HE WOULD NOT BE DISCOURAGED.
“About thirteen or fourteen years old. You see, my father was an amateur boat-builder, in a small way, and did very good work, but usually not for sale. But I began the work as a business thirty-six years ago, when I was about twenty-two.”
“You must have been terribly handicapped by your blindness?”
“It was an obstacle, but I simply would not allow it to discourage me, and did my best, just the same as if I could see. My mother had taught me to think, and so I made thought and memory take the place of eyes. I acquired a kind of habit of mental projection which has enabled me to see models in my mind, as it were, and to consider their good and bad points intelligently. Besides, I cultivated my powers of observation to the utmost in other respects. Even now I take an occasional trip of observation, for I like to see what others are doing, and so keep abreast of the progress of the age. But I must stop, or I shall get to ‘talking shop,’ the thing I declined to do at first. The main thing for a boy is to have a good mother, to heed her advice, to do his best, and not get a ‘swelled head’ as he rises—in other words, not to expect to put a gallon into a pint cup or a bushel into a peck measure. Concentration, decision, industry and economy should be his watchwords, and invincible determination and persistence his rule of action.”
LVI
A Great Vocalist Shows that Only Years of Labor Can Win the Heights of Song.
OF the five internationally famous singers—Melba, Calvé, Nordica, Eames and Lehmann—none is a greater favorite than Madame Lillian Nordica. She has had honors heaped upon her in every music-loving country, including her own, America. Milan, St. Petersburg, Paris, London, and New York in turn accepted her, and the music-lovers of those cities received her with a furore of praise. Jewel cases filled with bracelets, necklaces, tiaras and diadems of gold and precious stones, attest the unaffected sincerity of her admirers in all the great music-centers of the world. She enjoys, in addition, the distinction of being one of the first two American women to attain to international fame as a singer in grand opera. When Madame Nordica was in New York fulfilling her part in the most brilliant operatic season the city had ever known, she lived in sumptuous style at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, where I met her by appointment. She accepted the statement that the public is interested in the details of her career as most natural, and was pleased to discuss the philosophy of a singer’s success from the view-point of its difficulties.
“You would like to know how distinction in the field of art is earned? Well, it is not thrust upon anyone. The material for a great voice may be born in a person—it is, in fact—but the making of it into a great voice is a work of the most laborious character.”
“Is the matter of nationality of any advantage to an aspirant?”
“You wish to know——”
“Whether, in some countries, the atmosphere is not very favorable to a beginner;—the feeling of the public and the general support given to music not particularly conducive to the musical development of, we will say, a young girl with a promising voice.”
“Yes. I should judge almost any of the greater European nations would be better in this respect than the United States; not much better, however, because nearly all depends on strength of character, determination, and the will to work. If a girl has these, she will rise as high, in the end, anywhere; perhaps not so quickly in some places, but no less surely.”
“You had no European advantages?”
“None whatever.”
“Were you born in the West?”
“No. I come of New England stock. You will understand that more readily when I tell you that my real name is Norton. I was born at Farmington, Maine, and was reared in Boston.”
“Were your parents musically talented?”
“Not at all. Their opinion of music was that it is an airy, inviting art of the devil, used to tempt men’s feet to stray from the solemn path of right. They believed music, as a vocation, to be nearly as reprehensible as a stage career, and for the latter they had no tolerance whatever. I must be just, though, and own that they did make an exception in the case of church music, else I should never have received the slightest encouragement in my aspirations. They considered music in churches to be permissible—even laudable. So, when I displayed some ability as a singer, I was allowed to use it in behalf of religion, and I did. I joined the church choir and sang hymns about the house almost constantly.”
“You had a natural bent for singing.”
“Yes, but I needed a world of training. I had no conception of what work lies ahead of anyone who contemplates singing perfectly. All I knew was that I could sing, and that I would win my way with my voice if I could.”
“How did you accomplish it?”