Page:Our Little Girl (1923).pdf/85



The glamorous nights with Arnold, the semi-professional evenings with Tommy and the occasional dancing jaunts with Benny Wallace, Howard Richardson, Sylvester Lee and other spasmodic visitors gradually dwindled into mere incidents, as St. Cecilia took possession of Dorothy. The prophecy that there would be little time for social diversion proved to be hopelessly accurate. From the time that a distinguished European pianist made the opening address in October to the evening that a distinguished European violinist made the graduating speech in June two years later, Dorothy was occupied with a continuous sequence of vocal lessons, “secondary piano” instruction, lectures on why Jenny Lind was a great artist, how Beethoven enlarged the scope of the symphony, the development of the present piano, Wagner and the leit-motif, diseases of the larynx, and Richard Strauss’ demands on the virtuosity of piccolo players.

Dorothy’s chief instructor was Elma Graaberg, an elderly Dutch woman, who, according to the catalogue of St. Cecilia, had been leading mezzo-soprano at many famous Continental opera houses. She was a tall, heavy woman, with impenetrable dark brown eyes, a hooked nose, a receding chin, and a disarray of reddish gray hair. Dorothy wondered at first whether the irregularity of the color was due to the use of a peruke or whether Mme. Graaberg was an inept manipulator of dye-stuffs.