AND SO--TO ENGLAND!
The following season was one of concerts and not remarkably enjoyable.
In retrospect I see but a hurried jumble of work until our decision, in
the spring, to go to England.
For two or three years I had wanted to try my wings on the other side of
the world. Several matters had interfered and made it temporarily
impossible, chiefly an unfortunate business agreement into which I had
entered at the very outset of my professional career. During the second
season that I sang, an _impresario_, a Jew named Ulman, had made me an
offer to go abroad and sing in Paris and elsewhere. Being very eager to
forge ahead, it seemed like a satisfactory arrangement, and I signed a
contract binding myself to sing under Ulman's management _if I went
abroad_ any time in three years. When I came to think it over, I
regretted this arrangement exceedingly. I felt that the _impresario_ was
not the best one for me. To say the least, I came to doubt his ability.
At any rate, because of this complication, I voluntarily tied myself up
to Max Maretzek for several years and felt it a release as now I could
not tour under Ulman even if I cared to. By 1867, however, my Ulman
contract had expired and I was free to do as I pleased. I had no
contract abroad to be sure, nor any very definite prospects, but I
determined to go to England on a chance and see what developed. At any
rate I should have the advantage of being able to consult foreign
teachers and to improve my method. The uncertainties of my professional
outlook did not disturb me in the least. Indeed, what I really wanted
was, like any other girl, to go abroad, as the gentleman in the
old-fashioned ballad says:
... to go abroad;
To go strange countries for to see!
I greatly enjoyed the voyage as I have enjoyed every voyage that I have
made since, even including the channel crossing when everyone else on
board was seasick, and also the one in which I was nearly ship-wrecked
off the Irish coast. I have crossed the Atlantic between sixty and
seventy times and every trip has given me pleasure of one kind or
another. I am never nervous when travelling. Like poor Jack, I have a
vague but sure conviction that nothing will happen to _me_; that I am
protected by "a sweet little cherub that sits up aloft!"
At Queenstown, where we touched before going on to our regular port of
Liverpool, a man came on board asking for Miss Clara Louise Kellogg. He
was from Jarrett, the agent for Colonel Mapleson who was then
_impresario_ of "Her Majesty's Opera" in London, and he brought me word
that Mapleson wanted me to call on him as soon as I reached London and,
until we could definitely arrange matters, to please give him the
refusal of myself, if I may so express it. Perhaps I wasn't a proud and
happy girl! Mapleson, I heard later, was then believed to be on the
verge of failure and it was hoped that my appearance in his company
would revive his fortunes. I grew afterwards cordially to detest and to
distrust him, and we had more troubles than I can or care to keep track
of: and, as for Jarrett, he was a most unpleasant creature with a
positive genius for making trouble. But on that day in Queenstown
harbour, with the sun shining and the little Irish fisher boats--their
patched sails streaming into the blue off-shore distance,--the man
Jarrett had sent to meet me on behalf of Colonel Mapleson seemed like a
herald of great good cheer.
When we reached London we went to Miss Edward's Hotel in Hanover Square.
It was a curious institution, distinctive of its day and generation, a
real old-fashioned English hotel, behind streets that were "chained-up"
after nightfall. It was called a "private hotel" and unquestionably was
one; deadly dull, but maintained in the most aristocratic way
imaginable, like a formal, pluperfect, private house where one might
chance to be invited to visit. Everyone dined in his own sitting-room,
which was usually separated from the bedroom, and never a soul but the
servants was seen. The Langham was the first London hotel to introduce
the American style of hotel and it, with its successors, have had such
an influence upon the other hostelries of London as gradually to
undermine the quaint, old, truly English places we used to know, until
there are no more "private hotels" like Miss Edward's in existence.
We had friends in London and quickly made others. Commodore McVickar, of
the New York Yacht Club, had given me a letter to a friend of his, the
Dowager Duchess of Somerset. Her cards, by the way, were engraved in
just the opposite fashion--"Duchess Dowager." McVickar told me that, if
she liked, she could make things very pleasant for me in London. It
appeared that she was something of a lion hunter and was always on the
lookout for celebrities either arriving or arrived. She went in for
everything foreign to her own immediate circle--art, intellect, and
Americans--chiefly Americans, in fact, because they were more or less of
a novelty, and she had the thirst for change in her so strongly
developed that she ought to have lived at the present time. Every night
of her life she gave dinners to hosts of friends and acquaintances.
Indeed, it is a fact that her sole interest in life consisted of giving
dinner parties and making collections of lions, great and small. I have
been told that after dinner she sometimes danced the Spanish fandango
toward the end of the evening. I never happened to see her do it, but I
quite believe her to have been capable of that or of anything else
vivacious and eccentric, although she was seventy or eighty in the shade
and not entirely built for dancing.
I was somewhat impressed by the prospect of meeting a real live Duchess,
and had to be coached before-hand. In the early part of the eighteenth
century the mode of address "Your Grace" was used exclusively, and very
pretty and courtly it must have sounded. Nowadays it is only servants or
inferiors who think of using it. Plain "Duke" or "Duchess" is the later
form. At the period of which I am writing the custom was just betwixt
and between, in transition, and I was duly instructed to say "Your
Grace," but cautioned to say it _very_ seldom!
[Illustration: =Henry G. Stebbins=
From a photograph by Grillet & Co.]
On the nineteenth of November, Colonel Stebbins and I went to call.
Maria, Dowager Duchess of Somerset lived in Park Lane in a house of
indifferent aspect. Its distinctive feature was the formidable number of
flunkeys ranged on the steps and standing in front, all in powdered
wigs and white silk stockings and wearing waistcoats of a shade carrying
out the dominant colour of the ducal coat of arms. It was raining hard
when we got there, but not one of these gorgeous functionaries would
demean himself sufficiently to carry an umbrella down to our carriage.
In the drawing-room we had to wait a long time before a sort of
gilt-edged Groom of the Chambers came to the door and announced,
"Her Grace, the Duchess!"
My youthful American soul was prepared for someone quite dazzling, a
magnificent presence. What is the use of diadems and coronets if the
owner does not wear them? Of course I knew, theoretically, that
duchesses did not wear their coronets in the middle of the day, but I
did nevertheless hope for something brilliant or impressive.
Then in walked Maria, Dowager Duchess of Somerset. I cannot adequately
describe her. She was a little, dumpy, old woman with no corsets, and
dressed in a black alpaca gown and prunella shoes--those awful things
that the present generation are lucky enough never to have even seen.
She furthermore wore a _fichu_ of a style which had been entirely
extinct for fifty years at least. I really do not know how there
happened to be anyone living even then who could or would make such
things for her. No modern modiste could have achieved them and survived.
Her whole appearance was certainly beyond words. But she had very
beautiful hands, and when she spoke, the great lady was heard instantly.
It was all there, of course, only curiously costumed, not to say
disguised.
After Colonel Stebbins had presented me and she had greeted me kindly,
he said:
"I am sure Miss Kellogg will be glad to sing for you."
"O," said Her Grace, carelessly, "I haven't a piano. I don't play or
sing and so I don't need one. But I'll get one in."
I was amazed at the idea of a Duchess not owning a piano and having to
hire one when, in America, most middle-class homes possess one at
whatever sacrifice, and every little girl is expected to take music
lessons whether she has any ability or not. Even yet I do not quite
understand how she managed without a piano for her musical lions to play
on.
She did get one in without delay and I was speedily invited to come and
sing. I thought I would pay a particular compliment to my English
hostess on that occasion by choosing a song the words of which were
written by England's Poet Laureate, so I provided myself with the lovely
setting of _Tears, Idle Tears_; music written by an American, W. H. Cook
by name, who besides being a composer of music possessed a charming
tenor voice. In my innocence I thought this choice would make a hit.
Imagine my surprise therefore when my hostess's comment on the text was:
"Very pretty words. Who wrote them?"
"Why," I stammered, "Tennyson."
"Indeed? And, my dear Miss Kellogg, who _was_ Tennyson?"
Almost immediately after Colonel Stebbins bought her a handsome set of
the Poet Laureate's works with which she expressed herself as hugely
pleased, although I am personally doubtful if she ever opened a single
volume.
She did not forget the _Tears, Idle Tears_ episode, however, and had the
wit and good humour often to refer to it afterwards and, usually, quite
aptly. One of her most charming notes to me touches on it gracefully.
She was a great letter-writer and her epistles, couched in flowery terms
and embellished with huge capitals of the olden style, are treasures in
their way:
" ...I know all I feel; and the Tears (_not idle Tears_) that overflow
when I read about that Charming and Illustrious 'glorious Queen' ... who
is winning all hearts and delighting everyone...."
Another letter, one which I think is a particularly interesting specimen
of the Victorian style of letter-writing, runs:
...I read with great delight the "critique" of you in _The London
Review_, which your Mamma was good enough to send me. The Writer is
evidently a man of highly Cultivated Mind, capable of appreciating
Excellency and Genius, and like the experienced Lapidary knows a
pearl and a Diamond when he has the good fortune to fall in the way
of one of high, pure first Water, and great brilliancy. Even _you_
must now feel you have captivated the "elite" of the British
Public, and taken root in the country, deep, deep, deep....
My mother and I used often to go to see the Duchess and, through her met
many pleasant English people; the Duke and Duchess of Newcastle, Lady
Susan Vane-Tempest who was Newcastle's sister, Lord Dudley, Lord
Stanley, Lord Derby, Viscountess Combermere, Prince de la Tour
D'Auvergne, the French Ambassador,--I cannot begin to remember them
all--and I came really to like the quaint little old Duchess, who was
always most charming to me. One small incident struck me as
pathetic,--at least, it was half pathetic and half amusing. One day she
told me with impressive pride that she was going to show me one of her
dearest possessions, "a wonderful table made from a great American
treasure presented to her by her dear friend, Commodore McVickar." She
led me over to it and tenderly withdrew the cover, revealing to my
amazement a piece of rough, cheap, Indian beadwork, such as all who
crossed from Niagara to Canada in those days were familiar with. It was
about as much like the genuine and beautiful beadwork of the older
tribes as the tawdry American imitations are like true Japanese textures
and curios. This poor specimen the Duchess had had made into a table-top
and covered it with glass mounted in a gilt frame, and had given it a
place of honour in her reception room. I suppose Mr. McVickar had sent
it to her to give her a rough general idea of what Indian work looked
like. I cannot believe that he intended to play a joke on her. She was
certainly very proud of it and, so far as I know, nobody ever had the
heart to disillusion her.
More than once I encountered in England this incongruous and
inappropriate valuation of American things. I do not put it down to a
general admiration for us but, on the contrary, to the fact that the
English were so utterly and incredibly ignorant with regard to us. The
beadwork of the Duchess reminds me of another somewhat similar incident.
At that time there were only two really rich bachelors in New York
society, Wright Sandford and William Douglass. Willie Douglass was of
Scotch descent and sang very pleasingly. Women went wild over him. He
had a yacht that won everything in sight. While we were in London, he
and his yacht put in an appearance at Cowes and he asked us down to pay
him a visit. It was a delightful experience. The Earl of Harrington's
country seat was not far away and the Earl with his daughters came on
board to ask the yacht's party to luncheon the day following. Of course
we all went and, equally of course, we had a wonderful time. Lunch was a
deliciously informal affair. At one stage of the proceedings, somebody
wanted more soda water, when young Lord Petersham, Harrington's eldest
son, jumped up to fetch it himself. He rushed across the room and flung
open, with an air of triumph, the door of a common, wooden ice-box,--the
sort kept in the pantry or outside the kitchen door by Americans.
"Look!" he cried, "did you ever see anything so splendid? It's our
American refrigerator and the joy of our lives! I suppose you've seen
one before, Miss Kellogg?"
I explained rather feebly that I had, although not in a dining-room. But
the family assured me that a dining-room was the proper place for it. I
have seldom seen anything so heart-rendingly incongruous as that plain
ugly article of furniture in that dining-room all carved woodwork,
family silver, and armorial bearings!
They were dear people and my heart went out to them more completely than
to any of my London friends. I soon discovered why.
"You are the most cordial English people I've met yet," I said to Lady
Philippa Stanhope, the Earl's charming daughter. Her eyes twinkled.
"Oh, we're not English," she explained, "we're Irish!"
Yet even if I did not find the Londoners quite so congenial, I did like
them. I could not have helped it, they were so courteous to my mother
and me. Probably they supposed us to have Indians in our back-yards at
home; nevertheless they were always courteous, at times cordial. One of
the most charming of the Englishwomen I met was the Viscountess
Combermere. She was one of the Queen's ladies-in-waiting, a very
vivacious woman, and used to keep dinner tables in gales of laughter.
Just then when anyone in London wanted to introduce or excuse an
innovation, he or she would exclaim, "the Queen does it!" and there
would be nothing more for anyone to say. This became a sort of
catch-word. I recall one afternoon at the Dowager Duchess of Somerset's,
a cup of hot tea was handed to the Viscountess who, pouring the liquid
from the cup into the saucer and then sipping it from the saucer, said:
"Now ladies, do not think this is rude, for I have just come from the
Queen and saw her do the same. Let us emulate the Queen!" Then, seeing
us hesitate, "the Queen does it, ladies! the Queen does it!"
Whereupon everyone present drank tea from their saucers.
It was the Viscountess, also, who so greatly amused my mother at a
luncheon party by saying to her with the most polite interest:
"You speak English remarkably well, Mrs. Kellogg! Do they speak English
in America?"
"Yes, a little," replied mother, quietly.