THE COURIER.
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THE PASSING SHOW I
W I LLA GATHER f
f IIM I IIHHI
TO LILLIAN NORDICA.
My Valiant Countrywoman :
1 will acknowledge at the outset that
your career haa alwaya interested me
more than your art. Had you limited
your ambition to a church chcir, appear
ing occasionally in a limited oratorio
repertoire, aa many other women quite
bb talented as yourself have done, there
would be little in you to marvel at. Had
you, on tho other hand, choBon an eaBy
and remunerative career abroad, like
your compatriot, Mllo. Sanderson, you
would have insured a wiser form of no
toriety, would have appealed more
strongly to the vulgar imagination, and
would have encountered, I think, but
few reproaches. It is your taste for
difficulties that has alwaya interested
me. I think some strain of the zeal of
the campmeeting exhorter, John Allen,
your grandfather, must prompt in you
that Puritanic tendency to consciously
master whatsoever is difficult in the
world. Tho most remarkable thing
about you is that you should have chos
en the career you have. Having once se
riously set out to be a singer, I fancy it
was but natural that the grand-daughter
of John Allen Bhould be a good one,
and that whatsoever her band found to
do, she should do with her might.
You were born at Farmington, Maine;
a name culpably easy of pronunciation
for the birthplace of a singer. In early
life you had the still greater misfortune
to remove to Iowa;' Patagonia would
have been more auspicious. Your youth
was passed among people bitterly pre -judiced
to the theater and indifferent to
inusis of the better sort. It was a
handicap that you ran with fortune from
the outset. During the earlier part of
your career you were persistently dogged
by misfortunes, your connection with
Mr. Gilmore's European fiasco being not
the least among them. But you were
abundantly endowed with that peculiar
iy practical and aggreesive form of cour
age in America termed "grit." I believe
there is no synonym for the word in any
other language, and certainly the wo
men of no other nation possess that
qualitv so largely. It is not always an
attractive quality in woman, but it is in
valuable to ambition.
When you made your debut in opera,
you had studied indefatigably and your
musical education was unusually broad
and comprehensive. Your memory has
alwaya been excellent, and you were
able to sing a large repertoire at an
hour's notice. But your inborn inapti
tude for dramatic expression, your Purl
taoic aversion for emotional display,
clung to you, fettering you like heavy
armor. It was not until you sang at
Beyreuth, when you were carried be
yond yourself by the new possibilities
opening before you, by the whole associ
ations of the place, the flattering com
panionship of great artists, intoxicated
by your own success, stimulated by the
music itself aa by a draught of Rhine
wine, that you began to learn that hard
est of lessons for American women; to
letyouiselt go, in the argot nf the green
room, abandon, and that, my valiant
countrywoman, is the oply lesson you
have never learned thoroughly; the easy
thing, which is not a matter of labor,
or sleepless nights, or incessant practice,
but of a look, a touch a sigh. But hbre
that uifflculty-defying brain was put at
a loss; that iron will, trained so long to
stubborn opposition in an unequal con
test, rotuBed to soften. Far from relax
ing, you girded yourself up for a now
assault, only to find that one thing, at
loaBt, is not to be got by conscientious
endeavors, though it be the property of
many a vagabond who sleepB in the sun.
I remember hearing you sing Caval
eria Rusticana in the West, shortly after
it wbb first produced in this country.
Not only was it impossible to conceive
you as Santuzza, but as having any sym
pathy for or understanding of her. The
music you Bang remarkably well, but
your indifference to the character was
obvious, and to consider you seriously
in the part seemed like offering an in
sult to a well bred American woman.
Passional crimes are not rife among the
pine forests ot Maine, nor are they en
couraged even in Iowa. You have lived
in many countries and have studied the
language and manners of many peoploe;
intellectually you arc fioo from preju
dice. But sentiment is a thing inborn;
it forms before the parietal bones have
closed, is made up of tho first lights and
shadows and echoes of the great world
that comes to us across the great thresh
old upon which we play, and education
cannot change it. To your credit, you
have remained an American woman, and
it were easier to melt the stony hills of
Maine than the proud marble of your
body, easier to teach the pines a sensuous
melody than the splendid Amazon war
rior, full armed and girded for the fray.
Even since you returned to us with
the hall-mark of Beyrouth, we, your own
people, have done you scant justice.
Were you a Deutch trau of mountain
ous physique, or a raw-boned Russian
giantess, or a frowsy-haired Hungarian
Jewess, no doubt you would be very
much the fashion. But aince you are a
gifted gentlewoman of our own blood,
with the fresh color and frank eyes that
bespeak such fine things of your coun
try, we are prone to neglect you and
take your merits for granted. We find
the gypsies who consume black liqueurs
and spoil their complexions with tobac
co more interesting.
The manner in which you have held
your own in the Metropolitan Opera
Company should be a source of pride to
your countrymen. . With the exception
of Mme. Eames you are tho only Amer
ican woman who has made herself in
dispensable to that heterogenous organ
ization. In that motley assemblage of
bohemians, ex-cab drivers, ex-innkeepers,
swarthy beings drummed up from
every corner of Europe, speaking every
gibberish and dialect, you have main
tained your dignity and ours in a way
that makefl one long to cry, "A health
to the native born!" Great artists, all
of them, these foreign folk, of the aris
tocracy of genius, whatever their pedi
gree, of a blood more royal than that of
princes, but people of strange manners
and foreign sympathies and, withal, ex
ceedingly bigoted. The overwhelming
importance ot these personages has
never abashed you. What you know,
you know, though you came from Maine,
and you have made even the Poles
"Alas," said Oherbuliez, "this sad world,
full of accidents and Poles!" feel the
righteous indignation of the Puritan.
As artists, you have given these person
.ages their due, but in your personal and
professiolal relations with them you
have exacted courtesy, respect and fair
dealing, and have carried your colore
right gallantly, unawed by titles and
splendors and the favors of kings. In
much tbe Barae spirit did our great
Franklin, in his coon-atyia cap, walk un
perturbed through tbe halls of the
Tuilleries, conversing confidently with
savants and princes, tbe equal of any of
them; watching with keen interest the
foliieB of the bewigged aid bejeweled
gentlemen about him, preserving him
self, tbe simple, homely manners and
severe, strenuouB life of a newer world,
washed clean by the blue soa water.
Whatever of international reputation
you have acquired, you have won with
out servility, by courageous endeavor
andunceasing effort. You have made
tbe masterful New Englaud character,
come down to us no whit weakened from
the days of Winthrop and Roger Will
iams, felt and respected abroad. Of
this fine force of character in you, there
can be no doubt. It is a softer and
more elusive quality that we sometimes
miss in you, the thing which, in the
makeshift of our linguistic poverty, we
vaguely designate as temperament. And
I fear, my valiant countrywoman, that
tho two seldom thrive together. Even
in your voice itself, that powerful and
splendid organ, I miss a certain life
giving quality; yes, even in thoBe, round,
full, unclouded tones, tones of silver,
shaken from your throat as ligbtly as
tho water drops from a sea bird's wing,
when it flies upward in the golden dawn,
Iu them, to me, there is always a certain
unyielding quality; scarcely metallic,
but white and cold rathor, like the glit
ter of the diamonds in your tiara' Ah!
if you would sometimes let your heart
go out with that all-conquering voice!
if you would but sometimes be a woman!
Yours baa been an admirable career,
fair kinswoman; you have matched the
better traits of your own people against
the world, and we have no right to com
plain, since you have shown us all our
worthiest virtues in so fair a setting.
Yet genius doeB not alwaya consort with
industry and uprightness; some timoB
with idleness and folly rather. It is be
cause you climb eo well that you have
never tried to fly. You plan, you exe
cute, you dare, but I think you never
dream. You have mastered much, but
I think nothing has ever mastered you.
Music has become an exact science, and
ynu have made that science your own.
Yet, forget it not, music first came to
us many a century ago, before we had
concerned ourselves with science, when
wo were but creatures of desire and be
fore we had quite parted with our hairy
coats, indeed; and that it comes to us as
a religious chant and a love song. I be
lieve ttut through all its evolutions it
should always express those two cardinal
needs ot humanity, carrying the echo of
those yearnings which first broke the
silence ot the world.
I am not yet convinced that, were the
taste of the public more advanced, you
would not do well to limit yourself to
the concert stage. There is the domin
ion of pure tone, there less is demanded
of phrasing than in opera, and the in
trinsic beauties of the voice are judged
in the light of their own splendor.
In opera, I prefor you in Wagnerian
solos: warrior maidens, clothed in chas
tity and iron; women ot the white robe
and the bright sword, helpers ot men
and councillors of gods. Elsa, Brun
hilda, Elizabeth IsoldeT Ab, no! Never
was the sting of the potion .on your lips,
never have the waves that lash so madly
on the Irish coast told you tbe reason of
their fury, nor of how many centuries
they have quickened to the mystic woo
ing of the moon, able to escape it never.
American prima donnas of the future
will look back upon your memory with
pride and gratitude. You seem to me
to embody all that ia best in American
womanhood. I think if anywhere on
the continent, among the thousands of
strange faces that pass one, I chanced
to see yours, I should joyfully know
under what sky to place it. About you
there seems always something sugges
tive ot a tew hope in the world, not to
be encountered in tired Europe; some
thing altogether wholesome and invigor
ating like the clean smell of the pice
woods, mingled with the fresh sea
breezes. Something in your face, with
its resolute chin, so powerfully modeled,
bespeaking such poteacy for reaistence
and constancy ''reaistence unto death'
your grandfather would have said, re
calls to me always the granite bills of
the New England coast and the silent,
enduring strength of its pioneers.
IMIMMIMMIMMMIMMMHMMMMI
LHBS-
LOUISA L MOKKTTS.
IIMMHIMMMUMMMIMMUMMMI
CALENDAR OF NEBRASKA CLUBS.
December.
,n (Review and Art a, Leonardo da
101 f Vlnol York
10, Woman's c, House of Hanovor....H.vractiHo
in, Pansy r Stowo and Hccchor Teeurnsch
1rt I Fin do Slcclo'c, Audubon, AkhhhIz
l0 una .Stanley Seward
fl I Woman'N a, Household Kcnn- .
,0' 1 omlcH North Hend
1 History and Art o KuIIkIouh and
10, Political Condition of Oormnny,
f 814-011 Treaty of Verdun Seward
18, Woman'H c, Mimical Lincoln
H J Sorosls, TojiIch of the tlmcH, Cor-
'"' lolunus.ActV Stanton
18, Woman'H a., Parliamentary practice, Omaha
,0 ( Woman'H a, An afternoon with
,v' l bookH Falrhury
10, Woman'H a, French Con vernation.... Omahn
10, Woman'H e., Current topics Omaha
10, Century c, Tho Dutch colonlos Lincoln
10, Woman'H a, Gorman history Lincoln
10, SoroHlH, Our public SchoolH Lincoln
10, Sorosls, Ethics and philosophy Lincoln
,0 I History and Art c, Tho Cubal Mln-
1V' 1 iHtry Albion
on j Mary IlarnoN Literary a, Intcr-
""' Colonial Warn Fullorton
50, Woman'H o., Oratory Omaha
51, Woman'H o., Art Omaha
91, Woman'H c, Education Omaha
S3, Hall In tho drove, Art Lincoln
S3, Soir Culturo a, Christmas St. Paul
S3, Woman'H a, Christinas Plattsmouth
on J XIX Century o., Painting In tho
' Netherlands, Monroe Doctrine. . Seward
m, I Woman'H c, Holiday Adjourn
' I ment North Bond
( Fin do Slcclo a, American humor
23, Ists, und Christmas In Othor
I Land Seward
(Zctatlo o Growth of Lit
S3, eruturo from 1 KM-1890.
f Pronunciation test Weeping Water
OFFICERS OF N. F. W. C, 1890 ft 1000.
Prcs., Mrs. Anna L. Appcrson, Tccumsch.
V. P., Mm. Ida W. Ulalr, Wayne.
Cor. Sec, MrH.Vlrlnla D.Arnup, Tccumsch.
Roc. Sec., MIhh Mary Hill, York.
Trcas., Mrn. II. F. Doano, Crete.
Librarian, Mrs. a. M. LambertHon, Lincoln.
Auditor, Mrs. E. J.'Hulnor, Aurora.
The Omaha club dispensed with a
program last Monday, in order that it
might have ample time to discuss the
question of questions, "Shall the G. F.
W. O. be Reorganized?" The matter
was presented by a committee consist
ing of Mrs. Lillian R. Harford, Mrs.
Lowrie, Mrs. Andrews, Mrs. Heller and
Mrs. Ford, the chairman. It was stated
that tbe committee bad sought light,
not only from the Olub Woman and The
Courier, tbe respective official organs
of the general and state federations, but
from women of Ions; experience in the
PSM ' ' I
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THAT THIS f PI I
18 BRANDED &
ON EVERY Aw f 1
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wmw BBBBBfliBBBBkBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBP
"Impecunious Davis," a new two-step
march by Kerry Mills, the author ot
'Whistling Rufus," haa all the catchy
popularity ot that favorite of orchestras.
This is the shoe for short
skirts.
Box Oalf, Hand Sewed,
$3 .00 .
ClftlhERSONS
.
r in 0 $Tur.
p2)
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