On 10 April 1849, the United States Patent Office issued Patent Number 6310 to a man named Isaac Merritt Singer. Singer, who apprenticed as a mechanic during his teenage years, had been working in a factory in Fredericksburg, Ohio that manufactured wooden type for printers when he invented a new carving machine for wood or metal that he was going to manufacture in his own factory. It was not to be, however, as the factory where the prototype was being stored exploded.
Ever industrious, Singer accepted an invitation to the machine shop of Orson Phelps in Boston to recreate his machine. While there, Singer became intrigued by the sewing machines that Phelps was building for the Lerow and Blodgett company and began designing his own version. Sewing machines were not new, of course. The world’s first patent for a sewing machine was issued in 1790 in England, and Elias Howe had patented his machine in the United States in 1846. Nevertheless, on 12 August 1851, Singer was issued Patent Number 8294 for having “invented certain new and useful Improvements in the Machine for Sewing Seams in Cloth and Other Substances.” Within ten years, I.M. Singer & Company, later the Singer Manufacturing Company, was the largest sewing machine manufacturer in the world. Singer retired a man of preposterous wealth.
Singer’s wealth was necessary given his personal life. At 19, he married 15-year-old Catherine Haley, who bore him two children. Singer left Haley and the children to join the Baltimore Strolling Players, a traveling theater troupe. While on tour, Singer met Mary Ann Sponsler and began a 25-year affair with her during which she had eight children who survived and two who did not. By this time, Singer and Sponsler had formed their own troupe, the Merritt Players, which toured for nine years before running out of money while in…Fredericksburg, Ohio. After that, Singer’s ingenuity kicked in and wealth came soon thereafter. And thank God for it, because Singer was just getting started.
Singer, Sponsler, and family number two moved into a mansion on Fifth Avenue in New York City, where Singer’s factory was located. Singer began an affair with one of his employees, Mary McGonigal, who bore Singer five more surviving children. One McGonigal was not enough for Singer, however, and he allegedly had an affair with McGonigal’s sister Kate at the same time. These affairs are, of course, separate from the affair he was having with Mary Eastwood Walters, who gave birth to a daughter the same year Mary McGonigal did.
Finally, in 1861, Sponsler, who you may recall from two paragraphs ago was Singer’s long-time mistress, finally had enough and took Singer to court, demanding marital assets by alleging that they were common law spouses since they had lived together for seven months after Singer’s divorce from Haley, his first wife, which had finally been obtained the year prior after Singer accused Haley of adultery. I feel like it bears repeating that the divorce was obtained after SINGER accused HALEY of adultery. An undisclosed arrangement was agreed upon between Singer and Sponsler, who married one John Foster shortly thereafter. Singer, his reputation in tatters, left the country for England in 1862, living in London with McGonigal, leaving his company in the hands of his partner, Edward Clark, who incorporated in 1863.
You’re not going to believe this, but Singer did not remain faithful to McGonigal, leaving her for a woman thirty years his junior, a French model named Isabella Eugénie Boyer. Boyer, who went by the name Sommerville during her marriage to Singer because why not, had six of Singer’s children between 1863 and 1870. The family settled in Paignton, Devon, which is in that little tail that hangs off the southwest of England and is sometimes called the “English Riviera.” In 1871, Singer commissioned the building of Oldway Mansion, which he himself referred to as “The Wigwam,” a 110-room estate on 20 acres that included a grotto, a maze, and a hall of mirrors, which sounds a bit like the house Laurence Olivier owned in Sleuth, but he died before it was completed. Singer was laid to rest in a super fancy three-layer coffin of “cedar lined with satin, lead, and English oak with silver decoration” and his body buried in a marble tomb. For her part, after Singer’s passing, multiple sources say that Boyer served as the model for Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi’s Liberty Enlightening the World, which was dedicated on 28 October 1886 at New York Harbor.
Singer left behind an estate of $14 million, the equivalent of about $330 million today, but he did not divide this sum equally among his children. His eldest child, a son named William from his first wife, was left $500 because he took his mother’s side in the 1860 divorce proceedings. His eighteenth surviving child, Winnaretta, on the other hand, received $167,000 from Singer’s savings account, $50,000 in cash, more than $600,000 in stock, and a portion of the sale of the Singer Sewing Machine Company. She used it to build an empire of patronage in Paris.
Her mother had moved the family back to Paris after Singer’s death, and Winnaretta soon set about entwining herself with the Parisian elite. She married nobility, one Prince Louis de Scey-Montbéliard, at age 22. The marriage was annulled five years later unconsummated, but not before Winnaretta had her portrait painted by John Singer Sargent. The following year she followed in her mother’s footsteps by marrying a man thirty years her elder, Prince Edmond de Polignac. This marriage, likewise unconsummated, lasted eight years, until the Prince’s death in 1901 and it seems to have been a successful and happy lavender marriage based on friendship and mutual love of music.
Princesse Edmond de Polignac had been a lover of music since her teenage years. She requested, and was granted, a performance of Beethoven’s inscrutably dense String Quartet op. 131 for her thirteenth birthday. She was first introduced to the composer Gabriel Faure at age fifteen and maintained a friendship with him throughout the remainder of his life. She attended the festival at Bayreuth when she was seventeen. Together with Prince Edmond, who was a composer, in 1894 they created a salon at their home on Avenue Henri Martin, in the heart of the 16th arrondissement, presumably amongst the bitches that Florent Schmitt was yelling at during the Rite of Spring premiere. The salon would host every composer of significant stature in France, as well as artists, authors, and all manner of fascinating characters.
Of greater significance than the performances given in her salon were the works that she commissioned, the first of which was Stravinsky’s Renard. Princesse de Polignac first approached Stravinsky about a commission on 12 November 1912, offering 3,000 francs for a short work of about fifteen minutes. A list of available instruments was provided to the composer in December 1912 and the work was to be completed by 8 April 1913. Stravinsky did not complete it in time. To be fair, he was otherwise occupied at that time putting the finishing touches on one of the greatest artistic achievements in the history of man. Fortunately for Stravinsky, Princesse de Polignac was a patient woman and the commission was again negotiated on 4 January 1916 for 2,500 Swiss francs. She was also a prescient woman, identifying a trend that would shape the future of music. “My intention at that time was to ask different composers to write short works for me for a small orchestra of about twenty performers. I had the impression that, after Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss, the days of big orchestras were over, and that it would be delightful to return to a small orchestra of well-chosen players and instruments.”
The composer had been busy in the weeks prior making his debut as a conductor at two concerts organized by Diaghilev and the Ballet Russes with proceeds benefiting the Red Cross, first in Geneva on 20 December and the following week in Paris on 29 December. These concerts also served as the debut of Ernest Ansermet as the principal conductor of the Ballet Russes, a position he would hold until 1923. It was Ansermet, in fact, who taught Stravinsky how to conduct, even though Ansermet was himself a relative newcomer to conducting.
Ansermet graduated from the Faculty of Science in Laussane in 1903 with a degree in mathematical and physical sciences and began teaching mathematics immediately after. Ansermet initially found himself in Paris to work on a thesis for a doctorate in mathematics at the Sorbonne. This thesis was never completed, however, and Ansermet quit teaching to pursue a career in music in 1909, which against all logic turned out to be right decision. Paul Budry, a dear friend of all the main characters of our story, wrote of Ansermet’s transition from teacher to conductor a description simply too fantastic to be left out:
Ansermet, having obtained his degree, stands with the chalk in his fingers, explaining to the girls of the Ecole Normale the curious properties of the squares on the sides of a right-angled triangle, where the square on the hypotenuse is always so designed as to equal the sum of those on the other two sides; and the no less touching compliance of the side of the hexagon, which is simply bound to equal the radius. Not a particle of this can move the hearts of these girls. But he has long white hands, smooth gestures, a thrilling voice, black wavy hair; he is handsome, romantic and A Man. So in the exercise-books the isosceles triangle takes the form of a heart, and the secant turns into an arrow piercing through it. And at the blackboard Ansermet discovers that he possesses one of the peculiarities of a conductor – the man whose back view is worshipped by women.
The benefit concerts were a smashing success, the Paris performance raking in 400,000 francs, and propelled the Ballet Russes on to their tour of America, where they were engaged at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City. At the time, the Met Opera House was located on 39th Street and Broadway in what is now a Chase Bank building across from the now shuttered flagship location of sex-trafficker Peter Nygard’s stretch pants empire, a block from the Times Square Margaritaville Resort with a synagogue in it. This phrase gets thrown around a lot, but it really and truly applies here: Only In New York!
At the end of March 1916, Stravinsky was visited by his former collaborator, Vaslav Njinisky, who was on his way to join the Ballet Russes on their tour after being released from internment in Hungary. Nijinsky was joined by his wife, Romola de Pulszky, who had never met Stravinsky. Her first impression was that
[h]e was dressed like a dandy, with the most indescribable taste. He thought it was very chic, and there was something touching in his naivety and conceit. He seemed extremely sure of himself and was fully convinced of his genius, which he undoubtedly had, but the way he spoke of it seemed rather childish and at the same time charming. One would have thought a man as great as he would have been more dignified.
Stravinsky hoped to join them for the tour conducting his ballets, but he received no contract and did not wish to cross an ocean without any guarantee of being paid. He asked Nijinsky for help in persuading Diaghilev to recruit him for the tour, with Pulszky noting that Stravinsky “insisted that if Vaslav was a real friend, he would make it a condition to go to America only if Stravinsky was asked also…Stravinsky talked, raged, and cried; he paced up and down the room cursing Diaghilev.” Nothing materialized from Diaghilev, and Stravinsky was obliged to lay low and work on Renard. This turned out just fine, because within months of their first meeting at the train station, Ramuz and his family moved to Lausanne, a short train ride from Stravinsky’s home in Morges. Soon thereafter, their artistic relationship began.
Stravinsky completed the piano score to Renard on 1 August 1916, but the Russian language was not suitable for performance. Stravinsky wrote to Princesse de Polignac on 5 October 1916 that the “translated work will be particularly valuable for future presentations, since Russian is hardly spoken and even more rarely sung outside of Russia.” To accomplish this would require an adequate translation.
Enter Ramuz, who spoke French…but not Russian. The two men met at Stravinsky’s home in Morges and spent the entire day alternating between working and fueling themselves with coffee and food to keep working. Ramuz surely became an honorary Russian through diet alone.
At about five o’clock, we would be brought a snack of very strong coffee, fresh bread, and jam…We certainly earned the nice dinners cooked for us by the old nyanya, and which having started late…went on until the last train; with vodka (to start) then blinis, and shchi…minced meat, soft pastries sprinkled with hot butter; with combinations of soup and meat as well, and those dark-red beetroot soups which made me think of the mythical times of Russian history when they tell of conquerors drinking, from skulls (we had bowls), the blood of their enemies.
Ramuz was struck by his colleague’s fastidiousness.
Stravinsky’s writing desk resembled a surgeon’s instrument tray; now the order which the surgeon there sets out is one last chance he gives himself in his struggle against death. The artist too (in his way) is engaged in a struggle with death. These bottles of different-colored inks, each in its hierarchical place, play small part in a grand affirmation of a superior order. They keep company with different sorts and shapes of rubber and every kind of glinting steel object: rulers, scrapers, knives, pens, not to mention that particular wheeled instrument which Stravinsky himself had invented for the drawing of staves. One may recall St. Thomas’s definition: beauty is the splendor of order.
Ramuz’s description of the translation process certainly makes it sound quite arduous.
We met almost every day, in the blue room overlooking the garden; we were among the drums, the timpani, the bass drums, every kind of bashing instrument (or percussion, to use the official term), to which had recently been added the cimbalom I mentioned before…I had a sheet of paper, a pencil. Stravinsky read me the Russian text verse by verse, taking care each time to count the number of syllables in each verse, which I would write down in the margin of my paper; then we made the translation, that is, Stravinsky translated the text for me word for word. It was a word-for-word so literal as to often be quite incomprehensible, but with an inspired (nonlogical) imagery, meetings of sounds whose freshness was all the greater for lacking any (logical sense)…I wrote down my word-for-word; then came the question of lengths (of longs and shorts), also the question of vowels (this note was composed to an o, that one to an a, that one to an i); finally, and most important of all, the famous and insoluble question of tonic accent and its coincidence or noncoincidence with the musical accent…A kind of intimate, initial accord presided. It had been very quickly understood that there would be no rules, that there could be no rules, that there should be none. It had been very quickly understood that there would only be special cases. Each one entailed its own solution, and solution is not the word, for each one assumed the intervention much rather of taste than of understanding in the discursive, analytical sense. We were making soup. When you make soup, you taste it, adding water or salt.
Translating the libretto into French was difficult enough on its own. Trying to capture the cultural markers and nuances of the story in a new language proved impossible. Don’t mind me as I stare off into the distance contemplating this very thing for the next several months. Rhetorical devices like rhyming or grouping similar-sounding words together could not make the jump between languages, so Ramuz ended up creating new ones from scratch.
The effort on Ramuz’s part must have been significant, especially given the circumstances. An 18 September 1916 entry in Ramuz’s Journal speaks to one part of this effort. “Difficulty concentrating as it should be because of all these ‘distractions,’ of which the greatest of all is war.” On 5 October 1916, Stravinsky wrote to Princesse de Polignac with the completed translation and a request for an increase in Ramuz’s payment.
This was a considerable task, much more difficult than I thought it would be; I insisted that the French text preserve the flavor of the original, without [sounding] translated…[l]et me assure you, besides, that Ramuz’s translation is not only the best that I know but is very close to the original as well. If you recall, you agreed to pay 300 francs for the author’s honorarium. I now realize (and this was my fault) that this sum would be totally disproportionate to the amount of time that M. Ramuz devoted to the task. I would be ashamed not to offer him more than this…I allow myself to assert that 1,000 francs seems to me the minimum for this author, whom I esteem highly and whose name alone merits such an adjustment.
Stravinsky himself negotiated with Ramuz and they agreed that the author would receive 25% of any performance fees, which was to be the case for all of their collaborations. It’s a little unclear exactly what money found its way to Ramuz’s pocketbook. On 12 November 1916, Ramuz provided a receipt to Stravinsky indicating that he was paid 500 francs for the Renard translation. A letter from Ramuz to Stravinsky dated 21 November 1916 implies that Stravinsky was offering to pay Ramuz 100 francs per month for both the translation itself and the performance rights. Ramuz, however, objected to this approach: “1,000 francs would be much more useful to me right now, especially since the future is so uncertain.” If only Switzerland had a Jerry Springer- or Maury Povich-type show on in the middle of the afternoon, Ramuz could have used that structured settlement company that runs predatory advertisements about needing cash now.
Ramuz was certainly correct about the uncertain times ahead. The war carried on in a state of apoplectic violence, reaching one of the great apexes of our talent for perpetuating inhuman misery in the Battle of Verdun, which consumed nearly the entire year and includes the First Battle of the Somme, a diversionary tactic to draw German attention from Verdun that claimed the lives of 20,000 British, “became a metaphor for futile and indiscriminate slaughter” according to the Brittanica, and was still somehow successful. By its very nature war is a matter of attrition, but no other battle in human history was fought for attrition’s sake quite like this. General Erich von Falkenhayn, in a December 1915 letter to the Kaiser, outlined his strategy for defeating the French: “[t]he string in France has reached breaking point. A mass breakthrough—which in any case is beyond our means—is unnecessary. Within our reach there are objectives for the retention of which the French General Staff would be compelled to throw in every man they have. If they do so the forces of France will bleed to death.” The existence of this letter is confirmed in Falkenhayn’s postwar memoir, which he wrote since he was the ideas man and not one of the estimated 976,000 casualties. For that perspective, we turn to a random French lieutenant ultimately killed by a shell, whose diary of 23 May 1916 reads: “Humanity is mad. It must be mad to do what it is doing. What a massacre! What scenes of horror and carnage! I cannot find words to translate my impressions. Hell cannot be so terrible. Men are mad!”
As the year wound down, Stravinsky faced his own uncertain future. “I suffered excruciating pain from a severe attack of intercostal neuralgia, and there were moments where I could scarcely breathe.” The folks at Healthline.com describe the condition as “burning, sharp, or shooting pain…felt around the ribs, in the upper chest, or in the upper back,” which doesn’t sound scary at all. Stravinsky was nearly paralyzed and could not move without assistance. In his autobiography, written twenty years hence, he wrote that he shuddered “even now at the thought of what I had to endure.”
Things were even more uncertain in Stravinsky’s homeland. As Stravinsky lay bedridden with stabbing pains, the Russian Prince Felix Yusupov hosted a little midnight wine and pastries soiree in his palace on the Moika River in Saint Petersburg. In attendance were Grand Duke Dmitry Pavlovich, Tsar Nicholas II’s cousin, Vladimir Purishkevich, a member of the Duma, Doctor Stanislaus de Lazovert, Purishkevich’s physician, Lieutenant Sergei Mikhailovich Sukhotin, a young officer of the Russian Army on leave for convalescence, and a mystic healer named Grigory Rasputin. That the party took place in the palace’s cellar did not raise any eyebrows amongst the guests since all but one of them knew why it was being held there. For purposes of the ruse, Prince Yusupov made it seem as if a whole other party hosted by his wife was taking place upstairs, even utilizing recorded music to perpetuate the illusion. What happened that night is the source of some controversy as there are conflicting accounts of how the party ended.
Scenario 1: From Prince Yusupov’s memoirs Rasputin was picked up from his home around 12:30 AM by Prince Yusupov and a chauffeur and brought to the side entrance of the palace. Once in the cellar, the other guests gathered at the top of the stairs waiting. Yusupov offered Rasputin a pastry laced with potassium cyanide, but Rasputin refused, saying they were too sweet. In a panic, Yusupov excused himself and joined the guests upstairs to commiserate about next steps, but when he returned to the cellar, Rasputin had decided that, you know, on second thought, a pastry sounded good, and he ate one. The two men then began drinking madeira, Rasputin’s glass having been poisoned with the very same potassium cyanide.
The whole point of potassium cyanide is that it is a toxic asphyxiant that almost immediately begins impeding the body’s ability to use oxygen, thereby disrupting all of the major systems within all of us: the central nervous system, the cardiovascular system, and the pulmonary system. The Centers for Disease Control lists its primary uses as “fumigation, electroplating, and extracting gold and silver from ores,” none of which sound particularly tasty. The poison was seeming to have no effect on Rasputin, however, and Yusupov once again excused himself at 2:30 AM to confer with the other guests. The Grand Duke came prepared with a solid backup plan, in the form of a pistol, which he gave to Yusupov, who took it back downstairs. Rasputin was admiring an ebony cabinet but was interrupted by Yusupov’s personal Ezekiel 25:17 moment – "Grigory Efimovich, you would do better to look at the crucifix and pray to it" – and gunshots.
After hearing the gunshots, the rest of the guests came downstairs. Doctor Lazovert pronounced Rasputin dead. The men went upstairs to celebrate their success, which lasted about an hour before Yusupov had the urge to check on the body. Rasputin lay motionless in a pool of blood. Yusupov shook the body and saw the eyelids twitch and then open. “I then saw both eyes, the green eyes of a viper, staring at me with an expression of diabolical hatred.” Rasputin sprang to his feet and attacked Yusupov. The Prince fought Rasputin off and scrambled upstairs to where the other guests were and told them Rasputin was still alive. Purishkevich ran downstairs and saw Rasputin escaping out the cellar door into a courtyard. Purishkevich gave chase and fired two times, missing both. Eventually, however, he caught up with Rasputin and shot him twice, once in the back and once in the head. Rasputin tried to crawl away, but Purishkevich kicked him in the head.
The other guests helped drag Rasputin’s body back to the cellar. Once there, Yusupov grabbed a dumbbell and began beating Rasputin with it, splattering himself with blood in the process. As dawn approached, Rasputin was still not dead. While Yusupov cleaned himself up, the other men bound Rasputin with ropes and wrapped him in a heavy cloth. They drove their cargo to the Petrovsky Bridge, threw Rasputin in the Neva River, and went home. Rasputin’s body was found two days later, frozen with his hands in a raised position and water in his lungs.
Scenario 2: From the autopsy report Rasputin was shot in the head at close range.
Whatever the truth, it was certainly newsworthy. Ramuz wrote a short note to Stravinsky on 1 January 1917, saying simply “Thanks for Rasputin…” Yusupov and his co-conspirators thought they were saving the monarchy by eliminating Rasputin, who had established himself as deeply connected to the Tsarina thanks to his supposed healing abilities. As it turned out, the murder of Rasputin was the final destructive blow to the monarchy, which only lasted another three months. On 15 March 1917, Tsar Nicholas II abdicated the throne.
I’m going to have to re-read this several times to figure out the the total sum of children this bedroom bandicoot Singer had.