Produced by Richard Tonsing, Jonathan Ingram, Maria Grist and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net [Illustration: "WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS, SIR?" (_See page 10._)] THE STRAND MAGAZINE _An Illustrated Monthly_ EDITED BY GEORGE NEWNES Vol. XVII. _JANUARY TO JUNE_ London: GEORGE NEWNES, LTD., 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, & 12, SOUTHAMPTON STREET, AND EXETER STREET, STRAND 1899 THE STRAND MAGAZINE. Vol. xvii. JANUARY, 1899. No. 97. _Round the Fire._[1] BY A. CONAN DOYLE. VIII.--THE STORY OF THE JAPANNED BOX. It _was_ a curious thing, said the private tutor; one of those grotesque and whimsical incidents which occur to one as one goes through life. I lost the best situation which I am ever likely to have through it. But I am glad that I went to Thorpe Place, for I gained--well, as I tell you the story you will learn what I gained. [1] Copyright, 1899, by George Newnes, Limited. I don't know whether you are familiar with that part of the Midlands which is drained by the Avon. It is the most English part of England. Shakespeare, the flower of the whole race, was born right in the middle of it. It is a land of rolling pastures, rising in higher folds to the westward, until they swell into the Malvern Hills. There are no towns, but numerous villages, each with its grey Norman church. You have left the brick of the southern and eastern counties behind you, and everything is stone--stone for the walls, and lichened slabs of stone for the roofs. It is all grim and solid and massive, as befits the heart of a great nation. It was in the middle of this country, not very far from Evesham, that Sir John Bollamore lived in the old ancestral home of Thorpe Place, and thither it was that I came to teach his two little sons. Sir John was a widower--his wife had died three years before--and he had been left with these two lads aged eight and ten, and one dear little girl of seven. Miss Witherton, who is now my wife, was governess to this little girl. I was tutor to the two boys. Could there be a more obvious prelude to an engagement? She governs me now, and I tutor two little boys of our own. But, there--I have already revealed what it was which I gained in Thorpe Place! It was a very, very old house, incredibly old--pre-Norman, some of, it--and the Bollamores claimed to have lived in that situation since long before the Conquest. It struck a chill to my heart when first I came there, those enormously thick grey walls, the rude crumbling stones, the smell as from a sick animal which exhaled from the rotting plaster of the aged building. But the modern wing was bright and the garden was well kept. No house could be dismal which had a pretty girl inside it and such a show of roses in front. Apart from a very complete staff of servants there were only four of us in the household. These were Miss Witherton, who was at that time four-and-twenty and as pretty--well, as pretty as Mrs. Colmore is now--myself, Frank Colmore, aged thirty, Mrs. Stevens, the housekeeper, a dry, silent woman, and Mr. Richards, a tall, military-looking man, who acted as steward to the Bollamore estates. We four always had our meals together, but Sir John had his usually alone in the library. Sometimes he joined us at dinner, but on the whole we were just as glad when he did not. For he was a very formidable person. Imagine a man six foot three inches in height, majestically built, with a high-nosed, aristocratic face, brindled hair, shaggy eyebrows, a small, pointed Mephistophelian beard, and lines upon his brow and round his eyes as deep as if they had been carved with a penknife. He had grey eyes, weary, hopeless-looking eyes, proud and yet pathetic, eyes which claimed your pity and yet dared you to show it. His back was rounded with study, but otherwise he was as fine a looking man of his age--five-and-fifty perhaps--as any woman would wish to look upon. [Illustration: SIR JOHN BOLLAMORE.] But his presence was not a cheerful one. He was always courteous, always refined, but singularly silent and retiring. I have never lived so long with any man and known so little of him. If he were indoors he spent his time either in his own small study in the Eastern Tower, or in the library in the modern wing. So regular was his routine that one could always say at any hour exactly where he would be. Twice in the day he would visit his study, once after breakfast, and once about ten at night. You might set your watch by the slam of the heavy door. For the rest of the day he would be in his library--save that for an hour or two in the afternoon he would take a walk or a ride, which was solitary like the rest of his existence. He loved his children, and was keenly interested in the progress of their studies, but they were a little awed by the silent, shaggy-browed figure, and they avoided him as much as they could. Indeed, we all did that. It was some time before I came to know anything about the circumstances of Sir John Bollamore's life, for Mrs. Stevens, the housekeeper, and Mr. Richards, the land-steward, were too loyal to talk easily of their employer's affairs. As to the governess, she knew no more than I did, and our common interest was one of the causes which drew us together. At last, however, an incident occurred which led to a closer acquaintance with Mr. Richards and a fuller knowledge of the life of the man whom I served. The immediate cause of this was no less than the falling of Master Percy, the youngest of my pupils, into the mill-race, with imminent danger both to his life and to mine, since I had to risk myself in order to save him. Dripping and exhausted--for I was far more spent than the child--I was making for my room when Sir John, who had heard the hubbub, opened the door of his little study and asked me what was the matter. I told him of the accident, but assured him that his child was in no danger, while he listened with a rugged, immobile face, which expressed in its intense eyes and tightened lips all the emotion which he tried to conceal. "One moment! Step in here! Let me have the details!" said he, turning back through the open door. And so I found myself within that little sanctum, inside which, as I afterwards learned, no other foot had for three years been set save that of the old servant who cleaned it out. It was a round room, conforming to the shape of the tower in which it was situated, with a low ceiling, a single narrow, ivy-wreathed window, and the simplest of furniture. An old carpet, a single chair, a deal table, and a small shelf of books made up the whole contents. On the table stood a full-length photograph of a woman--I took no particular notice of the features, but I remember that a certain gracious gentleness was the prevailing impression. Beside it were a large black japanned box and one or two bundles of letters or papers fastened together with elastic bands. [Illustration: "OUR INTERVIEW WAS A SHORT ONE."] Our interview was a short one, for Sir John Bollamore perceived that I was soaked, and that I should change without delay. The incident led, however, to an instructive talk with Richards, the agent, who had never penetrated into the chamber which chance had opened to me. That very afternoon he came to me, all curiosity, and walked up and down the garden path with me, while my two charges played tennis upon the lawn beside us. "You hardly realize the exception which has been made in your favour," said he. "That room has been kept such a mystery, and Sir John's visits to it have been so regular and consistent, that an almost superstitious feeling has arisen about it in the household. I assure you that if I were to repeat to you the tales which are flying about, tales of mysterious visitors there, and of voices overheard by the servants, you might suspect that Sir John had relapsed into his old ways." "Why do you say relapsed?" I asked. He looked at me in surprise. "Is it possible," said he, "that Sir John Bollamore's previous history is unknown to you?" "Absolutely." "You astound me. I thought that every man in England knew something of his antecedents. I should not mention the matter if it were not that you are now one of ourselves, and that the facts might come to your ears in some harsher form if I were silent upon them. I always took it for granted that you knew that you were in the service of 'Devil' Bollamore." "But why 'Devil'?" I asked. "Ah, you are young and the world moves fast, but twenty years ago the name of 'Devil' Bollamore was one of the best known in London. He was the leader of the fastest set, bruiser, driver, gambler, drunkard--a survival of the old type, and as bad as the worst of them." I stared at him in amazement. "What!" I cried, "that quiet, studious, sad-faced man?" "The greatest rip and debauchee in England! All between ourselves, Colmore. But you understand now what I mean when I say that a woman's voice in his room might even now give rise to suspicions." "But what can have changed him so?" "Little Beryl Clare, when she took the risk of becoming his wife. That was the turning point. He had got so far that his own fast set had thrown him over. There is a world of difference, you know, between a man who drinks and a drunkard. They all drink, but they taboo a drunkard. He had become a slave to it--hopeless and helpless. Then she stepped in, saw the possibilities of a fine man in the wreck, took her chance in marrying him, though she might have had the pick of a dozen, and, by devoting her life to it, brought him back to manhood and decency. You have observed that no liquor is ever kept in the house. There never has been any since her foot crossed its threshold. A drop of it would be like blood to a tiger even now." "Then her influence still holds him?" "That is the wonder of it. When she died three years ago, we all expected and feared that he would fall back into his old ways. She feared it herself, and the thought gave a terror to death, for she was like a guardian angel to that man, and lived only for the one purpose. By the way, did you see a black japanned box in his room?" "Yes." "I fancy it contains her letters. If ever he has occasion to be away, if only for a single night, he invariably takes his black japanned box with him. Well, well, Colmore, perhaps I have told you rather more than I should, but I shall expect you to reciprocate if anything of interest should come to your knowledge." I could see that the worthy man was consumed with curiosity and just a little piqued that I, the new-comer, should have been the first to penetrate into the untrodden chamber. But the fact raised me in his esteem, and from that time onwards I found myself upon more confidential terms with him. And now the silent and majestic figure of my employer became an object of greater interest to me. I began to understand that strangely human look in his eyes, those deep lines upon his careworn face. He was a man who was fighting a ceaseless battle, holding at arm's length, from morning till night, a horrible adversary, who was for ever trying to close with him--an adversary which would destroy him body and soul could it but fix its claws once more upon him. As I watched the grim, round-backed figure pacing the corridor or walking in the garden, this imminent danger seemed to take bodily shape, and I could almost fancy that I saw this most loathsome and dangerous of all the fiends crouching closely in his very shadow, like a half-cowed beast which slinks beside its keeper, ready at any unguarded moment to spring at his throat. And the dead woman, the woman who had spent her life in warding off this danger, took shape also to my imagination, and I saw her as a shadowy but beautiful presence which intervened for ever with arms uplifted to screen the man whom she loved. In some subtle way he divined the sympathy which I had for him, and he showed in his own silent fashion that he appreciated it. He even invited me once to share his afternoon walk, and although no word passed between us on this occasion, it was a mark of confidence which he had never shown to anyone before. He asked me also to index his library (it was one of the best private libraries in England), and I spent many hours in the evening in his presence, if not in his society, he reading at his desk and I sitting in a recess by the window reducing to order the chaos which existed among his books. In spite of these closer relations I was never again asked to enter the chamber in the turret. And then came my revulsion of feeling. A single incident changed all my sympathy to loathing, and made me realize that my employer still remained all that he had ever been, with the additional vice of hypocrisy. What happened was as follows. One evening Miss Witherton had gone down to Broadway, the neighbouring village, to sing at a concert for some charity, and I, according to my promise, had walked over to escort her back. The drive sweeps round under the eastern turret, and I observed as I passed that the light was lit in the circular room. It was a summer evening, and the window, which was a little higher than our heads, was open. We were, as it happened, engrossed in our own conversation at the moment, and we had paused upon the lawn which skirts the old turret, when suddenly something broke in upon our talk and turned our thoughts away from our own affairs. It was a voice--the voice undoubtedly of a woman. It was low--so low that it was only in that still night air that we could have heard it, but, hushed as it was, there was no mistaking its feminine timbre. It spoke hurriedly, gaspingly for a few sentences, and then was silent--a piteous, breathless, imploring sort of voice. Miss Witherton and I stood for an instant staring at each other. Then we walked quickly in the direction of the hall-door. "It came through the window," I said. "We must not play the part of eaves-droppers," she answered. "We must forget that we have ever heard it." There was an absence of surprise in her manner which suggested a new idea to me. "You have heard it before," I cried. "I could not help it. My own room is higher up on the same turret. It has happened frequently." "Who can the woman be?" "I have no idea. I had rather not discuss it." [Illustration: "IT WAS THE VOICE UNDOUBTEDLY OF A WOMAN."] Her voice was enough to show me what she thought. But granting that our employer led a double and dubious life, who could she be, this mysterious woman who kept him company in the old tower? I knew from my own inspection how bleak and bare a room it was. She certainly did not live there. But in that case where did she come from? It could not be any one of the household. They were all under the vigilant eyes of Mrs. Stevens. The visitor must come from without. But how? And then suddenly I remembered how ancient this building was, and how probable that some mediÃ¦val passage existed in it. There is hardly an old castle without one. The mysterious room was the basement of the turret, so that if there were anything of the sort it would open through the floor. There were numerous cottages in the immediate vicinity. The other end of the secret passage might lie among some tangle of bramble in the neighbouring copse. I said nothing to anyone, but I felt that the secret of my employer lay within my power. And the more convinced I was of this the more I marvelled at the manner in which he concealed his true nature. Often as I watched his austere figure, I asked myself if it were indeed possible that such a man should be living this double life, and I tried to persuade myself that my suspicions might after all prove to be ill-founded. But there was the female voice, there was the secret nightly rendezvous in the turret chamber--how could such facts admit of an innocent interpretation? I conceived a horror of the man. I was filled with loathing at his deep, consistent hypocrisy. Only once during all those months did I ever see him without that sad but impassive mask which he usually presented towards his fellow-man. For an instant I caught a glimpse of those volcanic fires which he had damped down so long. The occasion was an unworthy one, for the object of his wrath was none other than the aged charwoman whom I have already mentioned as being the one person who was allowed within his mysterious chamber. I was passing the corridor which led to the turret--for my own room lay in that direction--when I heard a sudden, startled scream, and merged in it the husky, growling note of a man who is inarticulate with passion. It was the snarl of a furious wild beast. Then I heard his voice thrilling with anger. "You would dare!" he cried. "You would dare to disobey my directions!" An instant later the charwoman passed me, flying down the passage, white faced and tremulous, while the terrible voice thundered behind her. "Go to Mrs. Stevens for your money! Never set foot in Thorpe Place again!" Consumed with curiosity, I could not help following the woman, and found her round the corner leaning against the wall and palpitating like a frightened rabbit. [Illustration: "NEVER SET FOOT IN THORPE PLACE AGAIN!"] "What is the matter, Mrs. Brown?" I asked. "It's master!" she gasped. "Oh 'ow 'e frightened me! If you 'ad seen 'is eyes, Mr. Colmore, sir. I thought 'e would 'ave been the death of me." "But what had you done?" "Done, sir! Nothing. At least nothing to make so much of. Just laid my 'and on that black box of 'is--'adn't even opened it, when in 'e came and you 'eard the way 'e went on. I've lost my place, and glad I am of it, for I would never trust myself within reach of 'im again." So it was the japanned box which was the cause of this outburst--the box from which he would never permit himself to be separated. What was the connection, or was there any connection between this and the secret visits of the lady whose voice I had overheard? Sir John Bollamore's wrath was enduring as well as fiery, for from that day Mrs. Brown, the charwoman, vanished from our ken, and Thorpe Place knew her no more. And now I wish to tell you the singular chance which solved all these strange questions and put my employer's secret in my possession. The story may leave you with some lingering doubt as to whether my curiosity did not get the better of my honour, and whether I did not condescend to play the spy. If you choose to think so I cannot help it, but can only assure you that, improbable as it may appear, the matter came about exactly as I describe it. The first stage in this _dÃ©nouement_ was that the small room on the turret became uninhabitable. This occurred through the fall of the worm-eaten oaken beam which supported the ceiling. Rotten with age, it snapped in the middle one morning, and brought down a quantity of the plaster with it. Fortunately Sir John was not in the room at the time. His precious box was rescued from amongst the _dÃ©bris_ and brought into the library, where, henceforward, it was locked within his bureau. Sir John took no steps to repair the damage, and I never had an opportunity of searching for that secret passage, the existence of which I had surmised. As to the lady, I had thought that this would have brought her visits to an end, had I not one evening heard Mr. Richards asking Mrs. Stevens who the woman was whom he had overheard talking to Sir John in the library. I could not catch her reply, but I saw from her manner that it was not the first time that she had had to answer or avoid the same question. "You've heard the voice, Colmore?" said the agent. I confessed that I had. "And what do _you_ think of it?" I shrugged my shoulders, and remarked that it was no business of mine. "Come, come, you are just as curious as any of us. Is it a woman or not?" "It is certainly a woman." "Which room did you hear it from?" "From the turret-room, before the ceiling fell." "But I heard it from the library only last night. I passed the door as I was going to bed, and I heard something wailing and praying just as plainly as I hear you. It may be a woman----" "Why, what else _could_ it be?" He looked at me hard. "There are more things in heaven and earth," said he. "If it is a woman, how does she get there?" "I don't know." "No, nor I. But if it is the other thing--but there, for a practical business man at the end of the nineteenth century this is rather a ridiculous line of conversation." He turned away, but I saw that he felt even more than he had said. To all the old ghost stories of Thorpe Place a new one was being added before our very eyes. It may by this time have taken its permanent place, for though an explanation came to me, it never reached the others. And my explanation came in this way. I had suffered a sleepless night from neuralgia, and about mid-day I had taken a heavy dose of chlorodyne to alleviate the pain. At that time I was finishing the indexing of Sir John Bollamore's library, and it was my custom to work there from five till seven. On this particular day I struggled against the double effect of my bad night and the narcotic. I have already mentioned that there was a recess in the library, and in this it was my habit to work. I settled down steadily to my task, but my weariness overcame me and, falling back upon the settee, I dropped into a heavy sleep. [Illustration: "SIR JOHN BOLLAMORE WAS SITTING AT HIS STUDY TABLE."] How long I slept I do not know, but it was quite dark when I awoke. Confused by the chlorodyne which I had taken, I lay motionless in a semi-conscious state. The great room with its high walls covered with books loomed darkly all round me. A dim radiance from the moonlight came through the farther window, and against this lighter background I saw that Sir John Bollamore was sitting at his study table. His well-set head and clearly cut profile were sharply outlined against the glimmering square behind him. He bent as I watched him, and I heard the sharp turning of a key and the rasping of metal upon metal. As if in a dream I was vaguely conscious that this was the japanned box which stood in front of him, and that he had drawn something out of it, something squat and uncouth, which now lay before him upon the table. I never realized--it never occurred to my bemuddled and torpid brain that I was intruding upon his privacy, that he imagined himself to be alone in the room. And then, just as it rushed upon my horrified perceptions, and I had half risen to announce my presence, I heard a strange, crisp, metallic clicking, and then the voice. Yes, it was a woman's voice; there could not be a doubt of it. But a voice so charged with entreaty and with yearning love, that it will ring for ever in my ears. It came with a curious far-away tinkle, but every word was clear, though faint--very faint, for they were the last words of a dying woman. "I am not really gone, John," said the thin, gasping voice. "I am here at your very elbow, and shall be until we meet once more. I die happy to think that morning and night you will hear my voice. Oh, John, be strong, be strong, until we meet again." I say that I had risen in order to announce my presence, but I could not do so while the voice was sounding. I could only remain half lying, half sitting, paralyzed, astounded, listening to those yearning distant musical words. And he--he was so absorbed that even if I had spoken he might not have heard me. But with the silence of the voice came my half articulated apologies and explanations. He sprang across the room, switched on the electric light, and in its white glare I saw him, his eyes gleaming with anger, his face twisted with passion, as the hapless charwoman may have seen him weeks before. "Mr. Colmore!" he cried. "You here! What is the meaning of this, sir?" With halting words I explained it all, my neuralgia, the narcotic, my luckless sleep and singular awakening. As he listened the glow of anger faded from his face, and the sad, impassive mask closed once more over his features. "My secret is yours, Mr. Colmore," said he. "I have only myself to blame for relaxing my precautions. Half confidences are worse than no confidences, and so you may know all since you know so much. The story may go where you will when I have passed away, but until then I rely upon your sense of honour that no human soul shall hear it from your lips. I am proud still--God help me!--or, at least, I am proud enough to resent that pity which this story would draw upon me. I have smiled at envy, and disregarded hatred, but pity is more than I can tolerate. "You have heard the source from which the voice comes--that voice which has, as I understand, excited so much curiosity in my household. I am aware of the rumours to which it has given rise. These speculations, whether scandalous or superstitious, are such as I can disregard and forgive. What I should never forgive would be a disloyal spying and eavesdropping in order to satisfy an illicit curiosity. But of that, Mr. Colmore, I acquit you. "When I was a young man, sir, many years younger than you are now, I was launched upon town without a friend or adviser, and with a purse which brought only too many false friends and false advisers to my side. I drank deeply of the wine of life--if there is a man living who has drunk more deeply he is not a man whom I envy. My purse suffered, my character suffered, my constitution suffered, stimulants became a necessity to me, I was a creature from whom my memory recoils. And it was at that time, the time of my blackest degradation, that God sent into my life the gentlest, sweetest spirit that ever descended as a ministering angel from above. She loved me, broken as I was, loved me, and spent her life in making a man once more of that which had degraded itself to the level of the beasts. "But a fell disease struck her, and she withered away before my eyes. In the hour of her agony it was never of herself, of her own sufferings and her own death, that she thought. It was all of me. The one pang which her fate brought to her was the fear that when her influence was removed I should revert to that which I had been. It was in vain that I made oath to her that no drop of wine would ever cross my lips. She knew only too well the hold that the devil had upon me--she who had striven so to loosen it--and it haunted her night and day the thought that my soul might again be within his grip. "It was from some friend's gossip of the sick room that she heard of this invention--this phonograph--and with the quick insight of a loving woman she saw how she might use it for her ends. She sent me to London to procure the best which money could buy. When I returned she lay actually in the throes of death. And with her last breath--the very last that she breathed upon earth--she whispered this message into it, a message to strengthen my resolves and to retain her influence upon my actions. Into her ear I whispered that twice a day for ever afterwards I should listen to her dear voice, and so, smiling at the success of her plan, she passed gently away. "So now you have my secret, Mr. Colmore, and you understand why this japanned box and that which it contains is more to me than all my ancestral home. I trust you, and I believe you to be worthy of my trust. But after this the sight of you would be painful to me, and so good-bye! You will find no cause to regret having left my service, but you will understand that we must never meet again." So this was the last time that I was ever destined to see Sir John Bollamore, and I left him standing in his library, with his hand upon the instrument which brought him that ever-recurring, intangible, and yet intimate reminder from the woman whom he loved. You may have read about his death in a carriage accident last Midsummer. I do not fancy that it was a very unwelcome event to him. [Illustration] _Illustrated Interviews._ LXII.--MADAME MELBA. BY PERCY CROSS STANDING. [Illustration: MADAME MELBA AS SHE FIRST APPEARED IN GRAND OPERA.--GILDA IN "RIGOLETTO," BRUSSELS, OCTOBER 15, 1887. _From a Photo. by J. Ganz, Brussels._] To an observant student of the world's genius it is a reflection, not without a peculiar interest of its own, that the Australian Continent has so far produced but one woman-singer of the first rank. Of poets whose genius is as undoubted as their place in the world's literature is certain Australia has given us at least two, in Henry Kendall and the gifted but ill-fated Adam Lindsay Gordon. To the drama this, the "least contiguous" of the four continents, has contributed Haddon Chambers--though the creator of "Captain Swift" and "The Idler" has now dwelt among us so long as to be regarded as a fully naturalized "Englander." The department of imaginative literature is already represented by quite a little army from "down under," as the eminent names of Mrs. Campbell Praed, "Tasma," Mr. Rolf Boldrewood, Miss Ada Cambridge, Miss Ethel Turner, Mr. Guy Boothby, and the late Marcus Clarke bear eloquent testimony; whilst the field of critical and biographical writing finds a worthy representative in Mr. Patchett Martin. But Melba stands alone. Towering head and shoulders over every other aspirant to the highest honours of grand opera, the retirement of Madame Patti from the operatic field has left "the Australian Nightingale" undisputed ruler of an empire probably the proudest in the sum of this planet's most desirable possessions. Yet these are honours becomingly and graciously worn by one who, scarcely a decade ago, was little more than a name to the patrons and supporters of the opera. As I sit in her _salon_ to-day, and chat with this queenly woman, whose greatest charm assuredly lies in her consideration for others, I wonder whether she ever recalls that little white-robed girl (herself) who, in far-off Melbourne, in the dead of night, startled her parents and brought them downstairs by her playing of Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata." It is a pretty story, with a prettier sequel. ForÂ the parents of that little girl had not the heart to chide their offspring for her "precocity" (that unmeaning word in which the beginningsÂ of genius are so often concealed),Â but rather did they coax her back to bed as they marvelled over what they had heard. Surely they must, at that early day, have had some faint glimmering of the future in store for the coming _prima donna_! [Illustration: MADAME MELBA BEFORE HER DÃBUT, 1887. _From a Photo. by Chalot, Paris._] "Perhaps they did--I do not know,"Â says Madame Melba, dreamily. "But one thing I know for certain--that their daughter did not cherish any such aspirations for a long time to come. I went quietly on with my education--no, not my musical education, that came later--until my marriage, which took place at the early age of seventeen. Stop, though! IÂ was entirely forgetting to tell you the story of what I call 'my first appearance on any stage.' It took place at the Town Hall, Richmond, which is a suburb of Melbourne, and I was aged _six_ at the time! What did I sing? Let me see, now! Yes, I sang 'Shells of the Ocean' first, followed by 'Comin' thro' the Rye.' It was a great occasion, as you may imagine, and I am by no means certain that I am not prouder of it than of anything I have done since." On the question as to whence--if traceable at all--Madame Melba derives her voice and natural musical gifts, she told me that her mother was an accomplished musician. In addition to being a beautiful pianist, she played also the organ and the harp. Thus it was that the future _prima donna_ was reared so to speak in the lap of Music. Her mother was her first teacher of the piano, and afterwards her studies were aided by the exertions of her aunts Alice and Lizzie. "Even as a child of three or four," she continued, "I was so passionately devoted to music that I remember frequently crawling under the piano and remaining quiet there for hours while listening to my mother's playing. Yes, my mother sang also, though she had not a particularly notable voice. But her sister, my 'Aunt Lizzie,' as I called her, possessed a soprano voice of extraordinary beauty and quality. To this day I can remember my aunt's absolute control of her voice, and the beauty and ease of her execution even in the highest _pianissimo_ passages. Indeed, I feel sure my Aunt Lizzie would have enjoyed a brilliant career as a public singer, had she adopted it." It should be mentioned that the _diva's_ father, Mr. David Mitchell, is a squatter resident in the Colony of Victoria, and that his several stations are far removed from important townships. The family now reside at Colbin Abbin Estate; but in the days when Melba was a child they lived at "Steel's Flat," another of her father's estates, where she was born and brought up, with intermittent visits to Melbourne. I was interested to find that the subject of this interview can also trace the gift of music on the paternal side of the house. To this day her father sings in the local choir, and his daughter told me she well remembered his voice as a deep basso of beautiful _timbre_. He has always been passionately fond of music, and is, in addition to his vocal talent (to quote his daughter's own expression), "a fiddler of no mean ability." Madame Melba speaks in the most affectionate terms of both her parents. Her mother died while the great singer was in her teens, but Melba cherishes many sweet recollections of her. "She was a natural artist--not as regards music only, for one remembers it in the general expression of her life. She was, among other things, a charming painter on china, and the dessert-service still in use at home was decorated by her brush. "Did my father also foster my love of music? Yes, indeed he did, to the utmost of his power. When I was quite a baby it was my great joy, on Sunday afternoons, to sit on my father's knee at the harmonium. He would blow the bellows with his feet, while singing a bass accompaniment to the hymn which I would pick out on the key-board with one finger." Thus, finding that the Australian singer inherits the gift of song from either side of her family, I inquired whether this passion for music did not begin to take shape at a very tender age. "In illustration that that was so," she answered, "I remember once our family moving into 'winter quarters' at one of my father's outlying stations. I was ten years old at the time, but I know I felt furious, on arrival, to find that there was no piano in the house. My gentle mother consoled me with the gift of _a concertina_, which I taught myself to play during the three months that we remained there! In those sequestered places, in the case of country houses very far removed from a church or chapel, it is customary for a clergyman or lay preacher to come along on Sundays and preach to the family, the servants, and station hands--often quite a large congregation, particularly at shearing-time. "One Sunday--I was then, perhaps, thirteen years old--we were visited by a worthy man, who chanced to be a particularly poor preacher. At the conclusion of his very long and (as we children thought) somewhat wearisome discourse, he suggested that we should sing a hymn. There was a harmonium in the room, and my mother asked me to play a familiar hymn. I accordingly seated myself, but, in revenge for having been so bored, I played--to the horror of some and the secret delight of others--a music-hall ditty which had succeeded in penetrating our wilderness! It was called, 'You Should See Me Dance the Polka.' In the sequel, I received the well-merited punishment of being sent to bed for the remainder of the day. "It must have been about the end of the same year that I had, what I thought at the time, a very fearsome adventure indeed! It happened at Melbourne. I was learning to play the organ, and I had permission occasionally to practise on the great organ in the Scots Church. Late one afternoon I ceased playing, and fell into a reverie. When, at last, I proceeded to leave the church, I found, to my horror, I was locked in! My playing having ceased for some time, the sexton had concluded I was gone, and had locked up the church and left. You cannot conceive the agony of mind I endured. The church was very dark, and the pulpit and altar in their grey dust-cloths looked, to my frightened imagination, like monstrous ghosts. What should I do?... At last the sexton returned--by the merest chance he had forgotten something, which he came back to fetch, and so I obtained my release." About two years after her marriage, namely, at the age of nineteen, Melba began concert singing. At first she sang as an amateur; but so rapidly did she betray talents of an extraordinarily high order, that she was strongly recommended to adopt the vocal art as a profession. Upon this advice she acted, and came to England to study. The rest is history. It is, however, history of an exceedingly interesting character. It will be seen that, in shaping her public career, Madame Melba unconsciously moved in cycles of two years. Thus, she was married at seventeen. At nineteen she commenced to sing publicly. At twenty-one she came to Europe in order to study the art she had elected to follow. At twenty-three occurred her _dÃ©but_ on the operatic stage. So far as operatic England is concerned, the distinction of introducing Melba to the Covent Garden public belongs to the late Sir Augustus Harris, who subsequently wrote a rather remarkable letter on the subject of the Australian _dÃ©butante's_ quickly won popularity. Madame Melba's initial appearance on the Covent Garden stage took place in May, 1888, as the ill-fated heroine of Donizetti's "Lucia di Lammermoor." Her success, both with the critics and with the public, was so spontaneous and overwhelming, that her engagement for the next (1889) London season was rendered inevitable. The new _prima donna's_ principal appearance of 1889 was in Gounod's "RomÃ©o et Juliette," while her performance in Verdi's "Rigoletto" exhibited how rapidly, to quote Mr. Parker's "Opera Under Augustus Harris," "Madame Melba's popularity was increasing in this country." In 1890 she created at Covent Garden the character of _Ophelia_ in Dr. Ambroise Thomas's "Hamlet," which she had the advantage of rehearsing with the composer himself. [Illustration: MADAME MELBA IN "LAKMÃ," 1890. _From a Photo. by Dupont, Brussels._] In 1893 Melba went to America, to meet with a wholly unprecedented success; but in '94 she was back at Covent Garden, to charm huge audiences with her _Nedda_ in Leoncavallo's "Pagliacci" and her _Marguerite_ in "Faust." Since then the cantatrice has appeared with regularity during the London opera season. Two of her most interesting appearances have been in "Carmen" three years ago, when that opera was performed with the extraordinarily strong cast of Madame CalvÃ© as _Carmen_, Madame Melba as _Michaela_, and M. Alvarez as _Don JosÃ©_; and in "Les HuguenotÅ" in 1896, when Albani was the _Valentina_, and Melba the _Margherita de Valois_. In that season, by the way, a gloom was cast over English musical life by the deaths of Sir Joseph Barnby and Sir Augustus Harris, the latter being a personal friend of Madame Melba, and of whom she cherishes many pleasant recollections. [Illustration: MADAME MELBA AS LUCIA DI LAMMERMOOR, 1891. _From a Photo. by Nadar, Paris._] But then, as I told the Australian _prima donna_, in her case "pleasant recollections" must of necessity multiply themselves, by virtue of the numbers of the world's great ones with whom her art and her remarkable gifts have brought her in contact. And yet she remains so wholly and entirely a "womanly woman," that I verily believe she values the esteem and admiration of the lowliest peasant as highly as that of the great ones of the earth. In respect of the personal friendships to which I have just made reference, the _diva_ has delightful remembrances of masters like the veteran Verdi, Charles Gounod (with whom she had the privilege of rehearsing his "Faust" and "RomÃ©o et Juliette"), poor Goring Thomas, the creator of "Esmeralda," Tosti, and Puccini. In the case of the latter composer, she studied her part in his "La BohÃ¨me" (a new assumption) with him in Southern Italy last summer; and, if all that we hear be true, she is destined to win fresh laurels in the same composer's newest work, "La Tosca," in which Puccini does for Sardou's tragic story what Verdi has done for Shakespeare's "Othello." Nellie Melba is a woman of rare enthusiasms. In conversation with me, she could not say too much in praise of Madame Matilde Marchesi--the only singing-teacher she has ever had--and whom she speaks of in terms of warmest affection and sympathy. I asked the _prima donna_ whether she has ever experienced the excitement and danger of a theatre fire. "Yes, on two occasions," she told me; "in San Francisco and in London. In both cases the danger was happily averted. At Covent Garden the outbreak happened actually on the stage during a performance of 'Faust,' and the curtain had to be rung down. I chanced to be in the 'wings' at the time, and while they were battling with the flames behind the curtain, I came in front and begged the people to remain seated. Fortunately that most terrible of calamities, a theatre panic, was averted. As soon as I found myself behind the scenes once more I committed the weakness of fainting." There have been, not unnaturally, some striking incidents connected with Melba's enormous popularity at the Paris Opera House. There is one of them, however, to which a pathetic interest attaches by reason of the comparatively recent death of Madame Carnot, who figured in it in very sympathetic fashion. The opera was "Lucia di Lammermoor"--one of Melba's greatest, if not her very greatest assumption. It happened that the tenor, Monsieur Cossira, arrived at the Opera House feeling very unwell, but apparently recovering before the opera began he decided to go on. Early in the first act, however, he almost completely lost his voice! When it came to the duet with _Lucia_ in the first act, it utterly failed him. The _prima donna_, full of sympathy for his difficulty, for a time sang his music as well as her own; but ultimately the curtain had to be rung down, and for a few moments it appeared as though the performance could not proceed, since--surely a thing unprecedented at the Paris Opera House--Monsieur Cossira was not provided with an understudy! As luck would have it, though, among the audience was M. Engel, who had sung the part with Melba, not long before, in Brussels. Grasping the situation, he went behind the scenes and proffered his services, which were gladly and gratefully accepted. The performance proceeded, and for several nights thereafter M. Engel sang the part. "At the close of the evening," added Madame Melba, in telling me of the incident, "Madame Carnot sent for me. It was during Monsieur Carnot's reign at the ElysÃ©e, and so his wife was occupying the Presidential box at the Opera. Being a woman of very quick perception, Madame Carnot had observed my efforts at covering the confusion of my poor colleague. I can never forget her kind words to me then, nor shall I readily forget the sorrow I felt afterwards on hearing the news of President Carnot's terrible end, and of her own death subsequently." By the time this interview appears in print, Madame Melba will be in the thick of her fifth visit to the United States. Her previous operatic tours of the American Continent have been full of varied and interesting experiences. One of the most characteristic "Melba stories" that I know dates from her last tour but one. It was at St. Louis, where, thanks to a late train, the _diva_ and her company arrived only a very little time before the hour fixed for the commencement. There was, in fact, only just time for the artists to make for their respective dressing-rooms. But Melba, looking down from a coign of vantage into the orchestra, observed, to her dismay and annoyance, that her musicians were in morning dress. She promptly sent for the _chef d'orchestre_. The poor man expostulated, remonstrated; they had but a few minutes before come off the cars; there was no time, etc. But Melba was firm. "If the gentlemen of my orchestra do not choose to appear in evening dress, I shall refuse to go on the stage. I owe a duty to the public as well as to myself." This inexorable mandate had its effect, and the musicians were soon seen filing out of the orchestra, to return a few minutes later, suitably clad in the evening garb of comparative civilization. Then the curtain rose and the opera commenced--only a very little behind time. The incident did not, however, pass unrecognised. The critics of the Press had seen the musicians disappear and re-appear, and correctly surmising the cause of their "quick change," the result was a series of graceful little articles in the St. Louis papers complimenting the popular favourite upon her sense of the fitness of things. [Illustration: MADAME MELBA AS JULIETTE, 1892. _From a Photo. by Dupont, Brussels._] An incident without precedent on the concert stage marked the concert which Melba gave at the Albert Hall, on November 2nd, to signalize her departure for her present trans-Atlantic tour. Of the three principal performers--_i.e._, Madame Melba herself, Miss Ada Crossley, the contralto, and Mr. Johann Kruse, the solo violinist--all were not only Australians, but Victorians by birth. [Illustration: MADAME MELBA AS OPHÃLIE, 1895 _From a Photo. by Reutlinger, Paris._] [Illustration: MADAME MELBA, 1893. _From a Photo. by Renque et Cie, Paris._] Immediately after
{'title': 'The Strand Magazine, Vol. 17, No. 97, January to June 1899 by Various', 'source': 'Project Gutenberg', 'lang': 'en'}