Johannes Brahms_ A Biography - Jan Swafford [339]
For all the affection between them, that summer of 1888 Widmann’s republican and anti-German inclinations clashed with Brahms’s patriotism enough to threaten the friendship. It was the “Three-Kaiser Year” in Germany, with the death of Wilhelm I and his son Friedrich III and the ascent to the throne of the rash, vain, militant Wilhelm II. Widmann wrote an article condemning a speech by the Kaiser, and Brahms blew up over it. After some further squabbles over monarchism versus republicanism, with Brahms the liberal democrat perversely defending the Prussian throne, each man retired to his corner. Before long both were trying to smooth the waters, Brahms doing it in his roundabout fashion. He wrote Widmann, leaving the bitterness between the lines,
Thus all that comes from Germany is severely criticized, though the Germans themselves lead the way. It is the same in politics as in art. If the Bayreuth Theater stood in France, it would not require anything so great as the works of Wagner to make you and Wendt and all the world go on a pilgrimage there, and rouse your enthusiasm for something so ideally conceived and executed as those music-dramas.23
The coming years would see a great deal of tension between Switzerland and Wilhelm II’s Germany. In their future relations Brahms and Widmann carefully skirted the subject.
IN THE SAME PERIOD as the quarrel with Widmann, Brahms also distanced himself from the ailing Theodor Billroth. It pained him to see the erosion of his friend’s once overflowing vitality. Besides, in his decline the surgeon did not go quietly toward the night but angrily, without the least willingness to cut back his exhausting schedule. “I am at the height of my good fortune!” he wrote in this period, “And afraid of the gods!”24 From his summer house in St. Gilgen, Billroth sent Brahms a note in summer 1888: “I have not heard from you for quite a time, and just a few days ago … got your address through Fellinger.” They had once been nearly daily companions; now Billroth did not even know where Brahms was staying. Brahms replied with a stiff attempt at warmth: “Your letter has given me enormous pleasure. I have long wished for it and wanted to ask for it. You are so superior to me in goodness, writing, and in all possible things. What you can manage to accomplish!”25
There was more than fear of illness behind Brahms’s holding back; other matters had drawn them apart. Billroth could be as blunt and roughshod as any of the other extravagant egotists he called friends. He had received with great happiness the dedication of Brahms’s Two String Quartets, Opus 51, and naturally was thrilled when the composer presented him with the manuscripts. One day Brahms was visiting the surgeon and noticed a picture of himself framed on the wall, with a clip of his signature and dedication mounted under it. Suddenly he realized that Billroth had cut them out of a quartet manuscript. As a collector of manuscripts himself and preoccupied with their value, Brahms was horrified. He flew to friend Eusebius Mandyczewski, sputtering with rage, “Can you imagine? Billroth has cut up my quartets! Just think! He who should have known that I love him so well I would gladly have made him a new copy of the whole quartet if he wanted! And now he goes and chops a piece out of it!”26
Yet another matter rankled between them. Brahms had always proclaimed himself forgiving toward his parents for sending him to work in dives, chalking it up to ignorance on their part and toughening experience on his. To Billroth the scientist, what Johann Jakob had