In Search of ... Mrs. Wilhelm Nauck, violin teacher

Mrs. Wilhelm Nauck

Lovecraft has somewhat to say of an 1898-1899 incident that might never have been known otherwise. Sometime after 1897, Susan tried to impose some appreciation of art and music upon Lovecraft, who at first seemed excited about learning the violin, but as time went on and the tedium of practice wore on him, he apparently cracked under the strain shortly after a soloist concert.

His teacher was declared to be Mrs. Wilhelm Nauck. Using some sources found scanned into "Da Google", I was able to piece together a few things.

First, she was a neighbor of sorts. The 1899 Providence House Directory No. 8, shows that she lived at 387 Angell Street! However, there are some oddities. The listing at 387 Angell Street lists: Miss Susan M Cornell (border); Elizabeth G Hicks, widow and homeowner (h); Mrs A.C.S. Nauck, violin teacher (h); Wilhelm Nauck, teacher (h); Mrs M. E. Shepardson (h).

If Howard was going to the house, he would have walked several doors down and passed the Central Congregational Church at the corner, and continued on a bit further. The directory often lists the same person twic eat the same address, for instance at 391 Angell we find the conundrum of Wm. V. Wallace, physician, homeowner, but Wm. V. Wallace, real estate, border. The lessons may not have been at the home of Nauck, however.

There is a listing for W. Nauck in room 18 of the Hoppin Homestead Building (357 Westminster) a bit of a business mall with several of the rooms having music teachers. Nauck is listed as Principal of the European School of Languages. A true renaisance person, Wilhelm Nauck was a memmber of the Providence Athetic Association, and most notable a member of the Deutsche Gesellschaft (more below). There are seven other violin teachers listed in the Providence directory at this time.

We turn back to the other available directory from 1889, and find that at 283 Westminster we have two postings (different pages) for Wilhelm Nauck teaching German.

The Deutsche Gesselschaft was a German club which the State Legistature certified (in 1899) thus: STATE OF RHODE ISLAND (fcc) I Charles P Bennett secretary of state hereby certify that Herman Rosenberg, John L Remlinger, Jacob Ginand, Henry T Molter, F Henry Peycke, Gustav Saacke, Henry R Wirth, Max E Naumann, Herman G Possner, John Scheminger, Otto Gerlach, and John H Althans, have filed in the office of the secretary of state according to law their agreement to form a corporation under the name of Deutsche Gesellschaft for the purpose of social and literary culture in accordance with law and have also filed the certificate of the general treasurer that they have paid into the general treasury of the state the fee required by law. issued July 20 1898. The club is mentioned in the 1907 Old Home Week booklet.

So, in summary, Wilhelm Nauck was a long time resident and teacher of German, and club member, while Mrs. Wilhem Nauck (Mrs. A C S Nauck?) was a violin teacher competing for students against several other teachers in the city. beyond that, not much more can elicited from the data available.

The original recollections of Lovecraft are below:

[To Kleiner, 16 November 1916 in Letters to Rheinhart Kleiner, p. 621] My rhythmic tendencies led me into a love of melody, and I was forever whistling & humming in defiance of convention & good breeding. I was so exact in time & tune, & showed sch a semi-professional precision & flourish in my crude attempts, that my plea for a violin was granted when I was seven years of age, & I was placed under the instruction of the best violin teacher for children in the city — Mrs. Wilhelm Nauck. For two years I made such progress that Mrs. Nauck was entusiastic, & declared that I should adopt music as a career - but all this time the tedium of practising had been wearing shockingly on my always sensitive nervous system. My 'career' extended until 1899, its summit being a public recital at which I played a solo from Mozart before an audience of considerable size. Soon after that, my ambition & taste alike collapsed like a house of cards (to use a trite simile). I began to detest classical music, bcuase it had meant so much painful labour to me; & I positively loathed the violin. Our physician, knowing my temperament, advised an immediate discontinuance of music lessons, which speedily ensued. ... in music I lacked ambition & ability...

[To Kleiner, 16 November 1916 in Letters to Rheinhart Kleiner, p. 71] ... {interest in drama and plays}All this was contemporaneous with my disastrous efforts to acquire musical proficiency. Of my failure in that direction, I can only speak with humiliation. My mother has a well-nigh professional skill both with voice & piano - but I did not inherit her ability for studious application, & proved an utter and ignominious failure with the violin.

(This is also excerpted in A dreamer and a visionary: H.P. Lovecraft in his time By S. T. Joshi, p.35 ; HP Lovecraft: A Life, Joshi, p. 43; Selected Letters, Vol. 1, p. 29, Lovecraft: A Biography, DeCamp, p. 28; Lord of a Visible World, Joshi, p.17)


[10 April 1934 to Barlow] I had a very irregular heart action - badly affected by physical exertion - & such acute kidney trouble that a local practitioner would have operated for stone in the bladder had not a Boston specialist given a sounder diagnosis & traced it to the nervous system. That was when I was 9, & reduced to a very irritable state of pressure of violin lessons. On the specialist's advice those lessons were stopped ... psychologists would probably find something significant in the astonishing speed with which I forgot how to play the violin & even how to read music. I can't read music today.

(This is excerpted in HPL: A Life, Joshi, and found in O Fortunate Floridian, p.125)

Sweet Adeline

Lovecraft remembered this being a hit in the Spring of 1904. His memory holds.



In 1934, Lovecraft recalled the Spring 1904 song "You're the Flower of My Heart, Sweet Adeline". From Wikipedia:

"(You're the Flower of My Heart) Sweet Adeline" is a ballad best known as a barbershop standard. It was first published in 1903, with lyrics by Richard H. Gerard to music by Harry Armstrong, from a tune he had written in 1896 at the age of 18. According to a 1928 newspaper story, the lyrics were inspired "by a girl who worked at the music counter of a New York department store."

After failing to find a publisher with the initial title, "You're the Flower of My Heart, Sweet Rosalie", according to a story the two decided a new title was in order and were inspired by a poster advertising the farewell tour of opera singer Adelina Patti. It did not become a hit until it was performed in 1904 by the {Philadelphia based} group The Quaker City Four. They re-priemiered is at a performance at the Hammerstein Theater and the "lid blew off".

{Lovecraft does not mention, but would probably have been chagrined at its use by John F. Fitzgerald, grandfather of John F. Kennedy, who used it as his theme song for his two successful campaigns for Mayor of Boston. In 1931, the Marx Brothers used it comedically, but I've not seen where Lovecraft saw the Marx Brothers in anything. Unlikely his "cup of tea".

I found a notice that at least by 16 December 1904, this was a billboard #1 hit: 1904 ... "Sweet Adeline (You're the Flower of My Heart)" by Haydn Quartet. Again, many people would have rushed to cover this to get a record sale. This one "had legs" as they say. Parodies would immediately be rampant, too.

Also, remember that there were dozens of top songs in these years - nothing changes - these are only the ones that impressed him over the years.

For instance, here are a few top Billboard hits of December on each year - Christmas was a hot buying time even then. The same singers/groups were perennial hit-meisters.

1908 ... "Sunbonnet Sue" by Harry MacDonough & Haydn Quartet
1907 ... "Let's Take an Old-Fashioned Walk" by Ada Jones & Billy Murray
1906 ... "Love Me and the World Is Mine" by Henry Burr
1905 ... "Where the Morning Glories Twine Around the Door" by Byron G. Harlan
1904 ... "Sweet Adeline (You're the Flower of My Heart)" by Haydn Quartet
1903 ... "Any Rags?" by Arthur Collins
1902 ... "In the Good Old Summer Time" by J.W. Myers

[Adeline was Adelina Patti, a 19th century singer of renown, and froma billboard sign of her parting came the song]

On The Banks of the Wabash

Lovecraft alludes to this song in passing in one of his letters (1934), but it was old even in his day. It would be more from his parent's era, but he remembered it.

From Wikipedia...

"On the Banks of the Wabash, Far Away" was among the best-selling songs of 19th-Century, in terms of sheet music sold. Written and composed by American songwriter Paul Dresser, it was published by Tin Pan Alley firm Howley, Haviland & Co. in October 1897. The lyrics of the song reminisce about life near Dresser's childhood home by the Wabash River in Indiana.

The song remained popular and the Indiana General Assembly adopted the song as the official state song of Indiana on March 14, 1913. The song was the basis for a 1928 film by the same title. Its longtime popularity led to the emergence of several different lyrical versions of the song, including an 1898 anti-war song and a Swedish version that was a number one hit.

The song was composed during a transitory time in musical history when songs first began to be recorded for the phonograph. Wabash was among the first popular songs to be recorded, and Dresser's inability to control the distribution of phonograph cylinders led him and other music companies to petition the United States Congress to expand federal copyright protections over the new technology. Dresser's song was the subject of some controversy after his death in 1905.
_____

Round my Indiana homestead wave the cornfields,
In the distance loom the woodlands clear and cool.
Oftentimes my thoughts revert to scenes of childhood,
Where I first received my lessons, nature's school.
But one thing there is missing from the picture,
Without her face it seems so incomplete.
I long to see my mother in the doorway,
As she stood there years ago, her boy to greet.

Oh, the moonlight's fair tonight along the Wabash,
From the fields there comes the breath of newmown hay.
Through the sycamores the candle lights are gleaming,
On the banks of the Wabash, far away.

Many years have passed since I strolled by the river,
Arm in arm, with sweetheart Mary by my side,
It was there I tried to tell her that I loved her,
It was there I begged of her to be my bride.
Long years have passed since I strolled thro' there churchyard.
She's sleeping there, my angel, Mary dear,
I loved her, but she thought I didn't mean it,
Still I'd give my future were she only here.

Chrispy Time Travelin': In Search of ... "Bedelia"

Warning. Although Chrispy tries valiantly to make this a family-freindly blog, the nature of Lovecraft's beliefs and his era and milieu causes us to delve into darkness sometimes. I will do all I can to keep this of moderate temperament. "Bedelia" is ethnic and somewhat racist. Recall, Howard is now 12 years old, and these songs were permeating his young world. Chrispy believes that racism is learned, and usually in the pre-teen or teen-aged years. And so from an early age, HPL was being indoctrinated by his culture and probably by his family.

Before you throw stones at Lovecraft, let us all examine our own prejudices and beliefs. Beware glass houses. Otherwise, let us now scholarly pursure "Bedelia"
_____
_____

The music (no words) can be heard on this quick-time link. You will have to have quicktime. Chrispy was unable to find all the words on this time travel trip, sorry.

http://parlorsongs.com/content/b/bedelia.mid

_____


_____
OK, Lovecrftians, sit back as we click the time machine and go back to visit young Lovecraft in 1903. He mentions in passing* he used to sing "Bedelia". What's a Bedelia, you may ask? Let's depress "Da Google" button, and slip up the wikipedia lever a notch, and we get ...

"Bedelia (I Want to Steal Ye, Bedelia, I Love You So)", written by Billy Jerome and Jean Schwartz. We now go over to the Indiana University archives and we find ...

Title: Bedelia
First Line: There's a charming Irish lady with a roguish winning way,
First Line of Chorus: Bedelia, I want to steal ye, Bedelia, I love you so,
Composer: Schwartz, Jean
Lyricist: Jerome, William, 1856-1932
Performer: Elizabeth Murray
Published: New York: Shapiro, Bernstein & Co., copyright 1903

Now remember, these hit songs were covered by many, many people once they broke out, so we may not know which singer he heard (see cover art above), or maybe he heard several versions of them. They would be played EVERYWHERE, much like Billy Cyrus' Achy-Breaky Heart or Macarena was a while back. You wouldn't be able to miss it. Believe me, you COULDN'T miss it, any more than you would have missed those songs YOU hear EVERYWHERE.
_____

Here is a commentary:

... the Irish were also vilified in the early 20th century as invaders of the land and stealers of employment. The authors of this song seemed to go for a double play by sub-titling this song as "The Irish Coon Song Serenade". My God, what on earth were they thinking of! The lyrics of the song are all Irish referenced but the sub title perhaps shows just what the authors thought of the Irish.

In fact though, it does appear that it was the musical style, the "coon song" style that they may have been referring to for the lyrics make no mention of African-Americans, nor does it try to make comparisons. The lyrics do however, use stereotypes and common misconceptions about the Irish.
_____

Lovecraft doesn't mention it, but we should add this historical note, as well.

"Cordelia Malone" a novelty song written in 1904 by Billy Jerome and Jean Schwartz, and recorded that same year by popular Irish American singer Billy Murray {Not Bill Murray, the ghostbuster SNK person}. The lyrics are a stableboy's first-hand account of his courtship of Cordelia Malone, a "smart Irish girl". Over the course of the song, he describes his seemingly successful efforts to woo Cordelia through use of the then newly invented telephone, stating that:

"...Young suitors can all nightly flock 'round the door, since her sister Bedelia won fame, but her smiles don't you see, they are only for me, so they might as well leave her alone, 'cause she seems to rejoice at the sound of my voice when I sing through the Bell telephone: "Hello, hello, sweet Cordelia"..."

The name given to Cordelia's sister, 'Bedelia', may be in reference to a popular (previous year) 1903 song, "Bedelia (I Want to Steal Ye, Bedelia, I Love You So)", also written by Billy Jerome and Jean Schwartz.
_____

Well, that's all we have "time" for right now, heh. (Mr. Wells only lets us borrow his machine every so often.)

[* In a 1934 letter he writes down the lyrics of "Bedelia", the big hit of 1903..., I don't have a copy but a reference states this is in Selected Letters: 1932-1934 p. 365 - To J Vernon Shea, 4 February 1934]

Rock Group Tribute to HPL:

Frostmoon Eclipse Streams Lovecraft Themed Songs Online
posted Jan 11, 2009 at 3:28 PM by xFiruath.

The three songs that black metal act Frostmoon Eclipse contributed to the H.P. Lovecraft Series will be available for streaming on the band's MySpace page until the end of January.

Released on God Is Myth Records at the end of 2008, FROSTMOON ECLIPSE’s “I Am Providence” is Volume VI of the series dedicated to the writer H.P. Lovecraft. ...
Frostmoon Eclipse issued the following statement about the songs:

"The band are all fans of Lovecraft, and we found the idea behind the series particularly interesting to work on. Two of the tracks, “In The Vault” and “The Thing On The Doorstep” were inspired by Lovecraft stories and the idea that people could actually listen to them whilst reading the stories is fascinating. The final track “Providence, 1937-03-15” is our tribute to this extraordinary writer who died much too soon."