Part 32 (1/2)
Later, that same year, I went South again on another concert tour. All through the State of Mississippi there was a strange, horrible flavour to the food, I recall, and, so all-pervading was this flavour that finally I could hardly eat anything. The contralto and I were talking about it one day on the train and saying how glad we should be to get away from it. There being no parlour-cars, we were in an ordinary coach, and a woman who sat in front of me and overheard us, turned around and said:
”_I_ know what you mean! _I_ can tell you what it is. It's cotton seed.
Everything tastes of cotton seed in this country. They feed their cows on it, and their chickens. _Everything_ tastes of it; eggs, b.u.t.ter, biscuits, milk!”
This was true. The only thing, it seems, that could not be raised on cotton seed was fruit; and unfortunately it was not a fruit season when I was there.
The recollection of this trip necessitates my saying a little something of Southern hospitality. I was not satisfied with any of the arrangements that had been made for me. I had also taken a severe cold, and, when we reached Charlottesville, where we were to give a concert, I said I would not go on. This brought matters to a climax. I simply would not and could not sing in the condition I was; and declared I would not be subjected to any such treatment at the insistence of the management.
The end of it was that I took my maid and started for New York.
The trip at first promised to be a very uncomfortable one. Travelling accommodations were poor; food was difficult to obtain, and I was nearly ill. At one point, where the opening of a new bridge had just taken place, we stopped, and I noticed a private car attached to our train, which I coveted. Imagine my grat.i.tude and pleasure, therefore, when the porter presently came to me and said courteously that ”Colonel Cawyter”
sent his compliments and invited me into his private car. I accepted, of course. But this was not all. As I was making inquiries about train connections and facilities for food, of one of the gentlemen in the car, he realised what was before me, and said that I could go to his home where his wife would care for me. I protested, but he insisted and gave me his card. When we reached the station, I took a carriage and drove to the house, where I was received very courteously. It was a simple household of a mother, grandmother, and children, and they had already lunched when I got there. But they piled on more coal, and in a very short time made me a lunch that was simply delicious--all so easily, simply, and naturally, in spite of the haphazard fas.h.i.+on in which they seemed to live, as to quite win my admiration. And this incident of Southern hospitality enabled me to proceed on my way nourished and restored.
Another incident that I recall was of a similar nature in its fundamental kindness. I had no money with which to pay for my berth, and was asking the conductor if there was anyone who would cash a check for me, when a perfect stranger offered me the amount I needed. At first I refused, but finally consented to accept the loan in the same spirit in which it had been offered.
On the reorganised version of this trip we went down into Texas, giving concerts in Waco, Dallas, Cheyenne, San Antonio, and Galveston, among other places. This was before the wonderful railroad had been built that runs for miles through the water; and before the tidal wave that wiped the old Galveston out of existence. At Cheyenne, I remember, we had to ford a river to keep our engagement. At Waco a negro was found under the bed of one of the company; a bridge was burning; and a _posse_ of men, with bloodhounds, was starting out to track the incendiaries. I remember speaking there with a negro woman who had a white child in her charge.
The child was busily chewing gum and the woman told me that often the child would put her hand on her jaw saying, ”Oh, I'm _so_ tired!” But she could not be induced to stop chewing! At Dallas we sang in a hall that had a tin roof, and, during the concert, a terrific thunderstorm came on, so that I had to stop singing. This is the only time, I believe, that the elements ever succeeded in drowning me out. I never before had seen adobe houses, and I found San Antonio very interesting, and drove as far as I could along the road of the old Spanish Missions that maintain the traditions and aspects of the Spanish in the New World. The Southern theatres are the dirtiest places that can be imagined; and I recall eating opossum that was served to us with great pride by my waiter.
From this time on I did not contemplate any long engagements. I did not care for them, although I sometimes went to places to sing--and to collect pewter!
I never formally retired from public life, but quietly stopped when it seemed to me the time had come. It was a Kansas City newspaper reporter who incidentally brought home to me the fact that I was no longer very young. I had a few grey hairs, and, after an interview granted to this representative of the press--a woman, by the way--I found, on reading the interview in print the next day, that my grey hairs had been mentioned.
”They'll find that my voice is getting grey next,” I said to myself.
I really wanted to stop before everybody would be saying, ”You ought to have heard her sing ten years ago!”
[Ill.u.s.tration: =Carl Strakosch=
From a photograph by H. W. Barnett]
The last time I saw Patti I said to her:
”Adelina, have you got through singing?”
”Oh, I still sing for _mes pauvres_ in London,” she replied; but she didn't explain who were her poor.
On my last western concert tour I sang at Oshkosh. A special train of three cars on the Central brought down a large delegation for the occasion from Fond du Lac, Ripon, Neenah and Menasha, Appleton and other neighbouring towns. The audience was in the best of humour and a particularly sympathetic one. At the close of the concert I remarked that it was one of the finest audiences I ever sang to. And I added, by way of pleasantry, that, having sung at Oshkosh, I was now indeed ready to leave the stage!
But there were even more serious reasons that influenced me in my decision, one of which was that my mother had for some time past been in a poor state of health. More than once, when I went to the theatre, I had the feeling that she might not be alive when I returned home; and this was a nervous strain to me that, combined with a severe attack of bronchitis, brought about a physical condition which might have had seriously lasting results if I had not taken care of myself in time.
It was not easy to stop. When each autumn came around, it was very difficult not to go back to the public. I had an empty feeling. There is no sensation in the world like singing to an audience and knowing that you have it with you. I would not change my experience for that of any crowned head. The singer and the actor have, at least, the advantage over all other artists of a personal recognition of their success; although, of course, the painter and writer live in their work while the singer and the actor become only traditions. But such traditions! On the subject of the actor's traditions Edwin Booth has written:
In the main, tradition to the actor is as true as that which the sculptor perceives in Angelo, the painter in Raphael, and the musician in Beethoven.... Tradition, if it be traced through pure channels and to the fountainhead, leads one as near to Nature as can be followed by her servant, Art. Whatever Quinn, Barton Booth, Garrick, and Cooke gave to stagecraft, or as we now term it, ”business,” they received from their predecessors; from Betterton and perhaps from Shakespeare himself, who, though not distinguished as an actor, well knew what acting should be; and what they inherited in this way they bequeathed in turn to their art and we should not despise it. Kean knew without seeing Cooke, who in turn knew from Macklin, and so back to Betterton, just what to do and how to do it. Their great Mother Nature, who reiterates her teachings and preserves her monotone in motion, form, and sound, taught them. There must be some similitude in all things that are True!
The traditions of singing are not what they used to be, however, for the new school of opera does not require great finish, although it does demand greater dramatic art. It used to be that Tetrazzinis could make successes through coloratura singing alone; but to-day coloratura singing has no great hold on the public after the novelty has worn off.
But it does very well in combination with heavier music, as in Mozart's _Magic Flute_ or _The Huguenots_, and so modern singers have to be both coloraturists and dramaticists. _A propos_ of singing and methods, I append a newspaper interview that a reporter had with me in Paris, 1887.
He had been shown a new dinner dress of white _moire_ with ivy leaves woven into the tissue, and writes:
[Ill.u.s.tration: =Letter from Edwin Booth to Clara Louise Kellogg=]
I examined the rustling treasure critically and decided it was a complete success. The train was long, the stuff rich, the taste perfect, and yet--the great essential was wanting. I could not but reflect on the transformation which would come over that regal robe were it once hung on the shapely shoulders of the famous _prima donna_.