"Not lower than this!" said I, pointing to my forehead. He was much amused. Indeed, he was always laughing at my mother and me for our prudish ways; and my not marrying was always a joke between us.
"It's a sin," he declared once, when we were talking on a train, "a woman who would make such a perfect wife!"
"Louise," interrupted my mother sternly, "don't talk so much! You'll tire your voice!"
My good mother! She was always ruffling up like an indignant hen about me. In one scene of another opera, I remember, the villain and I had been playing rather more strenuously than usual and he caught my arm with some force. I staggered a little as I came off the stage and my mother flew at him.
"Don't you dare touch my daughter so roughly," she cried, much annoyed.
Mr. Carlton has paid me a nice tribute when writing of those days and of me at that time. He has said:
I have the most grateful memory of the sympathetic assistance I received from the gifted prima donna when I arrived in this country under the management of Maurice Grau and C. D. Hess, who were conducting the business details of the Kellogg Grand Opera Company. Like many Englishmen, I was quite unprepared for the evidences of perfection which characterised the production of opera in the United States and, as I had not yet attained my twenty-fourth year, I was somewhat awed by the importance of the rôles and the position I was imported to fulfil. It was in a great measure due to the gracious help I received from Miss Kellogg that, at my début at the Academy of Music, Philadelphia, as Valentine in Faust to her Marguerite, I achieved a success which led up to my renewing the engagement for four consecutive years.
In putting on grand opera in English I had, in each case, the tradition of two countries to contend with; but I endeavoured to secure some uniformity of style and usually rehearsed them all myself, sitting at the piano. The singers were, of course, hide-bound to the awful translations that were institutional and to them inevitable. None of them would have ever considered changing a word, even for the better. The translation of Mignon was probably the most completely revolutionary of the many translations and adaptations I indulged in. I shall never forget one fearfully clumsy passage in Trovatore.
| "To the handle, |
| To the handle, |
| To the handle |
| Strike the dagger!" |
There were two modifications possible, either of which was vastly preferable, and without actually changing a word.