However interesting the details of these events may seem it is impossible to dwell upon them all. We must take the more salient points in Madam Urso’s artist life, choosing such events as best illustrate her character and best explain the secret of her success that we may learn the true artistic lesson of her life and works. After traveling under Mr. Gilmore’s direction through all the principal towns of New England, Madam Urso left his company and spent the summer months in traveling in her private carriage with a small party of her own, and giving occasional concerts by the way.
She reached New York late in the fall and at once organized a new company, and visited Canada. This trip was a remarkably successful one, and extended till January, 1865. She then appeared at the Philharmonic concerts at New York and Brooklyn, and on reorganizing her company visited Northern and Central New York. She was at Syracuse at the time of the assassination of Lincoln and moved by the event composed an elegy for the violin that was afterwards performed with great success at Rochester.
The early summer of this year was spent among friends and in retirement and was entirely devoted to incessant and long continued practice. Practice upon her violin is the one thing that is never neglected. If it is not reported on every page it is because it is always present, never forgotten. This is the one price every great artist must pay for his or her position. What a commentary on our American haste to reach results does Madam Urso’s life-work present? She has genius. Genius without labor is worse than vain.
In June Madam Urso sailed in the China from Boston and passing through London returned once more to France her native land. Returned to live in dear old Paris but not in the Rue Lamartine. The city of her childhood sorrows and trials now became the city of her triumph. Her reputation both as a wonder-child and an artist had been almost wholly American. Now she was to take a bolder flight and win a European reputation. The opinions of our musical people were to be more than confirmed at Paris.
Her first appearance in Paris was at the invitation of the Count of Niewerkerke, then Minister of fine arts. The concert was a private one given at the Louvre before a select audience of artists, authors, musicians, officers and members of the government, diplomatic corps, etc. Every one appeared in uniform or decorated with medals or other insignia of rank, “and the young woman from America” whom nobody knew, and nobody ever heard, whose name even, was hardly known quietly took a seat in a corner as if she was only some stray person who had wandered into the grand assembly by some mistake. No little surprise was manifested when the Count sought her out and offered his arm to the young stranger to escort her to the seat of honor. Her violin case. It laid at her feet on the floor. If he would kindly ask a servant to bring it? Servant, indeed! No, he would be proud to carry it himself. And he did while the interest and curiosity was roused to unusual excitement, and every one asked who the young American could be that she should receive such attention. A prophet is always without honor in his own country, and the poor flute player’s daughter who had struggled through their own famous Conservatory as a child was almost unknown as a young woman. Rumors of an American reputation had invaded Paris, but who were the Americans that they should venture to hold opinions concerning Art. What did they know about music? Nothing, of course. How could such a wild, barbarous country know anything at all?
The violin was taken out and with a few strokes of her bow the almost unknown young woman was admitted to be a peer among them all. Never was an artist received with greater honors and distinction. One performance and her reputation was established. They suddenly found she was, as it were, one of themselves. France was her native land, Paris her home and so no honor they could bestow upon her would be too great. Pasdeloup, the orchestral director, was present and then and there invited her to play with his famous orchestra. So it was that the doors of fashionable and artistic Europe were thrown open at one wave of the magic bow. Our artist played the great Concerto in E by Mendelssohn with Pasdeloup’s magnificent orchestra at the hall of the Conservatory and won a splendid triumph on the very spot where in the days of her poverty-tinted childhood she first drew her bow before her severe old masters who had tried so hard to bar the young feet out of the paths of art.
For a year Madam Urso remained in France studying, listening to the best music to be heard, mingling with players of her own artistic stature and, as it were, renewing her musical youth by drinking deep at the fountains that flow from one of the great art centres of the world. Dear, sleepy old Nantes was visited and once more she played in the same old place where she first drew her bow in those almost forgotten days of her childhood. Not a thing had changed. It seemed as if even the same cats sat on the sunny walls and as if the same old women filled their water jars at the fountains and toiled up and down the steep streets. There were the geraniums in the windows just as she had seen them in her childhood. Her father’s organ stood in the dusty organ loft at the church of the Holy Cross, and even the same grey cobwebs festooned the arches above the seat where she used to sit and listen to the music. All her father’s old friends came to see her and brought their grandchildren. The Town Hall would not contain the hundreds that besieged the doors to see the Rose of Montholon, the woman who had made their town famous.
Many places in France were visited, and many concerts were given in Paris and other cities. It was a life of success, honors and happiness. More than all, it was home. For all that, another home claimed her, she must return to her adopted home, and in September 1866, Madam Urso returned to this country with renewed musical strength, increased ability and her talents brought to even higher culture than ever.
Every life has its dull spots—its period of uneventful living. Even public life with its exciting experiences, perpetual change and scenes, its endless procession of new faces may in time become monotonous. The artist life of Camilla Urso has been active and varied to a remarkable degree, but to repeat the details of such a succession of concert tours would be simply wearisome. Events are of small consequence except as illustrative of character and we must only select such as serve to show the woman and the artist in her true character. On returning from Europe Madam Urso at once resumed her concerts and appeared in New York and others cities. In January, 1867, she was engaged to play the Mendelssohn Concerto at one of the concerts of the Harvard Musical Association in Boston, and in order to be present in good season for rehearsal started two days before from New York by the way of Springfield. On the road she encountered a severe snow storm and was blockaded thirty-six hours between Worcester and Boston. Determined to keep her engagement with the Harvards she pushed on as long as the train would move. Again and again they were stopped, in gigantic drifts that came up to the tops of the cars. The train people resolutely shoveled their way through and pushed on again The day of the concert came and still they were twenty miles or more from Boston. The fires gave out and not a thing could be obtained to eat or drink. Still she would not give it up. Perhaps the train would yet reach the city in time for the concert. Finally the city came in sight. The wind had blown the the snow away from the track on the marshes behind the city and the last mile was made in good time and then the train plunged into another drift just beyond the junction of the Providence Railroad and where the Dartmouth street bridge now stands. It only lacked 60 minutes of the concert hour. She would leave the cars and walk into the city. Perhaps she might be in time yet. One of the gentlemen of the party took her violin case and they set out to reach the houses on Boylston street that were in plain sight not twenty rods away. It was a desperate undertaking but she resolved to try it. She must get to the Music Hall if possible. The snow might be overcome but she had not reckoned on the temperature, and before she had gone twenty yards down the track she found her hands were rapidly freezing and she seemed ready to faint and fall in the terrible cold. The gentlemen at once took her up and after a tremendous effort succeeded in carrying her as far as the signal house. She must get into shelter or perish almost in our streets. The burly signal man saw the party and opened the door of his round house and took them in. Madam Urso’s hands were stiff and bloodless and in their fright her friends thought they were forever lost. Even Madam Urso’s strong, brave spirit was utterly broken down over the appalling disaster. Of what use was her life if the cunning of her fingers was to be thus rudely destroyed. It is small wonder that the disaster almost crushed her and brought the bitterest tears to her eyes. The grimy signal man took in the situation at once and resorted to measures that were at once as effectual as they were grotesque and amusing. Kneeling down on the floor and taking off his cap he bid the gentlemen rub her hands in his tangled and matted hair. It was a most ludicrous remedy but it worked to a charm. The gentle heat brought the blood slowly back and after half an hour’s rubbing on the man’s big head she entirely recovered.
“Thet’s the way we always does, mum. Many’s the poor brakeman’s fingers I’ve saved by rubbin ’em in some one’s thick head o’ hair.”