Famous Persons and Places

by Nathaniel Parker Willis

Ridiculous as any intimate mixture of English and French ideas and persons seems to be in London, the foreign society of itself in that capital is exceedingly spiritual and agreeable. The various European embassies and their attachés, with their distinguished travellers, from their several countries, accidentally belonging to each; the French and Italians, married to English noblemen and gentry, and living in London, and the English themselves, who have become cosmopolite by residence in other countries, form a very large society in which mix, on perfectly equal terms, the first singers of the opera, and foreign musicians and artists generally. This last circumstance gives a peculiar charm to these reunions, though it imparts a pride and haughty bearing to the prima donna and her fraternity, which is, at least, sometimes very inconvenient to themselves. The remark recalls to my mind a scene I once witnessed in London, which will illustrate the feeling better than an essay upon it.

I was at one of those private concerts given at an enormous expense during the opera season, at which “assisted” Julia Grisi, Rubini, Lablache, Tamburini, and Ivanhoff. Grisi came in the carriage of a foreign lady of rank, who had dined with her, and she walked into the room looking like an empress. She was dressed in the plainest white, with her glossy haircut smooth from her brow, and a single white japonica dropped over one of her temples. The lady who brought her chaperoned her during the evening, as if she had been her daughter, and under the excitement of her own table and the kindness of her friends, she sung with a rapture and a freshet of glory (if one may borrow a word from the Mississippi) which set all hearts on fire. She surpassed her most applauded hour on the stage—for it was worth her while. The audience was composed, almost exclusively, of those who are not only cultivated judges, but who sometimes repay delight with a present of diamonds.

Lablache shook the house to its foundations in his turn; Rubini ran through his miraculous compass with the ease, truth, and melody, for which his singing is unsurpassed; Tamburini poured his rich and even fullness on the ear, and Russian Ivanhoff, the one southern singing-bird who has come out of the north, wire-drew his fine and spiritual notes, till they who had been flushed, and tearful, and silent, when the others had sang, drowned his voice in the poorer applause of exclamation and surprise.

The concert was over by twelve, the gold and silver paper bills of the performance were turned into fans, and every one was waiting till supper should be announced—the prima donna still sitting by her friend, but surrounded by foreign attachés, and in the highest elation at her own success. The doors of an inner suite of rooms were thrown open at last, and Grisi’s cordon of admirers prepared to follow her in and wait on her at supper. At this moment, one of the powdered menials of the house stepped up and informed her very respectfully that supper was prepared in a separate room for the singers!

Medea, in her most tragic hour, never stood so absolutely the picture of hate as did Grisi for a single instant, in the centre of that aristocratic crowd. Her chest swelled and rose, her lips closed over her snowy teeth, and compressed till the blood left them, and, for myself, I looked unconsciously to see where she would strike. I knew, then, that there was more than fancy—there was nature and capability of the real—in the imaginary passions she plays so powerfully. A laugh of extreme amusement at the scene from the high-born woman who had accompanied her, suddenly turned her humor, and she stopped in the midst of a muttering of Italian, in which I could distinguish only the terminations, and, with a sort of theatrical quickness of transition, joined heartily in her mirth. It was immediately proposed by this lady, however, that herself and their particular circle should join the insulted prima donna at the lower table, and they succeeded by this manœuvre in retaining Rubini and the others, who were leaving the house in a most unequivocal Italian fury.

I had been fortunate enough to be included in the invitation, and with one or two foreign diplomatic men, I followed Grisi and her amused friend to a small room on a lower floor, that seemed to be the housekeeper’s parlor. Here supper was set for six (including the man who had played the piano,) and on the side-table stood every variety of wine and fruit, and there was nothing in the supper, at least, to make us regret the table we had left. With a most imperative gesture and rather an amusing attempt at English, Grisi ordered the servants out of the room, and locked the door, and from that moment the conversation commenced and continued in their own musical, passionate, and energetic Italian. My long residence in that country had made me at home in it; every one present spoke it fluently; and I had an opportunity I might never have again, of seeing with what abandonment these children of the sun throw aside rank and distinction (yet without forgetting it,) and join with those who are their superiors in every circumstance of life in the gayeties of a chance hour.

Out of their own country these singers would probably acknowledge no higher rank than that of the kind and gifted lady who was their guest; yet, with the briefest apology at finding the room too cold after the heat of the concert, they put on their cloaks and hats as a safeguard to their lungs (more valuable to them than to others;) and as most of the cloaks were the worse for travel, and the hats were opera-hats with two corners, the grotesque contrast with the diamonds of one lady, and the radiant beauty of the other, may easily be imagined.

Singing should be hungry work, by the knife and fork they played; and between the excavations of truffle pies, and the bumpers of champagne and burgundy, the words were few. Lablache appeared to be an established droll, and every syllable he found time to utter was received with the most unbounded laughter. Kubini could not recover from the slight he conceived put upon him and his profession by the separate table; and he continually reminded Grisi, who by this time had quite recovered her good humor, that, the night before, supping at Devonshire house, the Duke of Wellington had held her gloves on one side, while His Grace, their host attended to her on the other.

“E vero!” said Ivanhoff, with a look of modest admiration at the prima donna.

“E vero, e bravo!” cried Tamburini, with his sepulchral-talking tone, much deeper than his singing.