Bedřich Smetana

“ In these respects the eastern music stands in contrast with the much more personal and subjective musical poesy to which northern composers have tended.' This characterization, it is interesting to note, would apply as well to the music of Smetana and Dvořák, in which the kind of thoughtfulness we find in Schumann is almost always wanting, as to the folk-music of their country.
The songs, if naturally less boisterous than the dances, are animated, forthright, and cheerful, rather than profound. They are usually in major rather than in minor, and vigorous though graceful in rhythm. ”

“ Smetana, who prescribed medicaments to be taken inwardly, thereby indicating, as Schindler asserts, that he had no expectation of effecting a cure, but wanted only to occupy Beethoven’s mind, knowing what to expect from so impatient, wilful and absent-minded a patient; for Beethoven was as unready to follow a physician’s advice as a musician’s, and was more likely to injure himself with overdoses of drugs than to invite the benefit which the practitioner hoped for by obedience to the prescription. ”

“ She was either perfectly straightforward, or as cool a hand as he had ever met.
“You are interested in Mr Stent? How strange! Gentlemen of your profession do not generally interest themselves in other persons without some strong motive, I presume?”
“The motive is a pretty strong one. At present, other interests require that I do not divulge it,” replied Smeaton gravely. He was pleased with one thing, he had already got the name of the man; he preferred not to confess that he did not know it. And her frank allusion to him as Mr Stent seemed to show that she had nothing to hide. ”

“ The first performance of “The Bartered Bride” at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York on February 19, 1909, was a great triumph. “New York Herald” wrote next morning: “Smetana has been called “the Bohemian Mozart”, which is very apt, for this music is classic in its gayety and its light-hearted charm. It is simply melody from beginning to end. One pretty tune succeeds another—it is a treasure of purling tunefulness that will occupy a prominent place in the repertoire of the opera house.” ”

“ As to character, if it is impossible to indict a whole people, so is it impossible to draw a portrait of such a collective group. Nevertheless, no one can doubt that one characteristic of the countrymen of Smetana and Dvořák is their noble gift for music. ”

“ Johnson pursued his advantage. “After the lapse of twelve months, by which time he had probably found his feet again, he would recognise it, to use a phrase we both know well, sir, as ‘a fair cop.’ He had defied the law; the law had got the better of him. He would take off his hat, and say to the law: ‘I give you best. You are the better man, and you won.’”
Smeaton regarded his subordinate with genuine admiration.
“I am not too old to learn, Johnson; you have taught me something to-night.” ”

“ It has its happy infancy in "green days in forest," leaping over rocks, playing with pebbles, and generally disporting itself until it comes out into the world and moves among men. Not empty handed either, for it carries the sound of the forest and the rhythm of running water to those that have their being on its banks; if you doubt it, come and hear Smetana's work at the National Theatre reflected in the waters of Prague. The Vltava arrives at Prague reinforced by its tributary, the Berounka, and flows almost due north until it meets the Castle Hill. ”

“ New York and Chicago Grand Opera are playing today works of Italian and French authors of the second and third rank, but Smetana and Dvořák are entirely forgotten. Is it not curious?
The greatest gift of Smetana to his nation was the cycle of six symphonic poems “Má Vlast” (My Country) . Here in America again only two poems of this complex are given every season by the symphonic orchestras: the first “Vyšehrad” and the second “Vltava” (In German “Moldau”) . “My Country” is a grandiose conception. ”

“ Late one afternoon, while Smeaton was seated in his bare official room on the second floor at Scotland Yard, the window of which overlooked Westminster Bridge, a constable ushered in a taxi-driver, saying:
“This man has come to see you, sir, regarding a fare he drove to Chesterfield Street the other night.”
“Excellent!” exclaimed Smeaton, lounging back in his chair, having been busy writing reports. “Sit down. What is your name?”
“Davies, sir—George Davies,” replied the man, twisting his cap awkwardly in his hands as he seated himself. ”

“ Hopes and hops were his worst enemies. When he talked people were wont to laugh, but every one said that Smead did not amount to anything. However, if all the other leading lights of the village had conferred their brains jointly on one man, he would not have been more than knee-high to the mental stature of Smead. He was a man of wide talent—a kind of human what-not. He could do many things well, but accomplished little.
In fact, Mr. Smead was an ass, and he knew enough to know that he was an ass, which of itself distinguished him above all the citizens of Griggsby. ”

“ He did not use any folk songs in his works, but he wrote his own original music so perfectly in the spirit of the folk music that his operas, symphonic poems, etc., are immensely dear to every Bohemian heart. His works are the Bohemian music par excellence. He gained his victory only after a long and tragic struggle: Smetana’s opponents asserted that the progressive ideas of the world’s music were incompatible with the national idea, but Smetana proved the contrary. ”

“ According to him Smethurst had made one gigantic mistake in his clever career—he had on four occasions written to his late friend, William Kershaw. Two of these letters had no bearing on the case, since they were written more than twenty-five years ago, and Kershaw, moreover, had lost them—so he said—long ago. According to him, however, the first of these letters was written when Smethurst, alias Barker, had spent all the money he had obtained from the crime, and found himself destitute in New York. ”

“ The doctor had been up from Tramworth to take the splints from Smeaton’s leg and had mentioned Swickey’s message to the convalescent, which was that she hoped he would soon be able to be up again, and that she knew he would be just as strong and active as ever in a little while.
“Strong and active. Strong and active.” The phrase fixed itself in Smeaton’s memory and he repeated it to himself daily, usually concluding with, “Wal, I guess I am—even if I ain’t no dude fur looks.” ”

“ A tall, bearded man, and a foreigner! Smeaton pricked up his ears. The description tallied somewhat with that of the person who had dined with Monkton in the little restaurant in Soho.
Davies was dismissed with encouraging words and a liberal douceur. Given Smeaton the semblance of a clue, and he was on the track like a bloodhound.
Within twenty minutes of the taxi-driver’s departure, he was interviewing one of the hall-porters at the Savoy, an imposing functionary, and an old friend.
Smeaton had a large and extensive acquaintance among people who could be useful. ”

“ Mind you, she had always been morally convinced of young Smethick’s innocence, but in her the professional woman always fought hard battles against the sentimentalist, and in this instance the overwhelming circumstantial evidence and the conviction of her superiors had forced her to accept the young man’s guilt as something out of her ken.
By his silence, too, the young man had tacitly confessed; and if a man is perceived on the very scene of a crime, both before it has been committed and directly afterwards ”

“ Smeaton, he knew, was still searching for Stent, and he, the amateur, had forestalled him. Was he right, after all, in his surmise that by some curious lapse the man of wider experience had left Farloe out of his calculations, and the man Stent was identical with the man Strange?
His survey finished, he mounted his machine, and rode along, thinking out his plans.
“Find a nice comfortable inn somewhere near, but not too close, pose as an artist out for a brief holiday, and find out all there is to be found about the mysterious Mr Strange,” was the result of his meditations. ”

“ I know you are not a man to let the grass grow under your feet.”
Smeaton explained the situation as it stood at present.
“We have partly identified one, and in my opinion the more important, of the two men who put him in the taxi. His name is given to me as Stent, and he is supposed to have a house somewhere in the neighbourhood of St. Albans. One of my best sergeants is down there to-day, making inquiries. I fancy we are also on the track of the second man.”
He added that it was to Farloe’s sister, Mrs Saxton, that he was indebted for the somewhat scanty information he possessed. ”

“ It contained in all forty-six courses of stone, and reached the height of seventy feet. The beds for the light-keepers were fixed in the uppermost room, and the kitchen with its fire-place in the room below it, whereas in the former house, the kitchen had been the upper room, doubtless, because the funnel for the smoke would be shorter. But Smeaton having been informed that with the former arrangement the beds and bedding were in a very damp and disagreeable state, proposed to remedy the evil by allowing the copper funnel to pass through the bed-room, and thus to dry the air. ”

“ Smeaton regarded Johnson approvingly. For some time past he had discerned in this comparatively young man qualities that bade fair to secure him a high position in his profession. He was level-headed, quick at instructions, possessed of considerable initiative, cautious, yet daring on occasion, confident without being boastful.
“One last word before you leave. You will make quite sure he is in the house before you enter it; in other words, that he has returned to London.”
“I heard yesterday from my cousin, who had met his valet, that his lordship arrived late the previous evening. ”

“ Kershaw's story and Smethurst's letters had both found their way into the papers, and following my usual method—mind you, I am only an amateur, I try to reason out a case for the love of the thing—I sought about for a motive for the crime, which the police declared Smethurst had committed. To effectually get rid of a dangerous blackmailer was the generally accepted theory. ”

“ Woman-like, she thought the scheme a dishonourable one, for the law, she knew, is severe on the blackmailer.
"The assignation might be a cunning trap, in any case it was a curious one; why, she argued, did not Smethurst elect to see Kershaw at his hotel the following day? A thousand whys and wherefores made her anxious, but the fat German had been won over by Kershaw's visions of untold gold, held tantalisingly before his eyes. He had lent the necessary £2, with which his friend intended to tidy himself up a bit before he went to meet his friend the millionaire. ”

“ A man whose life is so beneficially devoted to the service of the public can scarcely hope to enjoy leisure and retirement during which he may look back upon the [46] past, and leave a written record of his exertions. Smeaton was so constantly and urgently employed that he could not achieve much with his pen. On the 16th September 1792, he was seized with an attack of paralysis induced by over-exertion, and this attack carried him to the grave on the 28th of the next month, in the 69th year of his age.
During his illness he dictated several letters to his old friend Mr. Holmes. ”

“ He had all the characteristics of the poisoner—the calm deliberation, the protracted dissimulation, as with unshrinking, relentless wickedness the deadly work is carried on to the end. Smethurst’s victim was a Miss Bankes, with whom he had contracted a bigamous marriage. He had met her at a boarding-house, where he lived with his own wife, a person of “shady” antecedents, and whom he left without scruple to join Miss Bankes. ”

“ Smeton confessed from the first. Brereton, Weston, Rochfort, virtually confessed on the scaffold. Norris said nothing. Of all the sufferers not one ventured to declare that he or she was innocent,—and that six human beings should leave the [Pg 488] world with the undeserved stain of so odious a charge on them, without attempting to clear themselves, is credible only to those who form opinions by their wills, and believe or disbelieve as they choose.
To this end the queen had come at last, and silence is the best comment which charity has to offer upon it. ”

“ If he thought such a direct hint would arrest the flow of his visitor’s fatal fluency, he was grievously mistaken. Boyle raised an arresting hand, and indulged in some more contortions of arms and hands.
“I recognise the fact, sir, I fully recognise it. A man in your responsible position must find the working hours all too short for what you have to do. You bear upon your shoulders, capable as they are, the weight of Atlas, if I may say so.”
Smeaton had to smile, in spite of himself, at the fanciful imagery. “Not quite so bad as that, Mr Boyle. ”

“ The musical society “Lumir” has maintained its existence continuously from 1867 until the present, and has combined forces with “Hlahol,” a younger organization. These choral societies produce each season an opera by some distinguished Czech composer. The most ambitious is Smetana’s
St. Prokop’s Church. “Bartered Bride,” which has been given several times with the assistance of other choral societies. The 1919 performance was “Hubicka” (The Kiss) by the same composer. The scene of this opera is laid in the mountains of Slovensko, and peasant customs and mountain brigands share in the action. ”