Part 29 (1/2)

Another thing that I wish young would-be artists would remember is that, if it is worth while to sing the music of a song, it is equally worth while to sing the words, and that you cannot sing the words really, unless you are singing their meaning. Do I make myself understood, I wonder? Once a girl with a sweetly pretty voice sang to me Nevin's _Mighty Lak a Rose_, the little negro song which Madame Nordica gave so charmingly. When the girl had finished, I said:

”My dear, have you read those words?”

She looked at me blankly. I know she thought I was crazy.

”Because,” I proceeded, ”if you read the poetry over before you sing that song again, you'll find that it will help you.”

She had, I presume, ”read” the words or she could not have actually p.r.o.nounced them; but she had not made the slightest attempt to read the spirit of the little song. No picture had come to her of a rosy baby dropping asleep and of a loving mammy crooning over him. She had not read the _feeling_ of the song, even if she had memorised the syllables.

Girls hate to work. They, even more than boys, want a short cut to efficiency and success. Labour and effort are cruel words to them. They want the glamour and the fun all at once. What would they say to the n.o.ble and inspiring example of old E. S. Jaffray, a merchant of sixty, whom I once knew, who, at that age, decided to learn Italian in order to read Dante in the original?

The best way--as I have said before and as I insist on saying--for anyone to learn to sing is by imitation and a.s.similation. My friend Franceschetti, a Roman gentleman, poor but of n.o.ble family, has cla.s.ses that I always attend when I am in the Eternal City, and wherein the instruction is most advantageously given. He criticises each student in the presence of the others and, if the others are listening at all intelligently, they must profit. But you must listen, and then listen, and then keep on listening, and finally begin to listen all over again.

You must keep your ear ready, and your mind as well.

Just as Faure, when he heard the bad baritone, said to himself, ”that's my note! Now how does he do it?” so you must hold yourself ready to learn from the most humble as well as from the most unlikely sources.

Never forget that Faure learned from the really poor singer what no good one had been able to teach him. Remember, too, that Patti learned one of her own flexible effects from listening to Faure himself: and that these great artists were not too proud to acknowledge it. I never went to hear Patti, myself, without studying the fine, forward placing of her voice and coming home immediately and trying to imitate it.

Yet, after all one's efforts to help, one can only let the young singers find out for themselves. If we could profit by each other's experience, there would be no need for the doctrine of reincarnation. But I wish--oh, how I wish--that I could save some foolish girls from embarking on the ocean of art as half of them do with neither chart or compa.s.s, nor even a seaworthy boat.

A better metaphor comes to me in my recollection of a famous lighthouse that I once visited. The rocks about were strewn with dead birds--pitiful, little, eager creatures that had broken their wings and beaten out their lives all night against the great revolving light. So the lighthouse of success lures the young, ambitious singers. And so they break their wings against it.

CHAPTER x.x.x

THE WANDERl.u.s.t AND WHERE IT LED ME

That season of 1879 in Paris was certainly a wonderful one; and yet, before it was over, I caught that strange fever of unrest that sends birds migrating and puts the Romany tribes on the move. With me it came as a result of over-fatigue and ill-health; an instinctive craving for the medicine of change. The preceding London season had been exacting and, in Paris, I had not had a moment in which to really rest. Although the days had been filled most pleasantly and interestingly, they had been filled to over-flowing, and I was very, very tired. So, in the grip of the wanderl.u.s.t, we packed our trunks and went to Aix-les-Bains. We had not the slightest idea what we would do next. My mother was not very well, either, and my coloured maid, Eliza, had to be in attendance upon her a good deal of the time, so that I was forced to consider the detail of proper chaperonage. We were in a French settlement and I was a _prima donna_, fair game for gossip and comment. Therefore, I invited a friend of mine, a charming young Englishwoman, down from Paris to visit me. She was very curious about America, I remember. She was always asking me about ”the States” and was especially interested in my accounts of the anti-negro riots. The fact that they had been almost entirely instigated by the Irish Catholics in New York excited her so that she felt obliged to go and talk with a priest in Aix about it. It was she, also, who said something one day that I thought both amusing and significant.

”My dear,” she exclaimed, ”tell me what are 'b.u.t.tered nuts'?”

”Never heard of them,” I replied.

”Oh, yes, my dear Louise, you must have! They are in all American books!”

Of course she meant _b.u.t.ternuts_, as I laughingly explained. A moment later she observed meditatively, ”you know, I never take up an American novel that I don't read some description of food!”

I think what she said was quite true. I have remarked it since. Although I do not consider that we are a greedy nation in practice when it comes to food, we do love reading and hearing about good things to eat.

Presently, as my mother felt better and had no real need of me, I decided to take a little trip, leaving her at Aix with Eliza. Not quite by myself, of course. I never reached such a degree of emanc.i.p.ation as that. But I asked my English friend to go with me, and one fine day she and I set out in search of whatever entertaining thing might come our way. I had been so held down to routine all my life, my comings and goings had been so ordered and so sensible, that I deeply desired to do a bit of real gypsy wandering without the handicap of a travelling schedule. No travelling is so delightful as this sort. Don Quixote it was, if I remember rightly, who let his horse wander whithersoever he pleased, ”believing that in this consisted the very being of adventures.”

We went first to Geneva and so over the Simplon Pa.s.s into Italy. We dreamed among the lakes, reading guide-books to help us decide on our next stopping-point. So, on and on, until after a while we reached Vienna. Three hours after my arrival there Alfred Fischoff, the Austrian impresario, routed me out.

”Where are you bound for?” he wanted to know.

”Nowhere. That is just the beauty of it!”

”Ah!” he commented understandingly. And then he asked, ”How would you like to sing?”

Even though I was on a pleasure trip the idea allured me, for I always like to sing.

”Sing where?” I questioned.