CHAPTER VII
MAPLESON AND OTHER IMPRESARIOS
Memories are crowding upon me, and I find there is much still to be said about the Academy of Music, and the operatic folk whom it housed between 1854 and 1886. Just now the incidents which have been narrated about the banquet given in honor of the twenty-fifth anniversary of Adelina Patti's début recall other characteristic anecdotes of Colonel Mapleson, who managed the Academy of Music from 1878 to the end of the disastrous season of 1885-'86. When Mapleson and Abbey were drawing up their forces for the battle royal between the Academy of Music and the Metropolitan Opera House in 1883, one of the New York newspapers reported Mme. Patti as saying: "Colonel Mapleson comes here when he wants me to sing, and he calls me 'My dear child,' and he goes down on both knees and kisses my hands, and he has, you know, quite a supplicating face, and it is not easy to be firm with a man of such suavity of manners." I have often thought of this in connection with the outcome of the disastrous rivalry between the two houses and their managers. When Colonel Mapleson let himself down so gracefully upon his knee and pressed the prima donna's hand to his lips, the act was not all unselfish adoration. It used to be said that there was no manager alive who had succeeded in becoming debtor to Adelina Patti. It was golden grain alone that persuaded this bird to sing. The story is old of how her personal agent once hovered between her dressing room and the manager's office, carrying the message one way: "Madame Patti will not put on her slippers until she is paid," returning the other way with a thousand dollars; coming again to the manager with: "Madame has one slipper on, but will not put on the other till she has her fee"—and so on. Doubtless apocryphal and yet only a bit fanciful and exaggerated. Yet it was known in the inner operatic circles in 1885 that Colonel Mapleson had succeeded in getting himself pretty deeply into her debt. How he did it the anecdotes of the reception and Mme. Patti's interview serve to indicate. In sooth, the persuasive powers of the doughty colonel were distinctly remarkable, and it was not only the prima donna who lived in an atmosphere of adulation who fell a victim to them. I have a story to illustrate which came to me straight from the lips of the confiding creditor. He was a theatrical costumer, moreover, and one of the tribe of whom it is said that only to a Connecticut Yankee will they lower the flag in a horse trade.
My friend was a theatrical costumer with a shop conveniently situated in Union Square. When the clouds began to lower upon the Academy around the corner he became curious to know whether or not he was likely to get a balance of some $1,500 owing him for costumes furnished to the establishment. He sent his bill many times, and, being on amicable terms with Colonel Mapleson, called on him at intervals to talk over the situation. When he left the impresario's office he always carried away profuse promises of speedy payment, but nothing more. Finally, he put the bill into the hands of his lawyer, who at once took steps to attach the property of the foreign debtor, and, to bring about pressure in a manner that seemed likely to be effective, he instructed the deputy sheriff, who was to serve the legal papers, to present himself at the office of Colonel Mapleson an hour or so before the beginning of the opera. The arrangements perfected, he informed his client of what had been done. But there remained a kindly spot in the costumer's soul, and of his own volition he called on the manager in the afternoon of the day set apart for the coup in order to give him one more opportunity to save himself from the impending catastrophe.
"I found the Colonel in his office," said he, in relating the incident, "cutting the corners off of tickets and sending them out to fill his house for the next performance. While he clipped he talked away at me in his cheerfullest and blandest style, told me how sorry he was that he could not pay me out of hand, and deplored the action which I had taken, but with such absence of all resentment that I began to feel ashamed of myself for having threatened to shut him up. After half an hour I agreed to send a messenger post-haste to my lawyer and call off the sheriff. This done he borrowed $75 cash from me, and I went away happy. I tell you I know lots of managers, but there's only one Colonel Mapleson in this world."
Whether or not my friend ever collected his bill I do not know; but this I do know, that when the colonel ended the campaign of 1884-'85 Mme. Patti's name was on his list of creditors for a considerable sum—$5,000 or $6,000, I believe. The next time I met him he was sauntering about in what passes for a foyer in Covent Garden Theater, London. The rose in his buttonhole was not more radiant than he.
"What are you up to now, Colonel?" I asked him.
"In what respect?"
"In a business way, of course."
"Well," with a twinkling smile, "just now I am persuading Adelina to sing at my benefit."