The Complete Works of L M Montgomery, page 783
When Emma was only seven the little musical family of Chambly was sadly shaken by the death of the mother. The father taught music in a convent near Montreal and thither he took his two little orphan daughters to be cared for by the nuns.
Little Emma, always happy, was especially so here. The sisters saw she was marvellously talented and they encouraged her to perform before small audiences, and this was perfect joy to the budding actress. So pleasant was the convent life that a new ambition began to stir in her heart. She would stay here all her life, she declared, and become a nun when she grew up.
But the wise Mother Superior shook her head. No, little Emma must go out into the world for a few years before she made such a momentous decision. After a time, if she were still determined to be a nun, she might return.
“God has given you a beautiful voice,” the Mother said, “and I think it is clearly your duty to use it.”
When Emma was about fourteen her father moved with his family to Albany in New York state, leaving the beloved Canadian home forever. In this big city the girl’s glorious voice attracted immediate attention. She was made soprano soloist in a large church, and when the organist suddenly resigned Emma slipped into his place. And here she was, organist and choir leader in a big city church at fifteen!
But her work was easy for everybody loved her. She was little Emma to everyone for she never grew very big. She was so bright and full of fun, so blessed with the gracious gift of making others happy that she had friends on all sides. And these friends kept urging that she go abroad for further voice training. But her father was a poor music teacher and where was the money to come from?
The Bishop of Albany was especially interested in the little girl and very anxious that her talents should have every chance. So he busied himself in her behalf. Other friends rallied round. Two big concerts were arranged and tickets sold far and wide. The congregation of St. Joseph’s gave a generous donation, other friends brought contributions and finally there was enough money in the Bishop’s fund to send the little singer for a year’s training in Europe.
Six months in Paris! What an experience for the little girl from Chambly! And following that she went to Italy to study under the great Lamperti, one of the leading masters of the day.
And now the little Canadian songstress many a time felt grateful for her father’s rigid training. Had her early years been wasted in idleness or in half-hearted study the success that lay ahead would never have been hers. Lamperti demanded hard work from his pupils. Indeed he would have nothing to do with a pupil who did not give him his best efforts. He found the little girl from far-off Canada a pupil after his own heart. He was almost as much delighted over her capacity for steady work as he was with her glorious voice and he gave her his very best.
But it was not long before the little hoard of savings was spent, and the singer either had to return home or earn some money. So Lamperti decided to launch her in a great concert, young as she was. Arrangements were made for her debut in Messina in the Grand Opera, “La Somnambula.” And what about her name? All her teachers felt that Lajeunasse was not a suitable name for an opera star. Her elocution master suggested the name “Albani.” It belonged to a noble Italian family now extinct. Little Emma was delighted. It reminded her of her old home in Albany and the good Bishop. So Albani was the name that appeared in the announcements that a new opera star had arisen in the musical heavens, and was to appear first in Messina.
Launching a new unknown singer is always a great risk and the “star” in this case was so young that her debut was an anxious affair for Lamperti. He was as nervous as if she had been his own daughter. Just before she went on he came to her dressing room with a few last words and was overcome with dismay. There was a black cat sitting right on the threshold. A black cat! This merely meant the worst of ill luck. The concert would be a complete failure. But the little star, though superstitious like most French Canadians, did not allow her high spirits to be dampened. She would show him, she declared. Black cat or no black cat, she was going to succeed.
And what a success it was! Her emotional Italian audience went wild over the little Canadian girl with the magnificent voice and the splendid dramatic fire. From that night her success was assured. No danger of going back home to teach music. She was launched a prima donna at eighteen!
And now that she had proven herself she confessed her great ambition. She had always been a very loyal Briton, never forgetting that she was a Canadian, and she wanted above all things to go to England and try her fortunes in the great city of London.
She soon had money enough for the venture and her teachers arranged a tour of Malta on the way to help pay expenses. She gave several concerts in the island and it was while there that a happy chance made one of the world’s loveliest songs her very own.
One evening there came a special request from the homesick British soldiers and sailors for Home, sweet Home. Emma was delighted of course, and sang her very best, thinking, no doubt, of the little village of Chambly and the hills above Montreal and the roar of the St. Lawrence Rapids. And she never sang better. Her audience fairly rose up in rapturous applause. Those “exiles from home,” many of them with tears on their faces, demanded the song again and again. And so she sang it every night of her Malta season, often having to repeat it after a vociferous encore.
From that night, Home, sweet Home, seemed to be Albani’s own song. She sang it round the world; in peasants’ cottages and in kings’ palaces. She sang it to Queen Victoria at Windsor and to Lord Kitchener and the Viceregal party in India, to the homesick Welsh miners in South Africa and to her own Canadian people when she returned at the height of her fame to Montreal.
When she left Malta she had a royal send-off. The boats of the men-of-war lined up on either side the harbor as a guard on honor, making a long, cheering lane down which the little Canadian girl passed slowly and out to sea.
With such a triumph at the opening of her tour no wonder she conquered England. She was no sooner in London than she was engaged to sing by Mr. Frederick Gye, manager of the Royal Italian Opera of Covent Garden. For he had heard from Lamperti of his wonderful new pupil. A momentous engagement this proved to be to little Emma in more ways than one for only a few years later she married the manager’s son, Mr. Ernest Gye.
Once more she made her debut in La Somnambula, and her early triumphs were repeated. No one could resist such a voice wedded to such acting.
Indeed from now on life was one series of triumphs. It was “Roses, roses all the way,” for little Emma. Starting that night in Messina she reigned a Queen of Song for forty years. She sang her way round the world amid adoring plaudits of all sorts of audiences. But through a long life of unruffled success the little Canadian girl remained unspoiled. She never lost her life-long habit of strict attention to duty, and time and absence never dimmed her love for the old Canadian home.
Whenever she was in England she was commanded again and again to sing before Queen Victoria, and a warm friendship grew up between these two queens who ruled in such different realms. When Queen Victoria died, King Edward asked Madame Albani to sing at her funeral. It was an ordeal for one who had such a true affection for the dead Queen but the singer obeyed. Standing by the coffin in the dimly-lit chapel of Windsor she sang gloriously and triumphantly the great assurance: “I know that my Redeemer liveth.”
Albani was always in great demand for national functions of all sort in London. During Queen Victoria’s life there was a great Indian and Colonial exhibition held in London, with hundreds of delegates gathered from all over the empire. Tennyson wrote an ode for the closing meeting of the conference, Sir Arthur Sullivan set it to music and Albani was asked to sing it. The gathering was in the Royal Albert Hall: some ten-thousand people of every race and religion. Queen Victoria was there surrounded by her statesmen from every part of the Empire. All Britons they were and none more loyal than the little Canadian who stood out before the vast assemblage and thrilled every heart as she sang the lovely farewell:
Sharers of our glorious past,
Brothers, must we part at last?
Shall we not, through good and ill,
Cleave to one another still?
But England could not always cage such a songbird. The Continent, America, India, Australia, and of course, her native land were all clamoring to hear her, and accompanied by her husband she set off on a world tour.
Of course it was a royal home-coming to Canada. The day her ship docked the Mayor of Montreal proclaimed a public holiday. She was met by the city fathers and escorted in state to the Hotel de Ville. She was seated on the Mayor’s throne and addresses of welcome read to her, after which a great public reception was held.
There is a delightful story told of one of her visits home. The night she was to sing in Montreal she sent word to Chambly that every one of the old friends and neighbors were to come to her concert at her expense, and she reserved a large number of the front seats for them. They came in full strength, nearly all Chambly, it seemed, turned out to hear “La Petite Emma” sing.
But through some carelessness of the management the seats for the Chambly friends had not been saved and when the crowd in Habitant dress arrived they were brusquely told at the box office, “House sold out.” But the old neighbors did not turn away. They knew little Emma Lajeunasse better than that. A message was sent to her round by the stage door. Albani sent immediately for the manager. Why had the seats not been reserved? What was to be done? The manager shrugged. Nothing could be done now. Privately he did not think that a handful of French Canadian country folk were worth all that fuss.
“They must come up and sit on the platform,” Albani declared.
The manager refused politely but firmly.
“It cannot be done, Madame,” he said.
Little Emma’s soft dark eyes sparkled indignantly. “Then I don’t sing,” she said quietly.
Of course there was nothing to do but yield. Chairs were hurried to the stage and the Chambly friends filed into the very best seats the place afforded.
It was a great night. In the words of Drummond’s poem, “When Albani sang”:
Ev’ryboddy seem glad wen dey see her, come walkin’ right down de platform,
An’ way dey mak’ noise on de han’ den, w’y, it’s jus’ lak de beeg tonder storm!
But indeed Madame did not walk onto the platform, she ran. She always had the most delightful girlish way of skipping on and off and to-night when the vision in shining satin and blazing diamonds burst upon the stage all radiant smiles for the old friends no wonder their welcome sounded, “Lak de beeg tonder storm.”
Albani’s long successful history is full of just such deeds of love and kindness. For years she was the idol of the musical world, and through her her beloved native land gained recognition in the courts of genius. And to her warm loyal heart that was not one of the least of her triumphs. When she finally left the stage she settled in London, the home of her husband’s people and the place that had been the scene of her greatest success.
As the good Mother Superior had said in the far off convent days, her magnificent voice was the gift of God. But a gift alone, no matter how great, seldom raises one to such heights as she attained. And Madame Albani would never have won such a place in the courts of Fame had little Emma Lajeunasse not shown, along with her brilliant talents, the fine Canadian virtue of industry.
CHAPTER XVI. THE PRINCESS OF THE PADDLE: (TEKAHIONWAKE) PAULINE JOHNSON
IT was a slumberous late-summer afternoon. In a cool green curve of the Grand River, under overhanging willows, a canoe lay moored. In it a beautiful girl was reclining, her dark curly head on the bright cushion of the thwart, her soft dark eyes fixed on the shadowy reaches of the green river that wound far away into the soft amethyst haze.
Those girlish eyes saw more than the beauty of the winding stream and the flowery banks mirrored in the placid waters. For she was one of those rare souls to whom Nature speaks her own language and reveals her secrets. A school scribbler lay on her knee and while Nature whispered the girl wrote:
On the water’s idle pillow Sleeps the overhanging willow,
Green and cool;
Where the rushes lift their burnished
Oval heads from out the tarnished
Emerald pool.
There were nine lovely stanzas, and the poem was called In the Shadows, and the girl in the canoe, apparently idle let the lines slip off her pencil like shining beads from a string. And gems they surely were, destined one day to be a garland for her brow.
Many miles away from the canoe and the river, across the ocean there sat in an office in Old London the editor of a renowned magazine, when the mail brought him a book from a friend. It was a volume of Canadian poems called, Songs of the Great Dominion. The English man of letters was very much interested in anything of Canadian origin. He was delighted therefore with this volume of verse from Canada with its fresh new voices. One poem particularly attracted him, for in it he found an entirely new note, the music that belongs peculiarly to the Red Man. It was called, In the Shadows. One stanza fascinated him:
On the water’s idle pillow Sleeps the overhanging willow, Green and cool...
“I could not get it out of my head,” he declared afterwards. He read and re-read the whole lovely poem and the other poem by the same writer which the volume contained, and turned eagerly to the introductory remarks to see if he could find anything about the author, Pauline Johnson. He was still more interested when he learned that she was the daughter of a Mohawk Chief. So when the great editor wrote an appreciation of the book in the Athenæum, he paid a glowing tribute to the writer of In the Shadows.
One can imagine the thrill the girl of the canoe felt when some time later she read the review. In her generous whole-hearted fashion she sat down at once and wrote a letter of thanks. It was many years before the two met, but from their letters there grew up a fast friendship that lasted for life between Theodore Watts-Dunton and, “the beautiful and grand Canadian girl,” as he called her.
But the girl swinging idly in her canoe under the green shadows of the willows that hot August afternoon had no idea that she had put her foot upon the ladder of fame which she was so soon to mount.
In the Shadows was not her first poem by any means. In her nearby home “Chiefswood” beside the Grand River, Pauline Johnson had been scribbling verses ever since she had learned to write; yes, and making jingles about her dog and her pussy and her pony even before that time. And many an evening of fun the other three children had listening to little Pauline recite her rhymes.
It was a lovely home, this Chiefswood, and a most unusual one. The father, Chief Johnson, or Onwanonyshon, was a full blood Mohawk, head of the powerful Six Nations. His title had come down through a long line of chieftains from the days when Hiawatha formed the federation of the Six Nations or Iroquois. Chief Johnson was a gentleman in every sense of the word, kindly and cultured. Though he was well versed in the ways of white men and had many friends among them he spent his life in devoted service to his people on the Indian Reservation near Brantford.
Pauline’s mother was an English lady, Emily Howells, a relative of Dean Howells, the American novelist. When Emily was quite young the family moved to the New England states. This new home, with an over-stern father and an indifferent stepmother, was not a happy one for the sensitive little girl. So when an older sister married a missionary to the Indians stationed on the Indian reservation near Brantford in far-off Canada, she brought the little girl with her to her new home. It proved to be a very happy home too. In it they found a young Indian lad named Johnson, eldest son of the chief. He acted as interpreter and assistant to the missionary. Emily and the boy grew up side by side in this happy Christian home, and it was natural that they should be drawn together. When they were of age, despite strong opposition on both sides, they were married and the young Chief brought his bride to the beautiful home “Chiefswood” which he had built for her, beside the Grand River.
Here four children were born to them, two girls and two boys. Emily Pauline was the youngest. She grew up on the Indian Reservation with something akin to worship for her Chieftain father and giving her heart wholly to his people. In their early years the Johnson children had a governess and later were sent away to school. But schooling, as most children experience it, had little place in Pauline’s life. Some time in the Indian school on the Reservation and a couple of years in Brantford High School finished her formal education. But it by no means stopped there. It progressed steadily at home under her mother. Mrs. Johnson was always her daughter’s guide and counsellor. The little girl loved outdoor life and was perfectly happy with her pony and her dog and above all her canoe. But next to a paddle on the river she loved a book and her mother fostered this love and saw that Pauline early acquired a knowledge of good literature. Before she was twelve she had read many times every line of Sir Walter Scott’s poetry, all Longfellow’s, a great deal of Shakespeare and many of the English classics.
While she was still in her’teens Pauline began to send her poems to various publications. Some of her earliest verses appeared in a New York magazine called Gems of Poetry. Later The Week, an important publication of Toronto with Goldwin Smith at its head accepted several of her verses.
Life was very happy in the big beautiful house by the river. The Johnson girls were popular and Pauline especially had many friends among the young people of the city. And then came the death of her father which changed the whole course of their family life. It was impossible now to keep up “Chiefswood” and the family moved to Brantford while the boys entered business. The daughters felt the necessity of doing something to earn their living, but in those days there were very few openings for young ladies. Then came the turn in the lane and Pauline’s opportunity.
