Patti’s answer was a peal of laughter, and then she sat there singing very softly a stanza of “My Old Kentucky Home,” and as we finished the chorus she lifted a clear, sweet note, which thrilled us through and through, and stirred us to rapturous applause. “What have I done?” Patti put the question with a puzzled look. The reply came from the adjoining library: “High E.” One of our number had run to sound the piano pitch. Then I recalled what Sir Morell Mackenzie had told me a little while before he died. I was chatting with the great physician in that famous room of his in Harley Street. We happened to mention Madame Patti. “That great singer,” said Sir Morell, “has the most wonderful throat I have ever seen; it is the only one I have ever seen with the vocal chords in absolutely perfect condition after many years of use. They are not strained, or warped or roughened, but, as I tell you, they are absolutely perfect. There is no reason why they should not remain so ten years longer, and with care and health twenty years longer.”
Remembering this, I asked Madame Patti if she had taken extraordinary care of her voice. “I have never tired it,” said she; “I never sing when I am tired, and that means that I am never tired when I sing. And I have never strained for high notes. I have heard that the first question asked of new vocalists nowadays is ‘How high can you sing?’ But I have always thought _that_ the least important matter in singing. One should sing only what one can sing with perfect ease.”
“But in eating and drinking? According to all accounts you are most abstemious in these things.”
“No, indeed. I avoid very hot and very cold dishes, otherwise I eat and drink whatever I like. My care is chiefly to avoid taking cold, and to avoid indigestion. But these are the ordinary precautions of one who knows that health is the key to happiness.”
“And in practising? Have you rigid rules for that? One hears of astounding exercise and self-denial.”
“Brilliant achievements in fiction. For practising I run a few scales twenty minutes a day. After a long professional tour I let my voice rest for a month and do not practise at all during that time.”
During my visit to Craig-y-Nos we usually spent our evenings in the billiard-rooms. There are two at the castle, an English room and a French one. In the French room there is the great orchestrion which Madame Patti had built in Geneva at a cost of twenty thousand dollars. It is operated by electricity, and is said to be the finest instrument of the kind in the world. Monsieur Nicolini would start it of an evening, and the wonderful contrivance would “discourse most eloquent music” from a repertoire of one hundred and sixteen pieces, including arias from grand operas, military marches, and simple ballads. Music is the one charm that Madame Patti cannot resist. The simplest melody stirs her to song. In the far corner from the orchestrion she will sit, in an enticing easy-chair, and hum the air that is rolling from the organ-pipes, keeping time with her dainty feet, or moving her head as the air grows livelier. Now and again she sends forth some lark-like troll, and then she will urge the young people to a dance, or a chorus, and when every one is tuned to the full pitch of melody and merriment she will join in the fun as heartily as the rest. I used to sit and watch her play the castanets, or hear her snatch an air or two from “Martha,” “Lucia,” or “Traviata.”