Memories Of A Musical Career

MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL CAREER BY CLARA KATHLEEN ROGERS CLARA DORIA WITH ILLUSTRATIONS PRIVATELY PRINTED AT THE PLIMPTON PRESS - MCMXXXII Copyright, BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY, All rights reserved Published by LiWe, Brown, and Company, November, prp CLAKA KATHLKKN RMMIW Ilimi Doriu TO MY FATHER AND MOTHER I DEDICATE THIS BOOK IN TENDER MEMORY OF THEIR LOVING SELF-SACRIFICE, NEVER FULLY REQUITED BUT EVER REMEMBERED WITH UNDYING GRATITUDE FOREWORD JT I HIS story of my life would never have been written but for the repeated urgings of friends m who considered many of my experiences of un usual interest, as voiced by me in the intimacy of friendly intercourse. It was long before I could make up my mind to re spond to their urgings for the reason that an Autobi ography generally suggests that the writer is a person of importance in the eyes of the world, and I did not feel that I could arrogate to myself that distinction, or that the public would be interested in my concerns. When, however, it was put to me that no consecutive record exists of certain periods and events through which I have lived notably those of the Leipzig Conservatory between 1857 and 1860 and when my good friend, George W. Chadwick, argued that there fore my personal observations would be valued as com pleting the history of an interesting phase of musical evolution worth preserving, I began to take the matter into serious consideration. In contradiction to my first hesitancy to write my own story I have to own that frequently, on reflecting impersonally on the subject of autobiographies, I have thought that the story of almost any life however obscure would be interesting if all the thoughts, feelings and influenceswhich shaped it were faithfully recorded indeed that it might be of far more interest vii viii MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL CAREER than a cataloguing of a series of achievements, of ad ventures, and of triumphs in the lives of certain celeb rities. Perhaps these reflections may have had their influence in stirring my pen into action I had never kept a diary, not dreaming that I should ever be called upon to narrate the story of my life, neither had I made a collection of newspaper clippings and programmes as many artists are wont to do consequently I found myself without any written data and had to depend entirely on my own memory of events and of impressions received. My great perplexity was where to begin What to select from the mass of incidents with which my life had been replete When something whispered, What is the first thing that you can recall Begin with that 7 I did so. It was thus that the earliest memories of my child hood became a part of my story. Tapping my memory at this point produced a flow of recollections in steady sequence, every least occurrence being so strongly visu alized that it was like living through each phase of my life anew. In recording those early days in Chelten ham I was a child again in writing of Leipzig and Berlin I was once more a student with all the agitations which then beset me in recording my career in Italy I went through every phase of emotional excitement as vividly as though it were of yesterday and in setting down my subsequent experiences in London and in America I felt the alternating dullness and hopefulness through which I had passed. It has been a revelation to me of the greatest psy chological interest that events of but little consequenceand apparently long since forgotten should have lain buried in a subconsciousness. Truly it must be that FOREWORD ix somewhere, somehow, every thought and every act is registered in eternity, that nothing, however in significant, is lost In spite of my original reluctance, the writing of these memories has proved so absorbingly interesting to me that even if no one else should ever care to read what I have written, I should still feel amply repaid for my labour CONTENTS PAGE FOREWORD vii PRELUDE HOW JOHN BARNETT AND ELIZA LINDLEY HAPPENED TO BE MY PARENTS ...