CLARA LOUISE KELLOGG AS LINDA, 1868 134 From a photograph by Stereoscopic Co. MR. JAMES MCHENRY 138 From a photograph by Brady CHRISTINE NILSSON, AS QUEEN OF THE NIGHT 146 From a photograph by Pierre Petit DUKE OF NEWCASTLE 188 From a photograph by John Burton & Sons CLARA LOUISE KELLOGG AS CARMEN 230 From a photograph SIR HENRY IRVING AND ELLEN TERRY AS THE VICAR AND OLIVIA 234 From a photograph by Window & Grove FIRST EDITION OF THE "FAUST" SCORE, PUBLISHED IN 1859 BY CHOUSENS OF PARIS, NOW IN THE BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY 240 NEWSPAPER PRINT OF THE KELLOGG-LUCCA SEASON 250 Drawn by Jos. Keppler CLARA LOUISE KELLOGG IN _MIGNON_ 252 From a photograph by Mora ELLEN TERRY 284 From a photograph by Sarony COLONEL HENRY MAPLESON 290 From a photograph by Downey CLARA LOUISE KELLOGG AS AÏDA 292 From a photograph by Mora FAUST BROOCH PRESENTED TO CLARA LOUISE KELLOGG 298 CARL STRAKOSCH 364 From a photograph by H. W. Barnett LETTER FROM EDWIN BOOTH TO CLARA LOUISE KELLOGG 366 "ELPSTONE," NEW HARTFORD, CONNECTICUT 370 Memoirs of An American Prima Donna CHAPTER I MY FIRST NOTES I was born in Sumterville, South Carolina, and had a negro mammy to take care of me, one of the real old-fashioned kind, of a type now almost gone. She used to hold me in her arms and rock me back and forth, and as she rocked she sang. I don't know the name of the song she crooned; but I still know the melody, and have an impression that the words were: "Hey, Jim along,--Jim along Josy; Hey, Jim along,--Jim along Joe!" She used to sing these two lines over and over, so that I slept and waked to them. And my first musical efforts, when I was just ten months old, were to try to sing this ditty in imitation of my negro mammy. When my mother first heard me she became apprehensive. Yet I kept at it; and by the time I was a year old I could sing it so that it was quite recognisable. I do not remember this period, of course, but my mother often told me about it later, and I am sure she was not telling a fairy story. There is, after all, nothing incredible or miraculous about the fact, extraordinary as it certainly is. We are not surprised when the young thrush practises a trill. And in some people the need for music and the power to make it are just as instinctive as they are in the birds. What effects I have achieved and what success I have found must be laid to this big, living fact: music was in me, and it had to find expression.