A SINGER—AND HER MOTHER
Miss Euterpe Diatone is a concert-singer of average talent and popularity, if you will take my word for it; but if you prefer to accept her own version of the matter, you will learn that her genius excites the jealousy of the entire musical profession, also that if the public could only get their rights and the complete satisfaction of their musical desires, they would never hear any woman sing other than Miss Euterpe Diatone. But the concert-agents and the entrepreneurs are, as she will tell you, so venal and obtuse, and so easily influenced by the jealousy of the other vocalists, who cotton to them, and bribe them, maybe—who knows? Anyhow, Miss Diatone can tell you of numbers of instances where other singers, of less ability and fame than herself, have had engagements which ought to have been offered to her; and she knows for a fact that the concert-givers cut their own throats by this policy, for friends of her own actually stayed away from those concerts, only because she was not engaged to sing.
Of course all this is conveyed in a tone of becoming modesty, and if you want confirmation of these blatant facts, you have but to ask Miss Diatone’s mother, Madame Brown-Smith. Though, if you value my advice in any particular, you will be content with the daughter’s statement, for Madame Brown-Smith has always much to say on the subject of her daughter; and beautiful as motherly devotion undoubtedly is, the professional enthusiasm of the vocalist’s mother is apt to become a little oppressive. She is a veritable touter, regarding her daughter’s voice as the commercial traveller looks upon the article of his trade, and “pushing” it accordingly. As you listen to her depreciating every vocalist in turn, and telling you how Euterpe was encored so many times at such a concert, whereas every other performer “finished without a hand,” and how Euterpe was paid so much by such a publisher for singing a certain song, which is really such rubbish you have wondered how any one could have had the impertinence even to print it, you begin almost to wonder whether music is a “divine art” after all, and not a trade on a par with the selling of patent pills, soap, or grey shirtings. Truly the modern singer—and her mother—are terrible disillusioners.
When we think of all that music is, and all it means, its magic influence, its mighty power, and when we reflect that, through its medium, as the rhythmic expression of all unspoken emotion, the singer or the player may soothe a single heart or move a multitude, awaken a soul to love or rouse a nation to patriotism, what can we say of the musician who, with this splendid gift of song, merely turns it to sordid account? And yet singers must live. That is the difficulty, for in these days art must suffer that artists may prosper.
Miss Diatone is not one to starve for the sake of art, nor is her mother one to let her, for Madame Brown-Smith has something personal to say in the matter. Did she not pay for her daughter’s musical education out of the slender means her husband left her, and is it not fair that she should now enjoy the profits? But if her daughter studied the interests of art before popularity, the profits would be slight indeed. The fact is, it pays to sing commonplace songs, and the “royalty system” therefore provides an important portion of Miss Diatone’s income. Moreover, Miss Diatone urges that she must sing what the public want to hear, and when she sings songs of the pretty-pretty order now in vogue, she is vociferously encored. Moreover, she receives a fee from the publishers of the song as well as from the concert-giver, whereas, if she were to sing any really artistic song, which, of course, she will pretend she would much prefer doing, her audience would, she believes, be sure to find it “above their heads” and would applaud her faintly, and the publishers would not find it worth while to give her a “royalty.” The encore and the “royalty” seem indeed to be the goals of the modern concert-singers’ ambition, and for these they will sell their artistic souls.
I do not know how it is, but as soon as the commercial aspect of the musical profession takes hold on the artist’s life, it seems to narrow the soul, to prevent that true camaraderie which exists amongst all other artists than musicians, and to promote self-serving and jealousy. The struggle for existence in the musical world would too often appear to be opposed to magnanimity of mind and generosity of soul, for those who exhibit these qualities in their professional lives and in their art-work, are not, as a rule, among the prosperous. It is a small world, not the world of song, mark you, but the world of professional singers, and it is full of the littleness of small communities. Of course there are exceptions, but they only prove the rule.
Miss Diatone lives in the midst of this narrow world, with its warped personal interests and its jealousies, so opposed to the great world of art, which concerns itself with all humanity, but somehow she does not appear to realise that it is so. It has not yet been borne in upon her that the professionally musical community is not the centre of the universe, and that she is not the actual axis on which it turns. If such a knowledge were likely to come to her from any quarter, her mother would be in time to prevent it, for Madame Brown-Smith is her daughter’s Barnum. By the way, why she is called “Madame” Brown-Smith is a mystery, unless she considers that her daughter’s status in the musical profession confers that distinction upon her as a right. There is often a good deal of mystification among musical artists on the subject of these prefixes. They would seem to regard the use of “Madame” as a sort of artistic degree, and many vocalists’ mothers, adopting it in place of plain “Mrs.,” appear to hold the title in trust for their daughters till they become too old to be styled “Miss” any longer.
Without any disrespect to mothers, for as a class I reverence them, I cannot help thinking how much pleasanter many vocalists I wot of would be if they had no mothers, or, rather, if they had not the mothers Providence has provided them withal. Now, Miss Euterpe Diatone would be quite a nice, companionable girl if it were not for that mother of hers. Of course, Diatone is only a pseudonym, adopted for professional purposes, but as Euterpe Brown-Smith—when her father was alive, and before her mother discovered that she was worth working as a means of income—she was unaffected, and quite popular among her school-friends, though somewhat inclining to personal vanity. Then she began to develop a singing voice of a quality beyond anything known in their social circle—Mr. Brown-Smith, by the way, travelled in something or other, and they lived at Peckham Rye—and the fullest musical resources of the local High School were called into requisition for the cultivation of her voice. Then she was sent to one of the academies of music, and became quite popular in the parlours of Peckham Rye and its vicinity. She was greatly in demand for penny readings, choral meetings, and social gatherings of all kinds; and, of course, with her went her mother, who shone with her accomplished daughter’s reflected light, posed as the mother of the local prima donna, and made social capital out of the position.
Now Mrs. Brown-Smith, as she was then called, always had an eye to business, and, when her husband died, she bethought her of Euterpe’s singing powers for support; so, by fanning her daughter’s vanity in every particular, she encouraged her to study hard and win scholarships, until at the students’ concert she attracted the notice of the professors, the press, and the concert-agents, and thereupon obtained her first professional engagement. She was a success with the public, and gradually her engagements became more frequent, and of a better and more lucrative class, until her name has now become familiar in concert-halls and drawing-rooms.
And now Miss Euterpe Diatone and her mother reside in a flat in the West-end, and give pleasant “afternoon teas,” and are seen in many places honoured of Society. Miss Diatone is really a bright and engaging girl in her way, and if she wears her profession perpetually on her sleeve, so to speak, perhaps she finds it consistent with her advancement. But though Miss Diatone be welcome in many drawing-rooms, both socially and professionally, the same can hardly always be said of her mother; yet poor Euterpe is in the same case with Mary who had a little lamb, for wherever Miss Diatone goes her mother is sure to go.
If they happen to be on a visit at a country house, and a driving party is being made up for the young folk, while the elderly ladies are to stay at home, Madame Brown-Smith disconcerts everybody by asking where she is to sit, and, of course, she takes the very seat which had been set apart for the belle of the party. Then Miss Diatone has quietly to apologise for “poor Ma, who does so love the country,” the while she is boiling with indignation that her mother has probably spoiled her chance of a future invitation. Yes, her mother is certainly a trial; but if Euterpe attempted to protest that people may invite a young singer without necessarily wanting her mother, Madame Brown-Smith would only accuse her of ingratitude and want of feeling. What then can she do? But they have frequent quarrels, owing to Miss Diatone’s egotism and her mother’s aggressiveness, which come into conflict.
The subject of young men is one perhaps most fruitful of quarrels. Euterpe Diatone, though she finds much pleasure and gratification in the applause of the public, and much profit to boot, is essentially a woman, and her vanity cries also for the satisfaction of personal conquest. Consequently there is no over-looking the fact that she is an unconscionable flirt of a kind that is very popular with men, while at the same time she always keeps an eye open to the chances of matrimony, and to the advancement of her popularity. She has a very taking manner with both men and women, but with men she will assume a sauciness that leads them to suppose they may be familiar. Then she will at once stand on her dignity, and command their personal respect, after which she will relapse again, and completely puzzle them.
By this means she keeps her admirers at beck and call, and they all agree that she is “as clever as she knows how”—what odious expressions they do use nowadays!—but that “you have to mind your P’s and Q’s with her,” for she puts out her bristles of propriety at the least alarm. Still they do not propose marriage, and that is a subject of perennial annoyance to her. But perhaps Madame Brown-Smith may be in some measure accountable for this lapse of connubial courtesy on the part of Miss Diatone’s admirers. To tell the truth, she has an unmistakable way of intimating that any one who married Euterpe would find to his cost that mother and daughter were inseparable; though I cannot help thinking, from my personal observation of the young vocalist herself, that after marriage she would take an entirely different view of the matter from her mother. In the meanwhile, she realises with undisguised irritation that this mother of hers is spoiling all her matrimonial chances in her enthusiastic endeavours to further her daughter’s professional interests, and perhaps, in a greater degree, her own comforts.
It must not be supposed that Euterpe is not fond of her mother, or that she does not pay her sufficient attention; but she has acquired a habit of egotism, perhaps from the practice of constantly standing alone upon the platform, and facing the public on her own merits. When, therefore, Madame Brown-Smith’s idea of her own importance increases with her daughter’s professional and social status, and she monopolises the conversation with “my daughter” this, and “my daughter” that, and “my daughter” the other, Euterpe feels that she could create so much more favourable an impression concerning her own doings with the personal persuasion of her “I.” As the Americans would say, she wants “to run her own show.” And what concert-agent, what composer, what publisher, or even what conscientious critic, would not be more inclined to listen favourably to the autobiographical details of a fair and winning egotist, with all her charm of personality, than to the obvious advertising and touting of the young artist’s aggressive mother? If Miss Euterpe Diatone makes herself amiable to us with an eye to business—knowing us to be in a position to assist her professionally, we amiably fall in with her views because, though one eye be to business, the other is to ourselves, and both are pretty. We are only men, after all. But with the mother, it is quite another thing. We respect her maternal solicitude and her business assiduity, but she is a bore—brutal though it sound to say so. Moreover, without her for show-woman I verily believe Euterpe Diatone would have been a truer artist and a nicer woman.