"YOUR SINCERE ADMIRER"
A man whose name I never learned dropped a big, fragrant bunch of
violets at my feet each night for weeks. Becoming discouraged after a
while because I did not seek him out in his gallery seat, he sent me a
note begging for a glance and adding, for identification, this
illuminating point: "_You'll know me by my boots hanging over!_"
Who could disregard such an appeal? That night my eyes searched the
balconies feverishly. He had not vainly raised my hopes; his boots
_were_ hanging over, large boots, that looked as if they had seen
considerable service. I sang my best to those boots and--dear man!--the
violets fell as sweetly as before. I have conjured up a charming
portrait of this individual, with a soul high enough to love music and
violets and simple enough not to be ashamed of his boots. Would that all
"sincere admirers" might be of such an ingenuous and engaging a pattern.
The variety of "admirers" that are the lot of a person on the stage is
extraordinary. It is very difficult for the stage persons themselves to
understand it. It has never seemed to me that actors as a class are
particularly interesting. Personally I have always been too cognisant of
the personalities behind the scenes to ever have any theatrical idols;
but to a great many there is something absolutely fascinating about the
stage and stage folk. The actor appears to the audience in a perpetual,
hazy, calcium glory. We are, one and all, children with an inherent love
for fairy tales and it is probably this love which is in a great measure
accountable for the blind adoration received by most stage people.
I have received, I imagine, the usual number of letters from "your
sincere admirer," some of them funny and some of them rather pathetic.
Very few of them were really impertinent or offensive. In nearly all was
to be found the same touching devotion to an abstract ideal for which,
for the moment, I chanced to be cast. Once in a while there was some one
who, like a person who signed himself "Faust," insisted that I had "met
his eyes" and "encouraged him from afar." Needless to say I had never in
my life seen him; but he worked himself into quite a fever of resentment
on the subject and wrote me several letters. There was also a man who
wrote me several perfectly respectful, but ardent, love letters to
which, naturally, I did not respond. Then, finally, he bombarded me with
another type of screed of which the following is a specimen:
"Oh, for Heaven's sake, say something,--if it is only to rate me for my
importunities or to tell me to go about my business! Anything but this
contemptuous silence!"
But these were exceptions. Most of my "admirers'" letters are gems of
either humour or of sentiment. Among my treasures is an epistle that
begins:
"Miss Clara Louise Kellogg
Miss:
Before to expand my feelings, before to make you known the real
intent of this note, in fine before to disclose the secrets of my
heart, I will pray you to pardon my indiscretion (if indiscretion
that can be called) to address you unacquainted," etc.
Isn't this a masterpiece?
There was also an absurdly conceited man who wrote me one letter a year
for several years, always in the same vein. He was evidently a very
pious youth and had "gotten religion" rather badly, for in every epistle
he broke into exhortation and urged me fervently to become a "real
Christian," painting for me the joys of true religion if I once could
manage to "find it." In one of his later letters--after assuring me that
he had prayed for me night and morning for three years and would
continue to do so--he ended in this impressive manner:
" ...And if, in God's mercy, we are both permitted to walk 'the
Golden Streets,' I shall there seek you out and give you more fully
my reasons for writing you."
Could anything be more entertaining than this naive fashion of making a
date in Heaven?
Not all my letters were love letters. Sometimes I would receive a few
words from some woman unknown to me but full of a sweet and
understanding friendliness. Mrs. Elizabeth Tilton, then the centre of
the stage scandal through her friendship with Henry Ward Beecher, wrote
me a charming letter that ended with what struck me as a very pathetic
touch:
"I am unwilling to be known by you as the defiant, discontented
woman of the age--rather, as an humble helper of those less
fortunate than myself----"
I never knew Mrs. Tilton personally, but have often felt that I should
have liked her. One of the dearest communications I ever received was
from a French working girl, a corset maker, I believe. She wrote:
"I am but a poor little girl, Mademoiselle, a toiler in the sphere
where you reign a queen, but ever since I was a very little child I
have gone to listen to your voice whenever you have deigned to sing
in New York. Those magic tone-flowers, scattering their perfumed
sweetness on the waiting air, made my child heart throb with a
wonderful pulsation...."
One of the favourite jests of the critics was my obduracy in matters of
sentiment. It was said that I would always have emotional limitations
because I had no love affairs like other _prime donne_. Once, when I
gave some advice to a young girl to "keep your eyes fixed upon your
artistic future," or some such similar phrase, the press had a good deal
of fun at my expense. "That" it was declared, "was exactly what was the
matter with Clara Louise; she kept her eyes fixed upon an artistic
future instead of upon some man who was in love with her!" I was rather
a good shot, very fond of target shooting, and many jokes were also made
on the supposed damage I did. One newspaper man put it rather more
aptly. "Not only in pistol shooting," he said, "but in everything she
aims at, our _prima donna_ is sure to hit the mark."
My "sincere admirers" were from all parts of the house, but I think I
found the "gallery" ones most sincere and, certainly, the most amusing.
Max Maretzek used to say that he had no manner of use for an artist
unless she could fill the family circle. I am glad to be able to record
that I always could. My singing usually appealed to the people. _The
Police Gazette_ always gave me good notices! I love the family circle.
As a rule the appreciation there is greater because of the sacrifices
which they have had to make to buy their seats. When people can go to
hear good music every night, they do not care nearly so much about doing
it.
I wonder if anybody besides singers get such an extraordinary sense of
contact and connection with members of their audiences? I have sometimes
felt as if thought waves, reaching through the space between, held me
fast to some of those who heard me sing. Who knows what sympathies, what
comprehensions, what exquisite friendships, were blossoming out there in
the dark house like a garden, waiting to be gathered? Letters--not
necessarily love letters--rather, stray messages of appreciation and
understanding--have brought me a similar sense of joy and of safe
intimacy. After the receipt of any such, I have sung with the pleasant
sense that a new friend--yes, friend, not auditor--was listening. I have
suddenly felt at home in the big theatre; and often, very often, have I
looked eagerly over the banked hosts of faces, asking myself wistfully
which were the strangers and which mine own people.
It was not only in the theatre that I found "admirers." My vacations
were beset with those who wanted to look at and speak to a genuine
_prima donna_ at close range. Indeed, I had frequently to protect myself
from perfectly strange and intrusive people. Often I have gone to
Saratoga during the season. Saratoga was a fashionable resort in those
days and I always had a good audience. One incident that I remember of
Saratoga was a detestable train that invariably came along in the middle
of my performance--the evening train from New York. I always had to stop
whatever I was singing and wait for it to go by. One night I thought I
would cheat it and timed my song a little earlier so that I would be
through before the train arrived. It just beat me by a bar; and I could
hear it steaming nearer and nearing as I hurried on. As I came to the
end there was a loud whistle from the locomotive;--but, for once, luck
was on my side, for it was pitched in harmony with my final note! The
coincidence was warmly applauded.
When on the road I not infrequently practised with my banjo at hotels.
It was more practicable to carry about than a piano and, besides, it was
not always an easy matter to hire a good piano. One time--also in
Saratoga--I was playing that instrument preparatory to beginning my
morning practice, when an old gentleman who had a room on the same
floor, descended to the office in a fine temper. He was a long, slim,
wiry old fellow, with a high, black satin stock about his bony neck,
very few hairs on his little round head, deep sunken eyes, pinched
features, and an extremely nervous manner.
"See here," he burst out in a cracked voice, as he danced about on the
marble tiling of the office floor, "have you a band of nigger minstrels
in the house, eh! Zounds, sir, there's an infernal banjo tum, tum,
tumming in my ears every morning and I can't sleep. Drat banjoes--I hate
'em. And nigger minstrels--I hate 'em too. You must move me, sir, move
me at once. That banjo'll set me crazy. Move me at once, d'ye hear?--or
I'll leave the house!"
"Why, sir," said the clerk suavely, "that banjo player is not a nigger
minstrel, at all, sir, but Miss Clara Louise Kellogg, who uses a banjo
to practise with."
The hard lines in the old fellow's face relaxed, he looked sharply at
the clerk and, leaning over the counter, remarked:
"What, Clara Louise Kellogg! W--why, I'll go up and listen! Zounds, man,
she's my particular favourite. She's charmed me with her sweet voice
many a time. D---- n it, give her another banjo! Tell her to play all
day if she wants to! Clara Louise Kellogg, eh? H'm, well, well!"
He tottered off and, as I observed, after that so long as I stayed left
the door of his room open down the hall so that he could hear my "tum,
tum, tumming."
A very different, though equally ingenuous tribute to my powers was that
given by an old Indian trapper who, when in Chicago to sell his hides,
went to hear me sing and expressed his emotions to a newspaper man of
that city in approximately the following language:
I have heard most of the sweet and terrible noises that natives
make. I have heard the thunder among the Hills when the Lord was
knocking against the earth until it passed; and I have heard the
wind in the pines and the waves on the beaches, when the darkness
of night was in the woods, and nature was singing her Evening Song
and there was no bird nor beast the Lord has made, and I have not
heard a voice that would make as sweet a noise as nature makes when
the Spirit of the Universe speaks through the stillness; but that
sweet lady has made sounds to-night sweeter than my ears have heard
on hill or lake shore at noon, or in the night season, and I
certainly believe that the Spirit of the Lord has been with her and
given her the power to make such sweet sounds. A man might like to
have these sweet sounds in his ears when his body lies in his cabin
and his spirit is standing on the edge of the great clearing. I
wish she could sing for me when my eyes grow dim and my feet strike
the trail that no man strikes but once, nor travels both ways.
Surely among my friends, if not among my "sincere admirers," I may
include Okakura, who came over here with the late John La Farge as an
envoy from the Japanese Government to study the art of this country as
well as that of Europe. His dream was to found some sort of institution
in Japan for the preservation and development of his country's old,
national ideals in art. His criticisms of Raphael and Titian, by the
way, were something extraordinary. As for music, he had a marvellous
sense for it. La Farge took him to a Thomas Concert and he was vastly
impressed by the music of Beethoven. One might have thought that he had
listened to Occidental classics all his life. But, for that matter, I
know two little Japanese airs that Davidson of London told me might well
have been written by Beethoven himself; so it may be that there is an
obscure bond of sympathy, which our less acute ears would not always
recognise, between our great master and the composers of Okakura's
native land.
Okakura was only twenty-six when I first met him at Richard Watson
Gilder's studio in New York, but he was already a professor and spoke
perfect English and knew all our best literature. When Munkacsy, the
Hungarian painter, came over, his colleague, Francis Korbay, the
musician, gave him an evening reception, and I took my Japanese friend.
It was a charming evening and Okakura was the success of the reception.
When he started being introduced he was nothing but a professor. Before
he had gone the rounds he had become an Asiatic prince and millionaire.
He had the "grand manner" and wore gorgeous clothes on formal occasions.
Some years later I called on his wife in Tokio. I considered this was
the polite thing for me to do although Okakura himself was in Osaka at
the time. Okakura had an art school in Tokio, kept up with the aid of
the Government, where he was trying to fulfil his old ambition of
preserving the individuality of his own people's work and of driving out
Occidental encroachments. At the school, where we had gone with a guide
who could serve also as interpreter, I asked for Madame. My request to
see her was met with consternation. I was asking a great deal--how much,
I did not realise until afterwards. Before I could enter, I was
requested to take off my shoes. This I considered impossible as I was
wearing high-laced boots. Furthermore, we were having winter weather,
very cold and raw, and nothing was offered me to put on in their place,
as the Japanese custom is at the entrances of the temples. My refusal to
remove my shoes halted proceedings for a while; but, eventually, I was
led around to a side porch where I could sit on a _chair_ (I was amazed
at their having such a thing) and speak with the occupants of the house
as they knelt inside on their heels. The _shoji_, or bamboo and paper
screen, was pushed back, revealing an interior wonderfully clever in its
simplicity. The furniture consisted of a beautiful brassier and two rare
kakamonos on the wall--nothing more.
In came Madame Okakura in a grey kimono and bare feet. Down she went on
her knees and saluted me in the prettiest fashion imaginable. We talked
through the interpreter until her daughter entered, who spoke to me in
bad, limited French. The daughter was an unattractive girl, with an
artificially reddened mouth, but I thought the mother charming, like a
most exquisite Parisienne masquerading as a "Japanese Lady."
Not long after my visit I saw Okakura himself and told him how much I
had enjoyed seeing his wife. He gave me an annoyed glance and remained
silent. I was nonplussed and somewhat mortified. I could not understand
what could be the trouble, for he acted as if his honour were offended.
In time I learned that the unpardonable breach of good form in Japan was
to mention his wife to a Japanese!
So graceful, so delicate in both expression and feeling are the letters
that I have received from Okakura, that I cannot resist my inclination
to include them in this chapter,--although, possibly, they are somewhat
too personal. On January 4, 1887, he wrote:
/* MY DEAR MISS KELLOGG: */
France lies three nights ahead of us. The returning clouds still
seek the western shore and the ocean rolls back my dreams to you.
Your music lives in my soul. I carry away America in your voice;
and what better token can your nation offer? But praises to the
great sound like flattery, and praises to the beautiful sound like
love. To you they must both be tiresome. I shall refrain. You
allude to the Eastern Lights. Alas, the Lamp of Love flickers and
Night is on the plains of Osaka. There are lingering lights on the
crown of the Himalayas, on the edges of the Kowrous, among the
peaks of Hira and Kora. But what do they care for the twilight of
the Valley? They stand like the ocean moon, regardless of the
tempest below. Seek the light in the mansion of your own soul. Are
you not yourself the _Spirit Nightingale of the West_? Are you not
crying for the moon in union with your Emersons and
Longfellows--with your La Farges and your Gilders? Or am I
mistaken? I enclose my picture and submit the translation of the
few lines on the back to your _axe of anger and the benevolence of
your criticism_ as we say at home. I need a great deal of your
benevolence and deserve more of your anger, as the lines sound so
poor in the English. However they do not appear very grand in the
original and so I submit them to your guillotine with a free
conscience. The lines are different from the former, for I forget
them--or care not to repeat.
Will you kindly convey my best regards to Mrs. Gilder, for I owe so
much to her, to say nothing of your friendship! Will you also
condescend to write to me at your leisure?
* * * * *
(_Translation_:--One star floats into the ocean of Night. Past the
back of Taurus, away among the Pleiades, whither dost thou go?
Sadly I watch them all. My soul wanders after them into the
infinite. Shall my soul return, or--never?)
VIENNA, March 4, 1887.
MY DEAR MISS KELLOGG:
The home of a traveller is in his sweet memories. Under the shadow
of Vesuvius and on the waters of Leman my thoughts were always for
America, which you and your friends have made so pleasant to me.
Pardon me therefore if my pen again turns toward you. How kind of
you to remember me! Your letter reached me here last night and I
regret that I did not stay longer in Paris to receive it sooner.
Will you not favour me by writing again?
Europe is an enigma--often a source of sadness to me. The forces
that developed her are tearing her asunder. Is it because all
civilisations are destined to have their days and nights of Brahma?
Or was the principle that organised the European nations itself a
false one? Did they grasp the moon in the waters and at last
disturb the image? I know not. I only feel that the Spirit of
Unrest is standing beside me. War is coming and must come, sooner
or later. Conflicting opinions chase each other across the
continent as if the demons fought in the air before the battle of
men began. The policy of maintaining peace by increasing the
armies is absurd. It is indeed a sad state of things to make such a
sophism necessary. I am getting tired of this, though there is some
consolation that there are more fools in the world than the
Oriental.
I have been rather disappointed in the French music. Perhaps I am
too much prejudiced by _The Persian Serenade_ to appreciate
anything else. The acting was artificial and there was no voice
which had anything of the Spirit Nightingale in it. You once told
me that you intended to cross the Atlantic this summer. When? My
dreams are impatient of your arrival. May you come soon and correct
my one-sided impression of Europe!
I am going to Rome after two or three weeks' stay in this place.
That city interests me deeply, as yet the spiritual centre of the
West, whose voice still influences the politics of Central Europe.
In May I shall be at the Paris Salon and cross over to London in
the early part of June.
It snows every day in Vienna and I spend my time mostly with the
old doctors of the University. Their talks on philosophy and
science are indeed interesting, but somehow or other I don't feel
the delight I had in your society in New York. Why?
July 12, 1887.
MY DEAR MISS KELLOGG:
I am very glad to hear that you are in Europe. My duties in London
end this week and I have decided to start for Munich next morning,
thence to Dresden and Berlin. I am thus looking forward to the
great pleasure of meeting you again and gathering fragrance from
your conversation. Mrs. Gilder wrote to me that you were not quite
well since your tour in the West and my anxiety mingles with my
hopes. The atmosphere of English civilisation weighs heavily on me
and I am longing to be away. It seems that civilisation does not
agree with a member of an Eastern barbaric tribe. My conception of
music has been gradually changing. The Ninth Symphony has
revolutionised it. Where is the future of music to be?
Many questions crowd on me and I am impatient to lay them before
you at Carlsbad. Will you allow me to do so?
BERLIN. KAISERHAUF, July 24th.
MY DEAR MISS KELLOGG:
The Spirit of Unrest chases me northward. Dresden glided dimly
before me. Holbein was a disappointment. The Sistine Madonna was
divine beyond my expectation. I saw Raphael in his purity and was
delighted. None of his pictures is so inspired as this. Still my
thoughts wandered amid these grand creations. They flitted past in
a shower of colours and shadows and I have drifted hither through
the hazy forests of Heine and the troubled grey of Millet's
twilight....
To me your friendship is the boat that bears me proudly home. I
wait with pleasure any line you may send me there. Wishing every
good to you, I remain yours respectfully.
KAISERHAUF, July 28th, 1887.
MY DEAR MISS KELLOGG:
Ten thousand thanks for your kind letter. My address in Japan is
Monbusho, Tokio, and if you will write to me there I shall be so
happy! The task which I have imposed upon myself--the preserving of
historical continuity and internal development, etc.,--has to work
very slowly. I must be patient and cautious. Still I shall be
delighted to confide to you from time to time how I am getting on
with my dream if you will allow me to do so. You say that you have
a hope of finding what you long for in Buddhism. Surely your lotus
must be opening to the dawn. European philosophy has reached to a
point where no advance is possible except through mysticism. Yet
they ignore the hidden truths on limited scientific grounds. The
Berlin University has thus been forced to return to Kant and begin
afresh. They have destroyed but have no power to construct, and
they never will if they refuse to _see_ more into themselves....
Hoping you the best and the brightest, I am
Yours faithfully,
OKAKURA KAKUDZO.
And so I come to one of all these who was really a "sincere admirer,"
and a faithful lover, although I never knew him. It is a difficult
incident to write of, for I feel that it holds some of the deepest
elements of sentiment and of tragedy with which I ever came in touch.
I was singing in Boston when a man sent me a message saying that he was
connected with a newspaper and had something of great importance about
which he wanted to see me. He furthermore said that he wished to see me
alone. It was an extraordinary request and, at first, I refused. I
suspected a subterfuge--a wager, or something humiliating of that sort.
But he persisted, sending yet another message to the effect that he had
something to communicate to me which was of an essentially personal
nature. Finally I consented to grant him the interview and, as he had
requested, I saw him alone.
He was just back from the front where he had been war correspondent
during the heart of the Civil War, and he told me that he had a letter
to give to me from a soldier in his division who had been shot. The
soldier was mortally wounded when the reporter found him. He was lying
at the foot of a tree at the point of death, and the correspondent asked
if he could take any last messages for him to friends or relatives. The
soldier asked him to write down a message to take to a woman whom he had
loved for four years, but who did not know of his love.
"Tell her," he said, speaking with great difficulty, "that I would not
try even to meet her; but that I have loved her, before God, as well as
any man ever loved a woman." He asked the reporter to feel inside his
uniform for the woman's picture. "It is Miss Kellogg," he added, just
before he died. "You--don't think that she will be offended if I send
her this message--now--do you?"
He asked the correspondent to draw his sabre and cut off a lock of hair
to send to me, and the reporter wrote down the message on the only
scraps of paper at his disposal--torn bits scribbled over with reports
of the enemy's movements, and the names of other dead soldiers whose
people must be notified when the battle was over. And then the
soldier--my soldier--died; and the correspondent left him the picture
and came away.
The scribbled message and the lock of hair he put into my hands, saying:
"He was very much worried lest you would think him presumptuous. I told
him that I was sure you would not."
I was weeping as he spoke, and so he left me.