Mr. Gladstone, in a vein of pleasantry, once told Madame Patti that he would like to make her Queen of Wales. But she is that already, and more. She is Queen of Hearts the world over, and every soul with an ear is her liege. But, literally, in Wales Madame Patti is very like a queen. She lives in a palace; people come to her from the ends of the earth; she is attended with “love, honor, troops of friends;” and whenever she stirs beyond her own immediate domain the country folk gather by the roadside, dropping courtesies, and throwing kisses to her bonny majesty.
Her greeting of me was characteristic of this most famous and fortunate of women, this unspoiled favorite of our whirling planet. A group of her friends stood merrily chatting in the hall, and, as I approached, a dainty little woman with big brown eyes came running out from the centre of the company, stretched forth a hand, spoke a hearty welcome, and accompanied it with the inimitable smile which has made slaves of emperors. The vivacious and charming creature was Madame Patti, or, as we know her in private life, Madame Patti-Nicolini. Her husband is a handsome man of fifty-eight, though he looks twenty years younger. He is as devoted as if he were the newly accepted lover of an entrancing lass in her teens, and though his English is rather hazardous, he contrives to get about bravely in Wales.
My visit could not have been more happily timed. I found a sort of family party at Craig-y-Nos, and there was no stiff ceremonial to be encountered.
Note.—Our illustrations of Craig-y-Nos, interior and exterior, are reproductions from photographs specially taken for McClure’s Magazine by W. Arthur Smith, Swansea, South Wales.—Ed. as the case usually is in British country-houses. La Diva’s guests were intimate friends, and chiefly a company of fair English girls who pass every summer with her. When the guests, in full dinner-dress, assembled in the drawing-room, I found that we covered five nationalities—Italian, German, French, English, and American—and while we awaited the appearance of our hostess, the gathering seemed like a polyglot congress.
As the chimes in the clock-tower pealed the hour of eight, a pretty vision appeared at the drawing-room door. It was Patti, royally bedecked. The defects of the masculine mind leave me incapable of describing the attire of that sparkling little woman. But the spectacle brought us to our feet, bowing as if we had been a company of court-gallants in the “spacious days of great Elizabeth,” and we added the modern tribute of applause, which our queen acknowledged with a silvery laugh. I remember only that the gown was white, and of some silky stuff, and that about La Diva’s neck were loops of pearls, and that above her fluffy chestnut hair were glittering jewels. With women it may be different, but no man can give a list of Patti’s adornments on any occasion; he knows only that they become her, and that he sees only her radiant face. Before our murmurs of delight had ceased, Patti, who had not entered the room, but merely stood in the portal of it, turned, taking the arm of the guest who was to sit at her right hand, and away we marched in her train, as if she were truly the queen, through the corridors to the conservatory, where dinner was served.
CRAIG-Y-NOS.
It was my privilege at the castle table to sit at Madame Patti’s left. At her right was one whose friendship with her dates from the instant of her first European triumph, thirty-two years ago. I was taken into the family, as it were. But the best of my privilege was that it brought me so near our hostess, and made easy conversation possible. The delight of those déjeuners and dinners at Craig-y-Nos is not to be forgotten. There is a notion abroad that these meals are held in state; but they are not. There is merely the ordinary dinner custom of an English mansion. The menu, though, is stately enough, for the art culinary is practised in its most exquisite fashion there. The dining-room is very seldom used, for, handsome as that apartment is, Patti, and her guests too, for that matter, prefer to eat in the great glass room which was formerly the conservatory and is still called so. There we sit, as far as outlook goes, out of doors, for, in whatever direction we gaze, we look up or down the Swansea Valley, across to the mountains, and along the tumbling course of the river Tawe. To the imminent neglect of my repast, I sat gazing at the wood-covered cliffs of Craig-y-Nos (Rock-of-the-Night) opposite, and listening to the ceaseless music of the mountain stream. Patti, noticing my admiration for the view, said, “You see what a dreadful place it is in which I bury myself.”
CRAIG-Y-NOS AND TERRACES FROM THE RIVER.