The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1896-03-15
DU MAURIER INDICATED.
A Real TriIby I'm New York Who Sings
Under influence.

There is a real Trilby in New York city
q woman OF wealth and prominence, who.
like Du Maurier's heroine. cannot ordinar-
lily sing at all, but whose pure vocal notes
and marvellous performances on the piano
charm all who hear them when she Is un-
der the influence of a hypnotic spell. She
is Mrs. Addie Belden Gage. who lives with
her husband at the fashionable Hotel En-
pire, Fifty-fourth street and Columbus
avenue. Her strange case has been the
marvel Of her friends, as, indeed, 1t has
been of herself, for years. 1t differs from
that OF Trilby in that Mrs. Gage has no
Svengali-the influence comes on, apparent.
ly, OF itself. No one suggests it. Mrs.
Gage feels no i'll after effects. OF what oc-
ours during the presence of the influence
she is ignorant. She has never heard her.
self sing.
When the Trilby craze first took possess
sion of the reading world certain wise men.
while they submitted to the fascination Of
the story. declared that the authors main
idea was absurd. That a woman who in
her normal condition was totally devoid of
musical ear and ignorant of technique
could. under certain hypnotic. influence.
with the marvellous beauty Of her singing
uplift her audience to the greatest heights
0ooB ~ tANy oaA1b
an impossibility.
But only a few nights ago a party OF
guests at the Hotel Empire stopped TO listen
as they passed TO the sweet, clear yet weird
music of the woman's voice as she sang in
the reception room to a few favored friends.
They listened and were delighted. Later one
OF them closely observed the performer, and
remarked something in her demeanor which
made her ask questions. The woman, as she
sat at the piano with tightly closed eyelids,
mad a strangely white, intensely .rapt ex-
preston on her face. while her hands did not
move like those Of other people over the key
board; they seemed to be stiffened up and
TO fall without being in the least under the
control OF the player. But they drew forth
weird chords and ripping arpeggios OF per-
feet melody. Over this accompaniment the
voice broke forth in melody sweet, but very,
very strange. Without intermission the
singer wandered from Gounod to Meyerbeer,
from verdi to Wagner, then 10 simpler
melodies, and finally 10 Home, Sweet
Home" Gradually The voice grew softer and
softer and lower and lower, until in the end
1t seemed, not to stop-but to vanish like an
echo in the far-off distance, and the singers
hands fell relaxed in her lap. Her features
lost the strained expression. the eyelids
slowly opened. and with a peculiar, signing
yawn and rubbing the backs Of her hands
ac WSsn ne5 eyes: she arose from the piano.
mad been singing. From the time the hyp-
motto trance takes possession of her until
1t has entirely passed over she is practically
nonexiStent. She knows nothing of her sur
roundings, or what occurs about her; Meth
er is she aware of the fact that she is sing
Ing and accompanying herself on the piano.
consequently Mrs. Gage has never heard
ner own voice when under control. Mrs.
Gage positively asserts that it is not her
own voice She declares that Ii is the spirit
or a great actress and a singer, long since
dead. who seeks astral embodiment, and
gives vent to its pent-up being through the
medium of her person and throat. Some
thirty odd years ago Mrs. Addie Belden
Gage was born in Rochester,, of a fine old
aristocratic family. She received a first
class education and grew up to be an ex-
tremely bright and attractive girl.
About ten years ago, being then in her
early twenties. Miss Belden went on an ex-
tended Southern trip with an intimate
orable epoch that the strange hypnotic
spirit took sudden and simultaneous posses
sion of both these young girls.
Though both musical, their voices were
In no way extraordinary, nor had they at
tanned any high standard of cultivation.
But Directly the power possessed them. all
this was changed. Their voices grew to
enormous ompass and timbre. altogether
different from former a~ttainments, and be-
came suddenly as flexible and cultured as
that of an operate star who had spent
years in conscientious study. Though mu-
tually aware of the peculiar gift bestowed
on them both so mysteriously, the girls
sought no notoriety; in fact, they shrank
from 1t. and few but their most intimate
trends have ever known of it,.
Soon after this Miss Belden became Mrs.
Gage. She married a wealthy Rochester
gentleman, who had gone to live in Chicago.
They recently decided to come East to live,
and the last few years they have spent
travelling between New York, Boston,
Washington and Philadelphia. When in
this city they live at the new Hotel Empire,
and ii was there. through the purest acct
dent, that Mrs Cages strange experience
became known TO those outside her own
immediate circle. Both Mr.. and Mrs. Gage
are much opposed to notoriety.
When singing under control, Mrs. Gaze
has fluent use Of languages, which in her
own personality and normal condition. she
entirely ignores. The spirit, who possesses
her while singing, must nave been a great
linguist This spirit Mrs Gage calls
-Clotilde," but she never speaks much
about her, other than that she was a very
beautiful singer who retired from the oper-
attic stage very early in a most successful
career, owing TO a disastrous love affair.
She says that "Clotilde," however, does
not play the accomplishments. that it is
some other power that moves her hands
and produces the strange chords and har-
monies which are among the strangest part
of a very strange performance.
Ii would be an impossibility for any or
binary musician with eyes tight-closed and
hands moving in such stiff confusion as do
those of Mrs. Gage when singing in the
hypnotic state to produce such weird but
harmonious results from the keyboard.
All who are we'll acquainted with this re-
markable woman say that she is a very
charming person, with genial, gracious
manners, and that she is the last woman
whom any one could accuse of deception of