Table Talk [pp. 554-555]

554 TABLE-TALK [NOVEMBER:11,
TABLE-TALK.
HE recent appearance of Mrs. Moulton
as a public singer in this city was an
event which stirred fashionable society to its
very depths. Mrs. Moulton is a lady with the
fame of whose accomplishments and fascina tions New York and Paris have been ringing
for several years. She was a brilliant ama teur singer when she went abroad; and, dur ing her long residence in the French capital,
wonderful stories have reached us from time
to time of her conquests in the world of art
-how she had bewitched Rossini and won
the heart of Auber, caught all that the great est masters of the Continent had to teach her,
and been crowned queen of the American
colony by the special favor of the imperial
family. So she came back as a- new goddess,
full of the inspiration of song, and redolent
of the perfume of the Tuileries. Our best
society put on its fine array to give her a
royal welcome. The florists exhausted in genuity and stripped the green-houses to make
her costly emblems of triumph. Salvos of
appl)latuse shook the hall when she came forth,
and the critics (with one or two exceptions)
threw down their pens at her feet, and shouted
with the rest. The smiles of Fortune, which
had followed Mrs. Moulton from Boston all
over Europe, attended her even on the stage
of Steinway Hall. She has not been judged
as an artiste, but as a charming woman whom
it is a privilege to gaze upon, and happiness
to hear. Nearly all that has been said in her
praise is well deserved. The voice which has
thrilled so many brilliant saloons is one of
those rare and beautiful voices which are
found only once or twice in a lifetime-a
mezzo-soprano of moderate compass and ordinary strength, warm with the sensuous
quality that American voices generally lack,
light and flexible, with the birdlike purity
which is the American singer's usual charm.
In tenderness, sweetness, and true feminine
grace, it is surpassed by very few of the halfscore of really good voices which our country
has produced. In that peculiar vibratory
quality which is, so to speak, the raw material whence the singer produces (or at least
can produce) both pathos and passion, it is
not surpassed by any. For this exquisite organ art has done all that is needed for the
training of the most accomplished amateur
vocalist this generation has seen. In the
florid and elegant music of Rossini, for instance, Mrs. Moulton is almost absolutely perfect. She sings such pieces as the " Bel Raggio," from "Semiramide," as we have never
heard them sung before, revelling in the delicate runs and flourishes with which the composer has embellished the melody, laughing
at the difficulties, and conveying the comfortable assurance that her most extraordinary
feats are performed, not only with ease, but
with an exuberant enjoyment. It is no
wonder that Paris listened and wondered
while she filled the drawing - rooms with
melody, as a lark fills the summer.air, and
kings petted her, and composers wrote for
her, and the first of musicians were proud to
be her masters. But, when she came out of
this golden world wherein she had made her
fame, and sang in the very different atmos phere of a great public hall, we found that
there was one direction in which art had not
carried her far enough. Vocal endurance is
the result of culture more than of physical
strength. A lady of fashion does not want
it; for a public concert-singer it is one of the
first requisites. Lacking this, Mrs. Moulton's
performance has no climax. Her first song
is her best; after it, the music flags and the
pleasure dies away. And Nature, too, has
denied her the singer's crowning gift. Shle is
not emotional. The sentiment that breathes
faintly through her song is thin and heartless
-a conventional elegance, prompted by taste
and not by feeling. For the music which
rouses the soul and draws tears from the eyes,
we must go elsewhere. Mrs. Moulton reveals
to us the refinement and the brilliancy of a
favorite of Fortune; she never glows with
the inspiration of a great artist.
Admiral Rous, the veteran Nestor
of British sportsmanship, bitterly laments
the decline of the turf, and weeps pathetically
over the halcyon days that are gone. The
admiral is quite old enough to remember
when "the first gentleman in Europe" used
to desert the gravest cares of state, doff his
crown for a travelling-cap, and hasten down
to Newmarket for the races, followed, not
only by the butterflies of his court, but also
by such grave ministers as Lords Liverpool
and Castlereagh, and such dignified men of
military fame as the Duke of Wellington and
the Marquis of Anglesea. In those days Par liament stopped wrangling, and there was a
pause in the feverish coming and going of
king's messengers, when the fate of Lord
Jockeyby's "Irene," or Trottington's "Nutbrown Maid," was to be decided on the
course. The sport was royal, lordly, aristocratic; it was hardly proper for any one
under a baronet to show his face in the grand
pavilion, while it was the properest thing in
the world for the king and all his satellites
to get roaring drunk on these happy occasions. Tattersall's then held its own with the
Carlton and the Athenaeum as a club-room;
the gentlemen of England were its habitues,
and jockeydom was a power in the land.
Now, according to the regretful admiral,
horse-racing is fast becoming a mere vulgar,
riotous, gambling, brawling show for the
grosser multitude. Not only royalty and nobility, but the. gentry also, are retiring from
it in disgust; they are leaving the field to the
shoddy sportsman, the jaded cockney blood,
and abandoned young lords who have been
outlawed from the saloons of the West End
for their excessive dissipation. To be sure,
in the good old days to which the octogenarian eye of the admiral tearfully reverts, there
was betting on the turf-betting and other
gambling, drunkenness and hot quarrelling,
duelling and foul play. But, then, all this
was done by gentlemen; indeed, there were
parsons who indulged at times in the enlivening practices made fashionable by the
regent. No doubt, there is a great deal of
truth in the admiral's complaint. The sense
of the present British generation is against
horse-racing as a national pastime, and this
is reflected by the efforts in Parliament to put
the ban of the statute-book upon wagers.
Horse-racing was a very proper pastime in an
age when no man was a true man who did
not acknowledge the "code," whien gambling
was a polite custom of aristocratic drawing rooms, and when a guest ran some danger of
affronting his host if, after a dinner-party, he
could walk out of the room without stagger ing. But duelling, polite gambling, and fash ionable tipsiness, have pretty much gone out
in the tight little island; and the turf, though
it has lingered somewhat, is apparently fol lowing in their wake. It has, undoubted ly, degenerated into little more than a bet ting, tiotous assemblage of the thieves and
roughs of the metropolis and the country,
round about, with a sprinkling of nobility
and respectability here and there; it is surely
a dangerous allurement to weak-headed young
men with large fortunes and sporting tastes;
it has brought ruin upon hundreds of British
households; and it is no longer a proof or
encouragement of athletic tastes and habits.
So the more moral age of Victoria is bent
upon eradicating, among other evils, this
dangerous and now disreputable relic of the
grosser and more sensual age of "Gentle man George."
With the inauguration of its new
president, Yale University (as it should prop erly be called) begins, we hope, a new career.
President Porter finds himself entering upon
his duties at a time when there may be said
to be an intellectual revival among the col leges-when the subjects of collegiate reform,
of new methods of study and discipline, and
of. infusing a modern and progressive spirit
into college government, have been brought
into greater prominence than ever before. It
is a significant and satisfactory thing that
the incoming, like the outgoing, president is
something more than a mere professor. ExPresident Woolsey has won national fame as
an authority on international law and on the
law of divorce, and has treated with high success a large variety of topics, outside those in
which he has been officially interested, of
present interest to the public. He is, besides, one of the best living American writers
of pure and forcible English. His successor
has been called the first of American metaphysicians; and certainly his work on "The
Human Intellect" is one of the most admirable philosophical works ever published
in this country. President Porter's range of
subjects as a public writer is also a wide one,
and it is gratifying to k.now that a scholar
possessing such extra-professorial attainments
has assumed the presidency of what was long
the most rigidly-Puritan of our universities.
Science is happily no longer viewed with distrust and suspicion at the seat of learning
where Jonathan Edwards graduated, and
which was presided over by Ezra Stiles and
Timothy Dwight. Dr. Woolsey epitomized
the broad truth which may now be said to
have penetrated the most obtuse of sectarians,
when he stated, at the inauguration of President Porter, "that the sciences built on observation of Nature, and those built on the
primary convictions of man and on historical
evidence, cannot be hostile; and that Chris.
tian mind must be a narrow or a skeptical
one which stands in dread of every aew discovery or every theory proceeding from sci
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