adies could not contain their jealousy and said of course,
"aufgedonnert" (thundered out) like that I naturally would stand out
from them. Annoyed at their pettiness I removed the diamonds and flowers
and all ornaments. They then said of course to go without any ornaments
was palpably the best way of all to make myself conspicuous. So I let it
go at that.

I well remember the _Third Lady_, for there are spoken passages in this
opera, and I had to speak German for the first time before an audience
of critically listening natives, and Mozartian German at that! _Pamela_
nearly gave me nervous prostration. They were determined that I should
do it because she had to speak German with an English accent, so they
said it was made for me. As a matter of fact, after the months I had
spent in carefully eradicating my English accent it was difficult
suddenly to exaggerate it to order. I had to learn, rehearse and play
the entire part in five days, and I thought I should go mad. I had never
seen the wretched thing, so the baritone who played my husband kindly
came over to help me with the business. Otherwise my sister and I hardly
left the piano to eat and sleep. The dialect part of the libretto was in
an ancient manuscript copy, torn, marked and dog's-eared, and written in
an almost illegible German script. I could not take time enough to
puzzle it out, so my sister spent hours poring over it, deciphering the
German letters literally one by one by aid of a key, and writing it
again in Latin script. I had no clothes for it, as it was not on my
repertoire and it plays in 1820, but they costumed it for me in modern
dress, so again my summer wardrobe was called into service.

I learned it so quickly that the colleagues called me "Die
Notenfresserin" or note-eater, but the strain was awful. I remember when
I was studying _Pamela_ the Kapellmeister told me at least ten times,
how the contralto who played the _Pamela_ in his father's theatre and
who was also an English-speaking woman, had so caught his father's fancy
in that role, that from then on he had a tremendous affair with her.
This he repeated to me again and again, but I never seemed to take the
hint.

As _Erda_ in "Siegfried" I had a most trying experience. The director
had been, as I have said, a well-known Bayreuth singer, and he thought
no one could sing Wagner but himself. Unfortunately he had a strong
tendency to "look upon the wine," and when he had a part to sing
nervo