Gabrilowitsch, pianist.
David Bispham, vocalist.
Clara Clemens, ditto.
Mark Twain, introduces of team.
Detachments and squads and groups and singles came from everywhere
--Danbury, New Haven, Norwalk, Redding, Redding Ridge, Ridgefield,
and even from New York: some in 60-h.p. motor-cars, some in
buggies and carriages, and a swarm of farmer-young-folk on foot
from miles around--525 altogether.
If we hadn't stopped the sale of tickets a day and a half before the
performance we should have been swamped. We jammed 160 into the
library (not quite all had seats), we filled the loggia, the dining-
room, the hall, clear into the billiard-room, the stairs, and the
brick-paved square outside the dining-room door.
The artists were received with a great welcome, and it woke them up,
and I tell you they performed to the Queen's taste! The program was
an hour and three-quarters long and the encores added a half-hour to
it. The enthusiasm of the house was hair-lifting. They all stayed
an hour after the close to shake hands and congratulate.
We had no dollar seats except in the library, but we accumulated
$372 for the Building Fund. We had tea at half past six for a
dozen--the Hawthornes, Jeannette Gilder, and her niece, etc.; and
after 8-o'clock dinner we had a private concert and a ball in the
bare-stripped library until 10; nobody present but the team and Mr.
and Mrs. Paine and Jean and her dog. And me. Bispham did “Danny
Deever” and the “Erlkonig” in his majestic, great organ-tones and
artillery, and Gabrilowitsch played the accompaniments as they were
never played before, I do suppose.
There is not much to add to that account. Clemens, introducing the
performers, was the gay feature of the occasion. He spoke of the great
reputation of Bispham and Gabrilowitsch; then he said:
“My daughter is not as famous as these gentlemen, but she is ever so
much better-looking.”
The music of the evening that followed, with Gabrilowitsch at the piano
and David Bispham to sing, was something not likely ever to be repeated.
Bispham sang the “Erlkonig” and “Killiecrankie” and the “Grenadiers” and
several other songs. He spoke of having sung Wagner's arrangement of the
“Grenadiers” at the composer's home following his death, and how none of
the family had heard it before.
There followed dancing, and Jean Clemens, fine and handsome, apparently
full of life and health, danced down that great living-room as
care-free as if there was no shadow upon her life. And the evening was
distinguished in another way, for before it ended Clara Clemens had
promised Ossip Gabrilowitsch to become his wife.