"LIKE A PICKED CHICKEN"
Before my _debut_ in opera, Muzio took me out on a concert tour for a
few weeks. Colson was the _prima donna_, Brignoli the tenor, Ferri the
baritone, and Susini the basso. Susini had, I believe, distinguished
himself in the Italian Revolution. His name means _plums_ in Italian,
and his voice as well as his name was rich and luscious.
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.
My mother travelled with me, for she never let me out of her sight. Yet,
even with her along, the experience was very strange and new and rather
terrifying. I had no knowledge of stage life, and that first _tournee_
was comprised of a series of shocks and surprises, most of them
disillusioning.
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.
"Pay for it!" gasped Brignoli, waving his arms and fairly dancing with
rage, "of course I'll pay for it--just as I'll pay for the dinner,
if----"
"What!" exclaimed the landlord, in a new tone, "you will pay _extra_ for
the dinner, if we are willing to serve it for you now?"
"_Dio mio_, yes!" cried Brignoli.
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.
Brignoli only just missed being very great. But he had the indolence of
the Neapolitan sailor, and he was, of course, sadly spoiled. Women were
always crazy about him, and he posed as an _elegante_. Years afterward,
when I heard of his death, I never felt the loss of any beautiful thing
as I did the loss of his voice. The thought came to me:--"and he hasn't
been able to leave it to anyone as a legacy--"
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!
The first evening was an important event for me, my initial public
appearance, and I recall quite distinctly that I sang the Cavatina from
_Linda di Chamounix_--which I was soon to sing operatically--and that I
wore a green dress. Green was an unusual colour in gowns then. Our young
singers generally chose white or blue or pink or something insipid; but
I had a very definite taste in clothes, and liked effects that were not
only pretty but also individual and becoming.
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.
Pauline Colson was a charming artist, a French soprano of distinction in
her own country and always delightful in her work. She had first come to
America to sing in the French Opera in New Orleans where, for many
years, there had been a splendid opera season each winter. She had just
finished her winter's work there when some northern impresario engaged
her for a brief season of opera in New York; and it was at the
termination of this that Muzio engaged her for our concert tour. She
was one of the few artists who rebelled against the bad costuming then
prevalent; and it was said that for more than one of her _roles_ she
made her gowns herself, to be sure that they were correct. It was her
example that fired me in the revolutionary steps I was to take later
with regard to my own costumes.
Our next stop was Cincinnati--_Cincinnata_, as it was called! I had
there one of the shocks of my life. The leading newspaper of the city,
in commenting on our concert, said of me that "this young girl's parents
ought to remove her from public view, do her up in cotton wool, nourish
her well, and not allow her to appear again until she looks less like a
picked chicken"!
No one said anything about my voice! Indeed, I got almost no
encouragement before we reached Detroit, and I recall that I cried a
good part of the way between the two cities over my failure in
Cincinnati. But in Detroit Colson was taken ill, so I had a chance to do
the _prima donna_ work of the occasion. And I profited by the chance,
for it was in Detroit that an audience first discovered that I had some
nascent ability.
I _must_ have been an odd, young creature--just five feet and four
inches tall, and weighing only one hundred and four pounds. I was frail
and big-eyed, and wrapped up in music (not cotton wool), and exceedingly
childlike for my age. I knew nothing of life, for my puritanical
surroundings and the way in which I had been brought up were developing
my personality very slowly.
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.
All through that tour, as during every period of my life, I was working
and studying and practising and learning: trying to improve my voice,
trying to develop my artistic consciousness, trying to fit myself in a
hundred ways for my career. Work never frightened me; there was always
in me the desire to express myself--and to express that self as fully
and as variously as I might have opportunity for doing.
It sometimes seems to me that one of the strangest things in this world
is the realisation that there is never time to perfect everything in us;
that we carry seeds in our souls that cannot flower in one short life.
Perhaps Paradise will be a place where we can develop every possibility
and become our complete selves.
In one's brain and one's soul lies the power to do almost anything. I
believe that the psychological phenomena we hear so much about are
nothing but undiscovered forces in ourselves. I am not a spiritualist. I
do not care for so-called supernatural manifestations. Many of my
friends have been interested in such matters, and I was taken to the
celebrated "Stratford Knockings" and other mediumistic demonstrations
when I was a mere child; but it has never seemed to me that the marvels
I encountered came from an outside spiritual agency. I believe,
profoundly, that, one and all, they are the workings of forces in _us_
that we have not yet learned to develop fully nor to use wisely.
[Illustration: =Clara Louise Kellogg as a Young Lady=
From a photograph by Black & Case]
I never did anything in my life without study. The ancient axiom that
"what is worth doing at all is worth doing well" is more of a truth than
most people understand. The thing that one has chosen for one's life
work in the world:--what labour could be too great for it, or what too
minute?
When I knew that I was to make my _debut_ as Gilda, in Verdi's opera of
_Rigoletto_, I settled down to put myself into that part. I studied for
nine months, until I was not certain whether I was really Gilda--or only
myself!
I was taking lessons in acting with Scola then, in addition to my
musical study. And, besides Scola's regular course, I closely observed
the methods of individuals, actors, and singers. I remember seeing
Brignoli in _I Puritani_, during that "incubating period" before my
first appearance in opera. I was studying gesture then,--the free,
simple, _inevitable_ gesture that is so necessary to a natural effect in
dramatic singing; and during the beautiful melody, _A te, o cara_, which
he sang in the first act, Brignoli stood still in one spot and thrust
first one arm out, and then the other, at right angles from his body,
twenty-three consecutive times. I counted them, and I don't know how
many times he had done it before I began to count!
"Heavens!" I said, "that's one thing not to do, anyway!"
Languages were a very important part of my training. I had studied
French when I was nine years old, in the country, and as soon as I began
taking singing lessons I began Italian also. Much later, when I sang in
_Les Noces de Jeannette_, people would speak of my French and ask where
I had studied. But it was all learned at home.
I never studied German. There was less demand for it in music than there
is now. America practically had no "German opera;" and Italian was the
accepted tongue of dramatic and tragic music, as French was the language
of lighter and more popular operas. Besides, German always confused me;
and I never liked it.
Many years later than the time of which I am now writing, I was charmed
to be confirmed in my anti-German prejudices when I went to Paris. After
the Franco-Prussian War the signs and warnings in that city were put up
in every language in the world except German! The German way of putting
things was too long; and, furthermore, the French people didn't care if
Germans did break their legs or get run over.
Of course, all this is changed--and in music most of all. For example,
there could be no greater convert to Wagnerism than I!
My mother hated the atmosphere of the theatre even though she had wished
me to become a singer, and always gloried in my successes. To her rigid
and delicate instinct there was something dreadful in the free and easy
artistic attitude, and she always stood between me and any possible
intimacy with my fellow-singers. I believe this to have been a mistake.
Many traditions of the stage come to one naturally and easily through
others; but I had to wait and learn them all by experience. I was always
working as an outsider, and, naturally, this attitude of ours
antagonised singers with whom we appeared.
Not only that. My brain would have developed much more rapidly if I had
been allowed--no, if I had been _obliged_ to be more self-reliant. To
profit by one's own mistakes;--all the world's history goes to show that
is the only way to learn. By protecting me, my mother really robbed me
of much precious experience. For how many years after I had made my
_debut_ would she wait for me in the _coulisses_, ready to whisk me off
to my dressing-room before any horrible opera singer had a chance to
talk with me!
Yet she grieved for my forfeited youth--did my dear mother. She always
felt that I was being sacrificed to my work, and just at the time when I
would have most delighted in my girlhood. Of course, I was obliged to
live a life of labour and self-denial, but it was not quite so difficult
for me as she felt it to be, or as other people sometimes thought it
was. Not only did I adore my music, and look forward to my work as an
artist, but I literally never had any other life. I knew nothing of what
I had given up; and so was happy in what I had undertaken, as no girl
could have been happy who had lived a less restricted, hard-working and
yet dream-filled existence.
My mother was very strait-laced and puritanical, as I have said, and,
naturally, by reflection and association, I was the same. I lay stress
on this because I want one little act of mine to be appreciated as a
sign of my ineradicable girlishness and love of beauty. When I earned my
first money, I went to Mme. Percival's, the smart lingerie shop of New
York, and bought the three most exquisite chemises I could find,
imported and trimmed with real lace!
I daresay this harmless ebullition of youthful daintiness would have
proved the last straw to some of my Psalm-singing New England relatives.
There was one uncle of mine who vastly disapproved of my going on the
stage at all, saying that it would have been much better if I had been a
good, honest milliner. He used to sing:
[Illustration: Musical notation; "Broad is the road That leads to
Hell!"]
in a minor key, with the true, God-fearing, nasal twang in it.
How I detested that old man! And I had to bury him, too, at the last. I
wonder whether I should have been able to do so if I had gone into the
millinery business!