"Here," responded the scrubwoman, sitting up to eye him calmly.

When the young man expressed surprise and incredulity she explained, as she continued to mop the soapy water, that she invariably scrubbed the floor the day she was going to sing. "It keeps me busy," she concluded sententiously.

Think of the force that went into that scrubbing-brush which might have gone into the part of Leonora! But it is not for me to find fault with such a course of action because I followed a very similar one. If I did not exactly scrub floors, I did, somehow, contrive to find other equally adequate ways of dissipating my strength before I sang. Yet here I was, actually taking a holiday, with no chance at all to work even if I wanted to!

Admiral Farragut, who was in the harbour with his flagship the Hartford and several other American battle-ships, was greatly fêted, being just then a great hero of the war. The United States Consul gave a reception for him which he explained in advance was to be "characteristically American." The only noticeable thing about the entertainment seemed to be the quantity and variety of drinkables that were unceasingly served by swift and persuasive waiters. The Continentals must have had a startling impression of American thirst! The Admiral himself, however, was hardly given time to swallow anything at all, people were so anxious to ask him questions and to shake hands.

The director of the railway between Rome and Naples, M. De la Haute, put his private car at our disposal. In the present era of cars equipped with baths and barber shops, libraries and writing rooms, it would seem primitive, but it was quite the last word in the railroad luxury of that period. I was charmed with the Italian scenery as we steamed through it and, above all, with the highly pictorial peasants that we passed. Their clothes, of quaint cut and vivid hues, were exactly like stage costumes.

"Why," I exclaimed excitedly, peering from the car window, "they are all just out of scenes from Fra Diavolo!"

We were, indeed, going through the mountains of the Fra Diavolo country, where the inhabitants lived in continual fear of the bands of brigands that infested the mountains. Zerlina and Fra Diavolo were literally in their midst.

In Rome we dined with Charlotte Cushman. This was, of course, some years before her death and she was not yet ravaged by her tragic illness. She was very full of anecdotes of her friends, the Carlyles, Tennyson, and others, whom she had just left in England. To our little party was added Emma Stebbins, who had been doing famously in sculpture, and, also, Harriet Hosmer, the artist, as well as one or two clever men. It was Carnival Week, and so I had my first glimpse of a true Continental festa. I had never before seen any real Latin merriment. The Anglo-Saxon variety is apt to be heavy, rough, or vulgar. But those fascinating people had the wonderful power of being genuinely and innocently gay. They became like happy children at play. They threw confetti, sang and laughed, and tossed flowers about. It was a veritable lesson in joy to us more sober and commonplace Americans who looked on.

I have never been presented to the present Pope, but I gather from my friends in Rome that his administration is, as usual, a rather complicated affair. The ruling power is Cardinal Rampolla, the Mephisto of the Church, for whom a distinguished Marchesa has a salon and entertains, so that, in this way, he can meet people on neutral ground.

MY mother's diary reads as follows:

"Don't you know why everything on the stage has been going so badly to-night?" they said. "We've a jettatura in front!"

Madame Erminie Rudersdorf, the mother of Richard Mansfield, was in one of the boxes; and she was generally believed to have the Evil Eye. The Italian singers took it very seriously indeed and made horns all through the opera (that is, kept their fingers crossed) to ward off the satanic influence! Madame Rudersdorf was a tall, heavy, and swarthy Russian with ominously brilliant eyes; and one of the most commanding personalities I ever came in contact with. Although she had a dangerously bad temper, I never saw any evidences of it, nor of the jettatura either. She came that night and congratulated me:—and it meant something from her.

To return to my mother's diary after our first performance of Traviata in London:

Indeed, every minute of those spring weeks was occupied and more than occupied. I never was so busy before and never had such a good time. The "season" was a delightful one; and certainly no one had a more varied part in it than I. Thanks to the Dowager Duchess and our friends we went out frequently; and I was singing four and five times a week counting concerts. Private concerts were a great fad that season and I have often sung at two or three different ones in the same evening.

"What do you mean," he demanded, "by taking liberties with the music like that?"

One cannot afford to antagonise a conductor and he was, besides, so irascible a man that I did not care to mention to him that his 'cello had been at fault. He was a most indifferent musician as well as a narrow, obstinate man, although London considered him a very great leader. He only infuriated me the more by remarking indulgently, one night not long after, as if overlooking my various artistic shortcomings: "Well, well,—you're a very pretty woman anyway!" It was his "anyway" that irrevocably settled matters between us. He disliked Nilsson too. He declared both in public and in private that her use of her voice was mere "charlatanry and trickery" and not worthy to be called musical. Nilsson was not, in fact, a good musician; few prime donne are. On one occasion she did actually sing one bar in advance of the accompaniment for ten consecutive measures. This is almost inconceivable, but she did it, and Sir Michael never forgave her.

Gye, of Covent Garden, declared that we were killing the goose that laid the golden egg by putting all our prime donne into one opera. He said that this made it not only impossible for rival houses to draw any audiences, but that it also cut off our own noses. Nobody wanted to go on ordinary nights to hear operas that had only one prima donna in them when they could go on star nights and hear three at once. However, Colonel Mapleson found that the scheme paid and our "triple-cast" performances brought us most sensational houses. Personally, as I have already said, I never liked Mapleson, and I had many causes for resentment in a business way. I remember one battle I had with him and the stage manager about a dress I was to wear in Le Nozze di Figaro. I do not recall what it was they wanted me to wear; but I know that, whatever it was, I would not wear it. I left in the middle of rehearsal, drove home in an excited state of indignation, and seized upon poor Colonel Stebbins, always my steady help in time of trouble. He went, saw, fought, and conquered, after which the rehearsals went on more or less peaceably.

"Surely you engaged that enchanting singer!" I exclaimed.

"Indeed I didn't," he replied.

She went directly to Gye at Covent Garden, who engaged her promptly and, when she appeared two weeks later, she made a sensation. Her name was Sofia Scalchi.

Besides the private concerts of that season there were also plenty of public concerts, a particularly notable one being a Handel Festival at the Crystal Palace on May 1st, when I sang Oh, had I Jubal's Lyre! Everything connected with that occasion was on a large scale. There were seven thousand people in the house, the largest audience by far that I had ever sung to before. The place was so crowded that people hung about the doors trying to get in even after every seat was filled; and not one person left the hall until after I had finished—a remarkable record in its way! Some time later, when I was on my way home to America and wanted to buy some antiques, I wandered into a little, odd Dickens-like shop in Wardour Street. I wanted to have some articles sent on approval to meet me at Liverpool, but hesitated to ask the old man in the shop to take such a risk without knowing me. To my surprise he smiled at me a kindly, wrinkled smile and said, with the prettiest old-fashioned bow:

"Madame, you are welcome to take any liberties you will with my entire stock. I heard you sing 'Jubal's Lyre.' I shall never forget it, nor be able to repay you for the pleasure you gave me!"

I always felt this to be one of my sincerest tributes. Perhaps that is partly why the night of my first Crystal Hall Concert remains so clearly defined in my memory.

I also sang with Alboni. At an Albert Hall concert on my second visit to England a year or two later, I said to her:

"Madame, I cannot tell you how honoured I feel in singing on the same programme with you."

She bowed and smiled. She was a very, very large woman, heavily built, but she carried her size with remarkable dignity. I was considerably amused when she replied:

"Ah, Mademoiselle, I am only a shadow of what I have been!"

My most successful song that season was my old song Beware. It was unusual to see a prima donna play her own accompaniment, which I always did to this song and to most encores. The simple, rather insipid melody was written by Moulton, the first husband of the present Baronne de Hegeman, and it was not long before it was the rage in the sentimental younger set of London. How tired I became of that ridiculous sign-post cover and the "As Sung by Miss Clara Louise Kellogg" staring up at me! And how much more tired of the foolish tune:

THE Royal Private Concerts at Buckingham Palace formed in those days, and I believe still form, the last word in exclusiveness. Many persons who have been presented at court, in company with a great crowd of other social aspirants, never come close enough to the inner circle of royalty to get within even "speaking distance" of these concerts. In them the court etiquette is almost mediæval in its brilliant formality; and yet a certain intimacy prevails which could not be possible in a less carefully chosen gathering. So sacred an institution is the Royal Concert that they have a fixed price—twenty-five guineas for all the solo singers, whatever their customary salaries,—the discrepancies between the greater and the lesser being supposedly filled in with the colossal honour done the artists by being asked to appear.

My mother's entries in her diary at this point are:

Lucca used to warn me not to abuse my upper notes. We knew her as almost a mezzo. She told me, however, that she had once had an exceedingly high voice, and that one of her best parts was Leonora in Trovatore. She had abused her gift; but she always had a delightful quality of voice and put a great deal of personality into her work.

At last, after we had become utterly depressed and out of spirits, there was a little stir and the great doors at the side of the ballroom were thrown open. First of all entered the Silver-Sticks in Waiting, a dozen or so of them, backing in, two by two. All were, of course, distinguished men of title and position; and they were dressed in costumes in which silver was the dominant note and carried long wands of silver. They were followed by the Gold-Sticks in Waiting—men of even more exalted rank—and, finally, by the Royal Party. We all arose and curtesied, remaining standing until their Highnesses were seated.

Tremendously august personages used to be in the audiences of those Buckingham Palace concerts at which I sang then and later, such as the Duke and Duchess of Teck, the Prince and Princess Christian of Schleswig-Holstein, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, the Crown Prince of Sweden and Norway, the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh. Indeed, royalty, peers of the realm and ambassadors or representatives, and members of the court were the only auditors. In spite of this the concerts were deadly dull, partly, no doubt, because everybody was so enormously impressed by the ceremony of the occasion and by the rigours of court etiquette that they did not dare move or hardly breathe. There was one woman present at my first Buckingham Palace concert, a lady-in-waiting (she looked as if she had become accustomed to waiting) who was even more stiff than any one else and about whose décolleté there seemed to be no termination. Never once, to my certain knowledge, did she move either head or body an inch to the right or to the left throughout the performance.

A breach of etiquette was committed on one occasion by a friend of mine, a compatriot, who had accompanied me to one of these gilt-edged affairs. She stood up behind the very last row of the chorus and—used her opera-glasses! Not unnaturally, she wanted for once, poor girl, to get a good look at royalty; but it is needless to say that she was hastily and summarily suppressed.

"You sang that for me in Washington, didn't you, Miss Kellogg?" he said; and I was greatly pleased by the slight courteous remembrance.

After royalty had departed every one drew a long breath of partial relaxation. The guests could then move about with more or less freedom, talk with each other, and speak with the artists if they felt so inclined. I was impressed by the stiffness, the shyness and awkwardness of the English people—of even these very great English people, the women especially. One would suppose that authority and ease and graciousness would be in the very blood of those who are, as the saying is, "to the manner born," but they did not seem to have that "manner." Finally I came to the conclusion that they really liked to appear shy and gauche, and deliberately affected the stiffness and the awkwardness.

There was a supper at the palace after the Royal Concerts—two supper tables in fact—one for the royal family and one for the artists. I caught a glimpse on my first appearance there of the table set for the former with the historic gold plate, with which English crowned heads entertain their guests. It was splendid, of course, although very heavy and ponderous, and the food must needs have been something superlative to have fitted it. I doubt if it was, however, as British cooks are apt to be mediocre, even those in palaces. Cooking is a matter of the Epicurean temperament or, rather, with the British, the lack of it. Our supper was not at all bad in spite of this, although little Lucca did turn up her nose at it and at the arrangements.

"What!" she exclaimed tempestuously, "stay here to 'second supper'! Never! These English prigs want to make us eat with the servants! You may stay for their horrid supper if you choose. But I would rather starve—" and off she went, all rustling and fluttering with childish indignation.

It was at one of these after-concert "receptions" at the palace that I had quite a long chat with Adelina Patti about her coming to America. I urged it, for I knew that a fine welcome was awaiting her here. But Nicolini,—her husband for the moment,—who was sitting near, exclaimed: "Vous voulez la tuer!" ("Do you want to kill her!") It seems that they were both terribly afraid of crossing the ocean, although they apparently recovered from their dread in later years.

My mother and I were then living in Belgrave Mansions, not far from the palace nor from the Victoria Hotel where the Indian princes put up, and we used to see them passing back and forth, their attendants bearing exquisitely carved and ornamented boxes containing choice jewels and decorations and offerings to "The Great White Queen across the Seas,"—offerings as earnest of good faith and pledges of loyalty. I was glad to be "commanded" for the Royal Concert at which they were to be entertained, for I knew that it would be a splendid pageant. And it turned out to be, as I have said, the richest display I ever saw. The rich stuffs of the costumes lent themselves most fittingly to a lavish exhibition of jewels. The ornaments of the royal princesses and peeresses that I had been admiring up to that occasion seemed as nothing compared to this array. Every Eastern potentate appeared to be trying to vie with all the others as to the gems he wore in his turban.

OUR house in St. John's Wood that we rented for our first London season was small, but it had a front door and a back garden and, on the whole, we were very happy there. Whenever my mother became bored or dissatisfied she thought of the hotels on the Continent and immediately cheered up. There many people sought us out, and others were brought to see us. Newcastle was always coming with someone interesting in tow. Leonard Jerome, who built the Jockey Club, came with Newcastle, I remember, and so did Chevalier Wyckoff, who had something to do with The Herald, and did not use his title.

We became acquainted with the Tennants of Richmond Terrace. Their house was headquarters for an association of Esoteric Buddhism;—A. P. Sinnett, the author of the book entitled Esoteric Buddhism, was a prominent figure there. The family is perhaps best known from the fact that Miss Tennant married the celebrated explorer Stanley. But to me it always stood for the centre of occult societies. The household was an interesting one but not particularly peaceful.

During the warm weather we went often into the country to dine or lunch at country houses. I shall never forget Mr. Goddard's dinner at his place. He had a glass house at the end of the regular house that was half buried in a huge heliotrope plant which had grown so marvellously that it covered the walls like a vine. The trunk of it was as thick as a man's arm, and the perfume—! My mother wrote in her diary a single line summing up the day as it had been for her: "Lovely day. Strawberries and two black-eyed children." For my part, I gathered all the heliotrope I wanted for once in my life.

Mr. Sampson's entertainment is another notable memory. Mr. Sampson was financial editor of that august journal The London Times, much sought after by the large moneyed interests, and lived in Bushy Park, beyond Kensington. Mrs. Heurtly was our hostess; and Lang, who had just been running for Prime Minister, was there and, also, McKenzie, an East Indian importer in a big way who afterwards became Sir Edward McKenzie, through loaning to the Prince of Wales the money for the trousseau and marriage of the Prince of Wales's daughter Louise to the Duke of Fife, and who then was not invited to the wedding! It was through Sampson, too, that I first met the famous critic Davidson, and I think it was on the occasion of his party that I first met Nilsson's great friend Mrs. Cavendish Bentinck.

"Any new American jokes? I'm dining with the Prince and want something new for him!"

He loved riddles and conundrums, particularly those that had a poetical twist in them. One of his favourites was:

I have heard him tell that repeatedly, always ending with a little appreciative sigh and the ejaculation, "that is so poetical, isn't it?"

I sang, of course, in the evening, as their guest. There was no thought of remuneration, nor could there be. The graceful way in which our dear host showed his appreciation was to send me a pin, beautifully executed, of a horse and jockey done in enamel, enclosed in a circle of perfect crystal, the whole surrounded with a rim of superb diamonds and amethysts—purple and white being his racing colours. The brooch was inscribed simply with the date on which his horse ran and won.

I wore that pin for years. When I had it cleaned at Tiffany's a long time afterwards, it made quite a sensation, it was so unique. Once, I remember, I was in the studio dwelling on Fifteenth Street of the Richard Watson Gilders when I discovered that, having dressed in a hurry, I had put my pin in upside-down. I started to change it, and then said:

The first man Mrs. Gilder presented to me was evidently quite too much interested in the pin to talk to me.

"Excuse me," he at last said politely, "but you will like to know, I feel sure, that your brooch is upside-down."

"O, is it," said I sweetly. But I did not take the trouble to change it even then, and, afterwards, I would not have done so for worlds, for I should have been cheated out of a great deal of quiet amusement. One of the contributors to The Century was later presented to me, and the effect of that pin upside-down was more irritating than it had been to the first man. He almost stood on his head trying to discover what was the trouble. At last:

"You've got your pin upside-down," he snapped at me as though a personal affront had been offered him.

"I know I have," I snapped back.

"What do you wear it that way for?" he demanded.

"To make conversation!" I returned, nearly as cross as he was.

"I don't see it," he said curtly. As a matter of fact I had just realised that upside-down was the way to wear the pin henceforward. I said to Jeannette Gilder the next day:

"My upside-down pin was the hit of the evening. I am never going to wear it any other way!"

"I beg your pardon, but your——"

"I know," I told him kindly. "My pin is upside-down, isn't it?"

He retreated, thinking me mad, I suppose. But the fun of it has been worth some such reputation. Different people approach the subject so differently. Some are so apologetic and some are so helpful and some, like my Century acquaintance, are so immensely and disproportionately annoyed.

But I am wandering far afield and quite forgetting my first London season which, even at this remote day, is an absorbing recollection to me. I had at that time enough youthful enthusiasm and desire to "keep going" to have stocked a regiment of débutantes! Although I was quite as carefully chaperoned and looked out for in England as I had been in America, there was still an unusual sense of novelty and excitement about the days there. I had all of my clothes from Paris and learned that, as Sir Michael Costa had insultingly informed me, I was "quite a pretty woman anyhow." Add to this the generous praise that the London public gave me professionally, and is it to be considered a wonder that I felt as if all were a delightful fairy tale with me as the princess?

As my mother has also noted, I went to Covent Garden to hear Mario for the first time. Fioretti was the prima donna, said to be the best type of the Italian school. Altogether the occasion was expected to be a memorable one and I was full of expectations. Davidson, the critic of The London Times and the foremost musical critic on the Continent, except possibly Dr. Hanslick of Vienna, was full of enthusiasm. But I did not think much of Fioretti nor, even, of Mario! Yes, Mario the great, Mario the golden-voiced, Mario who could "soothe with a tenor note the souls in Purgatory" was a bitter disappointment to me. I was too inexperienced still to appreciate the art he exhibited, and his voice was but a ghost of his past glory. Yet England adored him with her wonderful loyalty to old idols.

Several distinguished artists and musicians came into our box that night, Randegger the singing teacher for one, and my good friend Sir George Armitage. Sir George was breathless with enthusiasm.

"There is no one like Mario!" he exclaimed, rubbing his hands with delight.

"This is the first time I ever heard him," I said.

"Ah, what an experience!" he cried.

"I should never have suspected he was the great tenor," I had to admit.

His devotion was so touching that I forebore to remind him that if one swallow does not make a summer, so one "la" does not make a singer. When poor Mario came over to America later he was a dire failure. He could not hold his own at all. He could not produce even his "la" by that time. Like Nilsson, however, he greatly improved dramatically after his vocal resonances were impaired, for I have been told that when in possession of his full voice he was very stiff and unsympathetic in his acting.

My mother's diary reads: