Part 3

DEAR AUNT,--We have now been here a week, and I feel ashamed that I have not written to you before, but I have been doing a great deal. The Cooleys have a gorgeous house in Fifth Avenue, furnished with every luxury one can imagine. The sitting-room, dining-room, library, and a conservatory next to the billiard-room, are down-stairs; up-stairs are the drawing-rooms (first, second, and third), which open into a marble-floored Pompeian room, with a fountain. Then comes mama's and my bed-room, with bath-room attached. On the third floor the family have their apartment. We have been many times to the opera, and heard an Italian tenor, called Brignoli, whom people are crazy over. He has a lovely voice and sings in "Trovatore." Last night, when he sang "Di quella pira," people's enthusiasm knew no bounds. They stood up and shouted, and ladies waved their handkerchiefs; he had to repeat it three times, and each time people got wilder. Nina and I clapped till our gloves were in pieces and our arms actually ached.

A Frenchman by the name of Musard has brought over a French orchestra, and is playing French music at the opera-house. People are wild over him also. Madame La Grange, who they say is a fine lady in her own country, is singing in "The Huguenots." She has rather a thin voice, but vocalizes beautifully. Nina and I weep over the hard fate of Valentine, who has to be present when her husband is conspiring against the Huguenots, knowing that her lover is listening behind the curtain and can't get away. The priests come in and bless the conspiracy, all the conspirators holding their swords forward to be blessed. This music is really too splendid for words, and we enjoy it intensely.

Mr. Bancroft, the celebrated historian, invited us to dinner, and after dinner they asked me to sing. I had to accompany myself. Every one pretended that they were enchanted. Just for fun, at the end I sang, "Three Little Kittens Took Off Their Mittens, to Eat a Christmas Pie," and one lady (would you believe it?) said she wept tears of joy, and had cold shivers down her back. When I sang, "For We Have Found Our Mittens," there was, she said, such a jubilant ring in my voice that her heart leaped for joy.

Mr. Bancroft sent me the next day a volume of Bryant's poems, with the dedication, "To Miss Lillie Greenough, in souvenir of a never-forgetable evening." I made so many acquaintances, and received so many invitations, that if we should stay much longer here there would be nothing left of me to take to Europe.

I will write as soon as we arrive on the other side. On whatever side I am, I am always your loving niece, who thinks that there is no one in the wide world to compare to you, that no one is as clever as you, that no one can sing like you, and that there never was any one who can hold a candle to you. There!

BREMEN, August, 1859.

DEAR AUNT,--At last we have arrived at our journey's end, and we are happy to have got out of and away from the steamer, where we have been cooped up for the last weeks. However, we had a very gay time during those weeks, and some very sprightly companions. Among them a runaway couple; he was a Mr. Aulick Palmer, but I don't know who she was. One could have learned it easily enough for the asking, as they were delighted to talk about themselves and their elopement, and how they did it. It was their favorite topic of conversation. I was intensely interested in them; I had never been so near a romance in my life. They had been married one hour when they came on board; she told her parents that she was going out shopping, and then, after the marriage, wrote a note to them to say that she was married and off to Europe, adding that she was not sorry for what she had done. He is a handsome man, tall and dark; she is a jolly, buxom blonde, with a charming smile which shows all her thirty and something teeth, and makes her red, thick lips uncurl. I thought, for such a newly married couple, they were not at all sentimental, which I should have supposed natural. She became sea-sick directly, and he called attention to her as she lay stretched out on a bench looking dreadfully green in the face: "We are a sick couple--home-sick, love-sick, and sea-sick."

The captain, who thought himself a wag but who forgot every morning what he had wagged about the day before, would say for his daily greeting, "Wie [as the Germans say] befinden sie sich?" He thought the pun on sea-sick was awfully funny, and would laugh uproariously. He said to Mr. Palmer, "Why are you not like a melon?" We all guessed. One person said, "Because he was not meloncholic [Aulick]." But all the guesses were wrong. "No," said the captain, "it is because the melon can't elope, and you can." He thought himself very funny, and was rather put out that we did not think him so, and went on repeating the joke to every one on the boat ad nauseam.

LONDON, 1859.

DEAREST A.,--We arrived here, as we intended, on the 27th.... We easily found Garcia's address, and drove there without delay. I was very anxious to see the "greatest singing master in the world," and there he was standing before me, looking very much as I had imagined him; but not like any one I had ever seen before. He has grayish hair and a black mustache, expressive big eyes, and such a fascinating smile! Mama said, having heard of his great reputation, she wished that he would consent to give me a few lessons. He smiled, and answered that, if I would kindly sing something for him, he could better judge how much teaching I required. I replied--I was so sure of myself--that, if he would accompany "Qui la voce," I would sing that. "Ha, ha!" he cried, with a certain sarcasm. "By all means let us have that," and sat down before the piano while I spread out the music before him. I sang, and thought I sang very well; but he just looked up into my face with a very quizzical expression, and said, "How long have you been singing, Mademoiselle?" Mama answered for me before I could speak. "She has sung, Monsieur, since she was a very small child."

He was not at all impressed by this, but said, "I thought so." Then he continued. "You say you would like to take some lessons of me?" I was becoming very humble, and said, meekly, that I hoped he would give me some. "Well, Mademoiselle, you have a very wonderful voice, but you have not the remotest idea how to sing." What a come-down! I, who thought I had only to open my mouth to be admired, and only needed a few finishing touches to make me perfect, to be told that I had "not the remotest idea how to sing"!

Mama and I both gasped for breath, and I could have cried for disappointment as well as mortification. However, I felt he was right, and, strange to say, mama felt so too. He said, "Take six months' rest and don't sing a single note, then come back to me." When he saw the crestfallen look on my face, he added, kindly, "Then we shall see something wonderful."

We leave for Dresden this evening.... Love to all.

Your humble

LILLIE.

LONDON, May, 1860.

DEAR A.,--I have not written since we left the kind V. Rensselaers in Dresden. Mama must have given you all the details of our life there.... I hope, now that I have studied French, German, and Italian like a good little girl for six months and not "sung a single note," that I may venture to present myself before the great Garcia again.

I can't imagine that I am the same person who has (it seems to me years ago) sung before large, distinguished, and enthusiastic audiences, has been a little belle, in a way, in Cambridge, has had serenades from the Harvard Glee Club (poor aunty! routed out of your sleep in the middle of the night to listen to them), inspired poetry, and danced on "the Green" on Class Day. I felt as if I ought to put on pantalettes and wear my hair down my back. I look now upon myself as a real Backfisch, as the Germans call very young girls, and that is simply what I am; and I feel that I ought never to have been allowed to sport about in those fascinating clear waters which reflected no shadows, now that I must go back to the millpond and learn to swim.

I have been already three weeks studying hard with Garcia, who is not only a wonderful teacher, but is a wonderful personality. I simply worship him, though he is very severe and pulls me up directly I "slipshod," as he calls it; and so far I have literally sung nothing but scales. He says that a scale must be like a beautiful row of pearls: each note like a pearl, perfect in roundness and color.

This is so easy to say, but very difficult to accomplish. Stone-breaking on the highroad is nothing to it. I come home tired out from my lessons, only to begin singing scales again. I tell mama I feel like a fish with the scales being taken off him.

Four hours by myself and two lessons a week will soon reduce your poor niece to a scaleton. Ah! please forgive this....

No question of a song yet. "Qui la voce" seems way back in the Middle Ages. Garcia says, "If, when your voice is well oiled [that is what he calls the scaling process], you are not intelligent enough to sing a song by yourself, then you had better knit stockings for the poor."

"Then," I answered, "I had better begin at once to learn to knit stockings."

"Not quite yet!" he laughed. "Wait till I have finished with you." More than once he has said, "Your voice reminds me of my sister Marie's [meaning Malibran]; but she had no brains to speak of, whereas you have, and you ought to be thankful for it."

I murmured that I was glad he thought so, and, if I really had some brains, I should be thankful; but I was not quite sure that I had. "Trust me to tell you if you have not," said he.

I trusted him, indeed, for I knew very well that he would not let the occasion slip had he anything of that sort to say.

LONDON, July, 1860.

DEAR A.,--Still hard at work. I wonder at mama's patience and endurance. To hear scales, cadenzas, and trills from morning till night must be terribly wearing on the nerves. I said as much to the master, and he consented to give me "Bel raggio," of "Semiramide." It is as good as an exercise, anyway, because it is nothing but cadenzas. Then he allowed me to sing "Una voce poco fa." I told him that mama had put on a pound of flesh since I was permitted to roam in these fresh pastures. This made him laugh. After he had seen that I had "brains enough" to sing these songs according to his august liking, he said, "Now we will try 'Voi che sapete,' of Mozart."