WAR TIMES
At first the tremendous crisis filled everyone with a purely impersonal
excitement and concern; but one fine morning we awoke to the fact that
our opera season was paralysed.
The American people found the actual dramas of Bull Run, Big Bethel and
Harpers Ferry more absorbing than any play or opera ever put upon the
boards, and the airs of _Yankee Doodle_ and _The Girl I Left Behind Me_
more inspiring than the finest operatic _arias_ in the world. They did
not want to go to the theatres in the evening. They wanted to read the
bulletin boards. Every move in the big game of war that was being played
by the ruling powers of our country was of thrilling interest, and as
fast as things happened they were "posted."
Maretzek "the Magnificent," so obstinate that he simply did not know how
to give up a project merely because it was impossible, packed a few of
us off to Philadelphia to produce the _Ballo in Maschera_. We hoped
against hope that it would be light enough to divert the public, at even
that tragic moment. But the public refused to be diverted. Why I ever
sang in it I cannot imagine. I weighed barely one hundred and four
pounds and was about as well suited to the part of Amelia as a sparrow
would have been. I never liked the _role_; it is heavy and uncongenial
and altogether out of my line. I should never have been permitted to do
it, and I have always suspected that there might have been something of
a plot against me on the part of the Italians. But all this made no
difference, for we abandoned the idea of taking the opera out on a short
tour. We could plainly see that opera was doomed for the time being in
America.
Then Maretzek bethought himself of _La Figlia del Reggimento_, a
military opera, very light and infectious, that might easily catch the
wave of public sentiment at the moment. We put it on in a rush. I played
the Daughter and we crowded into the performance every bit of martial
feeling we could muster. I learned to play the drum, and we introduced
all sorts of military business and bugle calls, and altogether contrived
to create a warlike atmosphere. We were determined to make a success of
it; but we were also genuinely moved by the contagious glow that
pervaded the country and the times, and to this combined mood of
patriotism and expediency we sacrificed many artistic details. For
example, we were barbarous enough to put in sundry American national
airs and we had the assistance of real Zouaves to lend colour; and this
reminds me that about the same period Isabella Hinckley even sang _The
Star Spangled Banner_ in the middle of a performance of _Il Barbiere_.
Our attempt was a great success. We played Donizetti's little opera to
houses of frantic enthusiasm, first in Baltimore, then in Washington on
May the third, where naturally the war fever was at its highest heat.
The audiences cheered and cried and let themselves go in the hysterical
manner of people wrought up by great national excitements. Even on the
stage we caught the feeling. I sang the Figlia better than I had ever
sung anything yet, and I found myself wondering, as I sang, how many of
my cadet friends of a few months earlier were already at the front.
[Illustration: =Clara Louise Kellogg as Figlia=
From a photograph by Black & Case]
I felt very proud of these friends when I read the despatches from the
front. They all distinguished themselves, some on one side and some on
the other. Alec McCook was Colonel of the 1st Ohio Volunteers, being an
Ohio man by birth, and did splendid service in the first big battle of
the war, Bull Run. He was made Major-General of Volunteers later, I
believe, and always held a prominent position in American military
affairs. From Fort Pulaski came word of Lieutenant Horace Porter who,
though only recently graduated, was in command of the battlements there.
He was speedily brevetted Captain for "distinguished gallantry under
fire," and after Antietam he was sent to join the Army of the Ohio. He
was everywhere and did everything imaginable during the
war--Chattanooga, Chickamauga, the Battle of the Wilderness--and was
General Grant's _aide-de-camp_ in some of the big conflicts. McCreary
and young Huger I heard less of because they were on the other side; but
they were both brave fellows and did finely according to their
convictions. It is odd to recall that Huger's father, General Isaac
Huger, had fought for the Union in the early wars and yet turned against
her in the civil struggle between the blues and the greys. The Hugers
were South Carolinians though, and therefore rabid Confederates.
With the war and its many memories, ghosts will always rise up in my
recollection of Custer, the "Golden Haired Laddie,"--as his friends
called him. He was a good friend of mine, and after the war was over he
used to come frequently to see me and tell me the most wonderful,
thrilling stories about it, and of his earliest fights with the Indians.
He was a most vivid creature; one felt a sense of vigour and energy and
eagerness about him; and he was so brave and zealous as to make one know
that he would always come up to the mark. I never saw more magnificent
enthusiasm. He was not thirty at that time and when on horseback, riding
hard, with his long yellow hair blowing back in the wind, he was a
marvellously striking figure. He was not really a tall man, but looked
so, being a soldier. Oh, if I could only remember those stories of
his--stories of pluck and of danger and of excitement!
It has always been a matter of secret pride with me that, in my small
way, I did something for the Union too. I heard that our patriotic and
inartistic _Daughter of the Regiment_ caused several lads to enlist. I
do not know if this were true, but I hoped so at the time, and it might
well have been so.
I had a dresser, Ellen Conklin, who had some strange and rather ghastly
tales to tell of the slave trade in the days before the war. She had
been in other opera companies, small troupes, that sang their way from
the far South, and the primitive and casual manner of their travel had
offered many opportunities for her to visit any number of slave markets.
She frequently had been harrowed to the breaking point by the sight of
mothers separated from their children, and men and women who loved each
other being parted for life. The worst horror of it all had been to her
the examining of the female slaves as to their physical equipment, in
which the buyers were more often brutal than not. Ellen was Irish and
emotional; and it tore her heart out to see such things; but she kept
on going to the slave sales just the same.
[Illustration: =General Horace Porter=
From a photograph by Pach Bros.]
"They nearly killed me, Miss," she declared to me with tears in her
eyes, "but I could never resist one!"
Though I quite understood Ellen's emotions, I found it a little
difficult to understand why she invited them so persistently. But I have
learned that this is a very common human weakness--luckily for managers
who put on harrowing plays. Many people go to the theatre to cry. When I
sang Mignon the audience always cried and wiped its eyes; and I felt
convinced that many had come for exactly that purpose. Two women I know
once went to see Helena Modjeska in _Adrienne Lecouvreur_ and, when the
curtain fell, one of them turned to the other with streaming eyes and
gasped between her choking sobs:
"L--l--let's come--(sob)--again--(sob)--t--t--to-morrow night! (sob,
sob)."
Personally, I think there are occasions enough for tears in this life,
bitter or consoling, without having somebody on the stage draw them out
over fictitious joys and sorrows.
In the beginning of the war the feeling against the negroes was really
more bitter in the North than in the South. The riots in New York were a
scandal and a disgrace, although very few people have any idea how bad
they actually were. The Irish Catholics were particularly rabid and
asserted openly, right and left, that the freeing of the slaves would
mean an influx of cheap labour that would become a drug on the market.
It was an Irish mob that burned a coloured orphan asylum, after which
taste of blood the most innocent black was not safe. Perfectly harmless
coloured people were hanged to lamp-posts with impunity. No one ever
seemed to be punished for such outrages. The time was one of open
lawlessness in New York City. The Irish seem sometimes to be peculiarly
possessed by this unreasoning and hysterical mob spirit which, as Ruskin
once pointed out, they always manage to justify to themselves by some
high abstract principle or sentiment. A story that has always seemed to
me illustrative of this is that of the Hibernian contingent that hanged
an unfortunate Jew because his people had killed Jesus Christ and, when
reminded that it had all happened some time before, replied that "that
might be, but they had only just heard of it!" It is a singularly
significant story, with much more truth than jest in it. Years later, I
recollect that those Irish riots in New York over the negro question
served as the basis for some exceedingly heated arguments between an
English friend of mine at Aix-les-Bains and a Catholic priest living
there. The priest sought to justify them, but his reasonings have
escaped me.
At the time of these riots our New York home was on Twenty-second Street
where Stern's shop now stands. We rented it from the Bryces,
Southerners, who had a coloured coachman, a fact that made our residence
a target for the animosity of our more ignorant neighbours who lived in
the rear. The house was built with a foreign porte-cochere; and, time
and again, small mobs would throng under that porte-cochere, battering
on the door and trying to break in to get the coachman. The hanging of a
negro near St. John's Chapel was an occasion for rejoicing and
festivity, and the lower class Irish considered it a time for their best
clothes. One hears of bear-baiting and bull-fights. But think of the
barbarity of all this!
Once, when we went away for a day or two, we left Irish servants in the
house and, on returning, I found that the maids had been wearing my
smartest gowns to view the riots and lynchings. A common lace collar was
pinned to one of my French dresses and I had little difficulty in
getting the waitress to admit that she had worn it. She explained
_naively_ that the riots were gala occasions, "a great time for the
Irish." She added that she had met my father on the stairs and had been
afraid that he would recognise the dress; but, although she was penitent
enough about "borrowing" the finery, she did not in the least see
anything odd in her desire to dress up for the tormenting of an
unfortunate fellow-creature.
Everybody went about singing Mrs. Howe's _Battle Hymn of the Republic_
and it was then that I first learned that the air--the simple but
rousing little melody of _John Brown's Body_--was in reality a melody by
Felix Mendelssohn. Martial songs of all kinds were the order of the day
and all more classic music was relegated to the background for the time
being. It was not until the following winter that public sentiment
subsided sufficiently for us to really consider another musical season.