it. Up and down the table good stories flew, sometimes faster than
we could catch them. Nobody likes a good joke better than Patti, and
when she heard one that particularly pleased her she would interpret
it to some guest who had not sufficiently mastered the language in
which the original anecdote was told. It was delightful comedy, and
after watching it with high pleasure, while La Diva spoke in a brace
of languages, I said: “I wonder if you have what people call a native
tongue, or whether in all of them you are ‘native and to the manner
born’?”
“Oh, I don’t know so many,” she replied, “only--let’s see--English,
German, French, Italian, Spanish, and Russian.”
“And which language do you speak best, if I may ask?”
“I really don’t know. To me there is no difference, as far as readiness
goes, and I suppose that in all of them readiness helps.”
[Illustration: MADAME PATTI’S FATHER.]
“But you have a favorite among them?”
“Oh, yes, Italian. Listen!” And then she recited an Italian poem. Next
to hearing Patti sing, the sweetest sound is her Italian speech. I
expressed my delight, and she said:
“Speaking of languages, Mr. Gladstone paid me a pretty compliment a
little while ago. I will show you his letter to-morrow, if you care to
see it.”
Patti forgets nothing. The next day she brought me Mr. Gladstone’s
letter. The Grand Old Man had been among her auditors at Edinburgh,
and after her performance he went upon the stage to thank her for the
pleasure he had felt in listening to her songs. He complained a little
of a cold which had been troubling him, and Patti begged him to try
some lozenges which she had found useful. That night she sent a little
box of them to Mr. Gladstone, and the statesman acknowledged the gift
with this letter:
“6 ROTHESAY TERRACE, EDINBURGH,
_October 22, 1890._
“DEAR MADAME PATTI:
“I do not know how to thank you enough for your charming gift.
I am afraid, however, that the use of your lozenges will not
make me your rival. _Voce quastata di ottante’ anni non si
ricupera._
“It was a rare treat to hear from your Italian lips last
night the songs of my own tongue, rendered with a delicacy of
modulation and a fineness of utterance such as no native ever
in my hearing has reached or even approached. Believe me,
“Faithfully yours,
“W. E. GLADSTONE.”
[Illustration: MADAME PATTI AT EIGHTEEN.]
This letter very naturally gave our conversation a reminiscent turn,
and, after some talk of great folk she has known, I asked Madame
Patti what had been the proudest experience in her career. “For a
great and unexpected honor most gracefully tendered, nothing that has
touched me deeper than a compliment paid by the Prince of Wales and a
distinguished company, at a dinner given in honor of the Duke of York
and the Princess May, a little while before their wedding. The dinner
was given by Mr. Alfred Rothschild, one of my oldest and best friends.
There were many royalties present, and more dukes and duchesses than
I can easily remember. During the ceremonies the Prince of Wales
arose, and to my great astonishment, proposed the health of his ‘old
and valued friend Madame Patti.’ He made _such_ a pretty speech,
and in the course of it said that he had first seen and heard me in
Philadelphia in 1860, when I sang in ‘Martha,’ and that since then
his own attendance at what he was good enough to call my ‘victories
in the realm of song’ had been among his most pleasant recollections.
He recalled the fact that on one of the occasions when the princess
and himself had invited me to Marlborough House, his wife had held up
little Prince George, in whose honor we were this night assembled,
and bade him kiss me, so that in after life he might say that he had
‘kissed the famous Madame Patti.’ And then, do you know, that whole
company of royalty, nobility, and men of genius rose and cheered me and
drank my health. Don’t you think that any little woman would be proud,
and ought to be proud, of a spontaneous tribute like that?”
It is difficult, when repeating thus in print such snatches of
autobiography, to suggest the modest tone and manner of the person
whose words may be recorded. It is particularly difficult in the
case of Madame Patti, who is as absolutely unspoiled as the freshest
_ingénue_. Autobiography such as hers must read a little fanciful to
most folk; it is so far removed from the common experiences of us all,
and even from the extraordinary experiences of the renowned persons we
usually hear about. But there is not a patch of vanity in Patti’s sunny
nature. Her life has been a long, unbroken record of success--success
of a degree attained by no other woman; no one else has won and held
such homage; no one else has been so wondrously endowed with beauty and
genius and sweet simplicity of nature--a nature unspoiled by flattery,
by applause, by wealth, by the possession and exercise of power. Patti
at fifty is like a girl in her ways, in her thoughts, in her spirit,
in her disinterestedness, in her enjoyments. Time has dimmed none of
her charms, it has lessened none of her superb gifts. She said to me
one day: “They tell me I am getting to be an old woman, but I don’t
believe it. I don’t feel old. I feel young. I am the youngest person of
my acquaintance.” That is true enough, as they know who see Patti from
day to day. She has all the enthusiasms and none of the affectations of
a young girl. When she speaks of herself it is with the most delicious
frankness and lack of self-consciousness. She is perfectly natural.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: MADAME PATTI IN 1869 AND IN 1877.]
She promised to show me the programme of that Philadelphia performance
before the Prince of Wales so long ago, and the next day she put
it before me. It is a satin programme with gilt fringe, and its
announcement is surmounted by the Prince of Wales’s feathers. At that
Philadelphia performance Adelina Patti made her first appearance before
royalty. In the next year she made her London début. It was at Covent
Garden, as Amina in “La Sonnambula.” The next morning Europe rang with
the fame of the new prima donna from America. “I tried to show them
that the young lady from America was entitled to a hearing,” said she,
as we looked over the old programmes.
[Illustration: THE DINING-ROOM.]
“And has the ‘young lady from America’ retained that spirit of national
pride, or has she become so much a citizen of the world that no corner
of it has any greater claim than another upon her affections?”
“I love the Italian language, the American people, the English country,
and my Welsh home.”
“A choice yet catholic selection. The national preferences, if you
can be said to own any, have reason on their side. Your parents were
Italian, you were born in Spain, you grew from girlhood to womanhood in
America, you first won international fame in England, and among these
Welsh hills you have planted a paradise.”
“How nice of you! That evening at Mr. Alfred Rothschild’s, the Prince
of Wales asked me why I do not stay in London during ‘the season,’ and
take some part in its endless social pleasures. ‘Because, your Royal
Highness,’ I replied, ‘I have a lovely home in Wales, and whenever
I come away from it I leave my heart there.’ ‘After all,’ said the
prince, ‘why should you stay in London when the whole world is only too
glad to make pilgrimages to Craig-y-Nos?’ Wasn’t that pretty?”
I wish I could somehow convey the _naïveté_ with which the last three
words were uttered. The tone expressed the most innocent pleasure
in the world. Indeed, when Patti speaks in this way she seems to be
wondering why people should say and do so many pleasant things in her
behalf. There is an air of childish wonder in her look and voice.
I said: “All good republicans have a passion for royalty. I find that
an article about a king or a queen or a prince is in greater demand in
the United States than anywhere else in the world. Do tell me something
more about the Prince and Princess of Wales. I promise you, as a
zealous democrat, that no one on the far side of the Atlantic will skip
a word. Have the prince and princess visited Craig-y-Nos?”
“No. But they were coming here a couple of years ago. See--here is the
prince’s letter fixing the date. But it was followed by their sudden
bereavement, and then for many, many months they lived in quiet and
mourning, only coming forth in their usual way just before the recent
royal wedding. They sent me an invitation to the wedding festivities.
But alas! I could not attend them. I had just finished my season, and
was lying painfully ill with rheumatism. You heard of that? For weeks
I suffered acutely. It’s an old complaint. I have had it at intervals
since I was a child. But about the royal wedding. When the Prince and
Princess of Wales learned that I was too ill to accept their gracious
invitation, they--well, what do you suppose they did next?”
“Something very apt and graceful.”
“They sent me two large portraits of themselves, bearing their
autographs, and fitted into great gilt frames. You shall see the
portraits after dinner. They occupy the place of honor in Craig-y-Nos
Castle.”
[Illustration: THE CONSERVATORY.]
We had reached the coffee stage of the dinner, and the cigars were
being passed. The ladies did not withdraw, according to the mediæval
and popular English habit, but the company remained unbroken, and while
the gentlemen smoked, the ladies kept them in conversation. Presently,
some one proposed Patti’s health, and we all stood, singing “For She’s
a Jolly Good Fellow.”
That put the ball of merriment in motion. One of the young ladies, a
goddaughter of our hostess, carolled a stanza from a popular ditty. At
first I thought it audacious that any one should sing in the presence
of La Diva. It seemed an act of sacrilege. But in another instant we
were all at it, piping the chorus, and Patti leading off. The fun of
the thing was infectious. The song finished, we ventured another,
and Patti joined us in the refrains of a medley of music-hall airs,
beginning with London’s latest mania, “Daisy Bell, or a Bicycle Made
for Two,” and winding up with Chevalier’s “Old Kent Road” and the
“Coster’s Serenade,” Coburn’s “Man that Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo,”
and the transatlantic “Daddy Wouldn’t Buy me a Bow-Wow.”
Madame turned with an arch look--“You will think our behavior
abominable.”
“On the contrary, I find it very jolly, not to say a rare experience;
for it is not everybody who has heard you sing comic songs.”
Patti’s answer was a peal of laughter, and then she sat there singing
very softly a stanza of “My Old Kentucky Home,” and as we finished the
chorus she lifted a clear, sweet note, which thrilled us through and
through, and stirred us to rapturous applause. “What have I done?”
Patti put the question with a puzzled look. The reply came from the
adjoining library: “High E.” One of our number had run to sound the
piano pitch. Then I recalled what Sir Morell Mackenzie had told me a
little while before he died. I was chatting with the great physician in
that famous room of his in Harley Street. We happened to mention Madame
Patti. “That great singer,” said Sir Morell, “has the most wonderful
throat I have ever seen; it is the only one I have ever seen with the
vocal chords in absolutely perfect condition after many years of use.
They are not strained, or warped or roughened, but, as I tell you, they
are absolutely perfect. There is no reason why they should not remain
so ten years longer, and with care and health twenty years longer.”
[Illustration: MADAME’S BOUDOIR.]
Remembering this, I asked Madame Patti if she had taken extraordinary
care of her voice. “I have never tired it,” said she; “I never sing
when I am tired, and that means that I am never tired when I sing.
And I have never strained for high notes. I have heard that the first
question asked of new vocalists nowadays is ‘How high can you sing?’
But I have always thought _that_ the least important matter in singing.
One should sing only what one can sing with perfect ease.”
“But in eating and drinking? According to all accounts you are most
abstemious in these things.”
“No, indeed. I avoid very hot and very cold dishes, otherwise I eat and
drink whatever I like. My care is chiefly to avoid taking cold, and to
avoid indigestion. But these are the ordinary precautions of one who
knows that health is the key to happiness.”
[Illustration: THE SITTING-ROOM.]
“And in practising? Have you rigid rules for that? One hears of
astounding exercise and self-denial.”
“Brilliant achievements in fiction. For practising I run a few scales
twenty minutes a day. After a long professional tour I let my voice
rest for a month and do not practise at all during that time.”
During my visit to Craig-y-Nos we usually spent our evenings in the
billiard-rooms. There are two at the castle, an English room and a
French one. In the French room there is the great orchestrion which
Madame Patti had built in Geneva at a cost of twenty thousand dollars.
It is operated by electricity, and is said to be the finest instrument
of the kind in the world. Monsieur Nicolini would start it of an
evening, and the wonderful contrivance would “discourse most eloquent
music” from a repertoire of one hundred and sixteen pieces, including
arias from grand operas, military marches, and simple ballads. Music
is the one charm that Madame Patti cannot resist. The simplest melody
stirs her to song. In the far corner from the orchestrion she will sit,
in an enticing easy-chair, and hum the air that is rolling from the
organ-pipes, keeping time with her dainty feet, or moving her head as
the air grows livelier. Now and again she sends forth some lark-like
troll, and then she will urge the young people to a dance, or a chorus,
and when every one is tuned to the full pitch of melody and merriment
she will join in the fun as heartily as the rest. I used to sit and
watch her play the castanets, or hear her snatch an air or two from
“Martha,” “Lucia,” or “Traviata.”
One night the younger fry of us were chanting negro melodies, and Patti
came into the room, warbling as if possessed by an ecstasy. “I love
those darky songs,” said she, and straightway she sang to us, with
that inimitable purity and tenderness which are hers alone, “Way Down
Upon the Swanee River,” and “Massa’s in the Cold, Cold Ground,” and
after that “Home, Sweet Home,” while all of us listeners felt the tears
rising, or the lumps swelling in our throats.
[Illustration: THE FRENCH BILLIARD-ROOM.]
Guests at Craig-y-Nos are the most fortunate of mortals. If the guest
be a gentleman, a valet is told off to attend upon him; if the guest
be a lady, a handmaid is placed at her service. Breakfast is served in
one’s room at any hour one may choose. Patti never comes down before
high noon. She rises at half-past eight, but remains until twelve in
her apartments, going through her correspondence with her secretary,
and practising a little music. At half-past twelve an elaborate
_déjeuner_ is served in the glass pavilion. Until that hour a guest is
free to follow his own devices. He may go shooting, fishing, riding,
walking, or he may stroll about the lovely demesne, and see what manner
of heavenly nook nature and Patti have made for themselves among the
hills of Wales. Patti’s castle is in every sense a palatial dwelling.
She saw it fifteen years ago, fell in love with it, purchased it, and
has subsequently expended at least half a million dollars in enlarging
and equipping it. The castellated mansion, with the theatre at one
end and the pavilion and winter garden at the other, shows a frontage
of fully a thousand feet along the terraced banks of the Tawe. But
the place has been so often described that it is unnecessary for me
to repeat the oft-told story, or to give details of the gasworks,
the electric-lighting station, the ice-plant and cold-storage rooms,
the steam-laundry, the French and English kitchens, the stables, the
carriage-houses, the fifty servants, the watchfulness of Caroline
Baumeister, the superintending zeal of William Heck. These matters are
a part of the folk-lore of England and America. But I would like to say
something of Patti’s little theatre. It is her special and particular
delight. She gets more pleasure from it than from any other of the many
possessions of Craig-y-Nos. It is a gem of a place, well-proportioned
and exquisitely decorated. Not only can the sloping floor be quickly
raised, so that the auditorium may be transformed into a ballroom,
but the appurtenances of the stage are the most elaborate and perfect
extant. For this statement I have the authority of an assistant
stage-manager of the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden. This expert
was supervising some alterations at the Patti theatre while I was at
Craig-y-Nos, and he told me that the pretty house contained every
accessory for the production of forty operas.
Occasionally Patti sings at concerts in her theatre. All her life she
has treasured her voice for the public; she has never exhausted it by
devising an excess of entertainment for her personal friends. So most
of the performances in the little theatre are pantomimic. Although
Patti seemed to me always to be humming and singing while I was at the
castle, yet there was nothing of the “performing” order in what she
did. She merely went singing softly about the house, or joining in our
choruses, like a happy girl.
I remember that one morning, while a dozen of us were sitting in the
shade of the terrace, the ladies with their fancy work, the gentlemen
with their books and cigars, we heard from the open windows above us a
burst of song, full-throated like a bird’s. It was for all the world
like the notes of an English lark, which always sings in a kind of
glorious ecstasy, as it mounts and mounts in the air, the merrier as it
climbs the higher, until it pours from its invisible height a shower
of joyous song. No one among us stirred. La Diva thought us far away
up the valley, where we had planned an excursion, but we had postponed
the project to a cooler day. We were afraid of disturbing Madame, so we
kept silent and listened. Our unseen entertainer seemed to be bustling
about her boudoir, singing as she flitted, snatching a bar or two
from this opera and that, revelling in the fragment of a ballad, and
trilling a few scales like my friend the lark. Presently she ceased,
and we were about to stir, when she began to sing “Comin’ Thro’ the
Rye.” She was alone in her room, but she was singing as gloriously
as if to an audience of ten thousand persons in the Albert Hall. The
unsuspected group of listeners on the terrace slipped from their own
control and took to vigorous hand-smiting and cries of delight.
[Illustration: THE ENGLISH BILLIARD-ROOM.]
“Oh, oh, oh!” said the bird-like voice above.
We looked up, and saw Patti leaning out at the casement.
“Oh,” said she, “I couldn’t help it, really I could not. I am so happy!”
At luncheon Madame proposed an entertainment in the theatre for the
evening. We were to have “Camille” in pantomime.
She persuaded Monsieur Nicolini to be the Armand Duval. Nicolini had
never cared to act in the little theatre, but now he consented to make
his début as a pantomimist, and he proved to be a master of the art. He
had learned it, in fact, at the Conservatoire, when, as a young man,
he had studied for the stage. “In those days,” says he, “the study of
pantomime was part of an actor’s training. Pity it is not so now.”
The preparations for the pantomime went on apace. Among the guests were
several capable amateurs. The performance began a little after ten on
the evening of the following day. Some musicians were brought from
Swansea. A dozen gentlefolk hastily summoned from the valley, those
of us among the guests who were not enrolled for the pantomime, and a
gallery full of peasantry and servants, made up the audience. We had
“Camille” in five acts of pantomime, and altogether it was a capital
performance, and a memorable one. Of course, Madame Patti and her
husband carried off the honors. There was a supper after the play, and
the sunlight crept into the Swansea Valley within two hours after we
had retired.
[Illustration: SIGNOR NICOLINI.]
I said to Patti after the pantomime, “You do not seem to believe that
change of occupation is the best possible rest. You appear to me to
work as hard at rehearsing and acting in your little theatre as if you
were ‘on tour.’”
“Not quite. Besides, it isn’t work, it is play,” replied the miraculous
little woman. “I love the theatre. And, then, there is always something
to learn about acting. I find these pantomime performances very useful
as well as very pleasant.”
Every afternoon about three o’clock Patti and her guests go for a
drive, a small procession of landaus and brakes rattling along the
smooth country roads. You can see at once that this is Patti-land. The
cottagers come to their doors and salute her Melodious Majesty, and all
the children of the country-side run out and throw kisses. “Oh! the
dears,” exclaimed the kind-hearted cantatrice as we were driving toward
the village of Ystradgynlais (they call it “Ist-rag-dun-las”), one
afternoon, “I should like to build another castle and put all those
mites into it, and let them live there amid music and flowers!” And I
believe that she would have given orders for such a castle straightway,
had there been a builder within sight.
[Illustration: A BIT IN THE PARK. THE SUSPENSION BRIDGE.]
On the way home Patti promised me “a surprise” for the evening. I
wondered what it might be, and when the non-appearance of the ladies
kept the gentlemen waiting in the drawing-room at dinner-time I was the
more puzzled. Nicolini, to pass the time, showed us some of Madame’s
trophies. It would be impossible to enumerate them, because Craig-y-Nos
Castle is like another South Kensington Museum in the treasures it
holds. Every shelf, table, and cabinet is packed with gifts which
Madame Patti has received from all parts of the earth, from monarchs
and millionaires, princes and peasants, old friends and strangers.
There is Marie Antoinette’s watch, to begin with, and there are the
new portraits of the Prince and Princess of Wales, to end with. There
is a remarkable collection of portraits of royal personages, presented
to Madame Patti by the distinguished originals on the occasion of her
marriage to M. Nicolini. Photographs of the Grand Old Man of Politics
and the Grand Old Man of Music rest side by side, on a little table
presented by some potentate. Gladstone’s likeness bears his autograph,
and the inscription: “_Con tanti e tanti complimenti_;” Verdi’s, his
autograph, and a fervid tribute written in Milan a year ago. There are
crowns and wreaths and rare china; there are paintings and plate and I
know not what, wherever one looks. If one were to make Patti a gift,
and he had a king’s ransom to purchase it withal, he would find it
difficult to give her anything that would be a novelty, or that would
be unique, in her eyes. She has everything now. For my part, I would
pluck a rose from her garden, or gather a nosegay from a hedgerow,
and it would please her as truly as if it were a priceless diadem.
She values the thought that prompts the giving, rather than the gift
itself. She never forgets even the smallest act of kindness that is
done for her sake. And she is always doing kindnesses for others. I
have heard from the Welsh folk many tales of her generous charities.
And to her friends she is the most open-handed of women. There was one
dank, drizzly day while I was at Craig-y-Nos. To the men this did not
matter. The wet did not interfere with their projected amusements.
But every lady wore some precious jewel which Patti had given her
that morning--a ring, a brooch, a bracelet, as the case might be. For
the generous creature thought her fair friends would be disappointed
because they could not get out of doors that day. How could she know
that every one in the castle welcomed the rain because it meant a few
hours more with Patti?