AMATEURS--AND OTHERS
In the seventies New York was interesting musically, chiefly because of
its amateurs. This sounds something like a paradox, but at that time New
York had a collection of musical amateurs who were almost as highly
cultivated as professionals. It was a set that was extremely interesting
and quite unique; and which bridged in a wonderful way the traditional
gulf between art and society.
Those of us who were fortunate enough to know New York then look about
us with wonder and amazement now. It seems, with our standards of an
earlier generation, as if there were no true social life to-day, just as
there are left no great social leaders. As for music--but perhaps it
behooves a retired _prima donna_ to be discreet in making comparisons.
Mrs. Peter Ronalds; Mrs. Samuel Barlow; her daughter Elsie, who became
Mrs. Stephen Henry Olin; May Callender; Minnie Parker--the granddaughter
of Mrs. Hill and later the wife of M. de Neufville;--these and many
others were the amateurs who combined music and society in a manner
worthy of the great French hostesses and originators of _salons_. Mrs.
Barlow was in advance of everybody in patronising music. She was
cultivated and artistic, had travelled a great deal abroad, and had
acquired a great many charming foreign graces in addition to her own
good American brains and breeding, and her fine natural social tact.
When I returned to New York after a sojourn on the other side, she came
to see me one day, and said:
"Louise, you've been away so much you don't know what our amateurs are
doing. I want you to come to my house to-night and hear them sing."
Like all professionals, I was a bit inclined to turn up my nose at the
very word "amateur," but of course I went to Mrs. Barlow's that evening,
and I have rarely spent a more enjoyable three hours. Elsie Barlow sang
delightfully. She had a limited voice, but an unusual musical
intelligence; I have seldom heard a public singer give a piece of music
a more delicate and discriminating interpretation. Then Miss May
Callender sang "Nobile Signor" from the _Huguenots_, and astonished me
with her artistic rendering of that _aria_. Miss Callender could have
easily been an opera singer, and a distinguished one, if she had so
chosen. Eugene Oudin, a Southern baritone, also sang with charming
effect. Minnie Parker, an eminent connoisseur in music, had her turn.
She sang "Bel Raggio" from _Semiramide_ with fine execution and all the
Rossini traditions. And I must not forget to mention Fanny Reed, Mrs.
Paran Stevens's sister, who sang very agreeably an _aria_ from _Il
Barbiere_. Altogether it was a most startling and illuminating evening,
and I was proud of my country and of a society that could produce such
amateurs.
Mrs. Peter Ronalds was another charming singer of that group; as was,
also, Mrs. Moulton, who was Lillie Greenough before her marriage. Both
had delightful and well cultivated voices. Mrs. Moulton had studied
abroad, but for the most part the amateurs of that day were purely
American products.
I often visited Mrs. Barlow at her country place at Glen Cove, L. I. She
was the most tactful of hostesses, and in her house there was no fuss or
formality, nothing but kind geniality and courtesy. She was the first
hostess in the United States to ask her women guests to bring their
maids; and she never once has asked me to sing when I was there. I did
sing, of course, but she was too well-bred to let me feel under the
slightest obligation. American hostesses are certainly sometimes very
odd in this connection. I have mentioned Fanny Reed and Mrs. Stevens in
Boston, and the time I had to play "Tommy Tucker" and sing for my
supper; and I am now reminded of another occasion even more
unpardonable, one that made me indirectly quite a bit of trouble.
Once upon a time when I was visiting in Chicago, and was being made much
of as an American _prima donna_ freshly arrived from European triumphs,
some old friends of my father gave me a reception. I had been for nearly
fourteen months abroad, and had come back with the associations and
manners of the best people of the older countries: and this I
particularly mention to suggest what a shock my treatment was to me.
On the day of the reception I had one of my worst sick headaches. I did
not want to go, naturally, but the husband of the woman giving the
reception called for me and begged that I would show myself there, if
only for a few moments. My mother also urged me to make an effort and
go. I made it--and went. In view of what afterwards occurred, I want to
say that my costume was a black velvet gown created by Worth, with a
heavy, long, handsome coat and a black velvet hat. When I reached the
house I was so ill that I could not stand at the door with my hostess
to receive the guests, but remained seated, hoping that I would not
groan aloud with the throbbing of my head.
The ladies began arriving, and nearly every one of them was in full
evening dress--_in the afternoon_! Mrs. Marshall Field, I remember, came
in an elaborate point lace shawl, and no hat.
I had not been there half an hour before I was asked to sing! I had
brought no music, there was no accompanist, and I was so dizzy that I
could hardly see the keys of the piano, yet, as the request was not
altogether the fault of my hostess, I did my best, playing some sort of
an accompaniment and singing something--very badly, I imagine. Then I
went home and to bed.
That episode was served up to me for eight years. I never went to
Chicago without reading some reference to it in the newspapers, and my
friends have told me that years later it was still discussed with
bitterness. It was stated that I was "ungracious," "rude," and that I
had "insulted the guests by my plain street attire" (shade of the great
Worth!); that I only sang once and then with no attempt to do my best;
that I did not eat the elaborate refreshments; did not rise from my
chair when people were presented to me; and left the house inside an
hour, although the reception was given for me. The bitterest attack was
an article printed in one of the morning papers, an article written by a
woman who had been among the guests. I never answered that or any other
of the attacks because the host and hostess were old friends and felt
very badly about the affair; but I have a memory of Chicago that will go
with me to the grave. It was very different with the New York hostesses
of whom Mrs. Barlow, Mrs. Ronalds, and Mrs. Gilder were the
representatives. By them a singer was treated as a little more, not
less, than an ordinary human being!
O you unfortunate people of a newer day who have not the memory of that
enchanting meeting-ground in East Fifteenth Street:--the delightful
Gilder studio, the rebuilding of which from a carriage house into a
studio-home was about the first piece of architectural work done by
Stanford White. There was one big, beautiful room, drawing-room and
sitting-room combined, with a fine fireplace in it. Many a time have I
done some scene from an opera there, in the firelight, to a sympathetic
few. Everybody went to the Richard Watson Gilders'--at least, everybody
who was worth while. They were in New York already the power that they
remained for so many years. Some pedantic enthusiast once said of them
that, "The Gilders were empowered by divine right to put the _cachet_ of
recognition upon distinction."
Miss Jeannette Gilder came into my life as long ago as 1869. I was
singing in a concert in Newark and she was in the wings, listening to my
first song. My mother and my maid were near her and, when I came off the
stage, as we were trying to find a certain song for an _encore_, the
pile of music fell at her feet. Promptly the tall young stranger said:
"Please let me hold them for you."
Her whole personality expressed a species of beaming admiration. I
looked at her critically; and from this small service began our
friendship.
The Gilders were then living in Newark. The father, who was a Chaplain
in the 40th New York Volunteers, died during the Civil War. His sons,
Richard Watson Gilder and William H. Gilder, were also soldiers in the
Civil War. The Richard Watson Gilders were married in 1874. Mrs. Gilder
was Miss Helena de Kay, granddaughter of Joseph Rodman Drake, who was
the author of _The Culprit Fay_.
I met many interesting people at the Fifteenth Street studio. Helen Hunt
Jackson, I remember well. She was then Mrs. Hunt, long before she had
married Mr. Jackson or had written _Ramona_. She was a most pleasing
personality, just stout enough to be genuinely genial. And Mrs. Frances
Hodgson Burnett I first met there, about the time her _Lass o'Lowrie's_
appeared, a story we all thought most impressive. George Cable was
discovered by the Gilders, like so many other literary lights, and he
and I used to sing Creole melodies before their big fireplace. His voice
was queer and light, without colour, but correct and well in tune. He
had only one bit of colour in him and that--the poetry of his nature--he
gave freely and exquisitely in his tales of Creole life. At a much later
time I saw something of the old French Quarter of New Orleans of which
he wrote, the whole spirit of which was so lovely. I also first met John
Alexander at the Gilders' after he came back from Paris; and John La
Farge, who brought there with him Okakura, the Japanese art connoisseur.
That was when I first met Okakura; and on the same occasion he was
introduced to Modjeska, she and I being the first stage people he had
ever met socially.
Later, in '79-'80, I saw a good deal of the Gilders in Paris, where they
had a studio in the Quartier Latin. At that time, Mr. Gilder arranged
for Millet's autobiography which first made him widely known in America;
and in their Paris studio I met Sargent and Bastien Le Page and many
other notables. I recall how becomingly Rodman Gilder--then three or
four years old--was always dressed, in "Little Lord Fauntleroy" fashion
long before the days of his young lordship. It was at this same period
that I went to Fontainebleau to study the Barbizon School and met the
son of Millet, who was trying to paint and never succeeded.
Speaking of the Gilders reminds me, albeit indirectly, of Helena
Modjeska, whom I first saw in Sacramento, playing _Adrienne Lecouvreur_.
I was simply enchanted and thought I had never seen such delicate and
yet such forcible acting. One reason why I was so greatly impressed was
that I had acquired the foreign standard of acting, and had been much
disturbed when I came home to find such lack of elegance and ease upon
the stage. She had the foreign manner--the grace and, at the same time,
the authority of the great French and German players; and it seemed to
me that she ought to be heard by the big critics. So I wrote home to
Jeannette Gilder in New York an enthusiastic account of this actress who
was being wasted on the Sacramento Valley. The public-spirited efforts
of the Gilders in promoting anything artistic was so well and so long
known that it is almost unnecessary to add that they interested
themselves in the Polish artist and secured for her an opportunity to
play in the East. She came, saw, and conquered; and I shall always feel,
therefore, that I was definitely instrumental in launching Modjeska in
theatrical New York.
"Didn't I tell you so?" I said to Jeannette Gilder. There was always
something very odd to me about Helena Modjeska. I never liked her
personally half as much as I did as an actress. But she certainly was a
wonderful actress. I once met John McCullough and talked with him about
Modjeska, and he told me that she first acted in Polish to his
English--Ophelia to his Hamlet--out West somewhere, I think it was in
San Francisco. He said that he had been the first to urge her to learn
English, and he was most enthusiastic about the wonderful effect she
created even at that early time. As I had seen her in Sacramento during,
approximately, the same period, I could discuss her with him
sympathetically and intelligently.
Although I never personally liked Helena Modjeska, I have liked as well
as known many stage folk and have had, first and last, many real friends
among them. It was my good fortune to know the elder Salvini in America.
He happened to be stopping at the same hotel. He looked like a
successful farmer; a very plain man,--very. He told me, among other
interesting things, that no matter how small his part happened to be, he
always played each succeeding act in a stronger colour, maintaining a
steady _crescendo_, so that the last impression of all was the climax. I
remember him in Othello, particularly his delicate and lovely _silent_
acting. When Desdemona came in and told the court how he had won her,
Salvini only looked at her and spoke but the one word: "Desdemona!"--but
the way he said it "made the tears rise in your heart and gather to your
eyes."
Irving and Terry, always among my close friends, I first met in London,
at the McHenrys' house in Holland Park. At that time the McHenrys'
Sunday night dinners were an institution. Later, when they came to
America, I saw a great deal of them; and I remember Ellen Terry saying
once, after a luncheon given by me at Delmonico's, "What a splendid
woman Jeannette Gilder is! You know--" and she gave me a rueful
glance--"I am _always_ wrong about men,--but seldom about women!"
Dear Ellen Terry! She has always been the freshest, the most wholesome,
and the most spontaneous personality on the stage: a sweet and candid
woman, with a sound, warm heart and a great genius. At Lady Macmillan's
a number of people, most of them literary, were discussing that deadly
worthy and respectable actress Madge Robertson--Mrs. Kendall. The morals
of stage people was the subject, and Mrs. Kendall was cited as an
example of propriety. One of the women present spoke up from her corner:
"Well," said she, "all I can say is that if I were giving a party for
young girls I would steer very clear of Mrs. Kendall and ask Miss Terry
instead. The Kendall lady does nothing but tell objectionable stories
that lead to the glorification of her own purity, but you will never in
a million years hear an indelicate word from the lips of Ellen Terry!"
The only complaint Henry Irving had to make against New York was that he
"had no one to play with." He insisted, and quite justly, too, that New
York had no leisure class: that cultivated Bohemia, the playground for
people of intellectual tastes and varied interests, did not exist in New
York. He used to say that after the theatre, and after supper, he could
not find anybody at his club who would discuss with him either modern
drama or the old dramatic traditions; or give him any exchange of ideas
or intelligent comradeship.
[Illustration: =Ellen Terry=
From a photograph by Sarony]
He and I had many delightful talks, and I wish now that I had made notes
of the things he told me about stagecraft. He had a great deal to say
about stage lighting, a subject he was for ever studying and about which
he was always experimenting. It was his idea to do away with shadows
upon the stage, and he finally accomplished his effect by lighting the
wings very brilliantly. Until his radical reforms in this direction
the theatres always used to be full of grotesque masses of light and
shade. To-day the art of lighting may be said to have reached
perfection.
One of the most interesting things about Henry Irving was the way in
which he made use of the smallest trifles that might aid him in getting
his effects. He knew perfectly his own limitations, and was always
seeking to compensate for them. For example, he was utterly lacking in
any musical sense; like Dr. Johnson, he did not even possess an
appreciation of sweet sounds, and did not care to go to either concerts
or operas. But he knew how important music was in the theatre, and he
knew instinctively--with that extraordinary stage-sense of his--what
would appeal to an audience, even if it did not appeal to him. So, if he
went anywhere and heard a melody or sequence of chords that he thought
might fit in somewhere, he had it noted down at once, and collected bits
of music in this way wherever he went. Sometime, he felt, the need for
that particular musical phrase would arrive in some production he was
putting on, and he would be ready with it. That was a wonderful thing
about Irving--he was always prepared.
Speaking of Irving and his statement about the lack of a cultivated
leisure class in New York, reminds me of the Vanderbilts, who were
shining examples of this very lack, for they were immensely wealthy and
yet did not half understand, at that time, the possibilities of wealth.
William H. Vanderbilt was always my very good friend. His father,
Cornelius, the founder of the family, used to say of him that "Bill
hadn't sense enough to make money himself--he had to have it left to
him!" The old man was wont to add, "Bill's no good anyway!" The
Vanderbilts were plain people in those days, but had the kindest hearts.
"Bill" took a course in practical railroading, filling the position of
conductor on the Hudson River Railroad, from which "job" he had just
been promoted when I first knew him. He did turn out to be some "good"
in spite of his father's pessimistic predictions.
My mother and I spent many summers at "Clarehurst," my country home at
Cold Spring on the Hudson. The Vanderbilts' railroad, the New York
Central, ran through Cold Spring, so that my Christmas present from
William H. Vanderbilt each year was an annual pass. He began sending it
to me alone, and then included my mother, until it became a regular
institution. We saw something of Mr. and Mrs. Vanderbilt at Saratoga
also, which was then a fashionable resort, before Newport supplanted it
with a higher standard of formality and extravagance. I remember I once
started to ask William H. Vanderbilt's advice about investing some
money.
"You may know of some good security--" I began.
"I don't! I don't!" he exclaimed with heat.
Then he shook his finger at me impressively, saying:
"Let me tell you something that my father always said, and don't you
ever forget it. He said that 'it takes a smart man to make money, but a
_damned sight smarter one to keep it_!'"
My place at Cold Spring was where I went to rest between seasons, a
lovely place with the wind off the Hudson River, and gorgeous oak trees
all about. When the acorns dropped on the tin roof of the veranda in the
dead of night they made an alarming noise like tiny ghostly footsteps.
One day when I was off on an herb-hunting expedition, some highwaymen
tried to stop my carriage, and that was the beginning of troublous times
at Cold Spring. It developed that a band of robbers was operating in our
neighbourhood, with headquarters in a cave on Storm King Mountain, just
opposite us. They made a specialty of robbing trains, and were led by a
small man with such little feet that his footprints were easily enough
traced;--traced, but not easily caught up with! He never was caught, I
believe. But he, or his followers, skulked about our place; and we were
alarmed enough to provide ourselves with pistols. That was when I
learned to shoot, and I used to have shooting parties for target
practice. My father would prowl about after dark, firing off his pistol
whenever he heard a suspicious sound, so that, for a time, what with
acorns and pistols, the nights were somewhat disturbed.
During the summers I drove all over the country and had great fun
stopping my pony--he was a dear pony, too,--and rambling about picking
flowers. I never passed a spring without stopping to drink from it. I've
always had a passion for woods and brooks; and was the enterprising one
of the family when it came to exploring new roads. Of the beaten track I
can stand only just so much; then my spirit rises in rebellion. I love a
cowpath.
I used to be an adept, too, at finding flag-root, which was "so good to
put in your handkerchief to take to church"! (We carried our
handkerchiefs in our hands in those days.) Or dill, or fresh fennel, "to
chew through the long service"! Now the dill flavour is called caraway
seed; but it isn't the same, or doesn't seem so. And there was fresh,
sweet, black birch! Could anything be more delicious than the taste of
black birch? The present generation, with its tea-rooms and soda-water
fountains, does not know the refreshment of those delicacies prepared by
Nature herself. I feel sure that John Burroughs appreciates black birch,
being, as he is, one of the survivals of the fittest!