Foreword
The name of Clara Louise Kellogg is known to the immediate generation chiefly as an echo of the past. Yet only thirty years ago it was written of her, enthusiastically but truthfully, that “no living singer needs a biography less than Miss Clara Louise Kellogg; and nowhere in the world would a biography of her be so superfluous as in America, where her name is a household word and her illustrious career is familiar in all its triumphant details to the whole people.”
The past to which she belongs is therefore recent; it is the past of yesterday only, thought of tenderly by our fathers and mothers, spoken of reverently as a poignant phase of their own ephemeral youth, one of their sweet lavender memories. The pity is (although this is itself part of the evanescent charm), that the singer’s best creations can live but in the hearts of a people, and the fame of sound is as fugitive as life itself.
A record of such creations is, however, possible and also enduring; while it is also necessary for a just estimate of the development of civilisations. As such, this record of her musical past—presented by Clara Louise Kellogg herself—will have a place in the annals of the evolution of musical art on the North American continent long after every vestige of fluttering personal reminiscence has vanished down the ages. A word of appreciation with regard to the preparation of this record is due to John Jay Whitehead, Jr., whose diligent chronological labours have materially assisted the editor.
Clara Louise Kellogg came from New England stock of English heritage. She was named after Clara Novello. Her father, George Kellogg, was an inventor of various machines and instruments and, at the time of her birth, was principal of Sumter Academy, Sumterville, S. C. Thus the famous singer was acclaimed in later years not only as the Star of the North (the rôle of Catherine in Meyerbeer’s opera of that name being one of her achievements) but also as “the lone star of the South in the operatic world.” She first sang publicly in New York in 1861 at an evening party given by Mr. Edward Cooper, the brother of Mrs. Abram Hewitt. This was the year of her début as Gilda in Verdi’s opera of Rigoletto at the Academy of Music in New York City. When she came before her countrymen as a singer, she was several decades ahead of her musical public, for she was a lyric artist as well as a singer. America was not then producing either singers or lyric artists; and in fact we were, as a nation, but just getting over the notion that America could not produce great voices. We held a very firm contempt for our own facilities, our knowledge, and our taste in musical matters. If we did discover a rough diamond, we had to send it to Italy to find out if it were of the first water and to have it polished and set. Nothing was so absolutely necessary for our self-respect as that some American woman should arise with sufficient American talent and bravery to prove beyond all cavil that the country was able to produce both singers and artists.
For rather more than twenty-five years, from her appearance as Gilda until she quietly withdrew from public life, when it seemed to her that the appropriate moment for so doing had come, Clara Louise Kellogg filled this need and maintained her contention. She was educated in America, and her career, both in America and abroad, was remarkable in its consistent triumphs. When Gounod’s Faust was a musical and an operatic innovation, she broke through the Italian traditions of her training and created the rôle of Marguerite according to her own beliefs; and throughout her later characterisations in Italian opera, she sustained a wonderfully poised attitude of independence and of observance with regard to these same traditions. In London, in St. Petersburg, in Vienna, as well as in the length and breadth of the United States, she gained a recognition and an appreciation in opera, oratorio, and concert, second to none: and when, later, she organised an English Opera Company and successfully piloted it on a course of unprecedented popularity, her personal laurels were equally supreme.
In 1887, Miss Kellogg married Carl Strakosch, who had for some time been her manager. Mr. Strakosch is the nephew of the two well-known impresarios, Maurice and Max Strakosch. After her marriage, the public career of Clara Louise Kellogg virtually ended. The Strakosch home is in New Hartford, Connecticut, and Mrs. Strakosch gave to it the name of “Elpstone” because of a large rock shaped like an elephant that is the most conspicuous feature as one enters the grounds through the poplar-guarded gate. Mr. and Mrs. Strakosch are very fond of their New Hartford home, but, the Litchfield County climate in winter being severe, they usually spend their winters in Rome. They have also travelled largely in Oriental countries.
In 1912, Mr. and Mrs. Strakosch celebrated their Silver Wedding at Elpstone. On this occasion, the whole village of New Hartford was given up to festivities, and friends came from miles away to offer their congratulations. Perhaps the most pleasant incident of the celebration was the presentation of a silver loving cup to Mr. and Mrs. Strakosch by the people of New Hartford in token of the affectionate esteem in which they are both held.
The woman, Clara Louise Kellogg, is quite as distinct a personality as was the prima donna. So thoroughly, indeed, so fundamentally, is she a musician that her knowledge of life itself is as much a matter of harmony as is her music. She lives her melody; applying the basic principle that Carlyle has expressed so admirably when he says: “See deeply enough and you see musically.”
ISABEL MOORE.
WOODSTOCK, N. Y.
August, 1913
| CONTENTS | ||
|---|---|---|
| CHAPTER | PAGE | |
| I. | My First Notes | 1 |
| II. | Girlhood | 11 |
| III. | “Like a Picked Chicken!” | 22 |
| IV. | A Youthful Realist | 33 |
| V. | Literary Boston | 43 |
| VI. | War Times | 55 |
| VII. | Steps of the Ladder | 62 |
| VIII. | Marguerite | 77 |
| IX. | Opéra Comique | 90 |
| X. | Another Season and a Little More Success | 99 |
| XI. | The End of the War | 110 |
| XII. | And so—to England! | 119 |
| XIII. | At Her Majesty’s | 129 |
| XIV. | Across the Channel | 139 |
| XV. | My First Holiday on the Continent | 152 |
| XVI. | Fellow-Artists | 163 |
| XVII. | The Royal Concerts at Buckingham Palace | 177 |
| XVIII. | The London Season | 188 |
| XIX. | Home Again | 200 |
| XX. | “Your Sincere Admirer” | 212 |
| XXI. | On the Road | 227 |
| XXII. | London Again | 235 |
| XXIII. | The Season with Lucca | 245 |
| XXIV. | English Opera | 254 |
| XXV. | English Opera—Continued | 266 |
| XXVI. | Amateurs and Others | 276 |
| XXVII. | “The Three Graces” | 289 |
| XXVIII. | Across the Seas Again | 300 |
| XXIX. | Teaching and the Half-Talented | 309 |
| XXX. | The Wanderlust, and Where It Led Me | 324 |
| XXXI. | Saint Petersburg | 334 |
| XXXII. | Good-bye to Russia—and then? | 346 |
| XXXIII. | The Last Years of my Professional Career | 357 |
| XXXIV. | Coda | 370 |
| Index | 373 | |
| ILLUSTRATIONS | ||
|---|---|---|
| PAGE | ||
| Clara Louise Kellogg Strakosch | Frontispiece | |
| Lydia Atwood | 2 | |
| Maternal Grandmother of Clara Louise Kellogg | ||
| Charles Atwood | 4 | |
| Maternal Grandfather of Clara Louise Kellogg | ||
| From a Daguerreotype | ||
| George Kellogg | 10 | |
| Father of Clara Louise Kellogg | ||
| From a photograph by Gurney & Son | ||
| Clara Louise Kellogg, Aged Three | 12 | |
| From a photograph by Black & Case | ||
| Clara Louise Kellogg, Aged Seven | 14 | |
| From a photograph by Black & Case | ||
| Clara Louise Kellogg as a Girl | 20 | |
| From a photograph by Sarony | ||
| Clara Louise Kellogg as a Young Lady | 28 | |
| From a photograph by Black & Case | ||
| Brignoli, 1865 | 42 | |
| From a photograph by C. Silvy | ||
| James Russell Lowell, in 1861 | 46 | |
| From a photograph by Brady | ||
| Charlotte Cushman, 1861 | 52 | |
| From a photograph by Silabee, Case & Co. | ||
| Clara Louise Kellogg as Figlia | 56 | |
| From a photograph by Black & Case | ||
| General Horace Porter | 58 | |
| From a photograph by Pach Bros. | ||
| Muzio | 66 | |
| From a photograph by Gurney & Son | ||
| Clara Louise Kellogg as Lucia | 72 | |
| From a photograph by Elliott & Fry | ||
| Clara Louise Kellogg as Martha | 74 | |
| From a photograph by Turner | ||
| Clara Louise Kellogg as Marguerite, 1865 | 82 | |
| From a photograph by Sarony | ||
| Clara Louise Kellogg as Marguerite, 1864 | 88 | |
| From a silhouette by Ida Waugh | ||
| Gottschalk | 106 | |
| From a photograph by Case & Getchell | ||
| Jane Elizabeth Crosby | 108 | |
| Mother of Clara Louise Kellogg | ||
| From a tintype | ||
| General William Tecumseh Sherman, 1877 | 116 | |
| From a photograph by Mora | ||
| Henry G. Stebbins | 122 | |
| From a photograph by Grillet & Co. | ||
| Adelina Patti | 130 | |
| From a photograph by Fredericks | ||
| Clara Louise Kellogg as Linda, 1868 | 134 | |
| From a photograph by Stereoscopic Co. | ||
| Mr. James McHenry | 138 | |
| From a photograph by Brady | ||
| Christine Nilsson, as Queen of the Night | 146 | |
| From a photograph by Pierre Petit | ||
| Duke of Newcastle | 188 | |
| From a photograph by John Burton & Sons | ||
| Clara Louise Kellogg as Carmen | 230 | |
| From a photograph | ||
| Sir Henry Irving and Ellen Terry as the Vicarand Olivia | 234 | |
| From a photograph by Window & Grove | ||
| First Edition of the “Faust” Score, Published in 1859 by Chousens of Paris, now in the Boston Public Library | 240 | |
| Newspaper Print of the Kellogg-Lucca Season | 250 | |
| Drawn by Jos. Keppler | ||
| Clara Louise Kellogg in Mignon | 252 | |
| From a photograph by Mora | ||
| Ellen Terry | 284 | |
| From a photograph by Sarony | ||
| Colonel Henry Mapleson | 290 | |
| From a photograph by Downey | ||
| Clara Louise Kellogg as Aïda | 292 | |
| From a photograph by Mora | ||
| Faust Brooch Presented to Clara Louise Kellogg | 298 | |
| Carl Strakosch | 364 | |
| From a photograph by H. W. Barnett | ||
| Letter from Edwin Booth to Clara Louise Kellogg | 366 | |
| “Elpstone,” New Hartford, Connecticut | 370 | |