Memoirs of an American Prima Donna Part 20

The variety of "admirers" that are the lot of a person on the stage is extraordinary. It is very difficult for the stage persons themselves to understand it. It has never seemed to me that actors as a cla.s.s are particularly interesting. Personally I have always been too cognisant of the personalities behind the scenes to ever have any theatrical idols; but to a great many there is something absolutely fascinating about the stage and stage folk. The actor appears to the audience in a perpetual, hazy, calcium glory. We are, one and all, children with an inherent love for fairy tales and it is probably this love which is in a great measure accountable for the blind adoration received by most stage people.

I have received, I imagine, the usual number of letters from "your sincere admirer," some of them funny and some of them rather pathetic.

Very few of them were really impertinent or offensive. In nearly all was to be found the same touching devotion to an abstract ideal for which, for the moment, I chanced to be cast. Once in a while there was some one who, like a person who signed himself "Faust," insisted that I had "met his eyes" and "encouraged him from afar." Needless to say I had never in my life seen him; but he worked himself into quite a fever of resentment on the subject and wrote me several letters. There was also a man who wrote me several perfectly respectful, but ardent, love letters to which, naturally, I did not respond. Then, finally, he bombarded me with another type of screed of which the following is a specimen:

"Oh, for Heaven's sake, say something,--if it is only to rate me for my importunities or to tell me to go about my business! Anything but this contemptuous silence!"

But these were exceptions. Most of my "admirers'" letters are gems of either humour or of sentiment. Among my treasures is an epistle that begins:

"Miss Clara Louise Kellogg

Miss:

Before to expand my feelings, before to make you known the real intent of this note, in fine before to disclose the secrets of my heart, I will pray you to pardon my indiscretion (if indiscretion that can be called) to address you unacquainted," etc.

Isn't this a masterpiece?

There was also an absurdly conceited man who wrote me one letter a year for several years, always in the same vein. He was evidently a very pious youth and had "gotten religion" rather badly, for in every epistle he broke into exhortation and urged me fervently to become a "real Christian," painting for me the joys of true religion if I once could manage to "find it." In one of his later letters--after a.s.suring me that he had prayed for me night and morning for three years and would continue to do so--he ended in this impressive manner:

" ...And if, in G.o.d's mercy, we are both permitted to walk 'the Golden Streets,' I shall there seek you out and give you more fully my reasons for writing you."

Could anything be more entertaining than this nave fas.h.i.+on of making a date in Heaven?

Not all my letters were love letters. Sometimes I would receive a few words from some woman unknown to me but full of a sweet and understanding friendliness. Mrs. Elizabeth Tilton, then the centre of the stage scandal through her friends.h.i.+p with Henry Ward Beecher, wrote me a charming letter that ended with what struck me as a very pathetic touch:

"I am unwilling to be known by you as the defiant, discontented woman of the age--rather, as an humble helper of those less fortunate than myself----"

I never knew Mrs. Tilton personally, but have often felt that I should have liked her. One of the dearest communications I ever received was from a French working girl, a corset maker, I believe. She wrote:

"I am but a poor little girl, Mademoiselle, a toiler in the sphere where you reign a queen, but ever since I was a very little child I have gone to listen to your voice whenever you have deigned to sing in New York. Those magic tone-flowers, scattering their perfumed sweetness on the waiting air, made my child heart throb with a wonderful pulsation...."

One of the favourite jests of the critics was my obduracy in matters of sentiment. It was said that I would always have emotional limitations because I had no love affairs like other _prime donne_. Once, when I gave some advice to a young girl to "keep your eyes fixed upon your artistic future," or some such similar phrase, the press had a good deal of fun at my expense. "That" it was declared, "was exactly what was the matter with Clara Louise; she kept her eyes fixed upon an artistic future instead of upon some man who was in love with her!" I was rather a good shot, very fond of target shooting, and many jokes were also made on the supposed damage I did. One newspaper man put it rather more aptly. "Not only in pistol shooting," he said, "but in everything she aims at, our _prima donna_ is sure to hit the mark."

My "sincere admirers" were from all parts of the house, but I think I found the "gallery" ones most sincere and, certainly, the most amusing.

Max Maretzek used to say that he had no manner of use for an artist unless she could fill the family circle. I am glad to be able to record that I always could. My singing usually appealed to the people. _The Police Gazette_ always gave me good notices! I love the family circle.

As a rule the appreciation there is greater because of the sacrifices which they have had to make to buy their seats. When people can go to hear good music every night, they do not care nearly so much about doing it.

I wonder if anybody besides singers get such an extraordinary sense of contact and connection with members of their audiences? I have sometimes felt as if thought waves, reaching through the s.p.a.ce between, held me fast to some of those who heard me sing. Who knows what sympathies, what comprehensions, what exquisite friends.h.i.+ps, were blossoming out there in the dark house like a garden, waiting to be gathered? Letters--not necessarily love letters--rather, stray messages of appreciation and understanding--have brought me a similar sense of joy and of safe intimacy. After the receipt of any such, I have sung with the pleasant sense that a new friend--yes, friend, not auditor--was listening. I have suddenly felt at home in the big theatre; and often, very often, have I looked eagerly over the banked hosts of faces, asking myself wistfully which were the strangers and which mine own people.

It was not only in the theatre that I found "admirers." My vacations were beset with those who wanted to look at and speak to a genuine _prima donna_ at close range. Indeed, I had frequently to protect myself from perfectly strange and intrusive people. Often I have gone to Saratoga during the season. Saratoga was a fas.h.i.+onable resort in those days and I always had a good audience. One incident that I remember of Saratoga was a detestable train that invariably came along in the middle of my performance--the evening train from New York. I always had to stop whatever I was singing and wait for it to go by. One night I thought I would cheat it and timed my song a little earlier so that I would be through before the train arrived. It just beat me by a bar; and I could hear it steaming nearer and nearing as I hurried on. As I came to the end there was a loud whistle from the locomotive;--but, for once, luck was on my side, for it was pitched in harmony with my final note! The coincidence was warmly applauded.

When on the road I not infrequently practised with my banjo at hotels.

It was more practicable to carry about than a piano and, besides, it was not always an easy matter to hire a good piano. One time--also in Saratoga--I was playing that instrument preparatory to beginning my morning practice, when an old gentleman who had a room on the same floor, descended to the office in a fine temper. He was a long, slim, wiry old fellow, with a high, black satin stock about his bony neck, very few hairs on his little round head, deep sunken eyes, pinched features, and an extremely nervous manner.

"See here," he burst out in a cracked voice, as he danced about on the marble tiling of the office floor, "have you a band of n.i.g.g.e.r minstrels in the house, eh! Zounds, sir, there's an infernal banjo tum, tum, tumming in my ears every morning and I can't sleep. Drat banjoes--I hate 'em. And n.i.g.g.e.r minstrels--I hate 'em too. You must move me, sir, move me at once. That banjo'll set me crazy. Move me at once, d'ye hear?--or I'll leave the house!"

"Why, sir," said the clerk suavely, "that banjo player is not a n.i.g.g.e.r minstrel, at all, sir, but Miss Clara Louise Kellogg, who uses a banjo to practise with."

The hard lines in the old fellow's face relaxed, he looked sharply at the clerk and, leaning over the counter, remarked:

"What, Clara Louise Kellogg! W--why, I'll go up and listen! Zounds, man, she's my particular favourite. She's charmed me with her sweet voice many a time. D---- n it, give her another banjo! Tell her to play all day if she wants to! Clara Louise Kellogg, eh? H'm, well, well!"

He tottered off and, as I observed, after that so long as I stayed left the door of his room open down the hall so that he could hear my "tum, tum, tumming."

A very different, though equally ingenuous tribute to my powers was that given by an old Indian trapper who, when in Chicago to sell his hides, went to hear me sing and expressed his emotions to a newspaper man of that city in approximately the following language:

I have heard most of the sweet and terrible noises that natives make. I have heard the thunder among the Hills when the Lord was knocking against the earth until it pa.s.sed; and I have heard the wind in the pines and the waves on the beaches, when the darkness of night was in the woods, and nature was singing her Evening Song and there was no bird nor beast the Lord has made, and I have not heard a voice that would make as sweet a noise as nature makes when the Spirit of the Universe speaks through the stillness; but that sweet lady has made sounds to-night sweeter than my ears have heard on hill or lake sh.o.r.e at noon, or in the night season, and I certainly believe that the Spirit of the Lord has been with her and given her the power to make such sweet sounds. A man might like to have these sweet sounds in his ears when his body lies in his cabin and his spirit is standing on the edge of the great clearing. I wish she could sing for me when my eyes grow dim and my feet strike the trail that no man strikes but once, nor travels both ways.

Surely among my friends, if not among my "sincere admirers," I may include Okakura, who came over here with the late John La Farge as an envoy from the j.a.panese Government to study the art of this country as well as that of Europe. His dream was to found some sort of inst.i.tution in j.a.pan for the preservation and development of his country's old, national ideals in art. His criticisms of Raphael and t.i.tian, by the way, were something extraordinary. As for music, he had a marvellous sense for it. La Farge took him to a Thomas Concert and he was vastly impressed by the music of Beethoven. One might have thought that he had listened to Occidental cla.s.sics all his life. But, for that matter, I know two little j.a.panese airs that Davidson of London told me might well have been written by Beethoven himself; so it may be that there is an obscure bond of sympathy, which our less acute ears would not always recognise, between our great master and the composers of Okakura's native land.

Okakura was only twenty-six when I first met him at Richard Watson Gilder's studio in New York, but he was already a professor and spoke perfect English and knew all our best literature. When Munkacsy, the Hungarian painter, came over, his colleague, Francis Korbay, the musician, gave him an evening reception, and I took my j.a.panese friend.

It was a charming evening and Okakura was the success of the reception.

When he started being introduced he was nothing but a professor. Before he had gone the rounds he had become an Asiatic prince and millionaire.

He had the "grand manner" and wore gorgeous clothes on formal occasions.

Some years later I called on his wife in Tokio. I considered this was the polite thing for me to do although Okakura himself was in Osaka at the time. Okakura had an art school in Tokio, kept up with the aid of the Government, where he was trying to fulfil his old ambition of preserving the individuality of his own people's work and of driving out Occidental encroachments. At the school, where we had gone with a guide who could serve also as interpreter, I asked for Madame. My request to see her was met with consternation. I was asking a great deal--how much, I did not realise until afterwards. Before I could enter, I was requested to take off my shoes. This I considered impossible as I was wearing high-laced boots. Furthermore, we were having winter weather, very cold and raw, and nothing was offered me to put on in their place, as the j.a.panese custom is at the entrances of the temples. My refusal to remove my shoes halted proceedings for a while; but, eventually, I was led around to a side porch where I could sit on a _chair_ (I was amazed at their having such a thing) and speak with the occupants of the house as they knelt inside on their heels. The _shoji_, or bamboo and paper screen, was pushed back, revealing an interior wonderfully clever in its simplicity. The furniture consisted of a beautiful bra.s.sier and two rare kakamonos on the wall--nothing more.

In came Madame Okakura in a grey kimono and bare feet. Down she went on her knees and saluted me in the prettiest fas.h.i.+on imaginable. We talked through the interpreter until her daughter entered, who spoke to me in bad, limited French. The daughter was an unattractive girl, with an artificially reddened mouth, but I thought the mother charming, like a most exquisite Parisienne masquerading as a "j.a.panese Lady."

Not long after my visit I saw Okakura himself and told him how much I had enjoyed seeing his wife. He gave me an annoyed glance and remained silent. I was nonplussed and somewhat mortified. I could not understand what could be the trouble, for he acted as if his honour were offended.

In time I learned that the unpardonable breach of good form in j.a.pan was to mention his wife to a j.a.panese!

So graceful, so delicate in both expression and feeling are the letters that I have received from Okakura, that I cannot resist my inclination to include them in this chapter,--although, possibly, they are somewhat too personal. On January 4, 1887, he wrote:

/* MY DEAR MISS KELLOGG: */

France lies three nights ahead of us. The returning clouds still seek the western sh.o.r.e and the ocean rolls back my dreams to you.

Your music lives in my soul. I carry away America in your voice; and what better token can your nation offer? But praises to the great sound like flattery, and praises to the beautiful sound like love. To you they must both be tiresome. I shall refrain. You allude to the Eastern Lights. Alas, the Lamp of Love flickers and Night is on the plains of Osaka. There are lingering lights on the crown of the Himalayas, on the edges of the Kowrous, among the peaks of Hira and Kora. But what do they care for the twilight of the Valley? They stand like the ocean moon, regardless of the tempest below. Seek the light in the mansion of your own soul. Are you not yourself the _Spirit Nightingale of the West_? Are you not crying for the moon in union with your Emersons and Longfellows--with your La Farges and your Gilders? Or am I mistaken? I enclose my picture and submit the translation of the few lines on the back to your _axe of anger and the benevolence of your criticism_ as we say at home. I need a great deal of your benevolence and deserve more of your anger, as the lines sound so poor in the English. However they do not appear very grand in the original and so I submit them to your guillotine with a free conscience. The lines are different from the former, for I forget them--or care not to repeat.

Will you kindly convey my best regards to Mrs. Gilder, for I owe so much to her, to say nothing of your friends.h.i.+p! Will you also condescend to write to me at your leisure?

(_Translation_:--One star floats into the ocean of Night. Past the back of Taurus, away among the Pleiades, whither dost thou go?

Sadly I watch them all. My soul wanders after them into the infinite. Shall my soul return, or--never?)

VIENNA, March 4, 1887.

MY DEAR MISS KELLOGG:

The home of a traveller is in his sweet memories. Under the shadow of Vesuvius and on the waters of Leman my thoughts were always for America, which you and your friends have made so pleasant to me.

Pardon me therefore if my pen again turns toward you. How kind of you to remember me! Your letter reached me here last night and I regret that I did not stay longer in Paris to receive it sooner.

Will you not favour me by writing again?

Europe is an enigma--often a source of sadness to me. The forces that developed her are tearing her asunder. Is it because all civilisations are destined to have their days and nights of Brahma?

Or was the principle that organised the European nations itself a false one? Did they grasp the moon in the waters and at last disturb the image? I know not. I only feel that the Spirit of Unrest is standing beside me. War is coming and must come, sooner or later. Conflicting opinions chase each other across the continent as if the demons fought in the air before the battle of men began. The policy of maintaining peace by increasing the armies is absurd. It is indeed a sad state of things to make such a sophism necessary. I am getting tired of this, though there is some consolation that there are more fools in the world than the Oriental.

I have been rather disappointed in the French music. Perhaps I am too much prejudiced by _The Persian Serenade_ to appreciate anything else. The acting was artificial and there was no voice which had anything of the Spirit Nightingale in it. You once told me that you intended to cross the Atlantic this summer. When? My dreams are impatient of your arrival. May you come soon and correct my one-sided impression of Europe!

I am going to Rome after two or three weeks' stay in this place.