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CHAPTER 14 entr’acte ii: uncrowned kings (1908–1917) Aside from music and his family there was only one vital interest in his life: the cause of Irish freedom. Even the most casual and slightly derogatory statement concerning the Irish people was sufficient to send him off in a violent burst of temper which would last throughout the day. —Clifford Victor Herbert, from the Philadelphia Gazette, May ,  Every Irishman is an uncrowned king! —Victor Herbert, from ‘‘Yesterthoughts,’’ by Frederick Stahlberg While Victor Herbert enthusiastically embraced American music and culture, he never forgot his Irish roots. Of Ireland’s music Herbert spoke in the closest personal terms: Ireland is full of music. It begins at the cradle and does not end at the grave. It is dance music, work music—very typical music: jigs, reels and some very mournful. . . . Ireland would never have survived but for her fairy tales and folk music. . . . Why has Ireland not produced a great national music that would sweep the world with its beauty, its eloquence, its fervor, its grandeur? When Irishmen are transported to freer and better conditions they make themselves felt the world over in art, literature, science and all the practical pursuits of life. I tell you that in Ireland the Irish would accomplish as much as they accomplish in other parts of the world if they were not suppressed and smothered well-neigh to death.’’1 Herbert promoted Irish music at every opportunity. At his popular Sunday evening concerts at the Broadway Theater, he frequently programmed arrangements of Irish folk songs and the music of other composers of Irish descent; and the annual Feis Coeil Agus Seanachas, a literary and musical festival sponsored by the Gaelic Society at Carnegie Hall, was the occasion for Herbert to introduce Stanford’s F-minor Symphony and his own Irish Rhapsody. In 1912 the Gaelic Society presented 433 him with a parchment encomium which used a facsimile of the lettering, coloring and tracery of the Book of Kells in recognition of his work on behalf of Irish causes. Those causes involved much more than advocacy of Irish music and art, for Victor Herbert was a patriot. In the first fifty years of his life that was a comparatively easy thing for him to be. Born in Ireland, raised by a mother deeply imbued with a love and respect for their Irish heritage, greatly influenced by the example of his prominent forebears on both his mother’s and father’s sides of the family, Herbert was virulently proud of his membership in what he called ‘‘the Irish race.’’ His use of the term ‘‘race’’ was typical for the period in which he lived, a period in which a Western pseudo-science, eugenics, was devoted to the establishment of definitions of ‘‘superior’’ and ‘‘inferior ’’ racial characteristics. Since the tradition of German culture in which he had been reared and schooled deeply affected his personal and intellectual development, he could scarcely have avoided racial consciousness. Since 1886 he had struggled to establish his image as 100 percent American , creating and championing the development of the art of music in his adopted land. But this tripartite loyalty came under serious stress in the first decades of the twentieth century. When in August of 1914 World War I exploded, which tradition would command Herbert’s loyalty? Could a loyal Celt support the cause of perfidious Albion against the interests of his Teutonic majesty? And when Wilson led his beloved America into the con- flict, and Clifford enlisted and became a hero at the Marne and the Argonne, what was the Irish advocate, the cultural German, the loyal American to do? Truly, patriotism did not come easily to Victor Herbert in the final years of his life. As a celebrity he was active in Liberty Bond drives; he was immensely proud of Clifford’s military service, but in his heart of hearts he remained true to his Irish heritage and was a constant supporter of the cause of Irish freedom. Herbert’s earliest association with the organized Irish community in America began in 1908, when he became a member of the Society of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick in the City of New York. The Society, founded in 1784 during a period when Ireland enjoyed a brief respite from British repression, was a strong supporter of the cause of Irish home rule, not independence. The American-Irish Historical Society, which Herbert joined in 1911, had a broad...

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