Time Aug. 17, 1953

... I am happy that Eleanor Steber had such a wonderful success in Richard Strauss's Die Frau ohne Schatten ... I remember ... exhausting rehearsals with Richard Strauss ... I went to his home in Garmisch--he studied the part of the [dyer's] wife with me. He really was a very simple family man, entirely devoted to his temperamental wife--he was really a henpecked husband ... I sang a lot of his lieder, and often his wife Pauline would listen. Some of the lieder seemed to bring back happy memories to them both, and Pauline would run to him, throwing her arms around him, saying with big sobs of touching sentimentality, "Do you remember, Richard?"--and he would have tears in his eyes, too. They were a strange couple. They fought like mad--needless to say, Pauline always started the fights ... He said to me when I departed: "You have seen a lot which you will find strange in this house. But believe me, all the praises in the world are not so refreshing as my wife's outbreaks of temperament." He was so accustomed to meeting people who adored him, bowed before him in reverence. He did not like it; he was a thoroughly straightforward man--and his Pauline was like a draft of fresh water.

Lotte Lehmann, Santa Barbara, Calif.