Prima donna

“ The prima donna, in her attempts to render herself personally attractive, has an auxiliary in her maid, who is a compound of companion and servant, and a coiffeuse gifted with the most delicate taste and artistic execution. ”

“ The royal prima donna, whose professional reputation is very high, and who sang sweetly, would at the end of a passionate outburst coolly relight her cheroot at the blazing faggot by the tree, and smoke it till her next speech or song. ”

“ The prima donna, who is a great favorite of the whole people, is tremendously applauded, on her entrance, and the "gods" are quite obstreperous with their delight, when she does anything remarkably well, which very often happens. ”

“ The sound of his own voice, the knowledge that he was bound to interest, to convince, even to convert, the very attitude in which he stood, with chest inflated, head thrown back, hand uplifted, all these things delighted him, communicated to his lively sentient side many delightful and varying sensations. As the prima donna among women so is the popular preacher among men. ”

“ And a very celebrated prima donna who takes the world captive as much by the exceeding loveliness of her person and manner as by her wonderful voice, is in the habit of beating her maid abominably two or three times a week. ”

“ I would hear the seawinds sigh their long-drawn accompaniment across the lovely wild-stringed harp of forest trees; a cloud would pass away from the moon and so lift a great silver curtain of ghostly light from the leafy, gnarled colonnades. And then the dusky, star-eyed prima donna of the forest would bow with a grace that was seemingly quite out of place as one listened to the wild hubbub of the fierce-eyed, tawny men who waved their arms as they cheered from the orchestral stalls of jungle, bush, and fern. ”

“ The character of the "Borgia woman" afforded a sphere in which our prima donna's talents shone with peculiar luster. The impassioned tenderness of her Desdemona, the soft sweetness of "love in its melancholy and in its regrets" of Anna Bolena, the fiery ardor and vehemence of Norma, had been powerfully expressed by her, but the mixture of savage cruelty and maternal intensity characteristic of Lucretia was embodied with a splendor of color and a subtilty of ideal which deservedly raised her estimate as a tragedienne higher than before. ”

“ A Parisian woman sees so many examples of good taste that a contrary result ensues. In Paris women learn to seize the hour and moment when they may appear to advantage; while Madame de la Baudraye, accustomed to take the stage, acquired an indefinable theatrical and domineering manner, the air of a prima donna coming forward on the boards, of which ironical smiles would soon have cured her in the capital. ”

“ From a young girl-student, one insignificant person among scores of others similarly insignificant, she had become a prominent personality, some one in whom even the great, busy, hurrying world paused to take an interest, and of whom the newspapers wrote eulogistic notices, heralding her as the coming English prima donna. ”

“ That eccentric prima donna of the French stage, Madame La Maupin, some of whose pranks we have mentioned in another sketch, after passing her prime and losing her voice and prestige, was glad to accept whatever offered as a means of earning her livelihood; and so we find her as lady-in-waiting to the Spanish Countess Marino. ”

“ Sing with expression, perform with talent, the dog would remain impassive and cold; but at the slightest incorrectness of intonation he ground his teeth, lashed his tail, growled, yelped, and barked aloud. So long as he flourished—and he may flourish still—not a concert or an opera was rehearsed in Darmstadt without inviting Herr Frederick Schwartz and his dog—but more especially the dog. If the prima donna made the slightest slip, the dog looked at his master with an air of disapprobation. If the hautboys came in too late, Poodle pricked up his ears ”

“ His daughter, Maria, destined in later years to become one of the world's most celebrated prima donnas, inherited somewhat of this feature of her father's character, and the result was not conducive of domestic tranquillity. ”

“ Says one biographer: "Living among the sons and daughters of pleasure, her only luxury was the luxury of doing good, and in the midst of wealth her only profusion consisted in beneficence." It is a pleasure to find such words as these spoken concerning a prima donna. The records so many of them leave of their personality speak only of selfishness, avarice, sharp temper, and whimsicality, varied now and then by an ostentatious bit of charity. ”

“ It’s such a tremendous satisfaction to do something for a voice like that. One gets so tired spending on one’s self and cultivating one’s own little society voice, that can just be heard across the drawing-room if everyone keeps quite still! Alden says she will be ready for Marchesi in six months, and for the Grand Opera in a year.”
“And one of these days, when she is a great prima donna and has married a marquis, or a count at least, she will come back and patronize you and send you a box for the matinée!” remarked Cahill.
Miss Minot shook her head smilingly. ”

“ Lest it should be supposed that the above calculation of what plain girls may do leaves some of their power and success still unaccounted for, it is quite [154] right and proper to add that the story of plain girls, if it were carefully written, would contain many instances, not merely of moderate good fortunes, but of splendid and exceptional triumph. Like prima donnas, opera-dancers, and lovely milliners, plain girls have been known to make extraordinary hits, and to awaken illustrious passions. ”

“ The careers of many of the noted prima donnas read like romances rather than history. Fiction has nothing more sensational or brilliant to present than the adulation, the almost worship, accorded to some of these women by an admiring public. ”

“ Her looks mark her everywhere as a supremely happy woman, and she goes out into the world marked with that strange, deep, grand impress of motherhood and womanhood, which has always made the true woman not only a working-mother, but a love-crowned queen! ”

“ Many of them hold places of honor and power. These women of a primitive age, who stand at the portals of the young world luminous and smiling, or draped in the stately dignity of antique goddesses, still retain the distinction of classic ideals. They look out from the misty dawn of things with veiled faces, but we know that love shone from their soft eyes, and words of wisdom fell from their rosy lips. ”

“ She was then in the prime and beauty of ripe womanhood: at that delightful age when the wife and mother, all the charms of mind and person fully developed and refined by taste and elegant culture, fascinates by a thousand nameless graces, and captivates and enslaves even the youthful crowd that sigh at the feet of her lovely daughter of seventeen—the age that leaves one in doubt whether beautiful women arrive at the zenith of their beauty and power under five-and-thirty. ”

“ His ardour fanned her own love into a flame that made her toss about the bed all night, and ache with longing in the pale dawn when she dressed. A lady! A lady in England! Oh, if he would only ask her to be his wife. Otherwise she couldn't be a lady. ”

“ Other girls were ladylike and soft-spoken. Was there a streak of commonness in her that made possible such a scene as she had just gone through? In her heart she longed to be a lady—gentle, refined, sweet of spirit. ”

“ Who is there, indeed, to understand the heart of womanhood? The woman, sitting in the dark before the window in that room so full of the memories of her childhood, held close in her arms an ancient doll whose face had been washed so many times by its little mother that it was but a smudge of paint. ”

“ No; but lovely, graceful, sympathetic, earnest, pure-minded girls in the flower of attractive maidenhood. And that is why the well-to-do American mother is asking herself whether she would be doing the best thing for her daughter if she were to encourage her to become merely a New-World, Old-World young lady of the ancient order of things. For centuries the women of civilization have worshipped chastity, suffering resignation and elegance as the ideals of femininity; now we mean to be intelligent besides, or at least as nearly so as possible. ”

“ The knowledge that she must have to complete her womanhood the woman should have gained only from the life of her dreams—the life that is beyond that old, old, open door through which she could not pass alone. In the companionship, sympathy, strength, protection, and love, of that one who was to cross with her the threshold of the door that God set open in the beginning, she should have gained the knowledge of life that would ripen her girlhood into womanhood. ”

“ How pretty she must have been at sixteen, before she had grown to the perfect womanhood which now became her so well! He fancied her in all the shyness and awkwardness of young maidenhood, with childhood reluctantly slipping from her, and girlhood anxiously leading her forward. Again he kissed the book, but reverently this time, and with a deep sigh as if it had been a holy one. ”

“ Once only she bursts forth with, "In truth I am not a little annoyed at being a woman. I ought either to have had another sex, another soul, or another country. I ought to have been a Spartan or a Roman woman, or at least a Frenchman. ”

“ In every position she was not princess, queen, patroness, or mistress; but woman merely—a true-hearted, gentle, refined woman. She was too young for the maternal character to be appropriate to her, yet the watchfulness and care she had for all resembled it. ”

“ Our intellectual creed may change; temperament, calling, social position, fortune, sect, may phrase differently the delightful lay she sang to us—its tone still lingers in the memory of our affections, holding the heart loyal, and if trusted to the end takes us triumphantly through life. "Ever the feminine leadeth us on." Every prospect the mother gains is soon commanded by her children: our comforts and satisfactions life-long having the voice and countenance of woman. ”

“ But if she is to be raised up to adorn a temple, or represent a divinity—if she is to fill the niche of wife and counsellor to true and noble men, if she is to be the mother, the educator of a race of heroes or martyrs, of a Napoleon, or a Jesus—then must the type of womanhood be on a larger scale than that yet carved by man. ”

“ But there was a multitude of women, both clever and learned, who added life and piquancy to the coteries of the Renaissance. Men were proud of the versatile wives and daughters who made their courts centers of light and learning; if they were without lettered tastes themselves, they were glad of the reflected glory. So, naturally, it was the ambition of every well-born girl to fit herself to shine in these brilliant circles, and every father who had a daughter of talent was conscious of possessing a treasure of great value upon which too much care could not be lavished. ”

“ The day is long past when a woman must either marry or be laughed at as an old maid. What I want my girls to do is to grow into strong, noble women who are fitted to fill any position that opens before them, and to fill it well, with no thought of self, but only for the good of others. ”

“ She comes to meet us half absorbed in her own thoughts, a complete woman,—complete in that indissoluble unity which is the basis of a healthy woman’s nature: woman-child and also woman-mother, a woman with the stamp which is the result of deep, vital experience, with a woman’s tragedy ineffaceably engraved on every feature,—this same woman’s tragedy which she reproduces upon the stage. ”

“ Put her in any drawing-room in the world, and she would at once be recognised as a highborn Englishwoman. She has in her, in embryo, all those excellent qualities that go to make a great lady: the icy stare, the haughty movement of the shoulder, the disdainful arch of the lip ”

“ The first wife from this day keeps her precedence; and the second is treated by the first wife like a grown up-daughter. I believe it would be very long before the love of their families would introduce this custom among the young women of Britain. ”

“ In these pages we have made some record of woman's work in past centuries, and also caught glimpses of duties, loves, hopes, fears, and sorrows not unlike our own. A wider sphere is now accorded, and a deeper responsibility devolves upon woman to fill it wisely and well. We should never forget that, as far as they were faithful to the duties appointed to them, they elevated their sex to a higher and nobler position, and therein performed the best work of the women of the Middle Ages. ”

“ She possessed all that soft delicacy of appearance that reminds the sterner sex how frail and dependent is woman, while she bore in her face that sweet and winning expression of intellect, that, in other climes more favored by civilization, and where cultivation adds so much to the charms of her sex, would alone have marked her as beautiful. ”

“ What a depth of heart lay hidden in that woman! She takes her husband's business—guides it as though it were a trifle; she takes her sons, and leads them; sets her daughters an example; like a master-leader, she governs the whole household. That is woman's influence. What made that woman? Responsibility. Call her out from weakness, lay upon her soul the burden of her children's education, and she is no longer a girl, but a woman!
Horace Greeley once said to Margaret Fuller: "If you should ask a woman to carry a ship round Cape Horn, how would she go to work to do it? ”

“ But the maiden inevitably became the wife, and the whirligig of Time brought in his revenges. The lady now found herself the most important member of her sex, in a dwelling filled with men. She had few women about her person, and the confidant of a great dame in old romance is, frequently enough, her chamberlain. These young men had no chance of marriage, and naturally strove to gain the attention of a lady, whose favour was to them so important a matter. ”