The stress of the coming audition for Gardiner played havoc with Tietjens’s emotions. “I sat at the piano trying to think, but I seem absolutely barren of ideas at present.” He abandoned the piano, read some Kipling, and went to bed early.
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| L. Frank Baum - circa early 1900s. |
On Sunday, Baum and Tietjens presented
the first act of The Octopus for Gardiner. Tietjens could
not gauge “what impression it made on [Gardiner], but apparently he seemed to like
it. I will have to put some trashy music in the second act . . . a good deal of
the success of the opera will have to depend on these trashy numbers, and they
are harder for me to write.”
The next evening, seeking trashy
inspiration, Tietjens went to the Grand Opera House to see Weber & Fields’s
Fiddle-Dee-Dee, some of which he quite enjoyed. [Click here to read his review] He started composing
again. “The result, [of my efforts] was a jingle, the chorus of the newspaper
reporters, which seemed sufficiently trashy to suit a manager.”
Baum sent word for Tietjens to come see
him on Friday, May 17. Baum was to leave for New York the next day. Gardiner
had given him a letter of introduction to Sam Shubert, manager of the Herald
Square Theater in New York. Gardiner’s letter puzzled Tietjens, "emphasizing that
the story was good, but conspicuously ignoring the music.” Baum reluctantly explained that Gardiner had told
him “in confidence that my stuff was too heavy to be accepted, the only good
things being Leola’s song and the ‘Tramp Quartette’.” Tietjens found the news a
great disappointment. Baum still felt The Octopus had much potential to
be produced. “ . . . but he is naturally optimistic . . . and [said] he did not
want to discourage me.” Tietjens was discouraged nonetheless.
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| Poster for Sousa's El Capitan. |
Trying to be encouraging, Baum suggested
Tietjens go see theatrical manager Henry W. Savage, who was visiting Chicago with his
Castle Square Opera Company at the Studebaker Theater. Tietjens went down to
the theater, but when he asked how he might meet with Savage, was “treated like
a school boy.” Stymied, Tietjens bought a ticket to see Savage’s production of
John Philip Sousa’s comic opera El Capitan that evening.
“It is really a wonderful
work, one of the best comic operas I have heard.” Tietjens was so intimidated
by the splendor of El Capitan that it “almost gave the quietus to my
comic opera aspirations. . . . I felt blue and despondent, and have almost
decided to discontinue the work.”
Tietjens had clearly gotten himself into
quite a state, “a mortal combat” between financial security and “nobility” of
art. His over-the-top misery was as heavy as many found his music. “It does
seem unjust that one who is capable of appreciating to its fullest depths the
true inwardness of his art and of all poetic impulses should be deterred by
mental ineptitude, due to financial difficulty.”
Tietjens’s family was not doing well at
the farm in Slater, Missouri. Slater was suffering from a drought and his family’s
finances were tight. Tietjens felt guilty taking money from his father. “I will
be 24 years of age next Wednesday [May 22], and that is too old to be supported
by a father who is himself not too well provided for.”
Unconvinced his comic opera had a future,
Tietjens avoided it. He spent the next few weeks working on his piano studies.
When his hands and fingers grew weary, he escaped into reading Kipling’s Soldiers
Three and Robert Louis Stevenson’s New Arabian Nights—The Suicide Club and
The Bottle Imp. “I am more interested in Stevenson than in my music.”
On May 27, Tietjens attempted to call on
Baum, who had returned that morning from his trip to New York. Baum’s wife Maud
met Tietjens at the door. Her husband, she explained, had come home with a tooth
infection and gone straight to the dentist, who had pulled ten teeth. In New
York Baum had seen Sam Shubert, who had refused to listen to an unfinished
work. Mrs. Baum left Tietjens “rather
unceremoniously. I lingered a moment and then [returned home], not in the best
of humors.”
 |
| Ike Morgan |
The next day Tietjens was surprised to
learn from a newspaper announcement that Ike Morgan would be marrying Pauline
Swain on June 28. Morgan confirmed the news when he returned home that evening.
Tietjens worried the marriage was premature. “It may happen that [Ike’s] book
will not bring the expected or desired revenue, and then he would be doubly
tied to . . . his newspaper work, which is a calamity to be dreaded.” No doubt Tietjens
was also distressed to be losing his roommate and the social intimacy he and
Morgan had shared for the last six months.
A few days later, demoralized by all
life’s pressures, Tietjens apprehensively returned to the Baums. “I fully
expected to have a falling out with him, but it turned out otherwise. . . [Baum]
was in higher spirits than ever . . .” In New York he had seen Frank Pixley and
Gustav Luders’s King Dodo and The Burgomaster, “and claims our
work is far superior to any of the popular hits in New York . . . I have now
determined to finish the [comic opera]. It would be rather cowardly, and a
wrong to Baum to leave him in the lurch, when the work has progressed so far.”
Tietjens plunged back into work on The
Octopus, but his financial situation was worsening every day. He had
written home for assistance twice and received no reply. “I have only a few cents left, and I’m
urgently in need of funds. I hate to borrow from Ike. I hope nothing has
happened at home [in Slater].”
Ike Morgan married Pauline Swain on the
morning of June 28, 1901. Tietjens gave Morgan $25 as a wedding gift, partly to repay
all of Morgan’s generosity over the six months Tietjens had now been in
Chicago. Where Tietjens found the money for his generous wedding gift is
unknown.
At the wedding reception, held at the
Denslows’, Tietjens entertained the guests, playing selections from The
Octopus. Denslow was particularly taken with Tietjens’s music and made a
suggestion that would change both their lives forever: Tietjens should really
be composing a comic opera based on The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
Copyright © 2019 David Maxine. All rights reserved.
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