PARIS AT LAST
I crossed on one of the steady big boats of the Atlantic Transport Line.
I remember only one passenger, a boy of even then such personal
magnetism that he stands out in my recollection as clearly as any one I
have ever met, though he was then only a young fellow and unknown to
fame. His name was Douglas Fairbanks and his ambition was to go on the
stage. He said as we neared England: "Well, some day we'll read,
'Conried of the Metropolitan Opera House presents Miss Kathleen Howard,'
and 'Charles Frohman presents Mr. Douglas Fairbanks.'" His prophecy,
which I recall even to the spot on the boat where he made it, and the
expression of his eyes which matched mine at that moment, has almost
been fulfilled.
I reached Paris in the beginning of September with "my instrument" in
working order, with a smattering of French, a letter of credit for
$1000, and a large supply of courage. I found my voice adequate to all
my demands upon it, but the money just half enough (it was increased
the next year). As for my courage, I have had to go on renewing that
ever since, until it has become the largest factor in my success. Emma
Juch told me once that she always said it was not difficult to attain
success and make a career. Perhaps her success was made at a time when
the competition was less keen, but I at any rate could never agree with
her.
I arrived in Paris early in the morning and went to a small hotel in the
rue Cambon. It quite thrilled me to ask the chambermaid for _eau chaude_
instead of "hot water"; and I felt proud of knowing that the midday meal
was called _dejeuner a la fourchette_. I remember that meal to this
day--it began with radishes and butter, those inseparable companions in
France, went on to omelette, then cold meat and salad, with small
clingstone peaches and little white grapes for dessert. Red or white
wine was "_compris_," and the bread was a yard long, cut half through
into sections, and laid down the middle of the table. It was all
half-miraculous to me, and afterwards when I went out to stroll under
the arches of the rue de Rivoli I thought myself in fairyland. The
jewelry, lingerie and photograph shops delighted me, as they have
innumerable tourists, and the name "Redfern" over a doorway gave me a
thrill. The Place de la Concorde seemed one of the most beautiful places
I had ever seen, an opinion which I still hold, by the way, and I felt
like a queen when I called an open _fiacre_ and drove in state toward
the Arc de Triomphe, stopping to buy a big bunch of red roses for twenty
cents from a ragged man who ran shouting beside my carriage. In the
evening I went to the opera and wondered at the great stairway and at
the big auditorium, and still more at the poor performance I saw there
but which I accounted for by the fact that September is the dull season.
That first day was all thrills. The next was spent in arranging hours
for lessons, and collecting pension addresses from all my acquaintances,
as I saw that it would be impossible to do my work in a hotel. I set
bravely out on my hunt for a dwelling place. Prices have increased
considerably since those days, for at that time it was possible to get
very good board and lodging on the left bank of the Seine for five
francs a day. My professor, Jacques Bouhy, however, lived near the Arc
de Triomphe, and I wished to be within walking distance. I toiled up and
down a great many stairs, and peeped into a great many rooms without
finding what I sought. I could not bear to wait a day to begin working,
and was just a bit discouraged, when I had the good fortune to meet two
girls from home, who gave me the address of the pension where they had
stayed. I rushed off at once to see it, and found a very nice house of
several floors, situated in a _cite_, a sort of garden behind the first
row of houses on the street, so that its windows faced a view of trees
and flowerbeds with circular gravel walks around them, instead of
cobblestones.
The head of the pension was an old woman who looked like a Bourbon but
was really a bourgeoise. It was nearly noon when I arrived, but she was
still in a wonderful dressing gown of purple and yellow stripes, with
_chaussons_, cloth slippers, on her feet, and an elaborate coiffure of
dyed black hair above her yellow old face. She came to me in the salon,
a long narrow room with French windows framing tree-tops, the windows
and doors all hung with rose-red velvet which looked as if it had been
in place since the First Empire. There were sofas of rose, and chairs of
the same with black wooden rims, tables and mantel-pieces with thousands
of things on them, and an old-fashioned square piano in the corner.
Madame was most gracious, remembered the name of her former lodgers,
said they were _tres gentilles_, turned a neat compliment to the
American nation, and showed me the rooms herself.
I chose a back one of good size, nicely furnished and hung with a pretty
chintz. It had a _cabinet de toilette_, or large cupboard for washstand
and trunks, opening off it, and I was to have it with complete board,
for two hundred francs a month ($40). The price was really higher, but
my arrangement was for the winter. I was to pay extra for light and
heat. The room had an open fireplace with a _grille_ or fire-basket in
it, for which I could buy _boulets_, coal dust pressed into egg-shaped
balls, for three francs a sack. Later, I could have had a _salamandre_,
one of the excellent small stoves which fit into the fireplace, really
warm a room, and require filling only once in twenty-four hours. But I
wanted something to poke, and I had an idea that Paris winters were not
very formidable. As a matter of fact, anything more penetrating than
their damp sunless cold it is impossible to imagine.
For light, there was a huge lamp for which I could buy _luciline_, a
kind of highly refined kerosene which has no odour and burns well. I
made my bath arrangements with Jean, Madame's old servant, who with his
wife, Eugenie, was the real head of the establishment. I had bought a
collapsible rubber tub, and Jean was to bring me a big can of hot water
every morning. I found that I had to tip occasionally or the water
became as cool as Jean's manners. Madame showed me her dining room, and
told me with pride that her cuisine was of an excellence renowned. I
went to fetch my trunks and hire a piano, glad that my long search was
over. The piano was a small upright, a tin pan for tone, as are all
Parisian pianos _en location_, and it was to cost me ten francs a month,
with eight francs for carting. They are more expensive now. When it was
installed, my Lares and Penates on top of it, and my music on a stool
beside it, I felt that my feet were firmly planted on the ladder leading
to success.
Then I began to work. And how I did work that winter! I had two singing
lessons a week, and a session with the opera class lasting three hours
in which we went through the dramatic action of our roles. I slaved at
my repertoire working three hours a week with a coach, and spending
hours and hours a day learning by heart at home. Of course I began with
the very biggest roles--we all do. The personalities of _Amneris_,
_Carmen_, _Dalila_, _Azucena_ in turn, all in their French version of
course, occupied my mind waking and sleeping.
Jacques Bouhy was always kind, grave and courteous with me. The thought
of his having created _Escamillo_ and his real knowledge of French
traditions thrilled me. He lent me his copy of "Samson et Dalila" from
which to copy the French words. It had an inscription from Saint-Saens
"A M. Bouhy, _grand pretre et grand artiste_." He created the role of
the Grand Priest.
The only time I ever saw him upset was one day after the Opera class. We
all thought him safely out riding as he always was on Mondays. My
letter, written at that time to my mother, says:
"This morning in the opera class we had rather an unpleasant time.
Little N., with the beautiful tenor voice, has learned in one week the
first half of the _Samson_ duet for me. He has had to learn it from a
score which has only his voice part written in it. He is frightfully
down on his luck and with the gorgeous voice and speaking French can't
get anything to do, and has no money, not a cent to his name. We had
done that, some one else had sung, and having ten minutes left, Valdejo
told N. to sing again if he would. He was tired, but jumped up and began
the first part of "Faust." He kept forgetting it. Suddenly the door
opened and in walked Bouhy as white as a sheet. He commanded N. to stop
singing and to learn his things before coming again to the class. Said,
why did he sing like a baritone when he was a tenor, mocked him, told
him he was ashamed to have such sounds made _chez lui_, that he had been
a year on "Faust." What example was he to the others? Every one else had
always worked seriously. He stormed for five long minutes, N. standing
quite still, with his brown dog's eyes fixed on him--then he left the
room. It was frightfully uncomfortable for us too. I am sure I have
done just such rotten work so it may be my turn next. Of course Bouhy
was right. N. has been there a year and ought to know it; but he is just
tired out, and never sleeps he says. They say Bouhy is beginning to show
his age. This week he bounced his cook whom he has had for years."
I had two French lessons a week, and should have had at least one
diction lesson besides, but for an invaluable course which I had taken
in New York with the Yersin sisters. These lessons were a nerve-racking
experience from which I used to emerge with my feathers all rubbed the
wrong way from the strain of trying to imitate the intangible
differences between the various French "e's." But I have always been
grateful for this rigid training, from the time when I first reached
Paris, and, though speaking very little French, could give an address to
a _cocher_ without having to repeat it, until now, when I can thank my
trained ear for a perfect accent in singing foreign languages.
I think no one ever studied more unrelentingly than I, during that first
year of hot enthusiasm. I began early in the morning, and the only
reason that I did not burn the midnight oil was that I found it cost me
too much in kerosene and firing. I could keep warm in bed for nothing,
and _boulets_ were my pet economy. Coming from a country where a warm
room was taken for granted, and where the furnaces in hotels and
boarding houses might have been supplied by Elijah's ravens for all I
knew about it, I just couldn't bear to see my money burning away bit by
bit in a grate; and many a time I have put on my fur-lined coat rather
than add fuel to the dying heap of dreadfully expensive ashes in the
_grille_.