"I went to try over the duet with the lady who was to represent my malheureuse cotelette, and found someone seated in the drawing-room, who made me a distant bow on my entrance. After a few moments' hesitation I ventured to remark, 'Miss——, I presume.' 'No,' she replied, 'I am Miss Messent, and I understand I am to have the pleasure of singing the duets in the last part of the "Creation" with you. Miss—— was to have sung them, but for some unexplained reason has given up the engagement.'"
The reason the baritone only learned some years after. Miss—— had made a small reputation already, which she declined jeopardising by singing duets with a young man fresh from Italy.
"I dined with Chorley on the evening of the concert, and met Manuel Garcia, who accompanied us to St Martin's Hall.
"I succeeded better than I had dared to hope. When I walked home with Chorley and Garcia after the performance, the latter expressed himself as pleased, but pointed out certain defects to be overcome, at the same time offering to render me any assistance in his power."
It was an offer of which Santley promptly availed himself, and he commenced lessons forthwith, the maestro being at the time in his fifty-third year, his pupil a lad of twenty-three. The profit which was received during those lessons the baritone has never forgotten. As to his personal memories of the maestro,—"It would require a whole book to say what I should be bound to say," he wrote to me in a letter during the preparation of the present memoir.
The feelings with which the world-renowned baritone regards his old master may best be summed up in the words inscribed on the photograph which used to stand on the grand piano in Señor Garcia's home: "To the King of Masters." Moreover, I remember his remarking one day, while I was studying under the maestro, "You are learning from the greatest teacher the world has ever known." Nor is he less ardent in his admiration for Mme. Viardot-Garcia. "No woman in my day has ever approached her as a dramatic singer," he once said; "she was perfect, as far as it is possible to attain perfection, both as vocalist and actress."
Santley is himself remarkable as a man no less than as an artist. After having made a name which will ever be honoured and reverenced throughout the musical world for high ideals nobly sustained, he is, though over seventy, still able to make before the public occasional appearances, in which he shows how the old Italian method, coupled with a fine intellect and dramatic instinct, can triumph over mere weight of years. As one listens it seems impossible to believe that a man who sings to-day with all the fire, vigour, and passion of youth, can have been before the public for anything like so long a period as half a century. Up to the present time Sir Charles Santley remains unquestionably the greatest baritone this country has produced.
Shortly after Santley had commenced lessons under the renowned teacher, he received an invitation to a party at Chorley's to meet a pupil of Garcia, Gertrude Kemble, who was about to make her début at St Martin's Hall in the Christmas performance of the "Messiah."