many hearts. Since Nell Gwyn no such scented
cognomen, redolent of cuckoo's boots, London pride, blood-red poppies,
purple fox-gloves, lemon stocks, and vermillion zinnias, has blown its
delicate odour across our scene.... Delightful and adorable Mary Garden,
the fragile Thais, pathetic Jean ... unforgettable Melisande....

_October 10, 1916._

Feodor Chaliapine

"_Do I contradict myself?_
_Very well, then, I contradict myself;_"

Walt Whitman.

Feodor Chaliapine, the Russian bass singer, appeared in New York at the
Metropolitan Opera House, then under the direction of Heinrich Conried,
during the season of 1907-08. He made his American debut on Wednesday
evening, November 20, 1907, when he impersonated the title part of
Boito's opera, _Mefistofele_. He was heard here altogether seven times
in this role; six times as Basilio in _Il Barbiere di Siviglia_; three
times as Mephistopheles in Gounod's _Faust_; three times as Leporello in
_Don Giovanni_; and at several Sunday night concerts. He also appeared
with the Metropolitan Opera Company in Philadelphia, and possibly
elsewhere.

I first met this remarkable artist in the dining-room of the Hotel Savoy
on a rainy Sunday afternoon, soon after his arrival in America. His
personality made a profound impression on me, as may be gathered from
some lines from an article I wrote which appeared the next morning in
the "New York Times": "The newest operatic acquisition to arrive in New
York is neither a prima donna soprano, nor an Italian tenor with a high
C, but a big, broad-shouldered boy, with a kindly smile and a deep bass
voice, ... thirty-four years old.... 'I spik English,' were his first
words. 'How do you do? et puis good-by, et puis I drrrink, you drrink,
he drrrrinks, et puis I love you!' ... Mr. Chaliapine looked like a
great big boy, a sophomore in college, who played football." (Pitts
Sanborn soon afterwards felicitously referred to him as _ce doux geant_,
a name often applied to Turgeniev.)

I have given the extent of the Russian's English vocabulary at this
time, and I soon discovered that it was not accident which had caused
him first to learn to conjugate the verb "to drink"; another English
verb he learned very quickly was "to eat." Some time later, after his
New York debut, I sought him out again to urge him to give a synopsis of
his original conception for a performance of Gounod's _Faust_. The
interview which ens