“But she’s engaged to me,” the poor old chap pleaded.
“And when she’s Mrs. Goodenough we shall always he delighted to see her,” was the stern, uncompromising reply.
Such exclusiveness—which shows that snobbery was even then approaching with gigantic strides—contrasts amusingly with what was then the composition of many of our “crack” regiments.
Otway Toler—a brother of the Earl of Norbury—was one of the best amateur musicians, and it was through his kindly offices that I became acquainted with Giulini and other leading opera singers in London.
No such voice as that gifted being’s has ever been heard before or since, and it is sad to recollect that whilst yet in the zenith of his fame he was ruthlessly struck down by insanity, and eventually died in a madhouse.
It was during this painful period that his voice is said to have reached a pitch of pathos that far exceeded anything it attained when he thrilled London nightly.
To compare it with any tenor that may suggest itself to the reader would be as absurd as comparing an English concertina to the most glorious notes of the most fluty instrument, and yet this divine voice was silenced without apparent cause, and the world—the operatic world—will never hear its like again.
As an old lady in tears was once overheard to say to her unmusical spouse at the opera: “It is the voice of a god, and not of a man,” to which her phlegmatic better-half replied: “Bosh, you should hear Sims Reeves; he can go an octave higher.”
Sims Reeves, indeed! But no matter—may they both rest in peace.
To go to an unpretentious Italian eating-house in Old Compton Street, Soho, that has long disappeared, was as good as attending the opera—if one was in the magic circle. Here all day, and every day, congregated the leading exponents, male and female, of Italian opera. At a piano on the first floor finishing touches were given to morceaux, duets were tried over, and, in addition to the vocalists, soloists of the highest order “ran through” special passages of their scores, while below, viands of the strictest Italian type were being consumed from morning to night.