was immersed in a flowing river of music. In the evening, when we were in bed, we would fall asleep to the sound of Maman playing Chopin waltzes on the piano.
In the morning, delicious smells from my mother's dressing table floated through the air. To me, they evoked the music she had played the night before as we drifted off to sleep; intriguing emanations of violet-scented rice powder and almond-scented hand cream blended with whiffs of rose-milk and honey-water perfumed with mint, dill, or vanilla.
In September of 1858, the year I turned eleven, we were sent away to school. We were separated from my brother Adélard, who went to a boys' college. After spending our summer holidays at our grandmother's house, Cornélia and I left for the convent school in Sault-au-Récollet, on the north shore of the island of Montreal. Although I was now a boarder with the Sisters of the Sacred Heart, I still studied under my father: he taught music at the convent, which paid for our room and board there.
The Mother Superior of the convent, Mère Trincano, had soft black eyes, a smooth complexion, a perfect oval face, and fingers as slender as Maman's. This nun had dedicated her life to the strict education of young girls. She spoke against the new vogue of children's balls, imported from France, saying that they were “no more than vanity contests and little theatres of luxuriousness.”
When we arrived, Mother Trincano took us on a tour of the school. We felt dwarfed by the huge corridors. We passed nuns escorting pupils who wore dark dresses with white cuffs and collars – the school uniform. In the library, a vast room with high, arched windows, I asked our guide if I would be able to read the books there. “Of course,” she answered. “But we will decide which ones are appropriate for you at your age.”
A wide stairway led to the dormitories. “This is your domain,” Mother Trincano said, showing us two narrow cast-iron beds with white coverlets. Beside each bed was a washstand with a porcelain jug and basin on it. “For your Saturday morning bath, you will wash with your nightdresses on.” We almost replied that this hadn't been the custom at our house.
The first nights that we slept at the convent, Cornélia wet her bed. I did my best to cover up these accidents, but it became impossible after a few days due to the smell, and soon, everyone realized what had happened. My poor little sister, humiliated and terrified, spent several days without speaking, and followed me about like a shadow.
Life at the convent suited me well enough, especially as I could play the piano and read my favourite books as much as I liked – including the stories of my beloved Comtesse de Ségur.
Music was my favourite subject. I was an exceptional pupil and won first prize every term in my first year. In my second year, I was barred from competition since I was on a much higher level than the other girls.
I even composed a hymn for Pope Pius IX and dedicated it to my great-uncle, the priest. I composed a triumphal march for my father, as a New Year's gift to him in 1860. That same year, on May 4, during a school recital, I sang another piece I had written, called Les martyrs. And on the occasion of Mother Trincano's birthday, I sang Travail de reconnaissance, which I had written for her. I became the star performer of the institution.
I experienced my first dramatic exaltation during a morality play that the school presented for Monseigneur Ignace Bourget, the Bishop of Montreal, who had come to officiate at our annual prize-giving ceremonies. Because I was not blessed with long blond hair like some of the other girls, I was not allowed to play an angel. I asked to play the role of the devil, who had to try to tempt Saint Anthony. The long-awaited day arrived. My hands were sweating and trembling as I waited in the wings for my cue. I hopped from one foot to the other, laughing and sobbing senselessly, wrinkling my black silk costume and fidgeting with my horned hood. My part was in the final sketch, which was intended to show the great piety of the saint as he prayed for strength to resist the Evil One's beguilements. But, instead of whispering to Anthony from over his shoulder, I began tickling his ears, pulling his hair, and shouting perfidious suggestions right into his face. The more the audience laughed, the more hysterical I became. Finally, the other students were obliged to drag me off the stage: I had lost all sense of reality.
The fever that had brought on this delirium lasted for three days. I remember hearing Mother Trincano saying to the doctor at my bedside: “The child is our most gifted music student; we would be terribly, terribly sorry to lose her.”
Nelly and I continued to spend our summer holidays with our brother Adélard at my grandmother Rachel's house. I could play the piano and sing as long as I liked, or play with dolls with my girlish aunts.2 Throughout the school year, the only games we were allowed were outdoor sports – our obligatory daily exercise. During the holidays, we went on country picnics. We dressed in the conventional style for the occasion: flounces, lace pantaloons, and strapped shoes for the girls, and a sailor suit for Adélard. And everyone wore straw bonnets or boaters.
Our aunts would come dressed in the same manner. We rode in uncovered carts, loaded with butterfly nets, hoops, tablecloths, blankets, and wicker baskets. The picnic lunch consisted of meat pasties, bread, ham, cold chicken, cakes, wild strawberries, and lemonade. A veritable feast!
After eating, we would run through the fields while the women embroidered or crocheted and gossiped and the men fished.
In the evenings, my grandmother sang old Scottish ballads, accompanying herself on the piano. Occasionally, to make us laugh, she would bang down on the keys, making the begonias shake in their pot.
However, the holidays always ended too soon, and with them, the joyful romps in the countryside and the boat rides in the Chambly Basin.
That vision of carefree summer days seems to draw a curtain over my childhood memories. In August of that same summer of 1860, another stage of my life began, in which I would sing for a prince – my first crowned head.
1. The three Lavigne brothers mentioned here all achieved notable success in the music world; Émery once accompanied actress Sarah Bernhardt on tour.
2. Emma once told an English newspaper reporter: “I never had a doll of my own.”
3
One Day, My Prince Will Come
In the spring of 1860, a Montreal newspaper, La Minerve, announced: “The Prince of Wales will come to Montreal to dedicate the newly finished bridge, named Victoria, in honour of the Queen of England, his mother.”
The Prince was indeed present at the opening ceremony on August 24; he screwed on the last bolt – a bolt fashioned of pure silver for the occasion. After this symbolic gesture, he was regaled by the four hundred voices of the Montreal Oratorio Society raised in a cantata. And I sang the soprano solo – I, Emma Lajeunesse, twelve years old. I must have looked very childish among all those gentlemen in their coats and tails and the ladies with their billowing crinolines.
Emma arrived in Paris in 1868, at twenty-one years of age, to perfect her musical training and to launch her career as an operatic soprano.
During our rehearsals, I had heard a quantity of whispered gossip that I only half understood. It seemed that Prince Albert Edward, a handsome eighteen-year-old, was somewhat of a rake, a pleasure-seeker who frequently went to Paris for his diversions. That was why he was nicknamed “the Gallic Prince” and the “Prince of Romance.”
A few days after the inauguration of the bridge, His Highness was scheduled to visit the Sacred Heart Convent! My father took advantage of the occasion to submit a petition, signed by more than fifty people, asking the Prince to write a letter of recommendation for me. This would help enormously to boost my career when I went to Europe, as Papa presumed I would.
Albert Edward's aide-de-camp, Major-General Bruce, refused diplomatically, explaining that, although my abilities as a child prodigy were unquestionable, I was still too young to hope for an engagement with any