreter. Kessler manages to get across his request that Nijinsky serve as the model for a statue of Apollo to be sculpted by Maillol and to grace the Nietzsche Memorial (which has become one of the more important of Kessler’s current side projects, though it means constant meetings with Nietzsche’s impossible sister, Elisabeth).
Maillol initially makes difficulties about Nijinsky posing for him. He wants to know if anyone has seen Nijinsky naked. Kessler, startled, and more than a little put out at Maillol’s haughty hesitation, discreetly replies that Nijinsky is clothed perfection. Maillol claims the dancer looks a little “round” to him, and to Kessler’s further annoyance insists that “the model must respond to the idea that the artist wishes to execute.” Eventually Maillol deigns to accept the commission, but for Kessler it’s been like trying to promote Cézanne to a devotee of Anton von Werner.
Diaghilev’s favorite haunt in Paris is Larue’s. There he gathers in his orbit a galaxy of admirers, each of whom rotates on their own axis: Rainer Maria Rilke, Misia Sert, Jean Cocteau, Max Reinhardt, Reynaldo Hahn, Stravinsky, Ravel—tout la vie moderne. Nijinsky, as always, conceals himself in a corner, pale and quietly smiling. Kessler notices that Reinhardt, perhaps with a pageant in mind, rarely takes his eyes off the dancer. When he does, it’s to announce that the Russian “is the greatest miracle he has ever encountered . . . still a schoolboy and yet a great genius.” Diaghilev is only mildly put out.
Not everyone agrees about Nijinsky. When the Russians perform in London, several of England’s great ladies express their deep concern to Kessler. Lady Speyer, for one, admits that Nijinsky’s performance in Afternoon of a Faun has roused frightening “animalistic” feelings in her; she agrees that he’s a genius of sorts—but also “a kind of monster.” She confides to Kessler that Nijinsky has had an “emetic effect”—the polite term for vomiting—on her husband and “other very powerful, hard men” as well. Kessler believes that’s all to the good, but doesn’t say so. In the privacy of his diary he deplores the upper-class revulsion and hatred of all art that is “not yet sterilized and dead.”
The renowned beauty Lady Ripon seems to Kessler an exception. She tells him that she has “great affection” for Nijinsky and feels like something of a protectress to Diaghilev. The feelings are not mutual. When Lady Ripon invites both men, along with Kessler and Léon Bakst, the Ballets Russes’s extraordinary designer, to lunch at her estate at Coombe, Diaghilev soon makes it clear that he cares nothing for either her affec-tion or protection. Lady Ripon makes the apparently grievous error of repeating to Diaghilev the current rumor that he’s grown dissatisfied with famed dancer/choreographer Michel Fokine and will soon dismiss him from the company. She dares to suggest that Fokine’s great popularity with the public might well be grounds for keeping him on. In response, Diaghilev turns on Lady Ripon—as Kessler sees it—“brutally.”
“I don’t give a damn about the public!” he shouts. “The public is there for one reason only—to be violated!” A startled Lady Ripon weakly apologizes.
On the trip back to London, Kessler remonstrates with Diaghilev, deplores his unnecessary rudeness to a gracious woman. Diaghilev sullenly replies that he’s chosen precisely the right way to respond to such uninformed, pliable creatures. When the Ballets Russes returns to Coombe the following evening to perform in front of King Edward’s wife, the beautiful, high-spirited Queen Alexandra, Diaghilev makes a point of snubbing Lady Ripon and an obedient Nijinsky fails even to greet her.
The next day she meets with Kessler in London and implores him to “put things right.” He feels deeply for her “tragic-comic situation,” goes directly to see Diaghilev and finds him “completely out of control.” He refers to Lady Ripon as “that sow,” swears he will never speak to her again, and declares that he’s weighing the idea of challenging Lord Ripon to a duel. An appalled Kessler uses all of his considerable diplomatic skill to somehow arrange, during the intermission of another performance, for Diaghilev to meet Queen Alexandra, who bestows a few friendly words on him. “Beaming,” Diaghilev wanders over to where Kessler and Lady Ripon are sitting and—“coldly but politely” (in Kessler’s words)—kisses her hand. The poor lady stands up, takes a few steps, then falls down in a faint. Upon such monumental events, Kessler ironically muses, do empires rise and fall.
The circle that centers on Diaghilev and meets at Larue’s café is often expanded to include various other contemporary eminences—among them, von Hofmannsthal (at Kessler’s suggestion) and another flamboyant poet—and incipient fascist—Gabriele D’Annunzio (after meeting him Kessler remarks on his “cruelly indifferent eyes” and his old-fashioned views on women). Kessler attends the meetings at Larue’s regularly. At one point the luncheon group becomes something of a war council. Gaston Calmette, editor of Le Figaro, publishes an attack on Nijinsky’s performance in Afternoon of a Faun, declaring that “no decent public could ever accept such animal realism . . . such vile movements of erotic bestiality.”
Calmette manages as well to denounce Auguste Rodin for having praised Nijinsky and for hanging “obscene” drawings in the chapel of Sacré-Coeur. Calmette demands that the state cease to subsidize the wealthy sculptor and that it at once evict him, though he’s now an old man, from his home in the Hôtel Biron.
On reading Calmette’s attack, Kessler drives at once to Diaghilev’s to consult about a response. Cocteau has preceded him. Feeling himself in some way responsible, as a result of having introduced Rodin to the Ballets Russes as a guest of his, Kessler’s first thought is to challenge Calmette to a duel. The suggestion astonishes Diaghilev and Cocteau. The anachronistic honor code, once the preserve of “true” gentlemen, has become illegal almost everywhere. Yet the gesture somehow fits, crazily, with the more incongruent elements in Kessler’s personality: he’s all at once an old-fashioned aristocrat of manners and an ardent champion of the avant-garde in art. Diaghilev and Cocteau remind Kessler that he’s in Paris—meaning that all sides would consider him, as a foreigner, in the wrong. Kessler takes that with good grace, however much it contradicts his self-image as a cosmopolitan figure above the crude nationalistic fray.
Stravinsky, Hofmannsthal, and Nijinsky soon arrive at Diaghilev’s, and the six of them together plot the next move. They decide to put themselves at Rodin’s disposal, and Diaghilev and Kessler are sent off as emissaries to the Hôtel Biron. Rodin greets them looking, in Kessler’s opinion, somewhat shaky and, his hair unbrushed, more disheveled than usual. Rodin tells them that he’s decided to do nothing at all in regard to Calmette.
“I’ve been attacked all my life,” he says. “I long ago decided that the best response is no response.”
Kessler repeats his offer to challenge Calmette to a duel. Diaghilev looks askance at him, as if about to say, “I thought we’d put that nonsense behind us.” But before he can speak, Rodin breaks in:
“I thank you for your solicitation,” he tells Kessler (who records the conversation in his diary). “It does you honor, and I am honored by it. But my friend, if I had heeded the assorted calumnies that have come my way, I would have done nothing with my life but go back and forth to the dueling ground. I would never have become a sculptor. Yet it’s been through my work that I’ve mounted the best possible rebuttal to those attacks.”
There’s no arguing with that. Diaghilev and Kessler help Rodin back to his bedroom and do their best to comfort the old man with a non-combative apéritif.
The next day they return again, this time with Nijinsky in tow. On entering, he immediately kisses Rodin’s hands, as a child might—which makes the old man flush with embarrassment. Kessler moves the conversation forward. “How wonderful you look today!” he tells Rodin, who shyly touches his freshly waved hair and confesses that he’s just emerged from a session with the curling tongs (which Kessler had already assumed from the pervasive smell of pomade). Rodin then smilingly shows the assembled trio the printed protest in Gil Blas that a number of leading writers and politicians have signed protesting the piece in Le Figaro. “Calmette is finished,” Rodin says with satisfaction. Empires of every kind remain intact.
Count Kessler enthusiastically urges Walther Rathenau to see Nijinsky perform. Enthusiasm isn’t a trait Rathenau admires; it strikes him as unpleasantly akin to religious fervor. Yet he trusts Kessler’s judgment—in the realm of art, at least—and eventually takes in a performance. He tells Kessler that he was “deeply impressed”—the equivalent for the austere Rathenau of banging a drum in the street. Rathenau immediately adds, “But there’s altogether too much babbling about art—your own informed views excluded, of course.”
“Shall we babble on about our favorite subject instead?” Kessler good-naturedly responds. “At least until dessert arrives.” The two are dining together at the exclusive Carlton. The room is packed, but the conversation subdued—as if people were opening their mouths without any sound coming out. It’s called behaving with the propriety due one’s station.
“‘Favorite subject’?” Rathenau is genuinely puzzled.
“The Kaiser, of course! People are openly laughing at his ineptitude. One acquaintance told me that Louis XVI didn’t have nearly so much to answer for when they cut off his head, as Wilhelm does. As I see it—just between us—His Majesty seems more than a bit unbalanced.”
“Let us say,” Rathenau cautions, “that he’s remarkably ‘changeable’—fearful one day, and an assaultive bully the next.”
“Isn’t that one and the same?”
“You have a point,” Rathenau concedes. “Wilhelm’s disposition is essentially operatic. He never has ‘a bad day’—he’s always having ‘a complete collapse.’”
“One view making the rounds is that the Kaiser, far from setting policy, is a mere figurehead, a toy vessel tossed around at will by his malignant ministers.”
Rathenau stares at him in disbelief, his brow knit with anger.
Fortunately, the waiter arrives with a confection of macaroons, along with coffee. By the time he’s poured it and again disappeared, Rathenau’s temper has calmed a bit.
“The idea of the Kaiser as a figurehead is absurd,” he finally says. “Am I to assume that you believe such nonsense?”
Kessler laughs at the insult; he’s come to terms with Rathenau’s rudeness—preferring to call it “candor.”
“I might have believed it,” he says with amusement, “had I not had the good sense to run it by you.”
Rathenau isn’t mollified. “Really, my dear Kessler, you must understand a few basic facts about the ‘All-High.’”
Kessler smiles. “I gladly submit to your tutelage.”
“To begin with, he is the supreme leader. Do not, like so many others, confuse his clownish personality with tractability. He, and he alone, sets policy for Germany. He’ll let Admiral Tirpitz bill himself as the architect of the new German fleet, but it’s Wilhelm who originated the Navy Bills that made it possible. He’s not only his own Admiral but his own Reich Chancellor. Von Bülow holds the post, but strictly on sufferance. He’ll be out of office the minute he opposes one of the Kaiser’s pet projects. The whole court network of oligarchs, sportsmen, and aristocrats dance to Wilhelm’s tune—no matter that they believe themselves the composer.” Rathenau is flush with contempt.
“Surely Eulenburg in his day wielded real power?”
“More than anyone before or since. I’ll give you that. But the Kaiser was an unformed young man when his friendship with Eulenburg began. And as you doubtless recall, once Eulenburg came under attack, the Emperor instantly spurned him. Wilhelm is a shallow man, incapable of loyalty. He still constantly refers to Eulenburg’s ‘betrayal.’”
Kessler laughs: “As if Eulenburg slept with a fisherman solely to embarrass him.”
Rathenau’s face appears carved from stone.
As if taking up an unspoken dare, Kessler continues along the same dangerous ground: “I suppose it’s a sad situation for any man, never to let himself become close to others.”
“You’re being sentimental.”
“Perhaps. Some might call it ‘compassionate,’” Kessler says playfully.
“Call it whatever you like, but don’t waste it on the Kaiser. Even Max Harden saw clearly that Wilhelm would instantly reject Eulenburg.”
Aware that Rathenau has refused his invitation to become personal, Kessler lets him direct the conversation back to politics: “If Harden felt any pity for Eulenburg, he didn’t let it stay his hand.”
“Why should he have? Compassion isn’t Harden’s business. Becoming feared and powerful is. And that he’s achieved.”
“He’s too sharp-tongued and aggressive for my taste. And not nearly special enough to be called ‘eccentric.’”
“On that score, you’re right. He follows the pack—and these days that means heading into the arms of the conservative nationalists.”
“How the man does shift and wander!” Kessler adds, with an edge of impatience.
“Harden equates nationalism with patriotism. A common mistake.” Rathenau pauses, then says, “Harden and I were quite friendly for a time.”
“So I’d heard. The news surprised me. I’ve had lunch with him once or twice, which was quite enough.”
“Harden and I had much in common—until he started braying about the philistinism of the masses, the threat that democracy poses to the historic values of the Fatherland. The bark is loud, but it issues from a mutt, not a thoroughbred. He’s much like the Kaiser—two men who make a lot of noise but are basically timid.”
“And trust no one,” Kessler adds.
“For Wilhelm the distrust includes the Kaiserin and his own children. His confidence in anyone is wholly contingent on the extent to which they carry out his will. Mind you, in opening your eyes to the Kaiser’s absolute power, I’m not suggesting for a moment that he’s been using it well. Discontent is widespread, and growing, yet thus far impotent to assert itself.”
“I often hear the Kaiser belittled, even mocked. Yet the grievances against him never seem to accumulate.” Kessler sounds puzzled.
“I liken it to the situation of a bank that’s been mismanaged for a number of years: some employees are quietly grumbling about it, but it’s only when insolvency is suddenly declared that there’s a great roar of disapproval. Just so with Germany. The disasters accumulate. Misrule could last for perhaps another twenty years. Then suddenly the consequences will show up everywhere. I predict we’ll reach that point within ten years.”
They sit silently for a moment. Finally Kessler says, “Should I believe everything you tell me, Rathenau?”
Rathenau smiles. “That would be the wisest course.”