London Days Part 5

"No. But they were coming here a couple of years ago. See--here is the Prince's letter fixing the date. But it was followed by the death of the Duke of Clarence, their eldest son, and then for many months they lived in quiet and mourning, only appearing in their usual way just before the wedding of the Duke of York (King George V). They sent me an invitation to the wedding festivities. But alas! I could not go. I had just finished my season and was lying painfully ill with rheumatism. You heard of that? For weeks I suffered acutely. It's an old complaint. I have had it at intervals ever since I was a child.

But about that royal wedding. When the Prince and Princess of Wales learned that I was too ill to accept their gracious invitation, they--well, what do you suppose they did next?"

"Something kind and graceful."

"They sent me two large portraits of themselves, bearing their autographs and fitted into great gilt frames. You shall see the portraits after dinner. They have the places of honour at Craig-y-Nos."

We had reached the coffee stage of dinner, and the cigars were being pa.s.sed. The ladies did not withdraw, according to the mediaeval (and shall I say popular?) habit, but the company remained unbroken, and while the gentlemen smoked, the ladies kept them in conversation.

Nowadays you would say they all smoked. Presently, some one {68} proposed Patti's health, and we all stood, singing, "For She 's a Jolly Good Fellow."

That put the ball of merriment in motion again. One of the young ladies, a G.o.ddaughter of the hostess, carolled a stanza from a popular ditty. At first I thought it audacious that any one should sing in the presence of _La Diva_. It seemed sacrilege. But in another instant we were all at it, piping the chorus, and Patti leading off. The fun of the thing was infectious. The song finished, we ventured another, and Patti joined us in the refrains of a medley of music-hall airs, beginning with London's latest mania, "Daisy Bell, or a Bicycle Built for Two", and winding up with Chevalier's "Old Kent Road" and the "Coster's Serenade", Coborn's "Man That Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo", and somebody else's "Daddy Would n't Buy me a Bow-Wow."

Patti turned with an arch look. "You will think our behaviour abominable."

"No, I don't. I think it jolly. Besides, it's not everybody who has heard you sing comic songs."

Her answer was a peal of laughter, and then she sat there, singing very softly a stanza of "My Old Kentucky Home", and as we finished the chorus she lifted a clear, sweet note, which thrilled us through and through and stirred us to excited applause.

"What have I done?" Patti put the question with a puzzled air.

The reply came from the adjoining library: "High E." One of our number had run to the piano.

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Then I recalled what Sir Morell Mackenzie had told me a little while before he died. We were chatting in that famous room of his in Harley Street, and we happened to mention Madame Patti. "She has the most wonderful throat I have ever seen," said Sir Morell. "It is the only one I have ever seen with the vocal cords in absolutely perfect condition after many years of use. They are not strained, or warped or roughened, but as I tell you, they are perfect. There is no reason why they should not remain so ten years longer, and with care and health twenty years longer."

Remembering this, I asked Patti if she had taken extraordinary care of her voice.

"I have never tired it," said she; "I never sing when I am tired, and that means I am never tired when I sing. And I have never strained for high notes. I have heard that the first question asked of new vocalists nowadays is 'How high can you sing?' But I have always thought that the least important matter in singing. One should sing only what one can sing with perfect ease."

"But in eating and drinking? According to all accounts, you are the most abstemious person in the world."

"No, indeed! I avoid very hot and very cold dishes, otherwise I eat and drink whatever I like. My care is chiefly to avoid taking cold and to avoid indigestion. But these are the ordinary precautions of one who knows that health is the key to happiness."

"And practising? Have you rigid rules for that? One hears of astounding exercise and self-denial."

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"Brilliant achievements in fiction. For practising I run a few scales twenty minutes a day. After a long professional tour I let my voice rest for a month and do not practise at all during that time."

During my visit to Craig-y-Nos we usually spent our evenings in the billiard rooms. There were two, an English room and a French one. In the French room there was a large orchestrion which had been built in Geneva for Madame Patti. It was operated by electricity and was said to be the finest instrument of its kind. Our hostess would start it of an evening, and the ingenious contrivance would "discourse most eloquent music" from a repertoire of one hundred and sixteen pieces, including arias from grand operas, military marches and simple ballads.

Music, of course, is the fascinator that Patti cannot resist. The simplest melody stirs her to song. In the far corner from the orchestrion she would sit in a big easy-chair, and hum the air that rolled from the organ pipes, keeping time with her dainty feet, or moving her head as the air grew livelier. Or she would send forth some lark-like trill, or urge the young people to a dance, or a chorus, and when every one was tuned to the full pitch of melody and merriment, she would join in the fun as heartily as the rest. I used to sit and watch her play the castanets, or hear her s.n.a.t.c.h an air or two from "Martha", "Lucia", or "Traviata."

One night the younger fry were chanting negro melodies, and Patti came into the room, warbling as if possessed by an ecstasy. "I love those darky songs," said she, and straightway she sang to us, {71} with that inimitable clarity and tenderness which were hers alone, "Way Down upon the Suwanee River", "Ma.s.sa's in the Col', Col' Ground", and after that "Home, Sweet Home", while all of us listeners felt more than we cared to show.

Guests at Craig-y-Nos were the most fortunate of mortals. If the guest were a man, a valet was told off to attend him; if the guest were a lady, a maid was placed at her service. Breakfast was served in one's room at any hour one chose. Patti never came down before high noon.

She rose at half-past eight, but remained until twelve in her apartments, going through her correspondence with her secretary and practising a little music. At half-past twelve luncheon was served in the gla.s.s pavilion. After that hour a guest was free to follow his own devices until dinner time. He might go shooting, fis.h.i.+ng, riding, walking, or he might stroll about the lovely demesne, and see what manner of heavenly nook nature and Patti had made for themselves among the hills of Wales. Patti's castle is in every sense a palatial dwelling. She saw it fifteen years before I did, fell in love with it, purchased it, and subsequently expended great sums in enlarging it.

The castellated mansion, with the theatre at one end and the pavilion and winter garden at the other, has a frontage of fully a thousand feet along the terraced banks of the Tawe. But the place has been so often described that it is unnecessary to repeat that oft-told story, or to give details of the gasworks, the electric-lighting station, the ice plant and cold-storage rooms, the steam {72} laundry, the French and English kitchens, the stables, the carriage houses, the fifty servants, or of the watchfulness, care, devotion, which surrounded the melodious mistress of this miniature kingdom. Those matters are a part of the folklore of England and America.

But I must say something of Patti's little theatre. It was her special and particular delight. She got more pleasure from it than from any other of the many possessions at Craig-y-Nos. It was a gem of a theatre, well proportioned and exquisitely decorated. Not only could the sloping floor be quickly raised, so that the auditorium might become a ballroom, but the appurtenances of the stage were elaborate and complete. For this statement I had the authority of the stage manager of the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden. This expert was supervising certain alterations at the Patti theatre while I was at Craig-y-Nos, and he told me that the house then contained every accessory for the production of forty operas!

Patti sang occasionally at concerts in her theatre. All her life she treasured her voice for the public; she had never exhausted it by devising an excess of entertainment for her personal friends. And so most of the performances in the little theatre were pantomimic.

Although Patti seemed to me always to be humming and singing while I was at the Castle, yet there was nothing of the "performing" order in what she did. She merely went singing softly about the house, or joining in our choruses, like a happy child.

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One morning, while a dozen of us were sitting in the shade of the terrace, the ladies with their fancy work, the men with their papers, books, and cigars, we heard, from an open window above, a burst of song, full-throated like a bird's. It was for all the world like the song of a skylark, of glorious ecstasy, as if the bird were mounting in the air, the merrier as it soared the higher, until it poured from an invisible height a shower of joyous melody. No one amongst us stirred, or made a sound. _La Diva_ thought us far away up the valley, where we had planned an excursion, but we had postponed the project to a cooler day. We remained silent, listening. Our unseen entertainer seemed to be flitting about her boudoir, singing as she flitted, s.n.a.t.c.hing a bar or two from this opera and that, revelling in the fragment of a ballad, or trilling a few notes like our friend the lark. Presently she ceased, and we were about to move, when she began to sing "Comin' Thro'

the Rye." She was alone in her room, but she was singing as gloriously as if to an audience of ten thousand in the Albert Hall. The unsuspected group of listeners on the terrace slipped then from their own control, and took to vigorous applause and cries of "_brava, brava_."

"Oh, oh, oh!" cried the birdlike voice above.

We looked up, and saw Patti leaning out at the cas.e.m.e.nt.

"Oh," said she, "I couldn't help it, really I could n't. I 'm so happy!"

At luncheon she proposed an entertainment in the theatre for the evening of the following day. {74} We were to have "Camille" in pantomime. The preparations moved swiftly. Among the guests were several capable amateur actors. The performance began a little after ten. Some musicians were brought from Swansea. A dozen gentlefolk hastily summoned from the valley, those among the guests who were not enrolled for the pantomime, and a gallery full of cottagers and servants made up the audience. We had "an opera" in five acts of pantomime, with orchestra, and all together it was fun. Of course, Patti carried off the honours. There was supper after the play, and the sunlight crept into the Swansea Valley within two hours after we had risen from table.

I said to Patti after the pantomime, "You don't seem to believe that change of occupation is the best possible rest. You seem to work as hard at rehearsing and acting in your little theatre as if you were 'on tour.'"

"Not quite! Besides, it is n't work, it's play," replied the miraculous little woman. "I love the theatre. And, then, there is always something to learn about acting. I find these pantomime performances useful as well as amusing."

Every afternoon about three o'clock Patti and her guests went for a drive, a small procession of landaus and brakes rattling along the smooth country roads. You could see at once that this was Pattiland.

The cottagers came to their doors and saluted her Melodious Majesty, and the children of the countryside ran out and threw kisses.

"Oh! the dears," exclaimed the kind-hearted {75} Queen, as we were driving toward the village of Ystradgynlais (they call it something like "Ist-rag-dun-las"), one afternoon. "I would like to build another castle and put all those mites into it, and let them live there with music and flowers!" And I believe she would have given orders for such a castle straightway, had there been a builder in sight.

On the way home Patti promised me "a surprise" for the evening. I wondered what it might be, and when the non-appearance of the ladies kept the gentlemen waiting in the drawing-room at dinner time, I was the more puzzled. The men, to pa.s.s the time, inspected the "trophies"

of the prima donna. It would be impossible to enumerate them because Craig-y-Nos Castle was another South Kensington Museum in respect to the treasures it held. Every shelf, table, and cabinet was packed with gifts which Patti had received from all parts of the earth, from monarchs and millionaires, princes and peasants, old friends and strangers. There was Marie Antoinette's watch, to begin with, and there were portraits of the Prince and Princess of Wales, to end with.

There was a remarkable collection of portraits of royal personages, presented to Patti by the distinguished originals on the occasion of her marriage to M. Nicolini. Photographs of the Grand Old Man of Politics and the Grand Old Man of Music rested side by side on a little table presented by some potentate. Gladstone's likeness bore his autograph and the inscription, "_Con tanti e tanti Complimenti_"; Verdi's, his autograph and a fervent tribute written at Milan. There were crowns and {76} wreaths and rare china; there were paintings and plate, and I know not what, wherever one looked.

If one were to make Patti a gift, and he had a King's ransom to purchase it, he would find it difficult to give her anything that would be a novelty, or that would be unique in her eyes. She had everything.

For my part, I would pluck a rose from her garden, or gather a nosegay from a hedgerow, and it would please her as much as if it were a diadem. She valued the thought that prompted the giving, rather than the gift itself. She never forgot even the smallest act of kindness that was done for her sake. And she was always doing kindnesses for others. I have heard from the Welsh folk many tales of her generosity.

And to her friends she was the most open-handed of women.

There was one dark, drizzly day during the visit to Craig-y-Nos. It mattered little to the men. The wet did not interfere with their amus.e.m.e.nts. But every lady wore some precious jewel that Patti had given her that morning,--a ring, a brooch, a bracelet, as the case might be. For the generous creature thought her fair friends would be disappointed because they could not get out of doors. How could she know that every one in the Castle welcomed the rain because it meant a few hours more with Patti?

The "surprise" she had spoken of was soon apparent. The ladies came trooping into the drawing-room wearing the gowns and jewels of Patti's operatic roles. Patti herself came last, in "Leonora's" white and jewels. What a dinner-party we {77} had that night,--we men, in the prim black and white of evening dress, sitting there with "Leonora" and "Desdemona" and "Marguerite" and "Rachel" and "Lucia" and "Carmen" and "Dinorah", and I know not how many more! n.o.body but Patti would have thought of such merry masquerading, or, having thought of it, would or could have gone to the trouble of providing it.

Of course, we talked of her favourite characters in opera, and then of singers she had known. She said it would give her real pleasure to hear Mario and Grisi again, or, coming to later days, Scalchi and Annie Louise Carey. The latter, being an American and a friend, I was glad to hear this appreciation of her from the Queen of Song. "Carey and Scalchi were the two greatest contraltos I have known; and I have sung with both of them. I remember Annie Louise Carey as a superb artist and a sweet and n.o.ble woman."

I said "Hear, hear," in the parliamentary manner, and then Patti added:

"Now we will go to the theatre again. There is to be another entertainment." It was, of all unexpected things, a lantern show.

Patti's arrangement for that was, like everything else at Craig-y-Nos, from her piano to her pet parrot, the only one of its kind. It was capable of giving, with all sorts of "mechanical effects", a two hours'

entertainment every night for two months without repeating a scene.

Patti invited me to sit beside her and watch the dissolving views. It seemed to me that it would be like this to sit beside Queen Victoria {78} during a "State performance" at Windsor, only not half so much fun! Here was Patti Imperatrice, dressed like a queen, wearing a crown of diamonds, and attended by her retinue of brilliantly attired women and attentive gentlemen of the court. And it was so like her to cause the entertainment to end with a series of American views and to sing for me "Home, Sweet Home", as we looked out on New York harbour from a steams.h.i.+p inward bound.

The next morning I started from Craig-y-Nos for America. As the dogcart was tugged slowly up the mountain side, the Stars and Stripes saluted me from the Castle tower, waving farewell as I withdrew from my peep at Paradise.