Geraldine Farrar The Story of an American Singer

Excerpt

CHAPTER I

MY LIFE AS A CHILD

I believe that a benevolent Fate has had watch over me. Some have called it luck; some have spoken of the hard work and the many years of study; others have cited my career as an instance of American pluck and perseverance. But deep down in my heart I feel much has been directed by Fate. This God-sent gift of song was bestowed upon me for some purpose, I know not what. It may fail me to-morrow, to-night; at any moment something may mar the delicate instrument, and then all the perseverance, pluck, study, and luck in the world will not restore it to me. If early in life I dimly sensed this insecurity, yet always have I gone onward and onward, eager for that which Fate had in store for me, and accepting gladly those rewards and opportunities which in the course of my career have been popularly referred to as "Farrar's luck."

Yet do not think that I waited in idleness to see what Fate would bring. From the days of my earliest recollection I have labored unceasingly to attain the goal which I believed and hope Destiny had marked out for me. My mother tells me that before I was five I had already shown strong musical tendencies. By the time I was ten I had visions of studying abroad. At the age of twelve I had heard the music of almost the entire grand opera repertoire. By the time I was sixteen I was studying in Paris.

My earliest memories take me back to my home town, Melrose, Massachusetts, a small but very attractive city not far from Boston. I can recall a large room with an open fireplace and flames flashing from a log fire into which I spent many hours gazing, trying to conjure up strange and fanciful shapes and figures. From the fireplace, so my mother tells me, I would stroll to the great, old-fashioned square piano in the corner, and, standing on tiptoe, would strum upon the keys. I suppose I was two or three years old at the time, yet it seems to me that I was striving to give expression musically to the strange shapes and figures suggested by the fire and by my vivid imagination.

Hereditary influences must have helped to shape my musical career. My mother and father both sang in the First Universalist Church of Melrose. Mother's father, Dennis Barnes, of Melrose, had been a musician, and had organized a little orchestra which played on special occasions. He gave violin lessons and composed, and there is a tradition that in his boyhood days he learned to play the violin from an Italian fiddler, and afterward constructed his own instrument, pulling hairs from the tail of an old white horse to make the bow.

My father, Sydney D. Farrar, owned a store in Melrose when I was born. In the summer time he played baseball with a local amateur team with such success that, when I was two years old, he was engaged by the Philadelphia National League Baseball Club as first baseman. He was a professional ball-player with the Philadelphia team for several years. Yet during the winters he was always in Melrose, looking after business. Both he and my mother were very fond of music, singing every week in the church quartet and sometimes at concerts.

The house in which I was born is still standing, a large, old-fashioned building on Mount Vernon Street, Melrose, which my father rented from the Houghton estate. It is next door to the Blake house, a well-known local landmark. Most of my early life was spent in this house, although subsequently we moved twice to occupy other houses in the neighborhood.

My mother says that I was a happy baby, crooning and humming to myself, singing when other babies usually cry. She says that the familiar airs of the barrel organs, which were played in the street every day, were all added to my repertoire in due time, correct as to melody, although I was too young to enunciate properly. My mother did not think it out of the ordinary for her baby to be so musically inclined, young as I was....