Part 26 (1/2)
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 pa.s.s. He began sending it to me alone, and then included my mother, until it became a regular inst.i.tution. We saw something of Mr. and Mrs. Vanderbilt at Saratoga also, which was then a fas.h.i.+onable 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 _d.a.m.ned 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 pa.s.sed a spring without stopping to drink from it. I've always had a pa.s.sion 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!
CHAPTER XXVII
”THE THREE GRACES”
In 1877, I embarked upon a venture that was destined, in spite of much success, to be one of the most unpleasant experiences of my professional career. Max Strakosch and Colonel Mapleson, the younger--Henry Mapleson--organised a Triple-Star Tour all over America, the three being Marie Roze, Annie Louise Cary, and Clara Louise Kellogg. The press called us ”The Three Graces” and wrote much fulsome nonsense about ”three pure and irreproachable women appearing together upon the operatic stage, etc.” The cla.s.sification was one I did not care for.
Here, after many intervening years, I enter and put on record my protest. At the time it all served as advertising to boom the tour and, as it was most of it arranged for by Mapleson himself, I had to let it go by in dignified silence.
Nor was Henry Mapleson any better than he should have been either, in his personal life or in his business relations, as his wives and I have reason to know. I say ”wives” advisedly, for he had several. Marie Roze was never really married to him but, as he called her Mrs. Mapleson, she ought to be counted among the number. At the time of our ”Three-Star Tour,” she was playing the _role_ of Mapleson's wife and finding it somewhat perilous. She was a mild and gentle woman, very sweet-natured and docile and singularly stupid, frequently incurring her managerial ”husband's” rage by doing things that he thought were impolitic, for he had always to manage every effect. She seldom complained of his treatment but n.o.body could know them without being sorry for her.
Previous to this relation with Mapleson, Marie Roze had married an exceedingly fine man, a young American singer of distinction, who died soon after the marriage. She had two sons, one of whom, Raymond Roze, pa.s.sed himself off as her nephew for years. I believe he is a musical director of position and success in London at the present day. Henry Mapleson did not inherit any of the strong points of his father, Col. J.
M. Mapleson of London, who really did know something about giving opera, although he had his failings and was difficult to deal with. Henry Mapleson always disliked me and, over and over again, he put Marie in a position of seeming antagonism to me; but I never bore malice for she was innocent enough. She had some spirit tucked away in her temperament somewhere, only, when we first knew her, she was too intimidated to let it show. When she was singing _Carmen_ she was the gentlest mannered gypsy that was ever stabbed by a jealous lover--a handsome Carmen but too sweet and good for anything. Carlton was the Escamillo and he said to her quite crossly once at rehearsal,
”You don't make love to me enough! You don't put enough devil into it!”
Marie flared up for a second.
”I can be a devil if I like,” she informed him. But, in spite of this a.s.sertion, she never put any devil into anything she did--on the stage at least.
[Ill.u.s.tration: =Colonel Henry Mapleson=
From a photograph by Downey]
Very few singers ever seem to get really inside Carmen. Some of the modern ones come closer to her; but in my day there was an unwritten law against realism in emotion. In most of the old standard _roles_ it was all right to idealise impulses and to beautify the part generally, but Carmen is too terribly human to profit by such treatment. She cannot be glossed over. One can, if one likes, play _Traviata_ from an elegant point of view, but there is nothing elegant about Merimee's Gypsy.
Neither is there any sentiment. Carmen is purely--or, rather, impurely--elemental, a complete little animal. I used to love the part, though. When I was studying the part, I got hold of Prosper Merimee's novel and read it and considered it until I really understood the girl's nature which, _en pa.s.sant_, I may say is more than the critic of _The New York Tribune_ had done. I doubt if he had ever read Merimee at all, for he said that my rendering of Carmen was too realistic! The same column spoke favourably in later years, of Mme. Calve's performance, so it was undoubtedly a case of _autres temps, autres moeurs_! Carmen was, of course, too low for me. It was written for a low mezzo, and parts of it I could not sing without forcing my lower register. The Habanera went very well by being transposed half a tone higher; but the card-playing scene was another matter. The La Morte _encore_ lies very low and I could not raise it. Luckily the orchestra is quite light there and I could sing reflectively as if I were saying to myself, as I sat on the bales, ”My time is coming!”
[Ill.u.s.tration: Musical notation: Ri-pe-te-ra: l'av-el!....an-cor!
au-cor!..La Morte n-cor!]
In the fortune-telling quartette I arranged with one of the Gypsy girls--Frasquita, I think it was,--to sing my part and let me sing hers, which was very high, and thus relieve me.
A _role_ in which I made my _debut_ while I was with Marie Roze and Gary was Ada. Mapleson was anxious that Roze should have it, but Strakosch gave it to me. One of Mapleson's critics wrote severely about my sitting on a low seat instead of on the steps of the dais during the return of Rhadames, I remember in this connection. But nothing could prevent Ada from being a success and it became one of my happiest _roles_. A year or two later when I sang it in London my success was confirmed. Gary was Amneris in it and ranked next to the Amneris for whom Verdi wrote it, although she rather over-acted the part. I have never seen an Amneris who did not. There is something about the part that goes to the head.