In the autumn of 1882 our old Southern friend, General R. D. Lilley, visited New York in the interests of Washington and Lee University. Colonel Mapleson, with Adelina Patti, Nicolini, and the famous _danseuse_, Cavalassi, had just arrived for a brilliant season at the Metropolitan Opera House. General Lilley sent me a letter from Colonel Mapleson,—which lies before me,—in which he offered "a grand entertainment to be given about the 3d of March for the endowment of scholarships in Washington and Lee University, in which entertainment the leading artists of the opera would appear," and asked for a committee of ladies to act in concert with him.
General Lilley was in a quandary. He knew no New York ladies. No more did I. But finally he won his way into the good graces of the widow of Governor Dix and mother of the Rev. Morgan Dix, who granted her drawing-room for our meetings, and doubtless consulted her own visiting list to find patronesses. When, at the general's earnest prayer, I went over to the first meeting, I found a noble band of women all enthusiasm over the project. I was a stranger in New York, and but dimly recognized the names on the committee with my own: Mrs. John Dix, Mrs. August Belmont, Mrs. William M. Evarts, Mrs. Francis R. Rives, Mrs. John Jay, Mrs. (Commodore) Vanderbilt, Mrs. Vincenzo Botta, Mrs. Henry Clews, Mrs. James Brown Potter, Mrs. Winfield S. Hancock, and others, about fifty in all! I can now easily understand that this committee had but to _will_ a thing, and if it were not accomplished, the fault would not lie in their lack of potentiality. They had but to say the word. Means, overflowing means, and generous patronage would be assured.
Colonel Mapleson met with us at our meetings, which Mrs. Dix made delightful. We had animated discussions over Mrs. Dix's tea-cups, and adopted fine resolutions. Patti, the colonel assured us, would sing,—certainly,—but she needed a vast deal of coaxing and mock entreaty. Then every day Nicolini—whom she had recently married—wrote us a letter presenting some difficulty which we must settle. The flowers we ordered were beyond compare—to Arditi, the orchestra leader, a large music scroll in white flowers, and upon this ground the first bars of his "Il bacio" in blue violets. To the witch Cavalassi we voted a floral slipper, to Colonel Mapleson a silken banner of Stars and Stripes. What, alas! could we do for Patti? Could _any_thing be enough? At last we sent for Colonel Mapleson. "Ladies," he said, "this will be your easiest task. Come to the opera-house with bouquets in your hands or corsage, tied with cords you have taken from your fans, and throw them to her, impulsively. There's nothing she so dotes on as to run all over the stage and pick up flowers, affect intense surprise at each new bouquet, press them to her heart, and be utterly overcome at last as she runs away."