Memoirs of an American Prima Donna Part 10

One of the pleasant affairs that came my way that year was Sir Morton Peto's banquet in October. Sir Morton was a distinguished Englishman who represented big railway interests in Great Britain and who was then negotiating some new and important railroading schemes on this side of the water. There were two hundred and fifty guests; practically everybody present, except my mother and myself, standing for some large financial power of the United States. I felt much complimented at being invited, for it was at a period when very great developments were in the making. America was literally teeming with new projects and plans and embryonic interests.

The banquet was given at Delmonico's, then at Fifth Avenue and Fourteenth Street, and the rooms were gorgeous in their drapings of American and English flags. The war was about drawing to its close and patriotism was at white heat. The influential Americans were in the mood to wave their banners and to exchange amenities with foreign potentates.

Sir Morton was a noted capitalist and his banquet was a sort of "hands across the sea" festival. He used, I recall, to stop at the Clarendon, now torn down and its site occupied by a commercial "sky sc.r.a.per," but then the smart hostelry of the town.

I sang that night after dinner. My services had not been engaged professionally, so, when Sir Morton wanted to reward me lavishly, I of course did not care to have him do so. We were still so new to _prime donne_ in New York that we had no social code or precedent to refer to with regard to them; and I preferred, personally, to keep the episode on a purely friendly and social basis. I was an invited guest only who had tried to do her part for the entertainment of the others. I was honoured, too. It was an experience to which anyone could look back with pride and pleasure.

But, being English, Sir Morton Peto had a solution and, within a day or two, sent me an exquisite pearl and diamond bracelet. It is odd how much more delicately and graciously than Americans all foreigners--of whatever nationality indeed--can relieve a situation of awkwardness and do the really considerate and appreciative thing which makes such a situation all right. I later found the same tactful qualities in the Duke of Newcastle who, with his family, were among the closest friends I had in England. Indeed, I was always much impressed with the good taste of English men and women in this connection.

An instance of the American fas.h.i.+on befell me during the winter of '63-'64 on the occasion of a big reception that was given by the father of Brander Matthews. I was invited to go and asked to sing, my host saying that if I would not accept a stipulated price he would be only too glad to make me a handsome present of some kind. The occasion turned out to be very unfortunate and unpleasant altogether, both at the time and with regard to the feeling that grew out of it. I happened to wear a dress that was nearly new, a handsome and expensive gown, and this was completely ruined by a servant upsetting melted ice cream over it. My host and hostess were all concern, saying that, as they were about to go to Paris, they would buy me a new one. I immediately felt that if they did this, they would consider the dress as an equivalent for my singing and that I should never hear anything more of the handsome present. Of course I said nothing of this, however, to anyone. Well--they went to Paris. Days and weeks pa.s.sed. I heard nothing from them about either dress or present. I went to Europe. They called on me in Paris. In the course of time we all came home to America; and the night after my return I received a long letter and a set of Castilian gold jewelry, altogether inadequate as an equivalent. There was nothing to do but to accept it, which I did, and then proceeded to give away the ornaments as I saw fit. The whole affair was uncomfortable and a discredit to my entertainers. Not only had I lost a rich dress through the carelessness of one of their servants, but I received a very tardy and inadequate recompense for my singing. I had refused payment in money because it was the custom to do so. But I was a professional singer, and I had been asked to the reception as a professional entertainer. This, however, I must add, is the most flagrant case that has ever come under my personal notice of an American host or hostess failing to "make good" at the expense of a professional.

Well--from time to time after Sir Morton's banquet, I sang in concert.

On one occasion I replaced Euphrosyne Parepa--she had not then married Carl Rosa--at one of the Bateman concerts. The Meyerbeer craze was then at its height. Good, sound music it was too, if a little brazen and noisy. _L'etoile du Nord_ (I don't understand why we always speak of it as _L'etoile du Nord_ when we never once sang it in French) had been sung in America by my old idol, Mme. de la Grange, nearly ten years before I essayed Catarina. My _premiere_ in the part was given in Philadelphia; but almost immediately we came back to New York for the spring opera season and I sang _The Star_ as princ.i.p.al attraction. Later on I sang it in Boston.

It was always good fun playing in Boston, for the Harvard boys adored "suping" and we had our extra men almost without the asking. They were such nice, clean, enthusiastic chaps! The reason why I remember them so clearly is that I never can forget how surprised I was when, in the boat at the end of the first act of _The Star of the North_, I chanced to look down and caught sight of Peter Barlow (now Judge Barlow) grinning up at me from a point almost underneath me on the stage, and how I nearly fell out of the boat!

We had difficulty in finding a satisfactory Prascovia. Prascovia is an important soprano part, and had to be well taken. At last Albites suggested a pupil of his. This was Minnie Hauck. Prascovia was sung at our first performance by Mlle. Bososio who was not equal to the part.

Minnie Hauck came into the theatre and sang a song of Meyerbeer's, and we knew that we had found our Prascovia. Her voice was very light but pleasing and well-trained, for Albites was a good teacher. She undoubtedly would add value to our cast. So she made her _debut_ as Prascovia, although she afterwards became better known to the public as one of the most famous of the early Carmens. Indeed, many people believed that she created that _role_ in America although, as a matter of fact, I sang Carmen several months before she did. As Prascovia she and I had a duet together, very long and elaborate, which we introduced after the tent scene and which made an immense hit. We always received many flowers after it--I, particularly, to be quite candid. By this time I was called The Flower Prima Donna because of the quant.i.ties of wonderful blossoms that were sent to me night after night. When singing _The Star of the North_ there was one bouquet that I was sure of getting regularly from a young man who always sent the same kind of flowers. I never needed a card on them or on the box to know from whom they came.

Miss Hauck used to help me pick up my bouquets. The only trouble was that every one she picked up she kept! As a rule I did not object, and, anyway, I might have had difficulty in proving that she had appropriated my flowers after she had taken the cards off: but one night she included in her general haul my own special, unmistakable bouquet! I recognised it, saw her take it, but, as there was no card, had the greatest difficulty in getting it away from her. I did, though, in the end.

Minnie Hauck was very pus.h.i.+ng and took advantage of everything to forward and help herself. She never had the least apprehension about the outcome of anything in which she was engaged and, in this, she was extremely fortunate, for most persons cursed with the artistic temperament are too sensitive to feel confident. She was clever, too.

This is another exception, for very few big singers are clever. I think it is Mme. Maeterlinck who has made use of the expression "too clever to sing well." I am convinced that there is quite a truth in it as well as a sarcasm. Wonderful voices usually are given to people who are, intrinsically, more or less nonent.i.ties. One cannot have everything in this world, and people with brains are not obliged to sing! But Minnie Hauck was a singer and she was also clever. If I remember rightly, she married some scientific foreign baron and lived afterwards in Lucerne.

Once I heard of a soldier who was asked to describe Waterloo and who replied that his whole impression of the battle consisted of a mental picture of the kind of b.u.t.ton that was on the coat of the man in front of him. It is so curiously true that one's view of important events is often a very small one,--especially when it comes to a matter of mere memory. Accordingly, I find my amethysts are almost my most vivid recollection in connection with _L'etoile du Nord_. I wanted a set of really handsome stage jewelry for Catarina. In fact, I had been looking for such a set for some time. There are many _roles_, Violetta for instance, for which rich jewels are needed. My friends were on the lookout for me, also, and it was while I was preparing for _The Star of the North_ that a man I knew came hurrying in with a wonderful tale of a set of imitation amethysts that he had discovered, and that were, he thought, precisely what I was looking for.

"The man who has them," he told me, "bought them at a bankrupt sale for ninety-six dollars and they are a regular white elephant to him. Of course, they are suitable only for the stage; and he has been hunting for months for some actress who would buy them. You'd better take a look at them, anyhow."

I had the set sent to me and, promptly, went wild over it. The stones, that ranged from the size of a bean to that of a large walnut, appeared to be as perfect as genuine amethysts, and the setting--genuine soft, old, worked gold--was really exquisite. There were seventy stones in the whole set, which included a necklace, a bracelet, a large brooch, ear-rings and a most gorgeous tiara. The colour of the gems was very deep and lovely, bordering on a claret tone rather than violet. The crown was apparently symbolic or suggestive of some great house. It was made of roses, shamrocks, and thistles, and every piece in the set was engraved with a small hare's head. I wish I knew heraldry and could tell to whom the lovely ornaments had first belonged. Of course I bought them, paying one hundred and fifty dollars for the set, which the man was glad enough to get. I wore it in _The Star_ and in other operas, and one day I took it down to Tiffany's to have it cleaned and repaired.

The man there, who knew me, examined it with interest.

"It will cost you one hundred and seventy dollars," he informed me.

"What!" I gasped. "That is more than the whole set is worth!"

He looked at me as if he thought I must be a little crazy.

"Miss Kellogg," he said, "if you think that, I don't believe you know what you've really got. What do you think this jewelry is really worth?"

"I don't know," I admitted. "What do you think it is worth?"

"Roughly speaking," he replied, "I should say about six thousand dollars. The workmans.h.i.+p is of great value, and every one of the stones is genuine."

Through all these years, therefore, I have been fearful that some Rip Van Winkle claimant might rise up and take my beloved amethysts away from me!

My general impressions of this period of my life include those of the two great pianists, Thalberg and Gottschalk. They were both wonderful, although I always admired Gottschalk more than the former. Thalberg had the greater technique; Gottschalk the greater charm. Sympathetically, the latter musician was better equipped than the former. The very simplest thing that Gottschalk played became full of fascination.

Thalberg was marvellously perfect as to his method; but it was Gottschalk who could "play the birds off the trees and the heart out of your breast," as the Irish say. Thalberg's work was, if I may put it so, mental; Gottschalk's was temperamental.

Gottschalk was one of the first big pianists to come to New York touring. He was from New Orleans, having been born there in the French Quarter, and spoke only French, like so many persons from that city up to thirty years ago. But he had been educated abroad and always ranked as a foreign artist. He must have been a Jew, from his name. Certainly, he looked like one. He had peculiarly drooping eyelids and was considered to be very attractive. He wrote enchanting Spanish-sounding songs; and gave the banjo quite a little dignity by writing a piece imitating it, much to my delight, because of my fondness for that instrument. He was in no way a cla.s.sical pianist. Thalberg was. Indeed, they were altogether different types. Thalberg was nothing like so interesting either as a personality or as a musician, although he was much more scholarly than his predecessor. I say predecessor, because Thalberg followed Gottschalk in the touring proposition. Gottschalk began his work before I began mine, and I first sang with him in my second season. He and I figured in the same concerts not only in those early days but also much later.

[Ill.u.s.tration: =Gottschalk=

Photograph by Case & Getch.e.l.l]

Gottschalk was a gay deceiver and women were crazy about him. Needless to say, my mother never let me have anything to do with him except professionally. He was pursued by adoring females wherever he went and inundated with letters from girls who had lost their hearts to his exquisite music and magnetic personality. I shall always remember Gottschalk and Brignoli comparing their latest love letters from matinee girls. Some poor, silly maiden had written to Gottschalk asking for a meeting at any place he would appoint. Said Gottschalk:

"It would be rather fun to make a date with her at some absurd, impossible place,--say a ferry-boat, for instance."

"Nonsense," said Brignoli, "a ferry-boat is not romantic enough. She wouldn't think of coming to a ferry-boat to meet her ideal!"

"She would come anywhere," declared Gottschalk, not at all vaingloriously, but as one stating a simple truth. "I'll make her come; and you shall come too and see her do it!"

"Will you bet?" asked Brignoli.

"I certainly will," replied Gottschalk.

They promptly put up quite a large sum of money and Gottschalk won. That dear, miserable goose of a girl did go to the ferry-boat to meet the ill.u.s.trious pianist of her adoration, and Brignoli was there to see. If only girls knew as much as I do about the way in which their stage heroes take their innocent adulation, and the wicked light-heartedness with which they make fun of it! But they do not; and the only way to teach them, I suppose, is to let them learn by themselves, poor little idiots.

As I look back I feel a continual sense of outrage that I mixed so little with the people and affairs that were all about me; interesting people and important affairs. My dear mother adored me. It is strange that we can never even be adored in the particular fas.h.i.+on in which we would prefer to be adored! My mother's way was to guard me eternally; she would have called it protecting me. But, really, it was a good deal like shutting me up in a gla.s.s case, and it was a great pity. My mother was an extraordinarily fine woman, upright as the day and of an unusual mentality. Uncompromising she was, not unnaturally, according to her heritage of race and creed and generation. Yet I sometimes question if she were as uncompromising as she used to seem to me, for was not the life she led with me, as well as her acceptance of it in the beginning, one long compromise between her nature and the actualities? At any rate, where she seemed to draw the line was in keeping me as much as possible aloof from my inevitable a.s.sociates. I led a deadly dull and virtuous life, of necessity. To be sure, I might have been just as virtuous or even more so had I been left to my own devices and judgments; but I contend that such a life is not up to much when it is compulsory.

Personal responsibility is necessary to development. Perhaps I reaped certain benefits from my mother's close chaperonage. Certainly, if there were benefits about it, I reaped them. But I very much question its ultimate advantage to me, and I confess freely that one of the things I most regret is the innocent, normal coquetry which is the birthright of every happy girl and which I entirely missed. It is all very well to be carefully guarded and to be made the archetype of American virtue on the stage, but there is a great deal of entirely innocuous amus.e.m.e.nt that I might have had and did not have, which I should have been better off for having. My mother could hardly let me hold a friendly conversation with a man--much less a flirtation.

[Ill.u.s.tration: =Jane Elizabeth Crosby=

Mother of Clara Louise Kellogg

From a tintype]

CHAPTER XI

THE END OF THE WAR

The Civil War was now coming to its close. Abraham Lincoln was the hero of the day, as he has been of all days since, in America. The White House was besieged with people from all walks of life, persistently anxious to shake hands with the War President, and he used to have to stand, for incredible lengths of time, smiling and hand-clasping. But he was ever a fine economist of energy and he flatly refused to talk. No one could get out of him more than a smile, a nod, or possibly a brief word of greeting.

One man made a bet that he would have some sort of conversation with the President while he was shaking hands with him.

"No, you won't," said the man to whom he was speaking, "I'll bet you that you won't get more than two words out of him!"

"I bet I will," said the venturesome one; and he set off to try his luck.

He went to the White House reception and, when his turn came and his hand was in the huge presidential grasp, he began to talk hastily and volubly, hoping to elicit some response. Lincoln listened a second, gazing at him gravely with his deep-set eyes, and then he laid an enormous hand in a loose, wrinkled white glove across his back.

"Don't dwell!" said he gently to his caller; and shoved him along, amiably but relentlessly, with the rest of the line. So the man got only his two words after all.

One week before the President was murdered I was in Was.h.i.+ngton and sat in the exact place in which he sat when he was shot. It was the same box, the same chair, and on Friday too,--one week to the day and hour before the tragedy. When I heard the terrible news I was able to picture exactly what it had been like. I could see just the jump that Booth must have had to make to get away. I never knew Wilkes Booth personally nor saw him act, but I have several times seen him leaving his theatre after a performance, with a raft of adoring matinee girls forming a more or less surrept.i.tous guard afar off. He was a tremendously popular idol and strikingly handsome. Even after his wicked crime there were many women who professed a sort of hysterical sympathy and pity for him. Somebody has said that there would always be at least one woman at the death-bed of the worst criminal in the world if she could get to it; and there were hundreds of the s.e.x who would have been charmed to watch beside Booth's, bad as he was and crazy into the bargain. It is a mysterious thing, the fascination that criminals have for some people, particularly women. Perhaps it is fundamentally a respect for accomplishment; admiration for the doing of something, good or evil, that they would not dare to do themselves.

We had all gone to Chicago for our spring opera season and were ready to open, when the tragic tidings came and shut down summarily upon every preparation for amus.e.m.e.nt of any kind. Every city in the Union went into mourning for the man whom the country idolised; of whom so many people spoke as _our_ "Abraham Lincoln." Perhaps it was because of this universal and almost personal affection that the authorities did such an odd thing--or, at least, it struck me as odd,--with his body. He was taken all over the country and "lay-in-state," as it is called, in different court houses in different states.