Produced by Chuck Greif, University of Michigan Libraries and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net [Illustration: Signature; Clara Louise Kellogg Strakosch] Memoirs of an American Prima Donna By Clara Louise Kellogg (Mme. Strakosch) _With 40 Illustrations_ G. P. Putnam's Sons New York and London The Knickerbocker Press 1913 COPYRIGHT, 1913 BY CLARA LOUISE KELLOGG STRAKOSCH The Knickerbocker Press, New York WITH AFFECTION AND DEEPEST APPRECIATION OF HER WORTH AS BOTH A RARE WOMAN AND A RARER FRIEND I INSCRIBE THIS RECORD OF MY PUBLIC LIFE TO JEANNETTE L. GILDER FOREWORD The name of Clara Louise Kellogg is known to the immediate generation chiefly as an echo of the past. Yet only thirty years ago it was written of her, enthusiastically but truthfully, that "no living singer needs a biography less than Miss Clara Louise Kellogg; and nowhere in the world would a biography of her be so superfluous as in America, where her name is a household word and her illustrious career is familiar in all its triumphant details to the whole people." The past to which she belongs is therefore recent; it is the past of yesterday only, thought of tenderly by our fathers and mothers, spoken of reverently as a poignant phase of their own ephemeral youth, one of their sweet lavender memories. The pity is (although this is itself part of the evanescent charm), that the singer's best creations can live but in the hearts of a people, and the fame of sound is as fugitive as life itself. A record of such creations is, however, possible and also enduring; while it is also necessary for a just estimate of the development of civilisations. As such, this record of her musical past--presented by Clara Louise Kellogg herself--will have a place in the annals of the evolution of musical art on the North American continent long after every vestige of fluttering personal reminiscence has vanished down the ages. A word of appreciation with regard to the preparation of this record is due to John Jay Whitehead, Jr., whose diligent chronological labours have materially assisted the editor.