The Charleston Daily News

GOSSIP ABOUT NILSSON.

The Great Swedish Songstress No Fairy -How She Looks-Her Deportment- What and How She Eats, &c.

Everybody will read with interest the following, from a New York correspondent of a St. Louis paper :

Miss Nilsson looms up pleasantly in the future; the gaunt, straight figure; the strong, pale face, with the hollow cheeks and the beautiful smile blooming on her lips; the kindly gray eyes; the majestic toss of the head, and the gait as firm and bold as a man's. Miss Nilsson is staying now at the Everett House. She looks much better than she did when she was in St. Louis. The breezes of Newport seem to have done her good. The color of her cheeks is better, and her very manner betrays that she is in much better spirits. Miss Nilsson, personally, is a charming woman. Her manners are decidedly French; she is a thoroughbred Parisian. She is perfectly easy, natural and very graceful. When a gentleman is presented to her she don't nod her head as an American lady would, but gives her hand with a frank, pleasant smile, as if she had known him ever, ever so long. You are immediately at your ease. You will be prompted to say whatever comes uppermost in your mind, and she will look at you astonished with her fine gray eyes, as if to say: "You dazzle me with your brilliant intellect." She is full of these artifices, which make you think her, after having been in her company half an hour, the simplest, the frankest, the most charming woman in Christendom. To see her eat is a pleasure. She does not eat like a fine American lady, with her fingers on the very tip of the fork, and as if she was just condescending to touch mortal food out of compliment to her guests; no, she handles knife and fork with freedom and vigor, violates all the decrees of fashion in holding the fork at the lowest end, and eats as if she was no lady of fashion at all, but only

A VERY HUNGRY WOMAN.

She does not hover over the food: she eats it, and eats it with such alacrity, vigor and relish, that it makes your mouth water. She is very fond of champagne; drinks it at all her meals, and is indeed the gayest, happiest creature alive. If a man is consumptive, or has the spleen, let him be a day in Miss Nilsson's company and he will be well again. The cure is infallible. There's no doubt of it. Europeans all know how to enjoy themselves. When Miss Nilsson travelled in the West, she used to have little dinner parties with Brignoli, Verger and Vieuxtemps very often, for Strakosch, the magnanimous, gave Miss Nilsson unlimited sway with regard to incurring dinner bills, so that she used to invite nearly every genteel man who was presented to her, at least once to dinner and champagne. These dinners were feasts for the gods. The talking, and laughing, and joking, and anecdote telling, and merrymaking that were going on there—were there ever such jolly dinners? Brignoli was full of fun; Verger was fuller; and Miss Nilsson—well, I shall not say how she did cut up; it would not be in keeping with the dignity of the muse and of her votary, who has been glorifled and deifled until I thought nothing remained more of her than essence pure angelical; whose voice has been likened to dripping diamonds, falling or bubbling crystal; over whom this matter-of-fact world has gone crazy. Alas! in beefsteak and onions the fond illusions vanish, and Miss Nilsson is, to the gaze of him whose bread she kindly buttered—the writer is going to have this pleasant reminiscence of his life engraved upon his tombstone, if the present enthusiasm for the songstress lasts—

ONLY A MORTAL!

Miss Nilsson herself, although she is vain like every one, is quite cynical. She looks at the flowery enthusiasm with which she is flattered through monetary spectacles, and has an eye to the main chance. If you rave about her in a newspaper, she likes it very well; she is a business woman, and knows exactly how much it is worth. But if you rave about her to her face, pay her a pretty compliment or so, she'll laugh and look quite pleased; but she will no more believe that you mean it than she would suspect the man in the moon of addressing her. "These people come here and flatter me because I am a famous great singer," she will say after you are gone, because of that, if I were poor and unknown no one would tell me I'm witty and beautiful." Is she right or wrong? She is smart, and knows the world. That she is not an essence floating in angelic kindness, but a strong-minded, independent woman, every one ought to see at the first glance.