Memoirs of an American Prima Donna Part 2

CHAPTER II

GIRLHOOD

In taking up vocal study, however, I had no fixed intention of going on the stage. All I decided was to make as much as I could of myself and of my voice. Many girls I knew studied singing merely as an accomplishment.

In fact, the girl who aspired professionally was almost unknown.

I first studied under a Frenchman named Millet, a graduate of the Conservatory of Paris, who was teaching the daughters of Colonel Stebbins and, also, the daughter of the Baron de Trobriand. Later, I worked with Manzocchi, Rivarde, Errani and Muzio, who was a great friend of Verdi.

Most of my fellow-students were charming society girls. Ella Porter and President Arthur's wife were with me under Rivarde, and Anna Palmer who married the scientist, Dr. Draper. The idea of my going on the stage would have appalled the families of these girls. In those days the life of the theatre was regarded as altogether outside the pale. One didn't know stage people; one couldn't speak to them, nor shake hands with them, nor even look at them except from a safe distance across the footlights. There were no "decent people on the stage"; how often did I hear that foolish thing said!

It is odd that in that most musical and artistic country, Italy, much the same prejudice exists to this day. I should never think of telling a really great Italian lady that I had been on the stage; she would immediately think that there was something queer about me. Of course in America all that was changed some time ago, after England had established the precedent. People are now pleased not only to meet artists socially, but to lionise them as well. But when I was a girl there was a gulf as deep as the Bottomless Pit between society and people of the theatre; and it was this gulf that I knew would open between myself and the friends of whom I was really fond as, in time, I realised that I was improving sufficiently to justify some definite ambitions. My work was steady and unremitting, and by the time I began study with Muzio my mind was pretty nearly made up.

A queer, nervous, brusque, red-headed man was Muzio, from the north of Italy, where the type always seems so curiously German. Besides being one of the conductors of the Opera, he organised concert tours, and promised to see that I should have my chance. It was said that he had fled from political disturbances in Italy, but this I never heard verified. Certainly he was quite a big man in the New York operatic world of his day, and was a most cultivated musician, with the "Italian traditions" of opera at his fingers' ends. It is to Muzio, incidentally, that I owe my trill.

[Ill.u.s.tration: =Clara Louise Kellogg. Aged Three=

From a photograph by Black & Case]

Oddly enough, I had great difficulty with that trill for three years; but in four weeks' study he taught me the trick,--for it is a trick, like so many other big effects. I believe I got it finally by using my sub-conscious mind. Don't you know how, after striving and straining for something, you at last relax and let some inner part of your brain carry on the battle? And how, often and often, it is then that victory comes? So it was with my trill; and so it has been with many difficult things that I have succeeded in since then.

No account of my education would be complete without a mention of the great singers whom I heard during that receptive period; that is, the years between fourteen and eighteen, before my professional _debut_. The first artist I heard when I was old enough really to appreciate good singing was Louisa Pine, who sang in New York in second-rate English Opera with Harrison, of whom she was deeply enamoured and who usually sang out of tune. We did not then fully understand how well-schooled and well-trained she was; and her really fine qualities were only revealed to me much later in a concert.

Then there was D'Angri, a contralto who sang Rossini to perfection.

_Italiani in Algeria_ was produced especially for her. About that same time Mme. de la Grange was appearing, together with Mme. de la Borde, a light and colorature soprano, something very new in America. Mme. de la Borde sang the Queen to Mme. de la Grange's Valentine in _Les Huguenots_, and had a French voice--if I may so express it--light, and of a strange quality. The French claimed that she sang a scale of _commas_, that is, a note between each of our chromatic intervals. She may have; but it merely sounded to the listener as if she wasn't singing the scale clearly. Mme. de la Grange was a sort of G.o.ddess to me, I remember. I heard her first in _Trovatore_ with Brignoli and Amodio.

Piccolomini arrived here a couple of years later and I heard her, too.

She was of a distinguished Italian family, and, considering Italy's aristocratic prejudices, it is strange that she should have been an opera singer. She made _Traviata_, in which she had already captured the British public, first known to us: yet she was an indifferent singer and had a very limited _repertoire_. She received her adulation partly because people didn't know much then about music. Adulation it was, too.

She made $5000 a month, and America had never before imagined such an operatic salary. She looked a little like Lucca; was small and dark, and decidedly clever in comedy. I was fortunate enough to see her in Pergolese's delightful, if archaic, opera, _La Serva Padrona_--"The Maid as Mistress"--and she proved herself to be an exceptional _comedienne_.

She was excellent in tragedy, too.

Brignoli was the first great tenor I ever heard; and Amodio the first famous baritone. Brignoli--but all the world knows what Brignoli was! As for Amodio; he had a great and beautiful voice; but, poor man, what a disadvantage he suffered under in his appearance. He was so fat that he was grotesque, he was absurdly short, and had absolutely no saving grace as to physique. He played Mazetto to Piccolomini's Zerlina, and the whole house roared when they came on dancing.

I heard nearly all the great singers of my youth; all that were to be heard in New York, at any rate, except Grisi. I missed Grisi, I am sorry to say, because on the one occasion when I was asked to hear her sing, with Mario, I chose to go to a children's party instead. I am much ashamed of this levity, although I was, to be sure, only ten years old at the time.

[Ill.u.s.tration: =Clara Louise Kellogg. Aged Seven=

Photograph by Black & Case]

Adelina Patti I heard the year before my own _debut_. She was a slip of a girl then, when she appeared over here in _Lucia_, and carried the town by storm. What a voice! I had never dreamed of anything like it.

But, for that matter, neither had anyone else.

What histrionic skill I ever developed I attribute to the splendid acting that I saw so constantly during my girlhood. And what actors and actresses we had! As I look back, I wonder if we half appreciated them.

It is certainly true that, viewed comparatively, we must cry "there were giants in those days!" Think of Mrs. John Wood and Jefferson at the Winter Garden; of Dion Boucicault and his wife, Agnes Robertson; of Laura Keene--a revelation to us all--and of the French Theatre, which was but a little hole in the wall, but the home of some exquisite art (I was brought up on the Raouls in French pantomime); and all the wonderful old Wallack Stock Company! Think of the elder Sothern, and of John Brougham, and of Charles Walcot, and of Mrs. John Hoey, Mrs. Vernon, and Mary Gannon,--that most beautiful and perfect of all _ingenues_! Those people would be world-famous stars if they were playing to-day; we have no actors or companies like them left. Not even the Comedie Francaise ever had such a gathering.

It may be imagined what an education it was for a young girl with stage aspirations to see such work week after week. For I was taken to see everyone in everything, and some of the impressions I received then were permanent. For instance, Matilda Heron in _Camille_ gave me a picture of poor Marguerite Gautier so deep and so vivid that I found it invaluable, years later, when I myself came to play Violetta in _Traviata_.

I saw both Ristori and Rachel too. The latter I heard recite on her last appearance in America. It was the _Ma.r.s.eillaise_, and deeply impressive.

Personally, I loved best her _Moineau de Lesbie_. Shall I ever forget her enchanting reading of the little scene with the jewels?--_Suis-je belle?_

The father of one of my fellow students was, as I have said before, Baron de Trobriand, a very charming man of the old French aristocracy.

He came often to the home of Colonel Stebbins and always showed a great deal of interest in my development. He knew Rachel very well; had known her ever since her girlhood indeed, and always declared that I was the image of her. As I look at my early portraits, I can see it myself a little. In all of them I have a desperately serious expression as though life were a tragedy. How well I remember the Baron and his wonderful stories of France! He had some ill.u.s.trious kindred, among them the d.u.c.h.esse de Berri, and we were never tired of his tales concerning her.

I find, to-day, as I look through some of my old press notices, that nice things were always said of me as an actress. Once, John Wallack, Lester's father, came to hear me in _Fra Diavolo_, and exclaimed:

"I wish to G.o.d that girl would lose her voice!"

He wanted me to give up singing and go on the dramatic stage; and so did Edwin Booth. I have a letter from Edwin Booth that I am more proud of than almost anything I possess. But these incidents happened, of course, later.

From all I saw and all I heard I tried to learn and to keep on learning.

And so I prepared for the time of my own initial bow before the public.

As I gradually studied and developed, I began to feel more and more sure that I was destined to be a singer. I felt that it was my life and my heritage; that I was made for it, and that nothing else could ever satisfy me. And Muzio told me that I was right. In another six months I would be ready to make my _debut_. It was a serious time, when I faced the future as a public singer, but I was very happy in the contemplation of it.

That summer I took a rest, preparatory to my first season,--how thrillingly professional that sounded, to be sure!--and it was during that summer that I had one of the most pleasant experiences of my girlhood,--one really delightful and _young_ experience, such as other girls have,--a wonderful change from the hard-working, serious months of study. I went to West Point for a visit. In spite of my sober bringing-up, I was full of the joy of life, and loved the days spent in a place filled with the military glamour that every girl adores.

West Point was more primitive then than it is now. But it was just as much fun. I danced, and watched the drill, and walked about, and made friends with the cadets,--to whom the fact that they were entertaining a budding _prima donna_ was both exciting and interesting--and had about the best time I ever had in my life.

Looking back now, however, I can feel a shadow of sadness lying over the memory of all that happy visit. We were just on the eve of war, little as we young people thought of it, and many of the merry, good-looking boys I danced with that summer fell at the front within the year. Some of them entered the Union Army the following spring when war was declared, and some went South to serve under the Stars and Bars. Among the former was Alec McCook--"Fighting McCook," as he was called.

Lieutenant McCreary was Southern, and was killed early in the war. So, also, was the son of General Huger--the General Huger who was then Postmaster General and later became a member of the Cabinet of the Confederacy.

It is interesting to consider that West Point, at the time of which I write, was a veritable hotbed of conspiracy. The Southerners were preparing hard and fast for action; the atmosphere teemed with plotting, so that even I was vaguely conscious that something exceedingly serious was going on. The Commandant of the Post, General Delafield, was an officer of strong Southern sympathies and later went to fight in Dixie land. When the war did finally break out, nearly all the ammunition was down South; and this had been managed from West Point.

Of course, all was done with great circ.u.mspection. Buchanan was a Democratic president; and the Democrats of the South sent a delegation to West Point to try to get the commanding officers to use their influence in reducing the military course from four to three years. This at least was their ostensible mission, and it made an excellent excuse as well as offered great opportunities for what we Federal sympathisers would call treason, but which they probably considered was justified by patriotism. Indeed, James Buchanan was allotted a very difficult part in the political affairs of the day; and the censure he received for what is called his "vacillation" was somewhat unjust. He held that the question of slavery and its abolition was not a national, but a local problem; and he never took any firm stand about it. But the conditions were bewilderingly new and complex, and statesmen often suffer from their very ability to look on both sides of a question.

Jefferson Davis was then at West Point; and, as for "Mrs. Jeff"--I always believed she was a spy. She had her niece and son with her at the Point, the latter, "Jeff, Jr.," then a child of five or six years old.

He had the worst temper I ever imagined in a boy; and I am ashamed to relate that the officers took a wicked delight in arousing and exhibiting it. He used to sit several steps up on the one narrow stairway of the hotel and swear the most horrible, hot oaths ever heard, getting red in the face with fury. Alec McCook, a.s.sistant instructor and a charming fellow of about thirty, would put him on a bucking donkey that was there and say:

"Now then, lad, don't you let him put you off!"

And the "lad" would sit on the donkey, turning the air blue with profanity. But one thing can be said for him: he did stick on!

Lieutenant Horace Porter, who was among my friends of that early summer, was destined to serve with distinction on the Northern side. I met him not long ago, a dignified, distinguished General; and it was difficult to see in him the high-spirited, young lieutenant of the old Point days.

"Do you know," he said, "Mrs. Jeff Davis sent for me to come and see her when she was in New York! _Of course_ I didn't go!"

He had not forgotten. One does not forget the things that happened just before the war. The great struggle burned them too deeply into our memories.

Nothing would satisfy the cadets, who were aware that I was preparing to go on the stage as a professional singer, but that I should sing for them. I was only too delighted to do so, but I didn't want to sing in the hotel. So they turned their "hop-room" into a concert-hall for the occasion and invited the officers and their friends, in spite of Mrs.

Jeff Davis, who tried her best to prevent the ball-room from being given to us for our musicale. She did not attend; but the affair made her exceedingly uncomfortable, for she disliked me and was jealous of the kindness and attention I received from everyone. She always referred to me as "that singing girl!"

As I have said, many of those attractive West Point boys and officers were killed in the war so soon to break upon us. Others, like General Porter, have remained my friends. A few I have kept in touch with only by hearsay. But throughout the Civil War I always felt a keener and more personal interest in the battles because, for a brief s.p.a.ce, I had come so close to the men who were engaged in them; and the sentiment never pa.s.sed.

Ever and ever so many years after that visit to West Point, a note came behind the scenes to me during one of my performances, and with it was a ma.s.s of exquisite flowers. "Please wear one of these flowers to-night!"

the note begged me. It was from one of the cadets to whom I had sung so long before, but whom I had never seen since.

I wore the flower: and I put my whole soul into my singing that night.

For that little episode of my girlhood, the meeting with those eager and plucky young spirits just before our great national crisis, has always been close to my heart. As for the three dark years that followed--ah, well,--I never want to read about the war now.

[Ill.u.s.tration: =Clara Louise Kellogg as a Girl=