THE ROYAL CONCERTS AT BUCKINGHAM
The Royal Private Concerts at Buckingham Palace formed in those days,
and I believe still form, the last word in exclusiveness. Many persons
who have been presented at court, in company with a great crowd of other
social aspirants, never come close enough to the inner circle of royalty
to get within even "speaking distance" of these concerts. In them the
court etiquette is almost mediaeval in its brilliant formality; and yet a
certain intimacy prevails which could not be possible in a less
carefully chosen gathering. So sacred an institution is the Royal
Concert that they have a fixed price--twenty-five guineas for all the
solo singers, whatever their customary salaries,--the discrepancies
between the greater and the lesser being supposedly filled in with the
colossal honour done the artists by being asked to appear.
Queen Victoria seldom presided at these or similar functions. The Prince
of Wales usually represented the Crown and did the honours, always
exceedingly well. I have been told by people who professed to know that
his good nature was rather taken advantage of by his august mother, who
not only worked him half to death in his official capacity, but never
allowed him enough income for the purpose. Personally, I always liked
the Prince. He was a tactful, courteous man with real artistic feeling
and cultivation. He filled a difficult position with much graciousness
and good sense. More than once has he come behind the scenes during an
operatic performance to congratulate and encourage me. The Princess was
good looking, but was said to be both dull and inflexible. The former
impression might easily have been the result of her deafness that so
handicapped her where social graces were concerned. She could not hear
herself speak and, therefore, used a voice so low as to be almost
inaudible. When she spoke to me I could not hear a word of what she
said. I hope it was agreeable.
My mother's entries in her diary at this point are:
_Monday. 17_. 3 P.M. Rehearsal at Anderson's for Buckingham Palace
Concert. Met Lucca there. A perfect original. Private concert in
the evening at No. 7 Grafton Street. Pinsuti conducted. Louise
_encored_ with _Beware_. Concert commenced at eleven. Closed at 2
A.M. Saw about five bushels of diamonds.
_18th. Tuesday._ Went to Buckingham Palace. Rehearsed at eleven.
Very good palace, but dirty.
_19._ Rehearsal of Somnambula. Got home at 4. Mr. S---- came in the
evening.
_20._ Buckingham Palace Concert.
The rehearsal at Buckingham Palace was held in the great ballroom with
the Queen's orchestra, under Cusins, and the artists were Titjiens,
Lucca, Faure, and myself. These concerts were composed of picked singers
from both Covent Garden and Her Majesty's and were supposed to represent
the best of each. As my mother notes, I first met Pauline Lucca
there--such an odd little creature. She amused me immensely. She was
always doing absurd things and making quaint, entertaining speeches.
She was not pretty, but her eyes were beautiful. On this occasion, I
remember, Titjiens was rehearsing one of her great, classic _arias_.
When she had finished we all, the orchestra included, applauded. Lucca
was sitting between Faure and myself, her feet nowhere near touching the
floor, and she applauded rhythmically and quite indifferently,
slap-bang! slap-bang! slinging her arms out so as to hit both of us and
then slapping them together, the while she kicked up her small feet like
a child of six. She was regardless of appearances and was applauding to
please herself.
Lucca used to warn me not to abuse my upper notes. We knew her as almost
a mezzo. She told me, however, that she had once had an exceedingly high
voice, and that one of her best parts was Leonora in _Trovatore_. She
had abused her gift; but she always had a delightful quality of voice
and put a great deal of personality into her work.
The approach to the Palace on concert nights was very impressive, for
the Grenadier Guards were drawn up outside, and inside were other guards
even more gorgeously arrayed than the cavalry. In the concert room
itself was stationed a royal bodyguard of the Yeomen of the Guards. The
commanding officer was called the Exon-in-Waiting. The proportions of
the room were magnificent and there were some fine frescoes and an
effective way of lighting up the stained glass windows from the outside;
but the general impression was not particularly regal. The decorations
were plain and dull--for a palace. The stage was arranged with chairs,
rising tier above tier, very much like a stage for oratorio singers.
Before royalty appears, the singers seat themselves on the stage and
remain there until their turn comes to sing. This is always a trial to
a singer, who really needs to get into the mood and to warm up to her
appearance. To stand up in cold blood and just _sing_ is discouraging.
The prospect of this dreary deliberateness did not tend to raise our
spirits as we sat and waited.
At last, after we had become utterly depressed and out of spirits, there
was a little stir and the great doors at the side of the ballroom were
thrown open. First of all entered the Silver-Sticks in Waiting, a dozen
or so of them, backing in, two by two. All were, of course,
distinguished men of title and position; and they were dressed in
costumes in which silver was the dominant note and carried long wands of
silver. They were followed by the Gold-Sticks in Waiting--men of even
more exalted rank--and, finally, by the Royal Party. We all arose and
curtesied, remaining standing until their Highnesses were seated.
The concerts were called informal and therefore long trains and court
veils were not insisted on; but the men had to appear in ceremonial
dress--knee breeches and silk stockings--and the women invariably wore
gorgeous costumes and family jewels, so that the scene was one full of
colour and glitter. The uniforms of the Ambassadors of different
countries made brilliant spots of colour. The Prince of Wales and his
Princess simply sparkled with orders and decorations. I happened to hear
the names of a few of her Royal Highness's. They were the Orders of
Victoria and Albert, the Star of India, St. Catherine of Russia, and the
Danish Family Order. She also wore many of the crown jewels, and with
excellent taste on every occasion I have seen her. With a black satin
gown and court train of crimson, for example, she wore only diamonds;
while another time I remember she wore pearls and sapphires with a
velvet gown of cream and pansy colour. Such good sense and discretion in
the choice of gems is rare. So many women seem to think that any jewels
are appropriate to any toilet.
Tremendously august personages used to be in the audiences of those
Buckingham Palace concerts at which I sang then and later, such as the
Duke and Duchess of Teck, the Prince and Princess Christian of
Schleswig-Holstein, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, the Crown Prince
of Sweden and Norway, the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh. Indeed,
royalty, peers of the realm and ambassadors or representatives, and
members of the court were the only auditors. In spite of this the
concerts were deadly dull, partly, no doubt, because everybody was so
enormously impressed by the ceremony of the occasion and by the rigours
of court etiquette that they did not dare move or hardly breathe. There
was one woman present at my first Buckingham Palace concert, a
lady-in-waiting (she looked as if she had become accustomed to waiting)
who was even more stiff than any one else and about whose decollete
there seemed to be no termination. Never once, to my certain knowledge,
did she move either head or body an inch to the right or to the left
throughout the performance.
A breach of etiquette was committed on one occasion by a friend of mine,
a compatriot, who had accompanied me to one of these gilt-edged affairs.
She stood up behind the very last row of the chorus and--used her
opera-glasses! Not unnaturally, she wanted for once, poor girl, to get a
good look at royalty; but it is needless to say that she was hastily and
summarily suppressed.
When the Prince and Princess were seated the concert could begin. There
were two customs that made those functions particularly oppressive. One
was that all applause was forbidden. An artist, particularly a singer or
stage person of any kind, lives and breathes through approbation: and
for a singer to sing her best and then sit down in a dead and stony
silence without any sort of demonstration, is a very chilling
experience. The only indication that a performance had been acceptable
was when the Prince of Wales wriggled his programme in an approving
manner. A hand-clap would have been a terrific breach of etiquette. The
other drawback--and the one that affected the guests even more than the
artists--was that, when once the Prince and Princess were seated, no one
could rise on any pretext or provocation whatever. I think it was at my
second appearance at the Royal Concerts that an amusing incident
occurred which impressed the inconvenience of this regulation upon my
memory. The Duchess of Edinburgh, daughter of the Czar, entered in the
Prince of Wales's party. She looked an irritable, dissatisfied, bilious
person; and I was told that she was always talking about being "the
daughter of the Czar of all the Russias" and that it galled her that
even the Princess of Wales took precedence over her. Those were the good
old days of tie-backs, made of elastic and steel, a sort of modified
hoop-skirt with all of the hoop in the back. The tie-back was the
passing of the hoop and its management was an education in itself. I
remember mine came from Paris and I had had a bit of difficulty in
learning to sit down in it gracefully. Well--the Duchess of Edinburgh
had not mastered the art. She was all right until she sat down and
looked very regal in a gown of thick, heavy white silk and the most
gorgeous of jewels--encrusted diamonds and Russian rubies, the latter
nearly the size of a pigeon's eggs. Her tiara and stomacher were so
magnificent that they appalled me. The Prince and Princess sat down and
every one else followed suit, the daughter of the Czar of all the
Russias among the others in the front row. And she sat down wrong. Her
tie-back tilted up as she went down; her skirt rose high in front,
revealing a pair of large feet, clad in white shoes, and large ankles,
nearly up to her knees. There was a footstool under the large feet and
they were very much in evidence the whole evening, posing, entirely
against their owner's will, on a temporary monument. The awful part of
it was that the Duchess knew all about it and was so furious that she
could hardly contain herself. It was a study to watch the daughter of
the Czar of all the Russias in these circumstances. Her face showed how
much she wanted to get up and pull down her dress and hide her robust
pedal extremities, but court etiquette forbade, and the Duchess
suffered.
The end of everything, as a matter of course, was _God Save the Queen_
and, as there were nearly always two _prime donne_ present, each of us
sang one verse. All the artists and the chorus sang the third, which
constituted "Good-night" and was the official closing of the
performance. I usually sang the first verse. When the concert was over,
the Prince and Princess with the lesser royalties filed out. They passed
by the front of the stage and always had some agreeable thing to say. I
recall with much pleasure Prince Arthur--the present Duke of
Connaught--stopping to compliment me on a song I had just sung--the
Polonaise from _Mignon_--and to remind me that I had sung it at Admiral
Dahlgren's reception at the Navy Yard in Washington during his American
visit.
"You sang that for me in Washington, didn't you, Miss Kellogg?" he said;
and I was greatly pleased by the slight courteous remembrance.
After royalty had departed every one drew a long breath of partial
relaxation. The guests could then move about with more or less freedom,
talk with each other, and speak with the artists if they felt so
inclined. I was impressed by the stiffness, the shyness and awkwardness
of the English people--of even these very great English people, the
women especially. One would suppose that authority and ease and
graciousness would be in the very blood of those who are, as the saying
is, "to the manner born," but they did not seem to have that "manner."
Finally I came to the conclusion that they really _liked_ to appear shy
and _gauche_, and deliberately affected the stiffness and the
awkwardness.
So much has been said about the Victorian prejudice against divorce and
against scandal of all sorts that no one will be surprised when I say
that, on one occasion when I sang at the Palace, I was the only woman
singer whom the ladies present spoke to, although the gentlemen paid
much attention to the others. The Duchess of Newcastle was particularly
cordial to me, as were also the wife of our American Ambassador and
Consuelo, Duchess of Manchester. My fellow-artists on that occasion were
Adelina Patti and Trebelli Bettina and, as each of them had been
associated with scandal, they were left icily alone. At that time Patti
and Nicolini were not married and the papers had much to say about the
tenor's desertion of his family. I have sung with Nilsson and Patti and
Lucca at these concerts. I have sung with Faure and Santley and Capoul
(nice little Capoul, known in America as "the ladies' man") and I have
sung with Scalchi and Titjiens. I have sung there with even the great
Mario.
There was a supper at the palace after the Royal Concerts--two supper
tables in fact--one for the royal family and one for the artists. I
caught a glimpse on my first appearance there of the table set for the
former with the historic gold plate, with which English crowned heads
entertain their guests. It was splendid, of course, although very heavy
and ponderous, and the food must needs have been something superlative
to have fitted it. I doubt if it was, however, as British cooks are apt
to be mediocre, even those in palaces. Cooking is a matter of the
Epicurean temperament or, rather, with the British, the lack of it. Our
supper was not at all bad in spite of this, although little Lucca did
turn up her nose at it and at the arrangements.
"What!" she exclaimed tempestuously, "stay here to 'second supper'!
Never! These English prigs want to make us eat with the servants! You
may stay for their horrid supper if you choose. But I would rather
starve--" and off she went, all rustling and fluttering with childish
indignation.
It was at one of these after-concert "receptions" at the palace that I
had quite a long chat with Adelina Patti about her coming to America. I
urged it, for I knew that a fine welcome was awaiting her here. But
Nicolini,--her husband for the moment,--who was sitting near, exclaimed:
"_Vous voulez la tuer!_" ("Do you want to kill her!") It seems that they
were both terribly afraid of crossing the ocean, although they
apparently recovered from their dread in later years.
There was one Royal Concert which will always remain in my memory as the
most marvellous and brilliant spectacle, socially speaking, of my whole
life. It was the one given in honour of the Queen's being made Empress
of India and among the guests were not only the aristocracy of Great
Britain, but all the Eastern princes and rajahs representing her
Majesty's new empire. At that time hardly any one had been in India.
Nowadays people make trips around the world and run across to take a
look at the Orient whenever they feel inclined. But then India sounded
to us like a fairy-tale place, impossibly rich and mysterious, a country
out of _The Arabian Nights_ at the very least.
My mother and I were then living in Belgrave Mansions, not far from the
palace nor from the Victoria Hotel where the Indian princes put up, and
we used to see them passing back and forth, their attendants bearing
exquisitely carved and ornamented boxes containing choice jewels and
decorations and offerings to "The Great White Queen across the
Seas,"--offerings as earnest of good faith and pledges of loyalty. I was
glad to be "commanded" for the Royal Concert at which they were to be
entertained, for I knew that it would be a splendid pageant. And it
turned out to be, as I have said, the richest display I ever saw. The
rich stuffs of the costumes lent themselves most fittingly to a lavish
exhibition of jewels. The ornaments of the royal princesses and
peeresses that I had been admiring up to that occasion seemed as nothing
compared to this array. Every Eastern potentate appeared to be trying to
vie with all the others as to the gems he wore in his turban.
It would be impossible for me to say how interesting I found all this
sort of thing. It was like a play to me--a delicious play, in which I,
too, had my part. I am an imperialist by nature. I love pomp and
ceremony and circumstance and titles. The few times that I have ever
been dissatisfied with my experiences in the lands of crowned heads, it
was merely because there wasn't quite grandeur enough to suit my taste!