I had given up my choir, and now found it a difficult matter to get another. All the churches had made their arrangements for the year and the best I could hope for was occasional substituting in case one of the altos was unable to sing. I made the round of the agents' offices. Some heard me and were complimentary, some refused as their lists were full. But when I mentioned the word "engagement," I was always met by the rejoinder "No experience." I used to say to them, "But how can I ever get experience if you won't give me a chance?" They would shrug and answer that that wasn't their affair.
It seemed a hopeless deadlock. No one would engage me without experience and no one would give me an opportunity to become experienced. I knew that the one way out of the difficulty was to go abroad and get experience there. I have said that the idea of singing in opera had always made a strong appeal to me, and I knew that I had some of the qualifications necessary for the stage—a big voice, good stage-appearance, and ability to act (we had always acted) as well as a great capacity for hard work. But the essential qualification, without which the others were all ineffective, was the financial support necessary to get me there and to provide means of studying and of living adequately while I prepared myself for opera.
I despaired of obtaining this, but the way was suddenly opened for me in what seemed a miraculous manner. Friends of mine in the church, Frank Smith Jones and his wife, offered to finance me through my years of preparation and for as long afterwards as I might need their aid. These real friends were behind me for years, and I owe them more than I could ever repay. They made it possible for me to have my sister with me, for me, a rather delicate girl, an inestimable benefit. In the seventh heaven of joy, I prepared to go to Paris to study with Jacques Bouhy, recommended to me by my New York teacher. I packed my few clothes, some songs, and a boundless enthusiasm, and set sail.
CHAPTER III
PARIS AT LAST
I CROSSED on one of the steady big boats of the Atlantic Transport Line. I remember only one passenger, a boy of even then such personal magnetism that he stands out in my recollection as clearly as any one I have ever met, though he was then only a young fellow and unknown to fame. His name was Douglas Fairbanks and his ambition was to go on the stage. He said as we neared England: "Well, some day we'll read, 'Conried of the Metropolitan Opera House presents Miss Kathleen Howard,' and 'Charles Frohman presents Mr. Douglas Fairbanks.'" His prophecy, which I recall even to the spot on the boat where he made it, and the expression of his eyes which matched mine at that moment, has almost been fulfilled.
I reached Paris in the beginning of September with "my instrument" in working order, with a smattering of French, a letter of credit for $1000, and a large supply of courage. I found my voice adequate to all my demands upon it, but the money just half enough (it was increased the next year). As for my courage, I have had to go on renewing that ever since, until it has become the largest factor in my success. Emma Juch told me once that she always said it was not difficult to attain success and make a career. Perhaps her success was made at a time when the competition was less keen, but I at any rate could never agree with her.
I arrived in Paris early in the morning and went to a small hotel in the rue Cambon. It quite thrilled me to ask the chambermaid for eau chaude instead of "hot water"; and I felt proud of knowing that the midday meal was called déjeuner à la fourchette. I remember that meal to this day—it began with radishes and butter, those inseparable companions in France, went on to omelette, then cold meat and salad, with small clingstone peaches and little white grapes for dessert. Red or white wine was "compris," and the bread was a yard long, cut half through into sections, and laid down the middle of the table. It was all half-miraculous to me, and afterwards when I went out to stroll under the arches of the rue de Rivoli I thought myself in fairyland. The jewelry, lingerie and photograph shops delighted me, as they have innumerable tourists, and the name "Redfern" over a doorway gave me a thrill. The Place de la Concorde seemed one of the most beautiful places I had ever seen, an opinion which I still hold, by the way, and I felt like a queen when I called an open fiacre and drove in state toward the Arc de Triomphe, stopping to buy a big bunch of red roses for twenty cents from a ragged man who ran shouting beside my carriage. In the evening I went to the opera and wondered at the great stairway and at the big auditorium, and still more at the poor performance I saw there but which I accounted for by the fact that September is the dull season.
That first day was all thrills. The next was spent in arranging hours for lessons, and collecting pension addresses from all my acquaintances, as I saw that it would be impossible to do my work in a hotel. I set bravely out on my hunt for a dwelling place. Prices have increased considerably since those days, for at that time it was possible to get very good board and lodging on the left bank of the Seine for five francs a day. My professor, Jacques Bouhy, however, lived near the Arc de Triomphe, and I wished to be within walking distance. I toiled up and down a great many stairs, and peeped into a great many rooms without finding what I sought. I could not bear to wait a day to begin working, and was just a bit discouraged, when I had the good fortune to meet two girls from home, who gave me the address of the pension where they had stayed. I rushed off at once to see it, and found a very nice house of several floors, situated in a cité, a sort of garden behind the first row of houses on the street, so that its windows faced a view of trees and flowerbeds with circular gravel walks around them, instead of cobblestones.
The head of the pension was an old woman who looked like a Bourbon but was really a bourgeoise. It was nearly noon when I arrived, but she was still in a wonderful dressing gown of purple and yellow stripes, with chaussons, cloth slippers, on her feet, and an elaborate coiffure of dyed black hair above her yellow old face. She came to me in the salon, a long narrow room with French windows framing tree-tops, the windows and doors all hung with rose-red velvet which looked as if it had been in place since the First Empire. There were sofas of rose, and chairs of the same with black wooden rims, tables and mantel-pieces with thousands of things on them, and an old-fashioned square piano in the corner. Madame was most gracious, remembered the name of her former lodgers, said they were très gentilles, turned a neat compliment to the American nation, and showed me the rooms herself.