Memoirs of an American Prima Donna Part 25

Of course I, who had been so protected, was horrified by all this. I could not understand how a girl could succeed in doing that kind of thing. She told me, furthermore, that she took care of her mother, brothers, and sisters.

"I must go to the post-office now and see if there's a letter from mother!" she exclaimed presently, jumping up. It was pouring rain outside.

"Show me your feet!" I said.

She grinned ruefully as she exhibited her shoes, but she was off the next moment in search of her letter. When she came back to the hotel, I got hold of her again, gave her some clothes, and took her to the concert in my carriage. After I had sung my first song she rushed up to me.

"Let me look down your throat," she cried excitedly, "I've got to see where it all comes from!"

After the concert we made her sing for us and our accompanist played for her. She asked me frankly if I thought she could make her living by her voice and I said yes. Her poverty and her desire to get on naturally appealed to me, and I was instrumental in raising a subscription for her so that she could come East. My mother immediately saw the hotel proprietor and arranged that what money he had collected the night before should be turned over to her. It has been said that I am responsible for Emma Abbott's career upon the operatic stage, but I may be pardoned if I deny the allegation. My idea was that she intended to sing in churches, and I believe she did so when she first came to New York. She was the one girl in ten thousand who was really worth helping, and of course my mother and I helped her. When we returned from my concert tour, I introduced her to people and saw that she was properly looked out for. And she became, as every one knows, highly successful in opera--appearing in many of my own _roles_. In a year's time from when I first met her, Emma Abbott was self-supporting. She was a girl of ability and I am glad that I started her off fairly, although, as a matter of fact, she would have got on anyway, whether I had done anything for her or not. Her way to success might have been a longer way, unaided, but she would have succeeded. She was eaten up with ambition. Yet there is much to respect in such a dogged determination to succeed. Of course, she was never particularly grateful to me. Of all the girls I have helped--and there have been many--only one has ever been really grateful, and she was the one for whom I did the least. Emma wrote me a flowery letter once, full of such sentences as "when the great _Prima Donna_ shined on me," and "I was almost in heaven, and I can remember just how you sang and looked," and "never can I forget all your goodness to me." But in the little ways that count she never actually evinced the least appreciation. Whenever we were in any way pitted against each other, she showed herself jealous and ungenerous.

She made enemies in general by her lack of tact, and never could get on in London, for instance, although in her day the feeling there for American singers was becoming most kindly.

Emma Abbott did appalling things with her art, of which one of the mildest was the introduction into _Faust_ of the hymn _Nearer My G.o.d to Thee_! It was in Italy that she did it, too. I believe she introduced it to please the Americans in the audience, many of whom applauded, although the Italians pointedly did not. And yet she was always trying to "purify" the stage and librettos! I have always felt about Emma Abbott that she had _too much_ force of character. Another thing that I never liked about her was the manner in which she puffed her own successes. She was reported to have made five times more than she actually did; but, at that, her earnings were considerable, for she would sacrifice much--except the character--to money-getting. Indeed, she was a very fine business woman.

I have spoken about George Conly's tragic death by drowning and of the benefit the Kellogg-Hess English Opera Company gave for his widow. Conly had also sung with Emma Abbott and, when the benefit was given, she and I appeared on the same programme. She knew my baritone, Carlton, and sent for him before the performance. She explained that she wanted him to appear on the bill with her in _Maritana_ and, also, to see that all donations from my friends and colleagues were sent to her, so that her collection should be larger than mine. Carlton explained to her that he was singing with Miss Kellogg and so would send any money that he could collect to her. It seems incredible that any one could do so small an action, and I can only consider it one of many little attempts to be spiteful and to show me that my erstwhile _protegee_ was now at the "top of the ladder."

Her thirst for profits finally was the indirect means of her death. When Utah was still a territory, the town of Ogden, where many travelling companies gave concerts, was very primitive. The concert hall had no dressing-room and was cold and draughty. I always refused outright to sing in such theatres, or else dressed in my hotel and drove to the concert warmly wrapped up. Emma Abbott was warned that the stage in the concert hall of the town of Ogden was bitterly cold. The house had sold well, however, and the receipts were considerable. Emma dressed in an improvised screened-off dressing-room, and, having a severe cold to begin with, she caught more on that occasion, and suddenly developed a serious case of pneumonia from which she died, a victim to her own indiscretion.

CHAPTER XXVI

AMATEURS--AND OTHERS

In the seventies New York was interesting musically, chiefly because of its amateurs. This sounds something like a paradox, but at that time New York had a collection of musical amateurs who were almost as highly cultivated as professionals. It was a set that was extremely interesting and quite unique; and which bridged in a wonderful way the traditional gulf between art and society.

Those of us who were fortunate enough to know New York then look about us with wonder and amazement now. It seems, with our standards of an earlier generation, as if there were no true social life to-day, just as there are left no great social leaders. As for music--but perhaps it behooves a retired _prima donna_ to be discreet in making comparisons.

Mrs. Peter Ronalds; Mrs. Samuel Barlow; her daughter Elsie, who became Mrs. Stephen Henry Olin; May Callender; Minnie Parker--the granddaughter of Mrs. Hill and later the wife of M. de Neufville;--these and many others were the amateurs who combined music and society in a manner worthy of the great French hostesses and originators of _salons_. Mrs.

Barlow was in advance of everybody in patronising music. She was cultivated and artistic, had travelled a great deal abroad, and had acquired a great many charming foreign graces in addition to her own good American brains and breeding, and her fine natural social tact.

When I returned to New York after a sojourn on the other side, she came to see me one day, and said:

"Louise, you've been away so much you don't know what our amateurs are doing. I want you to come to my house to-night and hear them sing."

Like all professionals, I was a bit inclined to turn up my nose at the very word "amateur," but of course I went to Mrs. Barlow's that evening, and I have rarely spent a more enjoyable three hours. Elsie Barlow sang delightfully. She had a limited voice, but an unusual musical intelligence; I have seldom heard a public singer give a piece of music a more delicate and discriminating interpretation. Then Miss May Callender sang "n.o.bile Signor" from the _Huguenots_, and astonished me with her artistic rendering of that _aria_. Miss Callender could have easily been an opera singer, and a distinguished one, if she had so chosen. Eugene Oudin, a Southern baritone, also sang with charming effect. Minnie Parker, an eminent connoisseur in music, had her turn.

She sang "Bel Raggio" from _Semiramide_ with fine execution and all the Rossini traditions. And I must not forget to mention f.a.n.n.y Reed, Mrs.

Paran Stevens's sister, who sang very agreeably an _aria_ from _Il Barbiere_. Altogether it was a most startling and illuminating evening, and I was proud of my country and of a society that could produce such amateurs.

Mrs. Peter Ronalds was another charming singer of that group; as was, also, Mrs. Moulton, who was Lillie Greenough before her marriage. Both had delightful and well cultivated voices. Mrs. Moulton had studied abroad, but for the most part the amateurs of that day were purely American products.

I often visited Mrs. Barlow at her country place at Glen Cove, L. I. She was the most tactful of hostesses, and in her house there was no fuss or formality, nothing but kind geniality and courtesy. She was the first hostess in the United States to ask her women guests to bring their maids; and she never once has asked me to sing when I was there. I did sing, of course, but she was too well-bred to let me feel under the slightest obligation. American hostesses are certainly sometimes very odd in this connection. I have mentioned f.a.n.n.y Reed and Mrs. Stevens in Boston, and the time I had to play "Tommy Tucker" and sing for my supper; and I am now reminded of another occasion even more unpardonable, one that made me indirectly quite a bit of trouble.

Once upon a time when I was visiting in Chicago, and was being made much of as an American _prima donna_ freshly arrived from European triumphs, some old friends of my father gave me a reception. I had been for nearly fourteen months abroad, and had come back with the a.s.sociations and manners of the best people of the older countries: and this I particularly mention to suggest what a shock my treatment was to me.

On the day of the reception I had one of my worst sick headaches. I did not want to go, naturally, but the husband of the woman giving the reception called for me and begged that I would show myself there, if only for a few moments. My mother also urged me to make an effort and go. I made it--and went. In view of what afterwards occurred, I want to say that my costume was a black velvet gown created by Worth, with a heavy, long, handsome coat and a black velvet hat. When I reached the house I was so ill that I could not stand at the door with my hostess to receive the guests, but remained seated, hoping that I would not groan aloud with the throbbing of my head.

The ladies began arriving, and nearly every one of them was in full evening dress--_in the afternoon_! Mrs. Marshall Field, I remember, came in an elaborate point lace shawl, and no hat.

I had not been there half an hour before I was asked to sing! I had brought no music, there was no accompanist, and I was so dizzy that I could hardly see the keys of the piano, yet, as the request was not altogether the fault of my hostess, I did my best, playing some sort of an accompaniment and singing something--very badly, I imagine. Then I went home and to bed.

That episode was served up to me for eight years. I never went to Chicago without reading some reference to it in the newspapers, and my friends have told me that years later it was still discussed with bitterness. It was stated that I was "ungracious," "rude," and that I had "insulted the guests by my plain street attire" (shade of the great Worth!); that I only sang once and then with no attempt to do my best; that I did not eat the elaborate refreshments; did not rise from my chair when people were presented to me; and left the house inside an hour, although the reception was given for me. The bitterest attack was an article printed in one of the morning papers, an article written by a woman who had been among the guests. I never answered that or any other of the attacks because the host and hostess were old friends and felt very badly about the affair; but I have a memory of Chicago that will go with me to the grave. It was very different with the New York hostesses of whom Mrs. Barlow, Mrs. Ronalds, and Mrs. Gilder were the representatives. By them a singer was treated as a little more, not less, than an ordinary human being!

O you unfortunate people of a newer day who have not the memory of that enchanting meeting-ground in East Fifteenth Street:--the delightful Gilder studio, the rebuilding of which from a carriage house into a studio-home was about the first piece of architectural work done by Stanford White. There was one big, beautiful room, drawing-room and sitting-room combined, with a fine fireplace in it. Many a time have I done some scene from an opera there, in the firelight, to a sympathetic few. Everybody went to the Richard Watson Gilders'--at least, everybody who was worth while. They were in New York already the power that they remained for so many years. Some pedantic enthusiast once said of them that, "The Gilders were empowered by divine right to put the _cachet_ of recognition upon distinction."

Miss Jeannette Gilder came into my life as long ago as 1869. I was singing in a concert in Newark and she was in the wings, listening to my first song. My mother and my maid were near her and, when I came off the stage, as we were trying to find a certain song for an _encore_, the pile of music fell at her feet. Promptly the tall young stranger said:

"Please let me hold them for you."

Her whole personality expressed a species of beaming admiration. I looked at her critically; and from this small service began our friendship.

The Gilders were then living in Newark. The father, who was a Chaplain in the 40th New York Volunteers, died during the Civil War. His sons, Richard Watson Gilder and William H. Gilder, were also soldiers in the Civil War. The Richard Watson Gilders were married in 1874. Mrs. Gilder was Miss Helena de Kay, granddaughter of Joseph Rodman Drake, who was the author of _The Culprit Fay_.

I met many interesting people at the Fifteenth Street studio. Helen Hunt Jackson, I remember well. She was then Mrs. Hunt, long before she had married Mr. Jackson or had written _Ramona_. She was a most pleasing personality, just stout enough to be genuinely genial. And Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett I first met there, about the time her _La.s.s o'Lowrie's_ appeared, a story we all thought most impressive. George Cable was discovered by the Gilders, like so many other literary lights, and he and I used to sing Creole melodies before their big fireplace. His voice was queer and light, without colour, but correct and well in tune. He had only one bit of colour in him and that--the poetry of his nature--he gave freely and exquisitely in his tales of Creole life. At a much later time I saw something of the old French Quarter of New Orleans of which he wrote, the whole spirit of which was so lovely. I also first met John Alexander at the Gilders' after he came back from Paris; and John La Farge, who brought there with him Okakura, the j.a.panese art connoisseur.

That was when I first met Okakura; and on the same occasion he was introduced to Modjeska, she and I being the first stage people he had ever met socially.

Later, in '79-'80, I saw a good deal of the Gilders in Paris, where they had a studio in the Quartier Latin. At that time, Mr. Gilder arranged for Millet's autobiography which first made him widely known in America; and in their Paris studio I met Sargent and Bastien Le Page and many other notables. I recall how becomingly Rodman Gilder--then three or four years old--was always dressed, in "Little Lord Fauntleroy" fashion long before the days of his young lordship. It was at this same period that I went to Fontainebleau to study the Barbizon School and met the son of Millet, who was trying to paint and never succeeded.

Speaking of the Gilders reminds me, albeit indirectly, of Helena Modjeska, whom I first saw in Sacramento, playing _Adrienne Lecouvreur_.

I was simply enchanted and thought I had never seen such delicate and yet such forcible acting. One reason why I was so greatly impressed was that I had acquired the foreign standard of acting, and had been much disturbed when I came home to find such lack of elegance and ease upon the stage. She had the foreign manner--the grace and, at the same time, the authority of the great French and German players; and it seemed to me that she ought to be heard by the big critics. So I wrote home to Jeannette Gilder in New York an enthusiastic account of this actress who was being wasted on the Sacramento Valley. The public-spirited efforts of the Gilders in promoting anything artistic was so well and so long known that it is almost unnecessary to add that they interested themselves in the Polish artist and secured for her an opportunity to play in the East. She came, saw, and conquered; and I shall always feel, therefore, that I was definitely instrumental in launching Modjeska in theatrical New York.

"Didn't I tell you so?" I said to Jeannette Gilder. There was always something very odd to me about Helena Modjeska. I never liked her personally half as much as I did as an actress. But she certainly was a wonderful actress. I once met John McCullough and talked with him about Modjeska, and he told me that she first acted in Polish to his English--Ophelia to his Hamlet--out West somewhere, I think it was in San Francisco. He said that he had been the first to urge her to learn English, and he was most enthusiastic about the wonderful effect she created even at that early time. As I had seen her in Sacramento during, approximately, the same period, I could discuss her with him sympathetically and intelligently.

Although I never personally liked Helena Modjeska, I have liked as well as known many stage folk and have had, first and last, many real friends among them. It was my good fortune to know the elder Salvini in America.

He happened to be stopping at the same hotel. He looked like a successful farmer; a very plain man,--very. He told me, among other interesting things, that no matter how small his part happened to be, he always played each succeeding act in a stronger colour, maintaining a steady _crescendo_, so that the last impression of all was the climax. I remember him in Oth.e.l.lo, particularly his delicate and lovely _silent_ acting. When Desdemona came in and told the court how he had won her, Salvini only looked at her and spoke but the one word: "Desdemona!"--but the way he said it "made the tears rise in your heart and gather to your eyes."

Irving and Terry, always among my close friends, I first met in London, at the McHenrys' house in Holland Park. At that time the McHenrys'

Sunday night dinners were an inst.i.tution. Later, when they came to America, I saw a great deal of them; and I remember Ellen Terry saying once, after a luncheon given by me at Delmonico's, "What a splendid woman Jeannette Gilder is! You know--" and she gave me a rueful glance--"I am _always_ wrong about men,--but seldom about women!"

Dear Ellen Terry! She has always been the freshest, the most wholesome, and the most spontaneous personality on the stage: a sweet and candid woman, with a sound, warm heart and a great genius. At Lady Macmillan's a number of people, most of them literary, were discussing that deadly worthy and respectable actress Madge Robertson--Mrs. Kendall. The morals of stage people was the subject, and Mrs. Kendall was cited as an example of propriety. One of the women present spoke up from her corner:

"Well," said she, "all I can say is that if I were giving a party for young girls I would steer very clear of Mrs. Kendall and ask Miss Terry instead. The Kendall lady does nothing but tell objectionable stories that lead to the glorification of her own purity, but you will never in a million years hear an indelicate word from the lips of Ellen Terry!"

The only complaint Henry Irving had to make against New York was that he "had no one to play with." He insisted, and quite justly, too, that New York had no leisure cla.s.s: that cultivated Bohemia, the playground for people of intellectual tastes and varied interests, did not exist in New York. He used to say that after the theatre, and after supper, he could not find anybody at his club who would discuss with him either modern drama or the old dramatic traditions; or give him any exchange of ideas or intelligent comradeship.

[Ill.u.s.tration: =Ellen Terry=

From a photograph by Sarony]

He and I had many delightful talks, and I wish now that I had made notes of the things he told me about stagecraft. He had a great deal to say about stage lighting, a subject he was for ever studying and about which he was always experimenting. It was his idea to do away with shadows upon the stage, and he finally accomplished his effect by lighting the wings very brilliantly. Until his radical reforms in this direction the theatres always used to be full of grotesque ma.s.ses of light and shade. To-day the art of lighting may be said to have reached perfection.

One of the most interesting things about Henry Irving was the way in which he made use of the smallest trifles that might aid him in getting his effects. He knew perfectly his own limitations, and was always seeking to compensate for them. For example, he was utterly lacking in any musical sense; like Dr. Johnson, he did not even possess an appreciation of sweet sounds, and did not care to go to either concerts or operas. But he knew how important music was in the theatre, and he knew instinctively--with that extraordinary stage-sense of his--what would appeal to an audience, even if it did not appeal to him. So, if he went anywhere and heard a melody or sequence of chords that he thought might fit in somewhere, he had it noted down at once, and collected bits of music in this way wherever he went. Sometime, he felt, the need for that particular musical phrase would arrive in some production he was putting on, and he would be ready with it. That was a wonderful thing about Irving--he was always prepared.

Speaking of Irving and his statement about the lack of a cultivated leisure cla.s.s in New York, reminds me of the Vanderbilts, who were shining examples of this very lack, for they were immensely wealthy and yet did not half understand, at that time, the possibilities of wealth.

William H. Vanderbilt was always my very good friend. His father, Cornelius, the founder of the family, used to say of him that "Bill hadn't sense enough to make money himself--he had to have it left to him!" The old man was wont to add, "Bill's no good anyway!" The Vanderbilts were plain people in those days, but had the kindest hearts.

"Bill" took a course in practical railroading, filling the position of conductor on the Hudson River Railroad, from which "job" he had just been promoted when I first knew him. He did turn out to be some "good"

in spite of his father's pessimistic predictions.