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NLA News - home November 2002 Volume XIII Number 2
'Dearest Tib': Letters from Nellie Melba
Portrait of Nellie Melba 1902
Portrait of Nellie Melba 1902
Photograph by Talma & Co., Melbourne
Manuscript Collection, MS 9561

 

 

 

Richard Stone looks at some of the diva’s correspondence

Just over 100 years ago, on 17 September 1902, Nellie Melba arrived in Brisbane after a long voyage across the Pacific. She travelled on to Melbourne by train, thus beginning a triumphant return home for the young singer who had left that city in 1887 as Nellie Mitchell. In the intervening 15 years, Melba had conquered the operatic stages of Europe and America.

The seven-month Australian tour combined the spectacle of the return of the conquering diva with a much-anticipated reunion with her family. Some of Melba’s feelings about this tour are revealed in a collection of letters and memorabilia which has been acquired by the National Library.

Late in 1901, Melba had written from Paris to her favourite sister Isabella (nicknamed ‘Tib’) announcing her intended return: ‘Now for some news which I hope will make all your hearts glad—I am really & truly coming to Australia—I shall leave after the London season, come by America & arrive about the middle of September next year ...’

In mid-1902, closer to her departure for Australia, an almost girlish Melba exclaimed to Tib in a letter from London: ‘I sang Boheme again last night to another crowded house & I sing Faust on Friday—In 6 weeks I sail—Hurrah! I am so excited …’

In between, Melba had spent Christmas in Paris. Letters to Tib reveal a more worrying persona. After admonishing Tib for not writing, she admits that ‘I always feel lonely at Xmas’, a feeling aggravated by the fact that ‘I have just lost 12,000 pounds which is too awful to contemplate …’ The singer blamed Alfred de Rothschild for what was apparently a bad investment—‘he has no business to speculate with my hard earned money …’ In the next breath, she implores her sister ‘please don’t tell the other members of the family except Tom, I know he will be sympathetic & sorry’. (Tom was Tom Patterson, Tib’s husband, Melba’s trusted brother-in-law.)

Concerned about her relations with her other sisters, Melba asked Tib, ‘Do you think I shall be happy in Australia? If my family are not going to be nice I prefer to stay away, I simply couldn’t stand it.’ Further, reacting to a letter from Tib (now lost) which must have mentioned public reaction to the tour, Melba wrote: ‘I flatter myself nothing can take away from the glory of my visit to Australia, I intend to enjoy myself & if the Australians do not enjoy my singing tant pis …’

Melba also had practical concerns:

Have you seen about a nurse? I must have one … Be sure & let me know what sort of dresses I shall require for September October November & December—I hope you have taken a nice house, I must have one—I received a nice letter from the pater asking me to stay at Doonside but of course I could not stay there all the time as I shall have 2 servants & a secretary …

Melba holding address of welcome, Lillydale, Victoria, 8 November 1902 (Standing left of Melba is her father David Mitchell)
Melba holding address of welcome, Lillydale, Victoria, 8 November 1902 (Standing left of Melba is her father David Mitchell)
Pictures Collection, Album 836/14

Personal feelings, practical concerns and shared intimacies permeate the letters written to ‘Tib’. Bought at auction in England, the actual provenance of the letters is tantalisingly unknown. There are 22 of them, and fragments of a further half-dozen written by Melba herself, as well as four written by her sister Dora. All the letters are written from Europe or the USA to Tib and other members of the family in Melbourne.

One exception is a letter to entrepreneur J.C. Williamson, closing the unsuccessful negotiations for his organisation to manage the 1902 tour. Melba toured under the management of George Musgrove instead, but she and Williamson remained friends and would jointly present three opera seasons in Australia between 1911 and 1928.

The collection of Melba material also includes programs, several photographs of Melba inscribed to her sisters, as well as a worn silk evening bag embroidered with floral patterns and the name ‘Nellie’ picked out in spangles.

Letters by Nellie Melba are prized items. A busy writer, her letters are scattered around various Australian institutions. Major holdings are located in the State libraries of Victoria and New South Wales, the Performing Arts Museum in Melbourne, the Melba Research Centre at the Lillydale Historical Society in Victoria, and in the National Library.

Ceremonial arch for Melba’s Lillydale visit
Ceremonial arch for Melba’s Lillydale visit
Pictures Collection, Album 836/1

The letters to Tib are important additions to the National Library’s rich Melba holdings. They cover the years 1895–1905, a period not previously represented. They also reveal more of the private Melba, and of her relationships with her family, an aspect of her life not strongly evident in the many other Melba letters in the Library’s Manuscripts Collection. Her letters to a close friend Lady Susan Fitzclarence, for instance, are chatty and have something of the intimacy and frankness seen in the letters to Tib. Otherwise, business matters, friendships, career news, and social gossip are variously expressed in letters to John Lemmone (her manager and accompanist), Mabel Batchelor (a former pupil), Mathilde Marchesi (her teacher in Paris), and to the artist Hans Heysen. (Melba bought several paintings from Heysen, and actively tried to assist his career, as well as offering him advice on the health of his children.) 

Melba’s letters in each of these large collections, and others in smaller ones, bear idiosyncratic, distinctive stylistic features. Most notable is a frustrating reluctance to date them. They are full of references to performances, social events, world events, and to many people—but most have no dates attached.

To compound the difficulty of dating and organising Melba’s letters, no comprehensive, detailed chronology of her performance history has been published—in spite of the fact that Melba published an autobiography, and has been the subject of several major biographies, and had extensive listings made of her recording career.

Melba had a broad, expansive handwriting style. She wrote on small notepaper in ink, but was not past dashing off notes in pencil. As she was constantly travelling, a large number of the letters are under hotel letterhead. Melba also used personalised notepaper with her own ‘NM’ logo. Her letters rarely go over four pages in length, and convey a strong sense of having been written in a highly concentrated fashion, in one busy sitting. The tone is direct, and no words are wasted. Thoughts, reports, impressions, pithy comments and criticisms tumble impatiently into each other. She used practically no punctuation, and little capitalisation, which renders the letters something of a stream-of-consciousness reading experience.

Nellie Melba as Manon, in Manon Lescaut (Massenet) 1896
Nellie Melba as Manon, in Manon Lescaut (Massenet) 1896
Photograph by Falk, New York
Manuscript Collection, MS 9561

Short though they generally are, Melba’s letters convey a vivid impression of a very active and vital woman coping (and sometimes not) with the vagaries of a very busy life.

Her success on the operatic stage is everpresent, however the adrenaline of touring and of the constant adulation is mixed with the other stresses involved. From Boston, December 1903, she wrote to Tib:

I shall be hard at it till the last moment I have sung 32 times from the 13th October till the 19th December so you will see I shall not have let the grass grow under my feet I am returning again next year more hard work but I like it I cant do nothing I am exactly like the pater …

Three years previously, Melba had undertaken a major tour of first appearances in Germany and central Europe, an event which features in several letters. From Vienna, a nervous Nellie Melba wrote to Tib:

I sing here tonight for the first time needless to say I am fussing dreadfully … Tomorrow I go to Budapest it is very nervous work singing in different towns 2 & 3 times a week I hate it. My voice is perfectly beautiful, I wish you could hear it everyone says it is fresher than ever …

Social success was also important. Melba was very near the top of the social ladder in England, something she regularly regales her family with.  A few months before her departure for Australia in 1902 she wrote: ‘you know what my life is during a London season, I am in a whirl the whole time …’ Lists of guests, and name-dropping of prominent hostesses and the Royal Family, appear frequently in the letters. There are several accounts of staying at various stately homes. For example, from Wemyss Castle in Scotland:

This place is too fascinating, I wish you could see it It is built on the rocks right on the sea—Their collection of letters is too remarkable Fancy reading letters of Charles 1st Charles 2nd Mary Queen of Scots etc There is a Chapel sous terrain with a lovely organ I played at service last night for the servants The piper plays the bagpipes after dessert it is too fascinating …

The postponement of the Coronation of Edward VII in June 1902 is seen by Melba as a mixture of loyal concern for the King’s health, and a matter of regret for the ruination of the social season.

The King is a little better & I had a letter from HRH The Prince of Wales saying that they were sure he would be soon quite well again I sincerely hope so, it is too sad since all the decorations being taken down I am afraid it will ruin the season some say the Coronation will take place in October but I doubt it … I can think of nothing else … I think it is the greatest tragedy the world as ever known …

Other world events such as the Boer War, the launch of an airship on the Riviera, and a stock market crash in New York feature in her letters too, as well as more prosaic matters such as the excessive heating in American houses.

The combination of the public and private personas of Nellie Melba is exemplified in a longer letter written in January 1902, from Monte Carlo. After much personal comment on some perceived failings in her siblings, she launches into describing the social scene on the Riviera and mentions, almost in passing, that ‘Puccini is coming to superintend the rehearsals’ of the forthcoming production of La Bohème. She then returns to the family in a more generous mode, offering to bring clothes to Australia for Tib and the children, and commenting solicitously on recent illnesses in the family. She turns her attention to her four-year-old niece Nellie, named after her, who had visited Melba in England with her family the previous year. Melba finishes the letter with a typical combination of deep affection, sentimentality and slightly unreal expectations of a demanding diva:

And now good bye dear my love to Tom & to all of you & please don’t let Nellie forget me. It will break my heart if she does not recognize me when I arrive Bless you Nellie.

RICHARD STONE is a former National Library staff member. He is currently a consultant on ephemera and performing arts resources

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