Mlle. Ilma de Murska, "The Hungarian Nightingale," was with us part of the time on this tour. She was a well-known Amina in Sonnambula and appeared in our all-star casts of Don Giovanni. She was said to have had five husbands. I know she had a chalk-white face, a belt of solid gold, and a menagerie of snakes and lizards that she carried about with her. This is all I remember with any vividness of Murska.
It all seems long, long ago; and, I find, it is the ridiculously unimportant things that stand out most clearly in my memory. For instance, we gave extra concerts, of course, and one of them lasted so long, thanks to encores and general enthusiasm, that Strakosch had to send word to hold the train by which we were leaving. But the audience wanted more, and yet more, and at last I had to go out on the stage and say:
"There's a train waiting for me! If I sing again, I'll miss that train!"
Then the people laughingly consented to let me go.
Another funny little episode happened in San Francisco, when I did for once break down in the middle of a scene. It was—let me see—I think it must have been in our last season of English opera, instead of in "The Three Graces" tour, for it occurred in The Talisman, but speaking of California suggests it to me. We carried six Russian singers. They all joined the Greek Church choir later. One of them was a little man about five feet high, with a sweet voice, but an extremely nervous temperament. There was an unimportant rôle in The Talisman of a crusading soldier who had to rush on and sing a phrase to the effect that St. George's boats and horses were approaching from both sides; I do not recall the words. The only man who could sing the "bit" was our five-foot Russian friend. He had to wear a large Saracen helmet and carry a shield six feet high; and his entrance was a running one. I, playing Lady Edith Plantagenet, looked around to see the poor little chap come staggering along under the immense shield and to hear a very shaky and frightened voice gasp: "Sire, St. George's floats and boats, and flounts and mounts—" I tried to sing "A traitor! A traitor!" but got only as far as "A trai—" when I was overcome with an impulse of laughter and the curtain had to be rung down!
I recall, too, a visit I had from a Chinese woman. I had bought something from a Chinese shop in San Francisco, and the wife of the merchant, dressed most ceremoniously and accompanied by four servants, came to see me and expressed her desire to have me call on her. So a cousin who was with me and I went, expecting to see a Chinese interior; but we found the most banal of American furnishings and surroundings. Afterwards we visited Chinatown and one of the opium dens, where we saw the whole process of opium smoking by the men there, lying in bunks along the wall like shelves. It was on this trip, too, when going West, that, as we reached the Junction in Utah to branch off to Salt Lake City, we found the tracks were all filled up with the funeral train—flat decorated cars with seats—left from the funeral of Brigham Young.
But the strongest recollection of all—yes, even than the troubles between Annie Louise Cary and myself—stands out, of that Western tour, the knowledge of the good friends I won, personally and professionally, a collective testimonial of which remains with me in the form of a large gold brooch shaped like a lyre, across which is an enamelled bar of music from Faust delicately engraved in gold and with diamonds used as the notes. On the back is inscribed:
"Farewell from friends who love thee."
The same year I sang at the triennial festival of the Händel and Haydn Society of Boston. Emma Thursby, a high coloratura soprano, was with us. So were Charles Adams and M. W. Whitney. Gary also sang. It was a very brilliant musical event for the Boston of those days. It was in Boston, too, although a little later, that Von Bulow called on me and, speaking of practising on the piano, showed me his fingers, upon the tips of every one of which were very tough corns. In further conversation he remarked, with regard to Wagner, "Ah, he married my widow!" When singing in Boston one night, during "The Three Graces" tour, at a performance of Mignon, there was noted by one newspaper man who was present the somewhat curious fact that in singing that Italian opera only one of the principals sang in his or in her native tongue. Cary was an American, Roze a Frenchwoman, Tom Karl (Carroll) an Irishman, Verdi (Green) an American, and myself. The only Italian was Frapoli, the new tenor.
