paper, secured a governess for her children, and subordinated all
demands upon her time to those of the Commission’s work. She organized
soldiers’ aid societies; delivered public addresses to stimulate gifts
of money and supplies in the principal towns and cities of the
Northwest; wrote letters by hundreds personally and by amanuenses, and
answered all that she received; wrote circulars, bulletins, and monthly
reports; made trips to the front with sanitary stores, to the
distribution of which she gave personal attention; brought back large
numbers of invalid soldiers, who were discharged that they might die at
home, and whom she accompanied in person or directed by proxy to their
several destinations; detailed, by order of Secretary Stanton, women
nurses for army hospitals, and accompanied them to their posts. In
short, the story of her own and other women’s work during the war has
never been told, and can never be understood save by those connected
with it. Mrs. Livermore has published her reminiscences of those crucial
days in a large volume, entitled “My Story of the War” (Hartford, Conn.,
1888), which reached a sale of over fifty thousand copies.
Then Mrs. Livermore entered as a speaker and writer on woman’s suffrage,
blazing, as she did in the Sanitary army work, a wide road and a broad
place for herself, until early in the seventies she devoted herself
entirely to the lecture platform.
For twenty-five years Mrs. Livermore has been the most conspicuous of
women orators on the lecture platform. Hers was the first woman’s name
on the list of the Redpath Bureau. She has the widest range of topics of
any woman lecturer--biographical, historical, political, religious, and
reformatory. She has lectured on an average of one hundred times a year
in the lyceums, besides over one thousand times on temperance and a
thousand times on woman’s suffrage, for she has always advocated the
enfranchisement of her sex, with her other work. She has travelled more
miles than any woman living. She can preach as well as lecture. I have
known her to travel and lecture six nights a week, and when she returned
from a long lecturing tour she would tell us of having preached twice on
nearly every Sunday during her absence, besides morning addresses before
schools and societies of women.
Mrs. Livermore has written a score of useful books, and edited half a
dozen papers, been active politically, foremost in the social life of
her home locality, taken an interest in all public affairs, political
and economic, and yet has always been an ideal wife and mother. Around
her are happy homes with devoted grandchildren while over fifty years of
married life have knit closer the bonds of personal and spiritual life.
She is an ideal American woman in all the active ways of its engrossing
life.
While in Boston, January, 1900, in charge of the exhibition of Tissot’s
paintings, “The Life of Christ,” and also a course of lectures by the
Dean of Ely, I sent invitations to Mrs. Livermore, expressing surprise
at not seeing her at either place. She wrote me:
* * * * *
“MELROSE, MASS., January 7, 1900.
“DEAR MR. POND:
“You are very kind to remember me so generously, and I appreciate it.
The time has been when wild horses could not have held me back from an
exhibition of the ‘Tissot Paintings,’ nor from the admirable lectures of
Dean Stubbs. But I am an old woman now--I shall be eighty on my next
birthday, and while I am in remarkable health, and rarely know a sick
day, yet since my husband’s death the heart has gone out of me forever.
I keep steadily at work, omitting nothing that I ought to do, but it is
the stern compulsion of duty now that moves me. I rarely get beyond what
I ought to do, and that consumes my time very thoroughly. The joy of
work, the pleasure of doing, the delight in seeing and hearing new
things have gone from me. I am not sorrowful, nor desolate, and I thank
God that I was permitted to accompany my husband to the very verge of
the life beyond, and that he was conscious and serene to the last
moment. I have only a hand’s breadth of life before me, and shall not
live long enough to get once more into my old touch with the life of
to-day.
“I sent two of my pretty granddaughters to the Exhibition of Paintings,
who took with them a picture of you, to help them identify you, if you
were present. They came home, declaring that ‘they had stared every man
at the show out of countenance,’ but they did not find you. They would
have introduced themselves to you, if they had found ‘a man to match
their picture.’ They were enthusiastic over the paintings. ‘They were as
exquisite as miniatures,’ they said. Yesterday, my oldest granddaughter
and namesake, just graduated from Wellesley, went with her betrothed to
see the paintings. I haven’t yet heard their report.
“Oh, my dear friend, nobody dies of ‘rheumatism,’ nor of asthma. People
afflicted with those perennial ailments live to kill everybody that
helps take care of them. So, buy a cane, or a pair of crutches,
according to the sort of rheumatism you have, and keep on hobbling
round. I thought I had rheumatism for two years, and doctored for it,
and anathematized it--when it turned out to be a broken tendon. I had
neglected it so long that it was past cure when I consulted a
specialist, and now--now I wear a cane, and all my friends add to my
collection of canes on my birthdays and at Christmas.
“Once more thanking you for your kindness, I remain,
“Yours very truly,
“MARY A. LIVERMORE.”
* * * * *
Miss Lucy Stone was to address a meeting of the
Anti-Slavery Society, of Maiden, Mass., of which William
Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, and Theodore Parker
were the presiding geniuses, in the autumn of 1847. The
following announcement was made by the pastor of the Congregational
Church: “I am requested by Mr. Mowey to say
that a hen will undertake to
crow like a cock at the Town
Hall this afternoon at five
o’clock. Anybody who wants
to hear that kind of music
will, of course, attend.”
[Illustration]
Everybody besieged Mr.
Mowey to learn what kind of
hen it was. He told them, it
was Miss Lucy Stone, a young
woman who was graduated
from a college in an Ohio
town called Oberlin, where
women were allowed the same
educational privileges as men.
This remarkable announcement was a great advertisement, and
brought together a large meeting.
It was the first time in the lives of the people that a woman’s
voice was heard from the rostrum in the cause of freedom.
From that time onward for many years Lucy Stone travelled
and lectured in behalf of “woman suffrage” and the slave,
suffering the same persecutions as did Phillips and other lecturers.
One night, while speaking in New England, a pane of glass
was removed from a window behind the speaker, and a hose
put through it. The little woman lecturer was deluged with
ice water. Wrapping her shawl closely about her, she calmly
finished her address. Again, at Cape Cod the Anti-Slavery
Society held a meeting in a grove. The mob surrounded the
speakers and roughly handled Mr. Foster and Miss Stone.
The bravery of the latter so won the admiration of the leader
of the mob that he defended her with a club, and stood by
her while from a stump she addressed the multitude. The
listeners were so moved by her speech that they subsided into
quiet, and at its conclusion a collection of $20 was taken up
to pay Foster for his coat.
“When Lucy Stone died, at Dorchester, Mass., October,
1893, the entire press of America and the civilized world
eulogized her. The Boston _Herald_ said: “She goes to her
grave honored, beloved, and mourned by the whole American
people.” The New York _Independent_: “The death of Lucy
Stone removes one of the world’s greatest benefactors.” _Harper’s
Weekly_: “Her life was full of earnestness, goodness,
blessedness, and the world is better that she lived.” I knew
Lucy Stone only slightly during the last decade of her life.
She was small in stature, dainty in dress, and possessed a voice
of singular sweetness. Hers was a sympathetic and charming
personality. Never again will there be a woman orator
of her type. Conditions are wanting. She was a product of
the times.
[Illustration: CLARA LOUISE KELLOGG]
Miss Clara Louise Kellogg, born and educated
in America, gifted with one of the sweetest voices ever
heard, endowed with common sense, energy, and character
above reproach--of American lyric artists of this generation
there is no name that has carried more weight. She was
educated not only in her own, but also in the French, German,
and Italian languages. Her musical talent amounted
to genius, and she translated a repertoire of standard Italian
operas into English. Making her début in the Academy of
Music, in New York, in 1862, she became a favorite at once
and held first place as an American prima donna for twenty
years without a peer. Without a peer in that field she was
also a thoroughly sensible business woman. Sought after in
society more than any other of our singers, she was always a sincere
and devoted lover of her art. Her personal friends were
among the choicest people we have; she was never in any
company that was not the best. She read the newspapers,
and took an active part in all important national issues. She
was a brilliant conversationalist. She never wanted a great
guarantee for singing where there was no cash in the house.
She made money for herself and her manager. She made a
fortune and retired. She owns a pretty summer home in
New Hartford, Connecticut.
She has been an honor to her profession, her sex, and her
country. She possesses all the qualifications that the word
lady implies. Her associate artists respected, admired, and
loved her. Miss Kellogg is an expert on the banjo, and is
very fond of negro songs.
Many and many an evening when we had an off night, or
were spending Sunday in some poor hotel, she would get the
company together in the parlor, and if there happened to be
a piano, she would give us an evening of song and music in
which the principals of the company would join, and the
doors would be thrown open and the corridors and adjoining
rooms thronged with guests, who were delighted with an entertainment
that wealth and managerial skill could never
produce.
Her speaking voice was almost as agreeable to listen to as
her singing voice, and thus she was an admired attraction
wherever she happened to be. In the hotel parlors, or in a
box at the opera, she was invariably surrounded by groups of
charmed listeners. She was a Good Samaritan, too. Having
studied medicine, she carried a little case of standard
remedies. If one of the singers was threatened with a cold
she could always nip it in the bud. If an accident occurred,
she had bandages and necessary supplies to bring relief.
She could comfort the distressed. Here is an instance: On
our arrival at St. Paul, while waiting in the hotel parlors to
be assigned to our rooms, William, our piano-tuner, came to
me with tears running down his face. He was in deep distress;
he must leave us at once and go back to New York.
His brother had died. Miss Kellogg, seeing the poor fellow,
immediately came to his relief.
“What is it, William?” she asked.
“My brother is dead. I must go home.”
“When did he die?” asked Miss Kellogg.
“I did not get the letter until just now. It has been forwarded
from Omaha. He has been buried two weeks.”
Miss Kellogg tried to persuade him that he could be of no
assistance in hurrying home now, that in a short time we
would all be back, and he would be better off to remain with
the company. Besides, we could not spare him, as there was
no one to take his place. He was persistent, being a superstitious
young German.
Miss Kellogg said at last, “Now, William, come with
me.”
She walked out with him to a dry-goods store, bought a
piece of black crêpe, and tied it on his arm in a very elaborate
bow. She made him get a silk hat and have it trimmed with
crêpe. In half an hour William was back among us, decorated
in full mourning and completely consoled. The entire
company were sympathizing with him. He was almost
happy, and the rest of us were satisfied and pleased.
Clara Louise Kellogg knows the way to every human heart,
from the most humble to the highest.
Emma Abbott, “honest little Emma” is what George
Lake called her. I first knew this child singer in
1867. She was a member of a concert company. It was not
a bad company, either, at least, Chicagoans thought so. It
consisted of
Mrs. Frank Lombard Soprano.
Little Emma Abbott, the child wonder Song and Guitar.
L. J. Boutwell Tenor.
Tom Corwin Basso.
In Appleton, where I lived, I managed the concerts, which were then
considered a great success. The receipts were about $75. Tickets,
twenty-five cents. The party spent Sunday in Appleton, and in the
afternoon we had the child wonder and her guitar at our house. My
critical musical ear was not fully developed at that time. I thought the
staccato pyrotechnics, and the deep alto, and all the intermediate
notes, mixed with the thunder and lightning and other noises of the
instrument, the most wonderful of anything I had yet seen and heard.
Everybody present seemed to be affected as severely as I was. Mr. Corwin
told me that this girl was certain of becoming one of the world’s
greatest opera singers some day. I did not understand all he meant then,
any more than I did that some day I should be living in New York or
Boston, and would be glad to pay this child wonder $500 for her first
concert on her return to America, after having become a “finished
artist,” as Emma styled herself.
Miss Abbott’s name found favor all over the country. She made friends
with the churches, lodges, and societies of all kinds. Her company was
generally known as the attraction for the opening of all new opera
houses. No combination ever travelled more miles or endured more
hardships than the Abbott Opera Company, and no company of artists ever
worked for such pittance of salaries. No artist ever worked harder than
Miss Abbott. She would often sing seven and sometimes eight operas a
week. She required no artist to do more than she did herself.
She was a conspicuous auditor on every public occasion that gave
opportunity. At fairs, races, ball games, athletic tournaments she
seldom failed to receive demonstration of recognition, and was
invariably noticed in the press the following day. She steered clear of
metropolitan cities. Her value was in smaller cities and country opera
houses, where she drew large crowds with light expenses. She has done
“Martha” with an orchestra of a piano, violin, and cornet, and seldom
had an orchestra of over six. I saw and heard her in Louisville, in
“Romeo and Juliet,” with an orchestra of seven, and the house packed to
its fullest capacity.
[Illustration]
Here is a letter of Emma’s which illustrates her managerial care:
* * * * *
“DEAR MR. POND: I write to tell you to be sure to see the second act of
Mignon [containing toilet scene of _Styrienne_, etc.], to-night, for
that is the important one for me. I know how gentlemen, who are so busy
as you are, generally do. They come when the important part is all over.
“In haste,
“Yours faithfully,
“EMMA ABBOTT.”
“Be sure and let me see your wife.”
* * * * *
This reminds me of an incident in Louisville. I was there with Henry
Ward Beecher on a Saturday night. Miss Abbott and her company were at
another theatre. I attended the Abbott matinee that afternoon. I wanted
to see Miss Abbott as _Juliet_ (Castle as _Romeo_), and to see and hear
the “Abbott kiss,” which was their great advertising feature that
season. I saw it all. Miss Abbott was in her wonderful, heavy lace
_Juliet_ dress, and her blond wig with the two great braids that trailed
with her skirt. It was wholly an Abbott occasion, with little to attract
attention to any other members of the company. The time arrived for the
kiss. It came. It was a success. It was real, and the smack sounded to
the remotest nook of the gallery.
After the performance that afternoon I rode to the hotel in a carriage
with Miss Abbott and her husband, Eugene Wetherell, to the Gait House,
where we three dined together. I had reserved a box for them at the
Mercantile Library Hall lecture in the evening, which was crowded to
hear Mr. Beecher. I remained near the door until some time after the
lecture began, watching for “Honest Little Emma” to appear.
The lecture was about half through when something happened. The
attention of the audience was attracted to the front of the house. All
of a sudden there came walking down the centre aisle Miss Emma Abbott in
her _Juliet_ make-up and wig, the trail fairly sweeping the aisle.
Walking down to the orchestra rail, she turned and walked in front of
the audience to the box which was on the left of the stage, and which
she might easily have reached by the side aisle without observation.
After the great wave of interruption had spent itself, Mr. Beecher
continued his lecture to the end, when Miss Abbott leaped from the box,
rushed to Mr Beecher, in whose church in Brooklyn she had formerly sung,
exclaiming:
“Dear Mr. Beecher, how do you do? You must excuse my _Juliet_ make-up
and dress and wig. I felt that I must see you, and I rushed from the
opera over here without changing my dress, fearing I should miss you.”
She had not seen the theatre since five o’clock, as she had a double
company, and in the evening the opera of “Carmen” was given with Mr. and
Mrs. Macdonald (now of the Bostonians) and Tom Karl as tenor. The little
fraud! It is reported that she left a fortune of over half a million
dollars.
Miss Helen Potter personated favorites of the lyceum to such perfection
that she crowded the Music Halls in Boston and the Academy of Music in
Philadelphia. The entertainment was entirely novel, and eminently
popular. It consisted of readings, chiefly humorous and heroic, well
chosen, dramatic, and in costume. They were “lyceum personations,” not
only of the manner, but of the rhetoric, of distinguished lecturers and
elocutionists of that time (the seventies).
[Illustration: MISS POTTER’S IMPERSONATION OF JOHN B. GOUGH]
Miss Potter’s personations of John B. Gough were so perfect, the wig,
beard, and masculine garments so well chosen and so well arranged, and
his peculiarities of voice and manner so faithfully represented, that
the audience often forgot it was a personation and thought that they
were listening to Gough himself.
Miss Potter made a fortune with her entertainment. She cleared over
$20,000 in her second season, was a favorite for about eight years, and
then retired. She has no successor.
Annie Grey came to America early in the summer of 1898 to give her
Scottish song recitals before several of the Chautauqua assemblies. She
appeared before a number of these large gatherings, at Monona Lake
Assembly, Madison, Wis., at Rock River Assembly, Dixon, Ill., at Bay
View Assembly, Mich., and at the Ocean Grove (N. J.) Assembly, where she
kept over four thousand people charmed for nearly two hours solely by
her singing and recital of the old Scotch ballads. It was a unique
entertainment, which captivated and charmed all these assemblies. There
had never been anything like them before in this country.
[Illustration]
At each recital Annie Grey sang one or two songs in Gaelic, to
illustrate the beauty of that language, accompanying herself on the
clarsach or ancient Scottish harp, once the national instrument, before
it was supplanted by the bagpipes. The instrument she used was made
especially for her, and had stops so arranged that the key could be
quickly changed. It was a great favorite everywhere she went. Her
mother, Madame Ogilvie Grey, an eminent pianist, travelled with her,
filling two numbers on the programme with Scotch melodies on the piano
and also playing many of her daughter’s accompaniments in a really
wonderful way.
The subjects of Annie Grey’s song recitals were: “The Lays, Lilts, and
Legends of Scotland,” “Robert Burns: His Pathos and Humor Told in
Poetry and Song,” and “The Gathering of the Clans.” In the latter she
graphically told in song and story the stirring incidents connected with
the Jacobite rising in 1745, to which period Scotland owes many of the
best of her ballads.
In the musical world Annie Grey holds a position of unique importance,
and enthusiastic audiences and appreciative remembrances are hers by
right of conquest in her chosen field of Scottish minstrelsy. Here no
one can touch her: she is supreme. In Scotland, in all parts of England,
on the Continent, and in the United States, the delightful
entertainments of her own devising and her own single-handed performance
have brought the wealth of Scottish minstrelsy, with its marvellous
power over the emotions of men and women, home to the understanding and
hearts of thousands. Being in love with her subject, she carries her
audience with her from first to last, making it laugh or thrill or
sadden as she wills. Her voice is perfectly modulated for lecturing and
reciting purposes, and her singing of Scottish songs stands apart and
above anything that has ever been attempted in the same line in this
country. Certainly at the present time it would be difficult to name any
professional woman who can sing “The Auld Scots Sangs,” grave and gay,
patriotic and humorous, with more fervor and feeling than Annie Grey.
Her distinct enunciation of the words, and the expression she puts into
them, make her singing most enjoyable. Where necessary, she also infuses
a good deal of dramatic passion into her performance.
She gave interesting accounts of the composition of various ballads and
songs, and told graceful and pathetic details of the lives and
circumstances of their authors. Of “Annie Laurie,” which she sang with
remarkable expression, she said: “I am surprised to find in America the
thought that ‘Annie Laurie’ was written two hundred years ago, for I
have the honor of a personal acquaintance with Lady John Scott, its
author, who is now in her ninetieth year, and who, I can assure you, has
no thought of being an antiquity.”
Annie Grey invariably received ovations at the conclusion of her
entertainments, and hundreds flocked to the platform to attest their
appreciation of her efforts. Her manner was not in the least bit
affected, and she received all praises with the utmost grace.
Annie Grey has sung before Queen Victoria and her court at Balmoral, on
which occasion her Majesty presented Miss Grey with a diamond bracelet.
She has sung before many other of the crowned heads of Europe, and with
many of the Italian opera singers well known to American audiences. She
was the original Buttercup in Pinafore when that opera was produced in
Edinburgh. For many years she was the favorite pupil of the famous
master Randegger.
I had first heard of Annie Grey through Mr. Christy, her London manager,
then when I saw her unbroken success and popularity with the refined,
and therefore somewhat critical, audiences at the Chautauqua assemblies,
where she first appeared in America, I felt confident that she would be
a success wherever she went in the United States, and so secured her for
a supplementary tour.
After the Chautauquas she gave three recitals before crowded audiences
in New York, and received most generous praise from the entire New York
press. The Chickering Piano Company showed their friendly interest by
offering the gratuitous use of Chickering Hall, and supplied her with a
grand piano both at her recitals and in her hotel.
Having captured New York, she laid siege to Boston, where four recitals
won a capitulation, as the press notices show. The civic and military
authorities appeared in full uniform at her first recital there, the
Clan Mackenzie, in Highland costume, was present and made her a Scottish
Chief, and the White Rose Society publicly decorated her with their
order set in gold.
From Boston she went to Montreal, then to Cleveland, Pittsburg,
Philadelphia, Saratoga, and to many of the large cities and towns of the
United States. Everywhere she was received with the greatest kindness
and enthusiasm, and her admirers made her many presents. The practical
wife of a Scottish millionaire handed her a box of oatmeal cakes and a
card informing her that she had had them specially baked for Annie Grey
and her mother.