ndomitable energy and ambition
which he transmitted to his daughters, who were to become such
distinguished ornaments of the stage, were not contented with making
their possessor a great executant, for he continued to produce operas,
several of which were put on the stage in Paris with notable success.
Garcia's name as a teacher commenced about the year 1823 to overshadow
his reputation as a singer. In the one he had rivals, in the other he
was peerless. His school of singing quickly became famous, though he
continued to appear on the stage, and to pour forth operas of more than
average merit.

The education of his daughter Maria, born at Paris, March 24, 1808, had
always been a matter of paternal solicitude. A delicate, sensitive, and
willful child, she had been so humored and petted at the convent-school
of Hammersmith, where she was first placed, that she developed a caprice
and a recklessness which made her return to the house of her stern and
imperious father doubly painful, lier experience was a severe one, and
Manuel Garcia was more pitiless to his daughter than to other pupils.
Already at this period Maria spoke with ease Spanish, Italian, French,
and English, to which she afterward added German. The Garcia household
was a strange one. The Spanish musician was a tyrant in his home, and
a savage temper, which had but few streaks of tenderness, frequently
vented itself in blows and brutality, in spite of the remarkable musical
facility with which Maria appropriated teaching, and the brilliant gifts
which would have flattered the pride and softened the sympathies of
a more gentle and complacent parent. The young girl, in spite of
her prodigious instinct for art and her splendid intelligence, had a
peculiarly intractable organ. The lower notes of the voice were very
imperfect, the upper tones thin, disagreeable, and hard, the middle
veiled, and her intonation so doubtful that it almost indicated an
imperfect ear. She would sometimes sing so badly that her father would
quit the piano precipitately and retreat to the farthest corner of the
house with his fingers thrust into his ears. But Garcia was resolved
that his daughter should become what Nature seemingly had resolved she
should not be, a great vocalist, and he bent all the energies of his
harsh and imperious temper to further this result. "One evening I
studied a duet with Maria," says the Countess Merlin, "in which Garcia
had written a passage, and he desired h