I had not been there half an hour before I was asked to sing! I had brought no music, there was no accompanist, and I was so dizzy that I could hardly see the keys of the piano, yet, as the request was not altogether the fault of my hostess, I did my best, playing some sort of an accompaniment and singing something—very badly, I imagine. Then I went home and to bed.
That episode was served up to me for eight years. I never went to Chicago without reading some reference to it in the newspapers, and my friends have told me that years later it was still discussed with bitterness. It was stated that I was "ungracious," "rude," and that I had "insulted the guests by my plain street attire" (shade of the great Worth!); that I only sang once and then with no attempt to do my best; that I did not eat the elaborate refreshments; did not rise from my chair when people were presented to me; and left the house inside an hour, although the reception was given for me. The bitterest attack was an article printed in one of the morning papers, an article written by a woman who had been among the guests. I never answered that or any other of the attacks because the host and hostess were old friends and felt very badly about the affair; but I have a memory of Chicago that will go with me to the grave. It was very different with the New York hostesses of whom Mrs. Barlow, Mrs. Ronalds, and Mrs. Gilder were the representatives. By them a singer was treated as a little more, not less, than an ordinary human being!
O you unfortunate people of a newer day who have not the memory of that enchanting meeting-ground in East Fifteenth Street:—the delightful Gilder studio, the rebuilding of which from a carriage house into a studio-home was about the first piece of architectural work done by Stanford White. There was one big, beautiful room, drawing-room and sitting-room combined, with a fine fireplace in it. Many a time have I done some scene from an opera there, in the firelight, to a sympathetic few. Everybody went to the Richard Watson Gilders'—at least, everybody who was worth while. They were in New York already the power that they remained for so many years. Some pedantic enthusiast once said of them that, "The Gilders were empowered by divine right to put the cachet of recognition upon distinction."
Miss Jeannette Gilder came into my life as long ago as 1869. I was singing in a concert in Newark and she was in the wings, listening to my first song. My mother and my maid were near her and, when I came off the stage, as we were trying to find a certain song for an encore, the pile of music fell at her feet. Promptly the tall young stranger said:
"Please let me hold them for you."
Her whole personality expressed a species of beaming admiration. I looked at her critically; and from this small service began our friendship.
The Gilders were then living in Newark. The father, who was a Chaplain in the 40th New York Volunteers, died during the Civil War. His sons, Richard Watson Gilder and William H. Gilder, were also soldiers in the Civil War. The Richard Watson Gilders were married in 1874. Mrs. Gilder was Miss Helena de Kay, granddaughter of Joseph Rodman Drake, who was the author of The Culprit Fay.
I met many interesting people at the Fifteenth Street studio. Helen Hunt Jackson, I remember well. She was then Mrs. Hunt, long before she had married Mr. Jackson or had written Ramona. She was a most pleasing personality, just stout enough to be genuinely genial. And Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett I first met there, about the time her Lass o'Lowrie's appeared, a story we all thought most impressive. George Cable was discovered by the Gilders, like so many other literary lights, and he and I used to sing Creole melodies before their big fireplace. His voice was queer and light, without colour, but correct and well in tune. He had only one bit of colour in him and that—the poetry of his nature—he gave freely and exquisitely in his tales of Creole life. At a much later time I saw something of the old French Quarter of New Orleans of which he wrote, the whole spirit of which was so lovely. I also first met John Alexander at the Gilders' after he came back from Paris; and John La Farge, who brought there with him Okakura, the Japanese art connoisseur. That was when I first met Okakura; and on the same occasion he was introduced to Modjeska, she and I being the first stage people he had ever met socially.
Later, in '79-'80, I saw a good deal of the Gilders in Paris, where they had a studio in the Quartier Latin. At that time, Mr. Gilder arranged for Millet's autobiography which first made him widely known in America; and in their Paris studio I met Sargent and Bastien Le Page and many other notables. I recall how becomingly Rodman Gilder—then three or four years old—was always dressed, in "Little Lord Fauntleroy" fashion long before the days of his young lordship. It was at this same period that I went to Fontainebleau to study the Barbizon School and met the son of Millet, who was trying to paint and never succeeded.
Speaking of the Gilders reminds me, albeit indirectly, of Helena Modjeska, whom I first saw in Sacramento, playing Adrienne Lecouvreur. I was simply enchanted and thought I had never seen such delicate and yet such forcible acting. One reason why I was so greatly impressed was that I had acquired the foreign standard of acting, and had been much disturbed when I came home to find such lack of elegance and ease upon the stage. She had the foreign manner—the grace and, at the same time, the authority of the great French and German players; and it seemed to me that she ought to be heard by the big critics. So I wrote home to Jeannette Gilder in New York an enthusiastic account of this actress who was being wasted on the Sacramento Valley. The public-spirited efforts of the Gilders in promoting anything artistic was so well and so long known that it is almost unnecessary to add that they interested themselves in the Polish artist and secured for her an opportunity to play in the East. She came, saw, and conquered; and I shall always feel, therefore, that I was definitely instrumental in launching Modjeska in theatrical New York.