At the end of the performance, something wonderful happened. When Galli-Curci came on to take her applause, she picked us out from where we sat clapping in the stalls, and waved to us. I remember thinking, “This is the nearest thing to royalty I shall ever be! I’m being waved at by Galli-Curci across the footlights of the Metropolitan!”
The next day, Galli-Curci asked us to dinner in her apartment. She lived just opposite the Metropolitan Museum on that part of Upper Fifth Avenue then known as Millionaires’ Row. She added that she would send a car for us.
Again we donned our Mabs Fashions’ evening dresses and swept out, we believed, as to the manner born. Our waiting car possessed a chauffeur and a fur rug.—We had hardly ever been in even a taxi before in our lives.—And away we went up Fifth Avenue, to be deposited at an apartment that looked rather like the Wallace Collection to us. At this point there was a slight social hitch: Louise was wearing an evening cloak made by me, with a near-fur collar, and if this collar were roughly handled, it would crackle. As the manservant took the cloak, the collar crackled. Louise was mortified, but no one seemed to notice. And then Galli-Curci came running downstairs and into the room.
Oh, Lita! How the years roll back when I recall that evening. I suppose it was later that she became “Lita” to us, for those were not the days when every important fan presumed to address stars by their Christian names. But from that first evening, she was a dear, kind, affectionate friend for life.
She apparently needed no more than a few minutes in our company to realize what kind of girls we were, and she asked almost immediately, “Did your mother mind your coming?”
We admitted that she did rather.
“I know exactly what she thought,” Galli-Curci said. “I’ll tell you what we will do. We’ll all write a card to Momma tonight to tell her that you are in a good house and she needn’t worry.”
And she did. In the middle of a busy season, she wrote to Mother, assuring her of our safety and happiness. A typical Galli-Curci gesture, we were to find later, for she combined an extraordinary sensitivity about the feelings of others with the sort of cool common sense one does not always associate with prima donnas.
Years later, one of her great colleagues—who liked her, as a matter of fact—told us many people considered Galli-Curci rather cold and proud. Although a small woman, she had immense dignity and presence, and her Spanish side gave her a rather aristocratic bearing that marked her out in any company. She would have been a fool if she had not known her exact position in the musical world of that day. And Galli-Curci was no fool.
But to us, she was an angel. And she changed our lives.
That first magical evening was like the sort of thing you invent to please yourself, but which never really happens. Plans were made for our enjoyment; we were advised on what to hear at the opera. And, final delight, Homer told us that Arturo Toscanini was returning to New York for the first time, after fifteen years’ absence—following his famous quarrel with Gatti-Casazza—and if we wished to go, he would take us.
In those days, we had only a vague idea of Toscanini’s position in the musical world, but we accepted with alacrity. Thanks to Homer, we witnessed that wonderful scene of excitement and rejoicing when Toscanini returned to New York.
In this connection, Lita told us an amusing story. Once, during Toscanini’s long absence and before the reconciliation between him and Gatti, she said to the famous manager of the Met, “Gatti, why don’t you have Toscanini back?”
Gatti regarded her with somewhat sardonic gloom and replied, “When you have had typhoid fever and have had the good fortune to recover, do you ask to have it again?”
That evening was the prelude to an unbelievable four weeks of musical festivity. In addition to hearing Lita once more in Traviata, we heard her as Rosina in Il Barbiere di Siviglia, and as Gilda in Rigoletto, which I still think her greatest part. I never heard another Gilda who even remotely approached her. She was an absolute mistress of the art of recitative, and her coloratura was as effortless, as natural as the spoken word. Also, she was a very good actress. Not a very great one—that is something different—but a very good one. She even looked a Gilda—quite a tough assignment for some who have essayed the role. With her oval, Renaissance type of face, her magnificent dark eyes, and that essential touch of melancholy, which could sometimes transform her face as well as her voice, she was the living embodiment of Rigoletto’s daughter.
As well as our Galli-Curci performance, we heard Turandot, Falstaff, Tosca, Romeo and Juliet, and La Forza del Destino. We also heard La Bohème and I think that it was on this first visit that we heard Martinelli in Pagliacci.
It will be seen from this list that we leaned very much to the Italian side of the operatic repertoire. Later, at our own Covent Garden, we discovered the great German artists of this rich period. But meanwhile, did we have fun among the Italians!
I cannot complete an account of these magical weeks without mentioning the amazing American hospitality we received. I mean the heart-warming welcome Americans extend to anyone they recognize as an eager and interested visitor. Because of the particular events in our later lives, we thought that the golden, happy things of life lay largely on the other side of the Atlantic. Because of those lovely, carefree, happy days of our youth, we found a particular touching significance in the words, “Westward, look, the land is bright.”
Like all good things, our American visit could not last forever, and finally we had to go to say goodbye to Lita and Homer. It was a melancholy occasion, but Lita said something that changed everything.
“If you come back one year in the fall, we will give you a really lovely holiday at our home in the Catskill Mountains.”
“If you’ll wait while we save up the money,” we cried, “we’ll come. But it takes two years.”
Lita promised to wait. And then she added thoughtfully, “Time and distance don’t matter, if you are really fond of someone.”
A profound and simple assertion, put to the test again and again in the years that followed, but always to prove true.
We went home on the Aquitania. Third class this time, which was the nearest thing to steerage that existed in our day. In working out our expenses, we had realized that we must travel one way in lowly state; we reasoned that, on the return journey, there would be no emigrants. This was true, but there were deportees—twenty-two of them, if I remember rightly. But it was an experience and we could hardly expect roses all the way.
As we ste pped off the Aquitania at Southampton, a man approached us: “Are you the Misses Cook?”
When we replied in chorus that we were, he went on, “Well, I’m from the Daily Mail.” And a milder version of our New Yorker publicity experience began all over again. We returned to the bosom of our amused family as minor celebrities of a moment; to this day, there exists an incredible photograph of Louise and me smirking falsely at each other in an attempt to “look sisterly,” as requested by the press.
We were spent out, down to our last shilling. Since we intended to return to New York, I thought it was time I tried to make some extra money and decided—like many a deluded creature before me—that the easiest thing might be to write something. Since they seemed interested, I sent a breezy little article about us and our trip to the Daily Mail.
Luckily for me, we were news in a very limited way; the article was accepted, and I saw myself in print for the first time. Intoxicated by success, we thought we were famous for life. Needless to say, in two or three days everyone had forgotten all about us, and in rather chastened mood, I pondered on possible topics that would interest anyone.
I hit upon