Read Ebook: Memoirs of an American Prima Donna by Kellogg Clara Louise

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Ebook has 238 lines and 118179 words, and 5 pages

"What is your song?"

"My life."

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.

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.

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.

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 illustrious kindred, among them the Duchesse de Berri, and we were never tired of his tales concerning her.

"I wish to God 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.

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 circumspection. 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, assistant 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.

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 space, I had come so close to the men who were engaged in them; and the sentiment never passed.

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 mass 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.

"LIKE A PICKED CHICKEN"

I was a general utility member of the company, and sang to fill in the chinks. We sang four times a week, and I received twenty-five dollars each time--that is, one hundred dollars a week--not bad for inexperienced seventeen, although Muzio regarded the tour for me as merely educational and part of my training.

We opened in Pittsburg, and it was there, at the old Monongahela House, that I had my first exhibition of Italian temperament, or, rather, temper!

When we arrived, we found that the dining-room was officially closed. We were tired out after a long hard trip of twenty-four hours, and, of course, almost starved. We got as far as the door, where we could look in hungrily, but it was empty and dark. There were no waiters; there was nothing, indeed, except the rows of neatly set tables for the next meal.

Brignoli demanded food. He was very fond of eating, I recall. And, in those days, he was a sort of little god in New York, where he lived in much luxury. When affairs went well with him, he was not an unamiable man; but he was a selfish egotist, with the devil's own temper on occasion.

The landlord approached and told us that the dinner hour was past, and that we could not get anything to eat until the next meal, which would be supper. And oh! if you only knew what supper was like in the provincial hotel of that day!

Brignoli was wild with wrath. He would start to storm and shout in his rage, and would then suddenly remember his voice and subside, only to begin again as his anger rose in spite of himself. It was really amusing, though I doubt if anyone appreciated the joke at the moment.

At last, as the landlord remained quite unmoved, Brignoli dashed into the room, grabbed the cloth on one of the tables near the door and pulled it off--dishes, silver, and all! The crash was terrific, and naturally the china was smashed to bits.

"You'll have to pay for that!" cried the landlord, indignantly.

The landlord stood and gaped at him.

"Why didn't you say so in the first place?" he asked with a sort of contemptuous pity, and went off to order the dinner.

When will the American and the Italian temperaments begin to understand each other!

Brignoli was not only a fine singer but a really good musician. He told me that he had given piano lessons in Paris before he began to sing at all. But of his absolute origin he would never speak. He was a handsome man, with ears that had been pierced for ear-rings. This led me to infer that he had at some time been a sailor, although he would never let anyone mention the subject. Anyhow, I always thought of Naples when I looked at him.

Most stage people have their pet superstitions. There seems to be something in their make-up that lends itself to an interest in signs. But Brignoli had a greater number of singular ones than any person I ever met. He had, among other things, a mascot that he carried all over the country. This was a stuffed deer's head, and it was always installed in his dressing-room wherever he might be singing. When he sang well, he would come back to the room and pat the deer's head approvingly. When he was not in voice, he would pound it and swear at it in Italian.

Brignoli lived for his voice. He adored it as if it were some phenomenon for which he was in no sense responsible. And I am not at all sure that this is not the right point of view for a singer. He always took tremendous pains with his voice and the greatest possible care of himself in every way, always eating huge quantities of raw oysters each night before he sang. The story is told of him that one day he fell off a train. People rushed to pick him up, solicitous lest the great tenor's bones were broken. But Brignoli had only one fear. Without waiting even to rise to his feet, he sat up, on the ground where he had fallen, and solemnly sang a bar or two. Finding his voice uninjured, he burst into heartfelt prayers of thanks-giving, and climbed back into the car.

But to return to our concert tour.

I remember that the concert room in Pittsburg was over the town market. That was what we had to contend with in those primitive days! Imagine our little company of devoted and ambitious artists trying to create a musical atmosphere one flight up, while they sold cabbages and fish downstairs!

Speaking of clothes, I learned on that first experimental tour the horrors of travel when it comes to keeping one's gowns fresh. I speedily acquired the habit, practised ever since, of carrying a big crash cloth about with me to spread on stages where I was to sing. This was not entirely to keep my clothes clean, important as that was. It was also for the sake of my voice and its effect. Few people know that the floor-covering on which a singer stands makes a very great difference. On carpets, for instance, one simply cannot get a good tone.

Just before I went on for that first concert, Madame Colson stopped me to put a rose in my hair, and said to me:

"Smile much, and show your teeth!"

After the concert she supplemented this counsel with the words:

"Always dress your best, and always smile, and always be gracious!"

I never forgot the advice.

The idea of pretty clothes and a pretty smile is not merely a pose nor an artificiality. It is likewise carrying out a spirit of courtesy. Just as a hostess greets a guest cordially and tries to make her feel at ease, so the tactful singer tries to show the people who have come to hear her that she is glad to see them.

That was a hard tour. Indeed, all tours were hard in those days. Travelling accommodations were limited and uncomfortable, and most of the hotels were very bad. Trains were slow, and connections uncertain, and of course there was no such thing as a Pullman or, much less, a dining-car. Sometimes we had to sit up all night and were not able to get anything to eat, not infrequently arriving too late for the meal hour of the hotel where we were to stop. The journeys were so long and so difficult that they used to say Pauline Lucca always travelled in her nightgown and a black velvet wrapper.

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