MY mother's diary reads as follows:

This somewhat incoherent record as jotted down by my mother is sketchy but true in spirit. Never in my life, before or since, was I ever so nervous as at our opening performance in London of Traviata; no, not even had my American dÉbut tried me so sorely. Everything in the world went wrong that could go wrong on this occasion. I forgot my powder and the skirt of my dress, and Annie, my maid, had to rush home in a cab to get them. I tore my costume while making my first entrance and had to play the entire act with a streamer of silk dangling at my feet. I went on half made up, daubed, nervous, out of breath. Never was I in such a state of nerves. But to my astonishment I made a very big success. There was a burst of applause after the first act and I could hardly believe my ears. It struck me as most extraordinary that what I considered so unsatisfactory should please the house. Several of the artists singing with me came to me during the evening much upset.

"Don't you know why everything on the stage has been going so badly to-night?" they said. "We've a jettatura in front!"

Madame Erminie Rudersdorf, the mother of Richard Mansfield, was in one of the boxes; and she was generally believed to have the Evil Eye. The Italian singers took it very seriously indeed and made horns all through the opera (that is, kept their fingers crossed) to ward off the satanic influence! Madame Rudersdorf was a tall, heavy, and swarthy Russian with ominously brilliant eyes; and one of the most commanding personalities I ever came in contact with. Although she had a dangerously bad temper, I never saw any evidences of it, nor of the jettatura either. She came that night and congratulated me:—and it meant something from her.

My professional vocation has brought me up against almost every conceivable superstition, from Brignoli's stuffed deer's head to the more commonplace fetish against thirteen as a number. But I never saw any one more obsessed by an idea of this sort than Christine Nilsson. She actually would not sing unless some one "held her thumbs" first. "Holding thumbs" is quite an ancient way of inviting good luck. One promises to "hold one's thumbs" for a friend who is going through some ordeal, like a first night or an operation for appendicitis or a wedding or anything else desperate. Nilsson was the first person I ever knew who practised the charm the other way about. Before she would even go on the stage somebody, if only the stage carpenter, had to take hold of her two thumbs and press them. She was convinced that the mystic rite brought her good fortune. Many of the Italian artists that I knew believed in the efficacy of coral as a talisman and always kept a bit of it about them to rub "for luck" just before they went on for their part of the performance. Somebody has told me that Emma Trentini had a queer individual superstition: when she was singing for Hammerstein she would never go on the stage until he had given her a quarter of a dollar! Ridiculous as all these idÉes fixes appear when writing them down, I am convinced that they do help some people. A sense of confidence is a great, an invaluable thing, and whatever can bring that about must necessarily, however foolish in itself, make for a measure of success. I caught Nilsson's "holding thumbs" trick myself without ever believing in it, and often have done it to people since in a sort of general luck-wishing, friendly spirit. The last time I was in Algiers I entered an antique shop that I always visit there and found the little woman who kept it in a somewhat indisposed and depressed state of mind:—so much so in fact that when I left I pinched her thumbs for luck. Not long afterwards I had the sweetest letter from her. "I cannot thank you enough," she wrote; "you did something—whatever it was—that has brought me luck. I feel sure it is all through you!"

To return to my mother's diary after our first performance of Traviata in London:

Indeed, every minute of those spring weeks was occupied and more than occupied. I never was so busy before and never had such a good time. The "season" was a delightful one; and certainly no one had a more varied part in it than I. Thanks to the Dowager Duchess and our friends we went out frequently; and I was singing four and five times a week counting concerts. Private concerts were a great fad that season and I have often sung at two or three different ones in the same evening.

Colonel Mapleson was in great feather, having three prime donne at his disposal at once, for Christine Nilsson had soon joined us, that curious mixture of "Scandinavian calm and Parisian elegance" as I have heard her described. No two singers were ever less alike, either physically or temperamentally, than she and I; yet, oddly enough, we over and over again followed each other in the same rÔles. Titjiens, Nilsson, and I sang together a great deal that season, not only in opera but also in concert. Our voices went well together and we always got on pleasantly. Madame Titjiens was no longer at the zenith of her great power, but she was very fine for all that. I admired Titjiens greatly as an artist in spite of her perfunctory acting. Cold and stately, she was especially effective in purely classic music, having at her command all its traditions:—Donna Anna for instance, and Fidelio and the Contessa. I sang with her in the Mozart operas. Particularly do I recall one night when the orchestra was under the direction of Sir Michael Costa. Both Titjiens and Nilsson were singing with me, and the former had to follow me in the recitative. Where Susanna gives the attacking note to the Contessa Sir Michael's 'cello gave me the wrong chord. I perceived it instantly, my absolute pitch serving me well, but I hardly knew what to do. I was singing in Italian, which made the problem even more difficult; but, as I sang, my sixth sense was working subconsciously. I was saying over and over in my brain: "I've got to give Titjiens the right note or the whole thing will be a mess. How am I going to do it?" I sang around in circles until I was able to give the Contessa the correct note. Titjiens gratefully caught it up and all came out well. When the number was over, both Titjiens and Nilsson came and congratulated me for what they recognised as a good piece of musicianship. But Sir Michael was in a rage.

"What do you mean," he demanded, "by taking liberties with the music like that?"

One cannot afford to antagonise a conductor and he was, besides, so irascible a man that I did not care to mention to him that his 'cello had been at fault. He was a most indifferent musician as well as a narrow, obstinate man, although London considered him a very great leader. He only infuriated me the more by remarking indulgently, one night not long after, as if overlooking my various artistic shortcomings: "Well, well,—you're a very pretty woman anyway!" It was his "anyway" that irrevocably settled matters between us. He disliked Nilsson too. He declared both in public and in private that her use of her voice was mere "charlatanry and trickery" and not worthy to be called musical. Nilsson was not, in fact, a good musician; few prime donne are. On one occasion she did actually sing one bar in advance of the accompaniment for ten consecutive measures. This is almost inconceivable, but she did it, and Sir Michael never forgave her.

Mapleson was planning as a tour de force with which to stun London a series of operas in which he could present all of us. "All-star casts" were rare in those days. Most managers saved their singers and doled them out judiciously, one at a time, in a very conservative fashion. But Mapleson had other notions. Our "all-star" Mozart casts were the wonder of all London. Think of Don Giovanni with Santley as the Don and Titjiens as Donna Anna; Nilsson as Donna Elvira, Rockitanski of Vienna the Leporello, and myself as Zerlina! Think of Le Nozze di Figaro with Titjiens as the Countess, Nilsson Cherubino, Santley the Count, and me as Susanna! These were casts unequalled in all Europe—almost, I believe, in all time!

Gye, of Covent Garden, declared that we were killing the goose that laid the golden egg by putting all our prime donne into one opera. He said that this made it not only impossible for rival houses to draw any audiences, but that it also cut off our own noses. Nobody wanted to go on ordinary nights to hear operas that had only one prima donna in them when they could go on star nights and hear three at once. However, Colonel Mapleson found that the scheme paid and our "triple-cast" performances brought us most sensational houses. Personally, as I have already said, I never liked Mapleson, and I had many causes for resentment in a business way. I remember one battle I had with him and the stage manager about a dress I was to wear in Le Nozze di Figaro. I do not recall what it was they wanted me to wear; but I know that, whatever it was, I would not wear it. I left in the middle of rehearsal, drove home in an excited state of indignation, and seized upon poor Colonel Stebbins, always my steady help in time of trouble. He went, saw, fought, and conquered, after which the rehearsals went on more or less peaceably.

Undoubtedly we had some fine artists at Her Majesty's, but occasionally Mapleson missed a big chance of securing others. One day we were putting on our wraps after rehearsal when my mother and I heard a lovely contralto voice. On inquiry, we learned that Colonel Mapleson and Arditi were trying the voice of a young Italian woman who had come to London in search of an engagement. The Colonel and the Director sat in the orchestra while the young woman sang an aria from Semiramide. When the trial was over the girl went away at once and I rushed out to speak to Mapleson.

"Surely you engaged that enchanting singer!" I exclaimed.

"Indeed I didn't," he replied.

She went directly to Gye at Covent Garden, who engaged her promptly and, when she appeared two weeks later, she made a sensation. Her name was Sofia Scalchi.

Besides the private concerts of that season there were also plenty of public concerts, a particularly notable one being a Handel Festival at the Crystal Palace on May 1st, when I sang Oh, had I Jubal's Lyre! Everything connected with that occasion was on a large scale. There were seven thousand people in the house, the largest audience by far that I had ever sung to before. The place was so crowded that people hung about the doors trying to get in even after every seat was filled; and not one person left the hall until after I had finished—a remarkable record in its way! Some time later, when I was on my way home to America and wanted to buy some antiques, I wandered into a little, odd Dickens-like shop in Wardour Street. I wanted to have some articles sent on approval to meet me at Liverpool, but hesitated to ask the old man in the shop to take such a risk without knowing me. To my surprise he smiled at me a kindly, wrinkled smile and said, with the prettiest old-fashioned bow:

"Madame, you are welcome to take any liberties you will with my entire stock. I heard you sing 'Jubal's Lyre.' I shall never forget it, nor be able to repay you for the pleasure you gave me!"

I always felt this to be one of my sincerest tributes. Perhaps that is partly why the night of my first Crystal Hall Concert remains so clearly defined in my memory.

My mother's diary of this period continues:

I sang several times at the Crystal Palace Concerts with Sims Reeves, the idolised English tenor. Never have I heard of or imagined an artist so spoiled as Reeves. The spring was a very hot one for London, although to us who were accustomed to the summer heat of America, it seemed nothing. But poor Sims Reeves evidently expected to have heat prostration or a sunstroke, for he always wore a big cork helmet to rehearsals, the kind that officers wear on the plains of India. The picture he made sitting under his huge helmet with a white puggaree around it, fanning himself feebly, was one never to be forgotten. He had a somewhat frumpy wife who waited on him like a slave. I had little patience with him, especially with his trick of disappointing his audiences at the eleventh hour. But he could sing! He was a real artist, and, when he was not troubling about the temperature, or his diet, he was an artist with whom it was a privilege to sing. I remember singing with him and Mme. Patey at a concert at Albert Hall. Mme. Patey was an admirable contralto and gifted with a superb technique. We three sang a trio without a rehearsal and, when it was over, Reeves declared that it was really wonderful the way in which we all three had "taken breath" at exactly the same points, showing that we were all well trained and could phrase a song in the only one correct way. This was also noticed and remarked upon by several professionals who were present.

I also sang with Alboni. At an Albert Hall concert on my second visit to England a year or two later, I said to her:

"Madame, I cannot tell you how honoured I feel in singing on the same programme with you."

She bowed and smiled. She was a very, very large woman, heavily built, but she carried her size with remarkable dignity. I was considerably amused when she replied:

"Ah, Mademoiselle, I am only a shadow of what I have been!"

My most successful song that season was my old song Beware. It was unusual to see a prima donna play her own accompaniment, which I always did to this song and to most encores. The simple, rather insipid melody was written by Moulton, the first husband of the present Baronne de Hegeman, and it was not long before it was the rage in the sentimental younger set of London. How tired I became of that ridiculous sign-post cover and the "As Sung by Miss Clara Louise Kellogg" staring up at me! And how much more tired of the foolish tune:

Musical notation; I know a maid-en fair to see, Take care! Take care!

One of the greatest honours paid me was the command to sing in one of the two concerts at Buckingham Palace given each season by the reigning sovereign. I have always kept the letter that told me I had been chosen for this great privilege. Cusins, from whom it came, was the Director of the Queen's music at the Palace.