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Clara Louise Kellogg. Aged Three
From a photograph by Black & Case

Oddly enough, I had great difficulty with that trill for three years; but in four weeks' study he taught me the trick,—for it is a trick, like so many other big effects. I believe I got it finally by using my sub-conscious mind. Don't you know how, after striving and straining for something, you at last relax and let some inner part of your brain carry on the battle? And how, often and often, it is then that victory comes? So it was with my trill; and so it has been with many difficult things that I have succeeded in since then.

No account of my education would be complete without a mention of the great singers whom I heard during that receptive period; that is, the years between fourteen and eighteen, before my professional début. The first artist I heard when I was old enough really to appreciate good singing was Louisa Pine, who sang in New York in second-rate English Opera with Harrison, of whom she was deeply enamoured and who usually sang out of tune. We did not then fully understand how well-schooled and well-trained she was; and her really fine qualities were only revealed to me much later in a concert.

Then there was D'Angri, a contralto who sang Rossini to perfection. Italiani in Algeria was produced especially for her. About that same time Mme. de la Grange was appearing, together with Mme. de la Borde, a light and colorature soprano, something very new in America. Mme. de la Borde sang the Queen to Mme. de la Grange's Valentine in Les Huguenots, and had a French voice—if I may so express it—light, and of a strange quality. The French claimed that she sang a scale of commas, that is, a note between each of our chromatic intervals. She may have; but it merely sounded to the listener as if she wasn't singing the scale clearly. Mme. de la Grange was a sort of goddess to me, I remember. I heard her first in Trovatore with Brignoli and Amodio.

Piccolomini arrived here a couple of years later and I heard her, too. She was of a distinguished Italian family, and, considering Italy's aristocratic prejudices, it is strange that she should have been an opera singer. She made Traviata, in which she had already captured the British public, first known to us: yet she was an indifferent singer and had a very limited répertoire. She received her adulation partly because people didn't know much then about music. Adulation it was, too. She made $5000 a month, and America had never before imagined such an operatic salary. She looked a little like Lucca; was small and dark, and decidedly clever in comedy. I was fortunate enough to see her in Pergolese's delightful, if archaic, opera, La Serva Padrona—"The Maid as Mistress"—and she proved herself to be an exceptional comédienne. She was excellent in tragedy, too.

Brignoli was the first great tenor I ever heard; and Amodio the first famous baritone. Brignoli—but all the world knows what Brignoli was! As for Amodio; he had a great and beautiful voice; but, poor man, what a disadvantage he suffered under in his appearance. He was so fat that he was grotesque, he was absurdly short, and had absolutely no saving grace as to physique. He played Mazetto to Piccolomini's Zerlina, and the whole house roared when they came on dancing.

I heard nearly all the great singers of my youth; all that were to be heard in New York, at any rate, except Grisi. I missed Grisi, I am sorry to say, because on the one occasion when I was asked to hear her sing, with Mario, I chose to go to a children's party instead. I am much ashamed of this levity, although I was, to be sure, only ten years old at the time.

Clara Louise Kellogg. Aged Seven
Photograph by Black & Case

Adelina Patti I heard the year before my own début. She was a slip of a girl then, when she appeared over here in Lucia, and carried the town by storm. What a voice! I had never dreamed of anything like it. But, for that matter, neither had anyone else.

What histrionic skill I ever developed I attribute to the splendid acting that I saw so constantly during my girlhood. And what actors and actresses we had! As I look back, I wonder if we half appreciated them. It is certainly true that, viewed comparatively, we must cry "there were giants in those days!" Think of Mrs. John Wood and Jefferson at the Winter Garden; of Dion Boucicault and his wife, Agnes Robertson; of Laura Keene—a revelation to us all—and of the French Theatre, which was but a little hole in the wall, but the home of some exquisite art (I was brought up on the Raouls in French pantomime); and all the wonderful old Wallack Stock Company! Think of the elder Sothern, and of John Brougham, and of Charles Walcot, and of Mrs. John Hoey, Mrs. Vernon, and Mary Gannon,—that most beautiful and perfect of all ingénues! Those people would be world-famous stars if they were playing to-day; we have no actors or companies like them left. Not even the Comédie Française ever had such a gathering.

It may be imagined what an education it was for a young girl with stage aspirations to see such work week after week. For I was taken to see everyone in everything, and some of the impressions I received then were permanent. For instance, Matilda Heron in Camille gave me a picture of poor Marguerite Gautier so deep and so vivid that I found it invaluable, years later, when I myself came to play Violetta in Traviata.

I saw both Ristori and Rachel too. The latter I heard recite on her last appearance in America. It was the Marseillaise, and deeply impressive. Personally, I loved best her Moineau de Lesbie. Shall I ever forget her enchanting reading of the little scene with the jewels?—Suis-je belle?

The father of one of my fellow students was, as I have said before, Baron de Trobriand, a very charming man of the old French aristocracy. He came often to the home of Colonel Stebbins and always showed a great deal of interest in my development. He knew Rachel very well; had known her ever since her girlhood indeed, and always declared that I was the image of her. As I look at my early portraits, I can see it myself a little. In all of them I have a desperately serious expression as though life were a tragedy. How well I remember the Baron and his wonderful stories of France! He had some illustrious kindred, among them the Duchesse de Berri, and we were never tired of his tales concerning her.

I find, to-day, as I look through some of my old press notices, that nice things were always said of me as an actress. Once, John Wallack, Lester's father, came to hear me in Fra Diavolo, and exclaimed:

"I wish to God that girl would lose her voice!"

He wanted me to give up singing and go on the dramatic stage; and so did Edwin Booth. I have a letter from Edwin Booth that I am more proud of than almost anything I possess. But these incidents happened, of course, later.

From all I saw and all I heard I tried to learn and to keep on learning. And so I prepared for the time of my own initial bow before the public. As I gradually studied and developed, I began to feel more and more sure that I was destined to be a singer. I felt that it was my life and my heritage; that I was made for it, and that nothing else could ever satisfy me. And Muzio told me that I was right. In another six months I would be ready to make my début. It was a serious time, when I faced the