Though I quite understood Ellen's emotions, I found it a little difficult to understand why she invited them so persistently. But I have learned that this is a very common human weakness—luckily for managers who put on harrowing plays. Many people go to the theatre to cry. When I sang Mignon the audience always cried and wiped its eyes; and I felt convinced that many had come for exactly that purpose. Two women I know once went to see Helena Modjeska in Adrienne Lecouvreur and, when the curtain fell, one of them turned to the other with streaming eyes and gasped between her choking sobs:
"L—l—let's come—(sob)—again—(sob)—t—t—to-morrow night! (sob, sob)."
Personally, I think there are occasions enough for tears in this life, bitter or consoling, without having somebody on the stage draw them out over fictitious joys and sorrows.
In the beginning of the war the feeling against the negroes was really more bitter in the North than in the South. The riots in New York were a scandal and a disgrace, although very few people have any idea how bad they actually were. The Irish Catholics were particularly rabid and asserted openly, right and left, that the freeing of the slaves would mean an influx of cheap labour that would become a drug on the market. It was an Irish mob that burned a coloured orphan asylum, after which taste of blood the most innocent black was not safe. Perfectly harmless coloured people were hanged to lamp-posts with impunity. No one ever seemed to be punished for such outrages. The time was one of open lawlessness in New York City. The Irish seem sometimes to be peculiarly possessed by this unreasoning and hysterical mob spirit which, as Ruskin once pointed out, they always manage to justify to themselves by some high abstract principle or sentiment. A story that has always seemed to me illustrative of this is that of the Hibernian contingent that hanged an unfortunate Jew because his people had killed Jesus Christ and, when reminded that it had all happened some time before, replied that "that might be, but they had only just heard of it!" It is a singularly significant story, with much more truth than jest in it. Years later, I recollect that those Irish riots in New York over the negro question served as the basis for some exceedingly heated arguments between an English friend of mine at Aix-les-Bains and a Catholic priest living there. The priest sought to justify them, but his reasonings have escaped me.
At the time of these riots our New York home was on Twenty-second Street where Stern's shop now stands. We rented it from the Bryces, Southerners, who had a coloured coachman, a fact that made our residence a target for the animosity of our more ignorant neighbours who lived in the rear. The house was built with a foreign porte-cochère; and, time and again, small mobs would throng under that porte-cochère, battering on the door and trying to break in to get the coachman. The hanging of a negro near St. John's Chapel was an occasion for rejoicing and festivity, and the lower class Irish considered it a time for their best clothes. One hears of bear-baiting and bull-fights. But think of the barbarity of all this!
Once, when we went away for a day or two, we left Irish servants in the house and, on returning, I found that the maids had been wearing my smartest gowns to view the riots and lynchings. A common lace collar was pinned to one of my French dresses and I had little difficulty in getting the waitress to admit that she had worn it. She explained naïvely that the riots were gala occasions, "a great time for the Irish." She added that she had met my father on the stairs and had been afraid that he would recognise the dress; but, although she was penitent enough about "borrowing" the finery, she did not in the least see anything odd in her desire to dress up for the tormenting of an unfortunate fellow-creature.
Everybody went about singing Mrs. Howe's Battle Hymn of the Republic and it was then that I first learned that the air—the simple but rousing little melody of John Brown's Body—was in reality a melody by Felix Mendelssohn. Martial songs of all kinds were the order of the day and all more classic music was relegated to the background for the time being. It was not until the following winter that public sentiment subsided sufficiently for us to really consider another musical season.
CHAPTER VII
STEPS OF THE LADDER
IN the three years between my début and my appearance in Faust I sang, in all, a dozen operas:—Rigoletto, Linda, I Puritani, Sonnambula, Ballo in Maschera, Figlia del Reggimento, Les Noces de Jeannette, Lucia, Don Giovanni, Poliuto, Marta, and Traviata. Besides these, I sang a good deal in concert, but I never cared for either concert or oratorio work as much as for opera. My real growth and development came from big parts in which both musical and dramatic accomplishment were necessary.
Like all artists, I look back upon many fluctuations in my artistic achievements. Sometimes I was good, and often not so good; and, curiously enough, I was usually best, according to my friends and critics, when most dissatisfied with myself. But of one thing I am fairly confident:—I never really went backward, never seriously retrograded artistically. Each rôle was a step further and higher. To each I brought a clearer vision, a surer touch, a more flexible method, a finer (how shall I say it in English?) attaque is nearest what I mean. This I say without vanity, for the artist who does not grow and improve with each succeeding part is deteriorating. There is no standing still in any life work; or, if there is, it is the standing still of successful effort, the hard-won tenure of a difficult place from which most people slip back. The Red Queen in Through the Looking Glass expressed it rightly when she told Alice that "you have to run just as hard as you can to stay where you are."