w ACTRESSES C£^ FAMOUS ACTRESSES OF THE DAY IN AMERICA Digitized by tine Internet Arciiive in 2007 with fundi^ng from IVIicrosoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/famousactressesoOOstrarich ^ ^1^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^'' '"^P rf fii '^lf^A4y(Zfy r,,Qi^^ ^yy^^ /!^^y _^y24^ t^^/^>y' Famous Actresses of the Day in America By Lewis C. Strang ' ILLVSTRAT^i) Boston L. C. Page and Company (Incorporated) 1899 Copyright, i8gg By L. C. Page and Compan^i . • ,' (\NCORPopAirE.b)C •; \ * Solom'al Press : Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co. Boston. Mass., U.S.A. CONTENTS. LPTER PAGE Preface ix ^ I. « Maude Adams . 11 ^11. ♦ Julia Marlowe . 27 III. Sarah Cowell LeMoyne 39 ^IV. * Minnie Maddern Fiske 50 V. Ida Conquest 69 VI. Blanche Walsh . 72 VII. Annie Russell . . 82 VIII. Isabel Irving . 98 ; IX. Maxine Elliott . 104 ^x. /Ada Rehan 113 XI. Virginia Harned . 125 ^XII. ^ Viola Allen . 134 XIII. Corona Riccardo . 147 XIV. Mary Mannering . 156 XV. Julia Arthur . 161/ 919TO9 VI Contents, CHAPTER PAGE XVI. May Irwin . . 174 XVII. Effie Shannon . . 187 "^XVIII. V Mrs. Leslie Carter . . 193 XIX. Mary Shaw . 206 XX. Olga Nethersole . 217 XXI. Lillian Lawrence . 232 XXII. Blanche Bates . . 243 XXIII. Elsie DeWolfe . . 248 XXIV. Rose Coghlan . . 258 XXV. Margaret Anglin . 270 XXVI. Fay Davis . . . . . 273 XXVII. Odette Tyler . . 285 XXVIII. Marie Burroughs . 291 XXIX. Kathryn Kidder . 299 "\ XXX. #Helena Modjeska . 306 XXXI. May Robson . 323 Index . 339 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGB Maude Adams as Lady Babbie in " The Little Minister" Frontispiece Maude Adams as Juliet in " Romeo and Juliet" i8 Julia Marlowe 27 Julia Marlowe as Colinette in "Colinette" 34 Mrs. LeMoyne as the Duchess in "Cather- ine" 39 Mrs. Fiske as Tess in " Tess of the D'Urber- VILLES" . \ . . . . . . -50 Blanche Walsh as Cleopatra in " Cleopatra " 72 Annie Russell as Catherine in "Catherine" 82 Isabelle Irving 98 Maxine Elliott as Alice Adams in " Nathan Hale" ........ 104 Ada Rehan as Beatrice in " Much Ado about Nothing" 113 Virginia Harned as Julie in "An Enemy to THE King" 125 Viola Allen .....,,. 134 9 10 List of Illustrations. PAGE Corona Riccardo as Berenice in "The Sign OF THE Cross" 147 Mary Mannering as Rose in "Trelawneyof THE Wells " 156 Julia Arthur as Mercedes in "Mercedes" . 161 Julia Arthur as Rosalind in " As You Like It" 170 Effie Shannon 187 Mrs. Leslie Carter 193 Olga Nethersole as Paula in "The Second Mrs. Tanqueray" 217 Lillian Lawrence 232 Blanche Bates 243 Elsie DeWolfe 248 Marie Burroughs 291 May Robson 323 PREFACE. It is obviously impossible, in writing of persons so prominently before the public as the women considered in this book, to secure any great amount of new matter regarding the chief incidents of their lives, and the author wishes frankly to acknowledge him- self a compiler and editor in so far as bio- graphical details are concerned. The facts were gathered from various contemporaneous publications, and in some instances, from the actresses themselves. Accuracy has been the aim, but sometimes it has appeared, after a careful sifting of ambiguous and contradic- tory statements, that a well-considered guess was the only apparent solution of the prob- lem. In so far as criticism is concerned the 12 ' Famous Actresses of the Day. to perfect an art so ' subtle that one hardly knows whether or not it exists at all. She is naturally a comedienne of exquisitely delicate and refined methods. Her powers of sugges- tion are remarkable, and for that reason her acting is exceedingly difficult to analyse. One unfamiliar with the theatre, and with the art of acting, would say that her work is largely intuitive, but intuition and magnetism will hardly explain Miss Adamses invariable suc- cess in the many different characters that she has assumed. Her Juliet — severely criticised though it was — showed, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that there was within that little frame the big, sensitive soul of an artist, a soul capable of understanding the great emotions and passions, and of express- ing them, not with tragic power, but with ^^a wealth of pathos far more heartrending. Miss Adams is said to be connected with the family of John Quincy Adams, the fifth President of the United States, Joshua Maude Adams. 13 Adams, a cousin of John Quincy Adams, left the family homestead in Quincy, Massachu- setts, and moved to Canada. His oldest son, also Joshua Adams, immigrated to Utah with a party of Mormon missionaries. This second Joshua Adams had a daughter, Annie Adams, and she was Maude's mother. Maude Adams was born in November, 1872, in Salt Lake City, where her father, whose name was Kis- kadden, was in business, and her mother was a member of a local stock company. Maude's first appearance on any stage was at the age of nine months in Salt Lake City, in a play called "The Lost Child." The business of the play required that a baby should be brought on the stage in a platter. The baby that had expected to be cradled in the dish had an attack of stage fright, or something equally serious, just as she should have been behaving her prettiest in prepara- tion for her public appearance. She yelled and kicked and refused to be pacified. Little 14 Famous Actresses of the Day, Miss Maude, who was spending the evening in her mother's dressing-room, was seized upon by the frantic stage-manager and rushed before the footlights, winking and blinking and crowing with delight at the applause of the audience. Naturally enough. Miss Adams does not remember her debut, and her first recollection of stage life is the playing of Little Schneider in "Our Fritz*' with J. K. Emmett. "I can see,'* she once said, "a little child in satin knickerbockers and jacket, with a big collar and tie, holding a jumping-jack in her hand, and trying to step out a dance with Fritz. That was myself. But it seems as though it must have been some other being. It gives me such a peculiar sensation in thinking about it. In that play I was put upon a large wheel, which was set revolving. At a certain point I had to scream, but I was never quite sure when that time was. I used to look at the manager's wife, who Maude Adams, 17 the country. ^The play itself, though intro- ducing the personages and main incidents of *'The Little Minister/' might fairly be termed an original work rather than a dram- atisation, so skilfully did the author of the novel rearrange his story for the stage. The drama was simple, straightforward and affecting, clean and wholesome, with an atmosphere delightfully artistic. Babbie, "the Egyptian," was a whimsical character, made indescribably fascinating by Miss Adams's glowing personality and gentle, though keenly incisive and authoritative, _ax:ting) She was dashing, careless, and free as the tantalising gypsy girl ; as the daughter of Lord Rintoul, graceful and spirited, seri- ous and sympathetic. In pathetic moments her touch was sure and her sincerity con- vincing ; in moments of light-hearted gaiety her blithesomeness was contagious and her humour a well-spring of joy. Miss Adams has just had the unique 1 8 Famous Actresses of the Day. experience of risking a seemingly inevitable failure and winning a most remarkable suc- cess. It must be acknowledged that it was a shocking thought, — Lady Babbie as Juliet, — but no more shocking than the perform- ance itself proved to many theatre-goers, not- ably William Winter, whose denunciation in the New York Tribune of May 9, 1899, the morning after Miss Adams's first appear- ance as Juliet, may become a classic. Mr. Winter wrote : " Miss Adams, a delicate, seemingly fragile and febrile person, in the potion scene of Juliet, might be expected to supply a mild specimen of hysterics. That was feasible, and that was afforded. The individual charm of girl-like sincerity which is peculiar to Miss Adams swayed her performance of Juliet with a winning softness, eliciting sym- pathy and inspiring kindness. Beyond that there was nothing. Many schoolgirls, with a little practice, would play the part just as MAUDE ADAMS As Juliet in " Romeo and Juliet " Maude Adams, 19 well — and would be just as little like it. In her especial way Miss Adams is a most agreeable actress ; she ought to be neither surprised nor hurt to ascertain by this expe- rience that nature never intended her to act the tragic heroines of Shakespeare. Much of the part was whispered and much of it was bleated. The personality cannot readily be described, but perhaps it may not be unfairly indicated as that of an intellectual young lady from Boston, competent in the mathematics and intent on teaching peda- gogy. A balcony scene without passion, a parting scene without delirium of grief, and a potion scene without power, — those were the products of Miss Adams's dramatic art." To offset Mr. Winter I quote Edward A. Dithmar, of the New York TimeSy a man sane, conservative, and experienced : " As she sat on the rude chair in the friar's dimly lighted cell, looking up into the old man's face, eagerly, beseechingly, and then 20 Famous Actresses of the Day. half turning, with an upward gesture, toward the window, spoke so earnestly in a tone far removed, to be sure, from the formal utter- ance of classical tragedy, but with unmis- takable feeling and sincerity, those thrilling phrases upon which the hopes of many an aspiring Juliet of the stage have broken : " « O ! bid me leap, rather than marry Paris, From off the battlements of yonder tower ; Or walk in thievish way ; or bid me lurk Where serpents are — ' the triumph of the newest of Juliets was assured. Far removed from the formal utterance of classical tragedy, indeed, but there was more of natural eloquence and seeming spontaneity of expression in Miss Adams's delivery of those words than has been associated with the manner of classical >| drama on our stage since Sarah Bernhardt acted Ph^dre. It can safely be proclaimed that Maude Adams is not a tragic actress. But Henry Irving is not a tragedian, and so Maude Adams. 21 far as the English-speaking stage is con- ^ cerned, the manner of tragedy all but died f^Jidii with Edwin Booth. . . . ** Juliet seemed actually to live again, loving suddenly and for aye, sorrowing and dying. Last winter the critics of music frequently and justly found fault with the singing of Ernest Van Dyck ; but they all declared that his splendid histrionism tri- umphed in * Lohengrin ' and * Tannhaiiser,* in spite of his deficiencies of voice and vocal method. Similarly we may say of Maude Adams (though I should hesitate to use quite such a showy word as 'splendid' to distinguish her dramatic talent) that her acting suffices in ' Romeo and Juliet,' though she does not sing the music as it might be sung. She has both tact and a rare quality of personal charm to bear her out. She has good sense, artistic sympathy, and apprecia- tion. And as occasion requires its use, she produces an appropriate symbol.*' 22 Famous Actresses of the Day, There is no mystery in the opposition of these critics. Mr. Winter, grounded in Shakespearian tradition and not so impres- sionable, perhaps, as a younger man, lacking in the sympathy that is touched by sincerity and genuine humanity, saw only the faults — the glaring faults, if you will — of Miss Adams's technique. Mr. Dithmar, on the other hand, thrust aside exasperating defi- ciencies and crudities and startling violations of classic rule and order; he reached the gist of the whole matter, — the inspired real- ness of this Juliet. There is only one Juliet that should be sought for by all actresses who try to win fame in this most difficult of roles. The traditional Juliet is the survival of the fittest, the result of the united intelligence of the most gifted players ; and consequently the traditional Juliet is the only Juliet that can be con- sidered as a permanent conception. Never- theless, there is the stubborn fact that Miss Maude Adams. 23 Adams gave a wonderfully touching per- formance of the character. Her convincing sincerity, her intelligent reading of the lines, — not metrical reading, mind you, for that she ignored entirely, — and, more than all, the appealing humanity of her impersonation, were forceful in the extreme ; and a fondness for tradition should not keep one from recog- nising these great merits in Miss Adams's work. Tradition is a standard of judgment, and in most cases a proper standard of judg- ment ; but once in awhile tradition has to be thrown out of the window, and it seems eminently proper so to treat it in Miss Adams's case. Maude Adams's Juliet was the creation of an actress whose personality and magnetism enabled her to override seemingly insur- mountable obstacles in the way of physique and temperament ; whose sheer mental force made not only possible, but pathetically real, a Juliet that defied tradition ; whose inherent 24 Famous Actresses of the Day. dramatic power made acceptable a reading of the lines that ignored even the pre- tence of metre, and also logically established a conception that was never for a moment tragic, a conception that showed only a girl, frightened almost at her great love, and later suffering she scarcely knew why. One might multiply words in recounting the faults in the performance as judged by the standard readings of the part. She did not look Juliet in the first place ; she spoke the lines without the least striving after elocutionary effect, spoke them as if they were the simplest of every-day prose ; she never once thrilled one with the full realisa- tion of a supreme, mighty passion. She did do one thing, however, and for that one thing I am willing to sacrifice all ideals of personal appearance, all delight in the music of the verse, willing to sacrifice even tragic power itself. She made Juliet ^^^^^^ ! More- over, if she did not speak poetry, she cer- Maude Adams, 25 tainly found in the poetry new and beautiful meanings ; and though she did not act tragedy, she accomplished far more when she touched the heart with a sorrow most genuine. Miss Adams was at her best in the first scene with Romeo, in the balcony scene, and in the scene in Friar Laurence's cell, after she had received her father's command to marry Paris. The first love scene with Romeo was of beauty simply indescribable. Remember, this was a Juliet who was really a girl, whose youth and innocence added immeasurably to the effect of her meeting with Romeo. One saw the dawning of love, realised the perplexity and bewilderment that accompanied love's conception and under- stood the wealth of knowledge that came with the kiss that so often has seemed mere wantonness on the part of Romeo. The power of the balcony scene came largely from the unusual and vivid interpre- tation of the lines. They were read with a 26 Famous Actresses of the Day, perfect comprehension, and with an intensity and earnestness that brooked no limitations of metre. The scene in Friar Laurence's cell was played without a suggestion of the horror that is sometimes given it to the detriment of the potion scene. The childish- ness displayed in the scene with the nurse was pronounced, and the potion scene was a penetrating picture of a horror-stricken girl, driven to the verge of despair, suffering pitifully and alone. The death scene, un- necessarily mutilated in the version used by Miss Adams, was quiet in the extreme and of abiding pathos. JULIA MARLOWE CHAPTER II. JULIA MARLOWE. Julia Marlowe, whose real name is Sarah Frances Frost, was born, late in the sixties, in Caldbeck, a north of England village. She was brought to the United States by her parents when she was about five years old. The family first settled in Kansas, but later moved to Cincinnati. Fanny Brough was the name by which Miss Marlowe was known, when, at the age of twelve years, her stage experiences began in the chorus of .^u\ Colonel Miles's Juvenile Pinafore Company. ,^ She was too bright, long to remain with the ' crowd, however, and soon she was permitted to take such parts as Hebe and Little But- tercup. 27 28 Famous Actresses of the Day. In charge of the troupe was Ada Dow, sister-in-law of Manager Miles, and years ago a well-known actress. She became con- vinced that the girl had talent, and virtually adopted her with the intention of training her for higher work on the stage. When she was fifteen years old, Miss Marlowe, still known as Fanny Brough, toured New York State with Robert McWade in "Rip Van Winkle," playing at first the boy Hendrix, and later the small part of Rip*s sister. The McWade company met with hard luck, and finally came to grief at Lyons, N. Y. An actor, who was with McWade, has reported that Fanny Brough was not altogether a favourite with her companions. She was pert and saucy, and not much of an actress either, a curious comment when one con- siders the Julia Marlowe of to-day. At the age of sixteen Miss Marlowe played her first Shakespearian character, Romeo's page, Balthazar. The Juliet of this perform- Julia Marlowe, 29 ance was Josephine Riley, of whom there may be memories in the West. Three years of hard study at Ada Dow's quiet home in Bayonne followed for the young actress, and 'Tt was the genuine old-fashioned stage train- jjgig that the aspirant for dramatic honours underwent, an experience hard on mind and , body, but thorough if one Hved through it. There were days and days of practice in gym- nastics, in voice culture, in elocution, and in stage deportment. Plays were read and re-read, time and time again. They were worked over with the aid of commentaries, histories, and critical notes, and even the life story of the author was investigated for '^^ further enlightenment on knotty points. Not until the play as a whole had been thor- oughly mastered was the memorising of a line permittedT] As a result of all this drudg- ery, at the end of the three years the student had a fair repertory of standard dramas, and was ready for her d^but as a star, which 30 Famous Actresses of the Day. event took place on April 25, 1887, at New London, Conn. It was at this time that she was first called Julia Marlowe. " I remember quite well my first appear- ance in New London. I played Parthenia in * Ingomar/ and the morning papers spoke of me as a genius, and said that I would surely wear a crown of diamonds before my career was at an end. How I did enjoy that," was the naiVe account of her d^but that Miss Marlowe gave several years after. A provincial tour of the small cities and towns of Connecticut and Massachusetts followed, the youthful star playing Juliet, Parthenia, Pauline in ** The Lady of Lyons," and Julia in "The Hunchback.*' In October she boldly tried New York, playing Shake- ^^ speare at the Bijou Opera House, a theatre chiefly given over to light opera. Her com- pany was poor, and her scenery and costumes were inadequate ; but most disastrous of all was the fact that no New Yorker had ever Julia Marlowe. 31 heard of her. This alone would have settled hfjr fate had everything else been in her favour. Some of the critics recognised talent in her acting; Robert G. IngersoU wrote a rapturous letter regarding her ; Lester Wal- lack testified to the promise her work gave ; but the public refused to have anything to do with her. It was a cruel experience, and one which Miss Marlowe did not soon forget. For years — even after her repu- tation had climbed into the metropolis — she shunned New York as she would a pestilence. Back to the provinces went the young actress to pass through a weary year of one night stands before she tried another large city. This time it was Boston. The date was December 3, 1888 ; the place was the HoUis Street Theatre, and the play was "Ingo- mar.'' Miss Marlowe's success was complete, so complete, in fact, that she was engaged for a return date at the Park Theatre the 32 Famous Actresses of the Day. following spring. The repertory of the De- cember week included, besides " Ingomar," ^.^^\^ "The Hunchback," "The Lady of Lyons," " Twelfth Night," and " Romeo and Juliet." For the following spring engagement she added " As You Like It " to the list. The following year she first played "Pygmalion and Galatea." In 1 89 1 Miss Marlowe tried Beatrice in "Much Ado about Nothing." She was hardly equal to this brilHant character at first, but her authority increased with every performance until her conception at last be- came adequate. Her impersonation of the character, while vivacious and altogether charming, never seemed to reach the soul of this most sparkling and intellectual of Shakespearian women. Her Imogene in " Cymbeline," acted about the same time, was a more successful characterisation, abounding in sentiment and beautifully pathetic, though by no means tragically great. Constance in Julia Marlowe, 33 " The Love Chase " came a year later, fol- lowed with Letitia Hardy in "The Belle's Stratagem '* and two boys' parts, Charles Hart in " Rogues and Vagabonds " and "Chatterton." In 1894, Miss Marlowe at- tempted Lady Teazle in "School for Scan- dal" and "Colombe's Birthday," neither of which was a lasting success. In May of that year she was married to Robert Tabor. The season of 1895-06 saw Miss Marlowe as Kate Hardcastle in " She Stoops to Con- ^guer," and later in the elaborate and unfor- tunate revival of " King Henry IV.," in which the actress essayed the role of Prince Hal, a thoroughly virile character, entirely beyond the range of a woman. She is also remem- bered for her impersonation of Lydia Lan- guish in the star cast of " The Rivals," which was headed by Joseph Jefferson. Miss Marlowe's latest productions have shown a constantly increasing tendency to avoid the classic. They are "For Bonnie 34 Famous Actresses of the Day, Prince Charlie," "Romola/' "The Countess Valeska/' and " Colinette." Physically, Julia Marlowe is a brunette of the brown-haired, dark-eyed type. Just what colour her eyes are I really do not know, — for a guess, dark brown, shading into black. They are large, of abiding charm, and wondrously expressive. She is rather above medium stature, though in certain roles she seems strangely undersized. The loveliness of her face is of expression rather than of mere feature, and it is emphatically a woman's face. On the stage she has unusual magnet- ism and especially winning femininity. This latter quality pervades all her characters, making them so delicately alluring and so peculiarly lovable that the judgment, even of an experienced observer, is very often led astray into unmerited enthusiasm. Always satisfying to a degree, and particularly de- lightful as a comedienne, she has never shown any unfathomable depth of tempera- JULIA MARLOWE As Colinette in " Colinette " r Julia Marlowe, 35 ment, nor has she yet achieved the really tragic. Her most popular Shakespearian character is probably Rosalind, an impersonation that is full of life and exuberance of spirits and of by-play entrancingly suggestive of mas- querading femininity. The lines she speaks with naturalness, and the music of her voice adds immeasurably to the beauty of the poetry. If there be any fault in her work, it is the extremely subtle one of failing to make Rosalind womanly as well as feminine. I Miss Marlowe*s Viola in " Twelfth Night " is a very fine study, indeed, one of the most nearly perfect impersonations in her Shake- spearian repertory. Viola is an essentially pathetic character over which continually hangs the sorrow of a hopeless love. Aside from a too evident burlesque of the duel scene with Sir Andrew Aguecheek, Miss Marlowe's conception is continuously tender > and maidenly, breathing the essence of 36 Famous Actresses of the Day, poetry and pregnant with a refined humour that is akin to tears. Her Juliet is wonderfully beautiful, — won- derfully pathetic even, especially in the potion scene, — but it is a characterisation that has always been found wanting in one essential. " Her nature is sympathetic with poetic sentiment and with humour in its purity," wrote Elwyn A. Barron. "That which is sweetly ideal, gentle, touching, that which is light in mirth and prettily fanciful, has never, we believe, had a more delightful exponent than Miss Marlowe. She is ex- quisite, too, in pathos and effective in stronger emotions, but in the dignity of soul-mastering passion she is deficient." When a dramatic critic can find no other fault with an actress's Juhet, he invariably declares that she lacks passion ; and it is true that Miss Marlowe has failed to convey the idea of an overpowering love that is Julia Marlowe. 37 the great element in Juliet's nature. Juliet's passion is far away from animal desire of the Carmen type. It is the poet's perfect love, the unattainable and undefinable ideal of devotion and purity held by human kind. Can such an idealistic conception be ex- pressed by means of the art of acting } Undoubtedly it has been so expressed, not often, perhaps, but once is sufficient to prove that it is not impossible. Miss Marlowe her- self once said : " A full realisation of my ideal is still beyond my strength. When once it is wholly and permanently within my grasp, I shall then indeed deserve to be called a great artist." Miss Marlowe has not the rich old comedy style, as was plainly shown in her playing of Kate Hardcastle. It was in many respects a charming stage presence, but it was not an honest exhibition of acting. It was the actress's personality only that was ever in evidence. Miss Marlowe played with the 38 Famous Actresses of the Day, brilliancy of a virtuoso, and her Kate was very provoking and very captivating. But it was also artificial and affected. There was none of that innocent artlessness and little of that girlish recklessness to which is due Kate's imposition on Marlow. Her Kate was much too old, much too sober, and much too wise. Miss Marlowe demonstrated her expert- ness in light comedy in "Colinette,'* a "make- believe '* sort of a play — almost a burlesque on life — which she carried to success by her own sweetly attractive individuality. Her acting, however, added nothing to a reputa- tion won by the hardest kind of work in the face of many difficulties, the reputation of being the most authoritative Shakespearian actress that we have. MRS. LEMOYNE As the Duchess in '* Catherine " CHAPTER III. SARAH COWELL LEMOYNE. Sarah Cowell LeMoyne is identified in the public mind with the role of the Dowager Duchess de Coutras in Henri Lavedan's comedy, "Catherine/' and those that saw the play in this country will not soon for- get the womanly sympathy and the matronly )l^ tenderness with which she invested that very interesting character. If ever an actress lived a part, Mrs. LeMoyne lived the Duchess, and the fineness of her art, the sincerity of her sentiment, and the com- pleteness of her conception left absolutely no loop-hole through which could enter false touches and broken illusions. " Mrs. Sarah Cowell LeMoyne's assump- 39 40 Famous Actresses of the Day. tion of the Dowager Duchess de Coutras/* wrote Henry Austin Clapp, " it is not absurd to say, in its appeal to the artistic sense, has in recent years seldom been surpassed upon our stage. Its suavity, directness, elegance, and distinction of style are remarkable in- deed. Practising, like Miss Annie Russell, a method never violent, seldom even vehe- ment, and, like her, almost never lifting her ^oice above an ordinary conversational tone, Mrs. LeMoyne, by the power of her pure and unaffected enunciation, of her vitally sympathetic tones, and of her frank and beautiful manners, at once convinces every auditor of the refinement, the genuineness, the breadth, and the loveliness of the Duchess's character. Whenever she moves or speaks, she charms and engages. All her dialogues are quiet, yet all are keenly interesting, and several of them are deeply stirring. Seldom is anything better wit- nessed here than her scenes in the first Sarah Cowell LeMoyne. 41 act with the duke, her son, where her shrewdness, her sympathy, and her experi- ence of life are all in evidence as she listens to his confession of love for Cather- ine, and the intent to make Catherine his wife ; the mother's combined playfulness and gravity, the tactfulness of her words and ways, her high-bred grace and magnanimity, are all equally obvious and fine, and under them all an anxious maternal tenderness and yearning are shown with pathetic potency. Here is a piece of comedy acting done with that ideal touch, at once light and firm, easy and strong, which is characteristic of the best histrionic school. Mrs. LeMoyne's tri- umph with her audience was complete. At the close of every one of her scenes there was a stir of responsive delight and quick- ened sympathy, which ran through the mass of spectators as waves move over a field of wheat under the impact of a breeze." Yet Mrs. LeMoyne*s stage experience hag 42 Famous Actresses of the Day, embraced perhaps six different characters, and has extended over only three seasons, one in the early eighties, whea A. M. Palmer's Union Square Theatre Company was at the height of its artistic excellence, and the others within the last two years. With the Union Square Company Mrs. LeMoyne, who was then simply Sarah Cow- ell, appeared as the mother in " A Celebrated Case," as a maid in "The Banker's Daugh- ter," as the opera singer in <*= French Flats," and as an old woman in "The DanichefFs." This part was the first one in which she made any recognisable impression, and it was also the last one that she played for many years. She appeared in it first in Chicago, and when the company returned to New York Manager Palmer insisted that she should act it there. Now, New York was the actress's home, and for more than three hundred nights she had presented there the maid in "The Banker's Daugh-' Sarah Cowell LeMoyne, 43 ten" And now to come back as an old woman ! Surely that was too much. She would be the countess or anything else in the play except the old woman. Mr. V^Xxcl^xq/)^ was persistent, however, and Miss CowelFs connection with the stage ended right there, not to be renewed until the spring of 1898, when she accepted the r61e of Mrs. Lorimer in " The Moth and the Flame,*' a character in which she displayed the wonderful finesse that was so finely evident in ** Catherine." "When I was a girl in my teens,'' said Mrs. LeMoyne, in speaking of her first stage experience, " I was acquainted with Madame Blavatsky. Before she left New York I got to know her very well. She had once told me that I reminded her in appearance of Rachel, and although I knew nothing in the world about Rachel, I set out to read her history and find out all I could about her. When I learned that she was an actress, I was more than ever determined to continue 44 Famous Actresses of the Day, reciting, as I had been doing for the benefit of my friends, and as a result of that there came the idea of my becoming an actress. J knew nobody connected with the theatre ; ( my family had no associations of that kind, Ynd there seemed to be very little prospect that I would ever accomplish my purpose. But I did ultimately get an introduction to Mr. Palmer, who was then at the Union Square Theatre. I read for him and Mr. Cazuran a scene from 'Henry VIII.* He told me he had nothing for me just at that time. Finally, he asked me if I thought I could act any of the parts in * A Celebrated Case,' which was then the play at the theatre. I told him I thought I could act Agnes Booth's. She was playing the part of the wife in the prologue. When I men- tioned that r61e, Mr. Palmer looked astonished. But he gave it to me to study, and after awhile I had an opportunity to play it several times on the road. That was my first part, Sarah Cowell LeMoyne. 45 and where I played it I cannot remember ; I was in too much of a whirl to pay attention to the names of towns. Afterward I joined the company and played the part of a maid. I was a realist in those days, and I remember that I insisted on wearing slippers without heels, because I thought those the appropri- ate shoes for a maid to wear. But I was applauded for a scene with John Strebelow, in which I showed sympathy for him in his troubles. In * The Danicheffs* I was more successful as the old woman than in any other role I played during my first engage- ment. But it was that which led me to bring my theatrical life to an end for so many years." When Mrs. LeMoyne left Mr. Palmer, she gave up acting for good and began to teach elocution and to give readings. As a reader, she visited England in 1884, and met with much success in drawing-room entertainments in private residences. While there, she be- 46 Famous Actresses of the Day. came acquainted, among other literary men, with the poet, Robert Browning, and later she was an important factor in the popular- ising of his works in this country. Her prin- cipal readings from Browning were " Count Gismond," "Time's Revenge," "Meeting at Night," "Herve Riel," and "Love among the Ruins." She was also very successful with the anonymous poem, so full of dramatic action and pathos, "The Engineer's Story," and also with Mary Mapes Dodge's dialect study, "Miss Maloney, on the Chinese Question." Mrs. LeMoyne had several offers to return to the stage while she was reading and teaching. Once she recited "Kentucky Belle" and "The Old Boat" before Sir Henry Irving, and in the little talk that followed he said that he would give her an engagement in his company the next day, if she cared to return to the stage. Lawrence Barrett also heard her read, and immediately offered her a part in " The Blot Sarah Cowell LeMoyne, 47 on the 'Scutcheon/' These offers were quickly declined, however. « I think that most of my friends among the actors were uncertain of my abilities to act," said Mrs. LeMoyne. "I remember they were always amiable when I mentioned my desire to become an actress some day. But it was evident that they had very little confidence in the outcome. I was reminded of that when I saw in a box at the theatre, where I was appearing in 'The Moth and the Flame,' an actress who had once come to me for some lessons in diction. She was about to play a new r61e, and I was discuss- ing it with her. Something I said must have touched her sensitive artistic nature, for she said to me, suddenly, *But, Mrs. LeMoyne, I did not come to you for lessons in acting.' * Oh, I understand,' I answered, with humility that was possibly exaggerated. * I couldn't possibly act myself.' I was rather pleased when I saw her in the au- 48 Famous Actresses of the Day, dience, for the play went particularly well that night. " Those days of my life were of greater profit than they would have been had I re- mained an actress," she continued. ** I saw all the great actors, and I read all that was good in literature. I believe now that noth- ing is better for the actor's art than a period of retirement, which gives him the opportun- ity to study the great ones of his profession and see just how he stands in reference to the other actors. It is as fatal to an actor as it is to anybody else to drop out of the foremost rank. He must always be ahead if he would keep the admiration and respect of the public, and it seems to me that only those that know what is going on about them are able to be up with the foremost.*' Mrs. LeMoyne's genius for the deline- ation of the middle-aged heroine is not exactly paralleled on the English-speaking stage. She understands thoroughly the Sarah Cowell LeMoyne. 49 woman whose life has been chastened by- suffering, and whose sympathy for others has been sharpened by experiences that have taught her to judge the world honestly, intel- ligently, and lovingly. Her emotional power is exceptional, and in pathetic moments she displays perfect sincerity. CHAPTER IV. MINNIE MADDERN FISKE. \\ Minnie Maddern Fiske s life story is unusual enough to be the invention of some fantastic writer of fiction. I was about to call it romantic, but that is about the last word to apply to those early experiences whose chief accompaniments seem to the average person to have been hardship and drudgery. Doubtless there were compensa- tions in an existence that began in the play- house and continued there almost constantly for twenty-four years ; in a babyhood passed with a "fly-by-night'' theatrical troupe that toured the South and West in the days when a dining-room in some country roadhouse made a prime theatre ; in a childhood spent 50 MRS. FISKE As Tess in " Tess of the D'lJrbervilles " Minnie Maddern Fiske. 5 1 in acting one after another every juvenile part known to the drama of the early seven- enties ; in a girlhood which was a struggle to win success in uncongenial and inconse- quential roles. Such an experience is, indeed, unusual, but it is also to the unfortunate victim depressingly prosaic. Nevertheless, it brought forth an individuality that has made itself immensely felt in the American theatre ; '/ produced a woman of independent purpose, who takes herself and her art seriously, whose views of life, as expressed in her art, are pessimistic, and whose humour inclines toward irony; it developed an actress of strikingly original methods and of remark- mQ^ able emotional power, an actress also of uncommon versatility, whose comedy is effer- vescent and sparkling, possessing a quality of wjt that is bitingly keen and cruelly pene- trating.^ Mrs. Fiske was born in New Orleans in 1866. Her maiden name was Marie Augusta 5 2 Famous Actresses of t/ie Day. Davey, her father being Thomas Davey, a pioneer circuit manager in the South and West ; but from the first she was known as Minnie Maddem, after her mother, whose name was Lizzie Maddem, and who was herself an actress of some promise, and a musician of much abihty. Mrs. Fiske's grandmother was an English girl of good family, who eloped with her music-teacher, and was, in consequence, cut off even with- out the proverbial shilling. The young couple, however, managed to exist somehow, and with the usual poor man's luck were blessed with a large family. There were seven children, besides father and mother, when the family immigrated to America, where the father formed a concert company, in which each of the youngsters played some instrument, and Lizzie Maddem, in a high comb and queer pantalettes, at the age of twelve, was the first comet of the strolling band. It is a tradition in the family that Minnie Maddern Fiske. 53 'Lizzie Maddern at that age could score the music for the orchestra. Little Minnie Maddern made her appear- ance on the stage at a very early age and in a most unconventional fashion. Her mother, while playing in New Orleans, was accus- tomed to leave the child at a hotel in care of a coloured nurse, who, perceiving that the baby was a sound sleeper, became negligent in the fulfilment of her duties. One night, while the nurse was away enjoying herself with friends, the baby woke up. " I am sure that I remember it quite dis- tinctly," said Mrs. Fiske, in telling the story. " There was a dim light in the room — and I was alone. Oh, the horrible idea! I had never, to my knowledge, been alone before in my life. First I was frightened ; then I was indignant. I scrambled out of bed and began tugging on what clothes I could find, crying bitterly all the time, and with but one thought, — to find my mother. I had once 54 Famous Actresses of the Day. been taken to the theatre in the daytime, and I was determined to go there. At last, half-dressed, bareheaded, for my hat was in a big wardrobe and I would not have dared to open the door, I went out into the streets ' I have to this day a vivid recollection of how brilliant and interesting the streets were to my eyes that had never seen such sights be- fore. I forgot to cry, I forgot to be fright- ened, and I saw some fascinating things before a good-natured fellow picked me up, discovered my identity, and took me safely to the theatre. I recall distinctly being held by my new friend and identified at the box- office ; then being passed over to a boy who took me around to a narrow, dark door and carried me into a lumbery place and put me in a chair where I looked out into what seemed a bright, sunshiny world with queer trees and fairies. Just then I spied my mother. She was dressed like a fairy, and she was just coming out of a water-lily Minnie Maddern Fiske, 5 5 — for it was the transformation scene of a spectacle. I was very much pleased with mamma's appearance. You see, I was a veritable child of the stage. I had no dis- approval, even at so young an age, of tights, even when they were on my mother. I slipped right out of that chair, and, before any one saw what I was going to do, I ran right to her and began explaining my nurse's treachery. I am told that I was received with applause, and that my first appearance, even though it was impromptu, was a success. It was a bit irregular, but it was an appear- ance, and I hadn't a touch, even, of stage fright." After that the child was kept in the the- atre, cradled in a big trunk in her mother's dressing-room. It was not long, however, before her mother fashioned her a Scotch costume, and she was sent on the stage between the tragedy and the farce to sing about "Jamie Coming over the Meadow," 56 Famous Actresses of the Day. and to dance the Highland fling. From that time until her marriage to Harrison Grey Fiske in 1890, with the exception of a few months here and there spent in different schools, Minnie Maddern was continuously on the stage. Her first appearance in a play occurred when she was three years old. She played the Duke of York in Shakespeare's *' Richard HI." Who the Richard was Mrs. Fiske does not remember, but she told Miss Mildred Aldrich the following amusing story of an- other early experience : "I began playing at three, or I might really say at two, and before I was twelve I had in my father's strolling company acted an old woman's part, when the old woman was sick and there was no one else to do it. But I can tell you of a very funny time when I played with Barry Sullivan. You know I did all the children in Shakespeare's plays with him, and often acted more than one Minnie Maddern Fiske, 57 part. I remember distinctly the night that he first played * Macbeth/ I must tell you first, that you may understand better, that the theatre was not to me what it is to chil- dren who are taken into it when they are old enough to realise it. I was almost born in it. I do not remember a time when it was not my home. It^had no glamour to me. I kaew no fear of it nor any great emotion about it. I just loved it naturally as other children love brothers and sisters. "I was to play one of the apparitions in * Macbeth.' I did not care much about learning parts ; I had to be bribed to do that. On this occasion the piece was, as usual, put on in a hurry, and at rehearsal I stuck hopelessly in my speech. But, though I was only three, I had the assur- ance of an old stager. I made the stock declaration that I should be all right at night. Well, at night I wasn't 'all right,' but that didn't trouble me. I was put on 58 Famous Actresses of the Day. the trap, and a funny little ghost I must have been, with my bristling red curls and my nightgown, as, with a branch in my hand, I appeared before Sullivan, and with the temerity of an old actor began to fake my lines. I got out something about like this, and my voice must have been pretty shrill, for I was greeted with laughter : ' Be lion mettled, proud, and take no heed there perspirers are/ The audience shrieked, and Barry hissed between his teeth, *Take her off ! Take her off ! ' and I was unexpectedly lowered out of sight, quite disgusted, for I was very well satisfied with myself. Poor Sullivan ! I remember he took me on his knee after the act, and plaintively remon- strated with me. He offered me lollipops if I would learn the lines before the next day. I had not then made the acquaintance of lollipops, but they sounded good, and I got my lines — and got the lollipops, for Barry was a man of his word." Minnie Maddern Fiske. 59 When Laura Keene made her great pro- duction of Boucicault*s " Hunted Down," Minnie Maddern was the Willie Lee, being then but five or six years old. She later played Prince Arthur in the notable revival of " King John '* at Booth's Theatre, New York, with John McCullough, J. B. Booth, and Agnes Booth in the cast. vBef ore attain- ing her fourteenth year she had acted many ' of the leading juvenile parts, and occasion- ally old women's parts, so remarkable was her adaptability. Long before she wore long dresses off the stage, she had assumed them in the theatre. When but twelve years of age she played Francois in '* Richelieu," and Louise in " The Two Orphans." When thirteen she assumed old woman parts with astonishing success. She was the original little Fritz in J. K. Emmett's New York productions of " Fritz " at both Wallack's Theatre and at Niblo's ; she played Paul Jn " The Octoroon " in the 6o Famous Actresses of the Day, great Philadelphia production at the Chest- nut Street Theatre ; she played Franko in "Guy Mannering," when Mrs. Waller was the Meg Merriles ; she was the Sybil in Carlotta LeClercq's production of "The Sheep in Wolffs Clothing ; " she played Mary Morgan in "Ten Nights in a Bar- room/' when Yankee Locke produced it in Boston ; she did the child in Oliver Doud Byron's spectacular production of "Across the Continent/' She was at the Chestnut Street Theatre with E. L. Davenport, and played the child's parts in his repertory. When Augustin Daly produced " Monsieur Alphonse" at the Fifth Avenue Theatre, New York, she was the Adrienne ; when Mrs. Scott-Sid dons first played " Frou-Frou " she was the Georgie. She played both Heinrich and Minna in " Rip Van Winkle," and she was the Eva of Bidwell's produc- tion of " Uncle Tom's Cabin." With Daly she also played the boy's part in "The Minnie Maddeni Fiske. 6i Bosom Friend/* and Alfred in the first road production of " Divorce." Other parts were the child in "The Chicago Fire,'* produced in New York ; Hilda in Emmett's " Karl and Hilda ; " Ralph Rackstraw in Hooley's Juve- nile Pinafore Company ; and Clip in " A Messenger from Jarvis Section." At the age of ten she acted the Sun God in David Bidweirs "The Witch," at New Orleans, and she also appeared in "Aladdin," "The White Fawn," and other spectacular pieces. Mrs. Fiske's recollections of Lucille West- ern, with whom she played a number of children's parts, are very vivid. "I recall that in one play in which I appeared with her," said Mrs. Fiske, " I played the part of a little boy who died. I could not forget if I tried that haggard and despairing face that used to behd above me, as my little body became limp and still in my simulation of death — and with chil- dren the emotion of acting is much stronger 62 Famous Actresses of the Day, than most people think. After my eyes closed there always seemed to me a long, horrible silence. Then she grasped my arm with a force that well-nigh made me scream. < Willie ! Willie ! ' she called, quickly, harshly, but with such entreaty that I found it diffi- cult not to open my eyes and reply. /Child though I was, I could feel her suffer. Then she lay me down, oh, so carefully, so gently, and through my closed lids I felt her look ^ at me, just as I felt, rather than heard, her whisper, * He is dead. I heard the curtain roll down ; I heard the cheers of the audi- ence, but the great woman seemed to think ^^fe ^ only of me. * My darling, my darling,' she ^ ^v cried, as I sat up cheerfully in my property '^ cot, ' did I hurt your little baby arm } ^ I am so forgetful, so rough. I know I hurt you.' *Not a bit,' I said, stoutly, though I could hardly move the poor abused member.^ Then Lucille Western laughed with delight, as she called, * I say, Pike, this girl's got the Minnie Madderii Fiske, 63 stuff in her/ and she hit me a thump on the back, almost as painful as my wrenched arm. We have lived by the age of Lucille Westerns, but they were great in their time." At the age of sixteen Miss Maddern be- came a star. At that time Lotta, Maggie Mitchell, and Annie Pixley were at the height of their success in a variety of dra- matic fare called " protean pieces," plays, or rather entertainments, that depended for popularity entirely on the leading performer's personality. Some undiscerning person, de- ceived by Miss Maddern's girlish figure, curly red hair, and odd individuality, thought that he saw in her a second Lotta, and ac- cordingly brought her out at the Park Thea- tre, New York, May 20, 1882, in " Fogg's ^ j^.i3^ Ferry." She was unsuited for that kind of ^oh^n work, and what impression she made was due to her thorough stage training. In 1883 she appeared in "The Storm Child." In 1885 she produced Steele Mackaye's ver- 64 Famous Actresses of the Day. sion of Sardou's " Andrea," which he called " In Spite of All." " The Child Wife " and "The Puritan Maid" followed in 1886, " Caprice " in 1887, " Lady Jemima " in 1888, and "Featherbrain" in 1889. In March, 1890, she became the wife of Harrison Grey Fiske, of the New York Dra- matic Mirrory and retired from the stage for three years. It is not generally known that this was her second venture into matrimony. When only a girl she was married, contrary to the desires of her friends, to LeGrande White, a musician, who managed her first star- ring tour and from whom she was afterward divorced. During her retirement Mrs. Fiske acted occasionally in benefit performances. She also did considerable literary work, writing a number of short stories and several plays, among them ''A Light from St. Agnes," first played by herself in December, 189s; "Not Guilty," "Grandpapa," "The Rose," played by the Rosina Yokes company Minnie Maddern Fiske, 65 with Felix Morris in the leading character ; "The Dream of Matthew Wayne/' "John Doe," dramatised from a sketch by Mr. Fiske; " Fontenelle/' written in collabora- tion with Mr. Fiske and produced by James O'Neill, and "The Countess Roudine," in which Mrs. Fiske collaborated with Paul Kester, and which was produced by Modjeska. Mrs. Fiske' s return to the stage in the fall of 1893 was signalised by a remarkable impersonation of Nora in Ibsen's " A Doll's \ House," which immediately attracted critical ' ^ attention. She then produced in November in Boston a play by her husband, called " Hester Crewe." This was a disastrous failure, and two years more of private life followed, when she again started out, touring the West and South, playing at first Marie Deloche in "The Queen of Liars," an adapta- tion of Daudet's "La Menteuse." This was followed with productions of " A Doll's House," Daudet's " A White Pink," her own y 66 Famous Actresses of the Day. "A Light from St. Agnes/' Dumas's "La Femme de Claude," Sardou's "Divorgons," and " A Right to Happiness," afterward called " Love Finds the Way." On March , 2, 1897, at the Fifth Avenue Theatre, New |iw York, she made her greatest success in Lorimer Stoddard's dramatisation of Thomas ' Hardy's novel "Tess of the D'Urbervilles." Mrs. Fiske continued to be the same assidu- ous producer last season, during which she brought out Mrs. Oscar Beringer's " A Bit of Old Chelsea," Horace B. Fry's "Little Italy," a little one-act tragedy of more than ordinary worth and a realistic study of a bit of metropolitan life never before presented in the theatre, " Frou-Frou," and "Magda." Mrs. Fiske's "Tess" is a personation of tremendous intensity and startling realism. Its emotional phases are expressed with the 0^^ utmost quietness, but with a power that ^- never fails to reach the heart of the most unimpressible spectator. It is a marvellous Minnie Maddern Fiske, 6y exhibition of the inherent force of suppression. The crescendo in Mrs. Fiske' s characterisa- tion is remarkable; there is constantly in- creasing suspense and continually growing emotional force until the break comes just after the murder of Alec. The pitiful seri- ousness and the pathetic happiness of the woman in her love for Angel Clare ; her realisation after marriage that her disgrace is still her own secret ; her confession and that despairing plea, "Don't leave me! Please, don't leave me ! " the desperation that drives her again to Alec, and finally the killing of the wretch, — all these are great moments with the actress, each contributing its exact proportion to the unity of her creation. The person that sees " Tess " for the first time is so moved by the tragedy that is passing on the stage that he takes little account of the actress's art, an involun- tary tribute that he pays to her spontaneity and naturalness. 68 Famous Actresses of the Day. Mrs. Fiske's ability in comedy is splendidly shown in ** Divorgoiis/' She acts the drama with a refined abandon that is positively captivating, making Cyprienne deliciously capricious and delightfully feminine. There is a piquancy about her performance that is difficult to describe, and a zest in the way she makes her points that establishes them with wonderful clearness. CHAPTER V. IDA CONQUEST. Ida Conquest made her first appearance as a professional actress with Alexander Salvini in 1892 at a special matinee perform- ance at the Tremont Theatre, Boston, of '* Rohan, the Silent,'' in which she played Isobel. A few weeks previous to that she had gained considerable notice by her work in two dramas acted at the Columbia Theatre, Bos- ton, by students of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, and she was also well known in that city as an amateur actress. Her first stage experience, however, began when she was only eight years old as Little Buttercup in the Bostpu Museum Juvenile production of "Pinafore,'' in which she ap- peared over three hundred times. 69 7o Famous Actresses of the Day, Miss Conquest is a Boston girl, the daughter of Thomas Conquest, a prominent merchant of that city. She is a blonde of extremely attractive features, with golden, .^ gleaming hair and deep blue eyes. She has '' not the unexpressive baby face, so often asso- -^ ciated with the blonde type of feminine beauty, but there is an abundance of character in her S^\ . finely chiselled nose and firmly rounded chin. She is tall, lithe, and graceful, — well set up, as the West Pointer would say. After her success with Mr. Salvini Miss Conquest was engaged by A. M. Palmer, with whom she remained until his company was disbanded. Coming under Daniel Froh- man's management, she was seen as Phyllis Lee in "The Charity Ball," Carey in "Ala- bama,'* Sybil in "The Dancing Girl," and in "Americans Abroad." In 1895 she be- came a member of Charles Frohman*s Empire Theatre company, with which she acted Musette in "Bohemia," Justine Emptage in Ida Conquest, 71 " The Benefit of a Doubt/' Lady Belton in "Marriage/* Amy Chil worth in "Liberty Hall/' Renee de Cochefort (also played by Viola Allen) in " Under the Red Robe/' and Babiole in "The Conquerors." She also played in London in " Too Much Johnson '* with William Gillette. Last season Miss Conquest met with great success in Boston in Mr. Gillette's delightful farce, " Because She Loved Him So/' creating the part of the jealous wife when that play was produced at the Boston Museum in December, 1898. She displayed splendid abilities as a light comedy actress, developing the character along mock-heroic lines, and playing it with a seriousness that was keenly ludicrous and yet absolutely with- out a touch of burlesque. Her jealous tirades were full of unconscious humour, and she walked through the most absurd situations with a serenity that added tenfold to their ridiculousness. ^ CHAPTER VI. BLANCHE WALSH. Blanche Walsh was for a number of years estimated as a more than ordinarily capable actress, but not until she fell heiress last season to the Sardou drama, with which the late Fanny Davenport had been identi- fied in this country, were the breadth and force and fine dramatic quality of her talent discovered. Miss Walsh was the leading lady of a Denver stock company when she received the "Antony and Cleopatra" manuscript and a notice to report in New York for rehearsals at the earliest possi- ble moment. She closed with the Denver Company on Wednesday and arrived in New York the following Friday, letter perfect in a 72 Copyright, 1898, by J. Schloss. BLANCHE WALSH As Cleopatra in " Cleopatra " Blanche Walsh, 73 part of unusual length. " Fedora'' and " La Tosca '' were mastered in the same marvellous fashion, for Miss Walsh is what stage folks term a wonder as a "quick study." When she took the heroine's role in " Secret Service " at short notice, it was stated that she required only ten hours thoroughly to acquire a part. It is too late a day to find fault with the strongly theatrical flavour of the Sardou plays of the past ten years. Their artificiality, sensationalism, and claptrap are apparent. Nevertheless they are an effective medium for the variety of acting of which Sarah Bernhardt is the extreme exponent, acting that is entirely art, and which makes its / ^^ effects by using the body as a kind of emo- \ ^ L tional instrument. The theory is that an I ^, > emotion is first of all mentally conceived and then mechanically expressed by the per- j fectly trained body. It allows little for spon- | taneity, and it scorns absolutely the actor i who "loses himself in his part." 74 Famous Actresses of the Day, When I say that Miss Walsh is a splendid example of this school of acting, I give her great praise. I certainly never saw Sardou's Cleopatra played better than she played it, not even by the divine Sarah herself. I do not mean to imply that Miss Walsh is the mistress of the art of acting that Bernhardt is, for such a statement would be absurd. But the Sardou Cleopatra, which Bern- hardt's great art only tended to cheapen, Miss Walsh, because of greater tempera- mental sympathy, perhaps, was able to make a living, breathing being. It was the human quality in Miss Walsh's conception that was its most striking feature. Hers was a Cleo- patra easily understood, a Cleopatra that won sympathy, a quality I never before found in this Sardou character. In physical appear- ance Miss Walsh almost personifies passion, for her beauty is of a warm Southern type, her hair of shining jet, and her eyes black and burning. Often in modern rdles she has Blanche Walsh, 75 seemed cold and statuesque, but her Cleo- patra, while queenly, was warm-blooded and fervid. In " La Tosca " and " Fedora '' Miss Walsh was equally successful, her Fedora particu- larly being a most beautiful picture. The "strong'* scene at the end of the third act was powerfully played, and her portrayal of the woman sacrificing her reputation to save her lover's life (a Frenchy conception, by the way, that does not convincingly appeal to an American audience) was very vivid. The death scene was realistic and exceedingly artistic. It did not horrify; rather say it grieved. Blanche Walsh is a New York girl, the daughter of Thomas Power Walsh, at one time the warden of the Tombs, and up to the time of his death in June, 1899, ^ well- known character of the famous Sixth Ward. She was born on January 4, 1873, and went to Public School No. 50 until she was gradu- ^6 Famous Actresses of the Day, ated in 1886. Her first public appearance occurred in June, 1887, at a benefit perform- ance in the Windsor Theatre. Miss Walsh played Desdemona, and the occasion was in many respects a memorable one, for the whole East Side was interested in the debut of ** Fatty '* Walsh's girl as an actress. Her first professional engagement was with Thomas McDonough in a small part in the melodrama, " Siberia." When she was only sixteen years old she was en- gaged to play Olivia in Marie Wainwright's production of "Twelfth Night," and she re- mained with Miss Wainwright three seasons, appearing as Zamora in **The Honeymoon," Florence Marygold in "My Uncle's Will," Madeline in " Frederic Lemaitre," Grace Harkaway in "London Assurance," and Queen Elizabeth in "Amy Robsart." Her Elizabeth was really a remarkable imperson- ation, especially when one considered that Blanche Walsh, yy Miss Walsh at the time was only nineteen years old. It was characterised by a dignity majestic and regal, and a beauty of face and figure that certainly never belonged to the original of the character. Miss Walsh de- servedly received much praise, and as a result she took a step forward in her profession. Under Charles Frohman's management Miss Walsh created the role of Diana Stockton in Bronson Howard's "Aristoc- racy," produced in September, 1892, and continued with this play for two seasons. She next appeared as Kate Kennion in ** The Girl I Left behind Me," and on January i, 1895, joined Nat Goodwin, playing the hero- ines in **A Gilded Fool," "In Mizzoura," "David Garrick," "The Nominee," "The Gold Mine," and " Lend Me Five Shillings." After this came a season of summer stock in Washington, during which time she had the leading parts in "Pink Dominoes," "My 78 Famous Actresses of the Day, Awful Dad," "American Assurance/* "My Wife's Mother/* and also played Romeo in E. A. Lancaster's one-act piece, "Romeo's First Love." This was a curious little play, founded on Romeo's unreciprocated love for Rosaline, referred to in the first act of " Romeo and Juliet." The author endeav- oured to imagine scenes that might have taken place between Rosaline and Romeo, just previous to the time when Romeo ac- companied Benvolio and Mercutio to the Capulet's ball and there met Juliet. Besides acting Romeo, Miss Walsh superintended the production of the play, stage-managed it, selected the costumes, and drilled the company. She was next heard of as the adventuress, Mrs. Bulford, in "The Great Diamond Rob- bery," produced in New York City in 1895. In November she assumed the part of >Trilby at the Garden Theatre, New York, and played it for the remainder of the Blanche Walsh. 79 season. This was another instance of a remarkably quick study. She was coming from a rehearsal at noon when she was told that Virginia Harned, who, by the way, was the original stage Trilby, was ill, and there was no one to play the character at the afternoon performance, which began at two o'clock. It hardly seemed possible »^ that Miss Walsh could do more than read the part, yet at two o'clock she went on, seemingly letter perfect, and acted as if she had had days instead of minutes to prepare herself for the r61e. I'- - ^-'^^^^ Rejoining Nat Goodwin's company, she went with him to Australia, assuming all the characters she had previously played with him, and in addition acting Lydia Languish in "The Rivals," and Louise in " Gringoire.'' Returning to America, in October, 1896, she originated the part of Margaret Neville in " Heartease,'' with Palmer's stock company. In January, Miss So Famous Actresses of the Day. Walsh played in " Straight from the Heart/* in New York, appearing in the dual role of the brother and sister, Harold and Clara Nugent. She was then called upon to take at short notice the character of Edith Varney in William Gillette's "Secret Service." She saw the play for the first time on a Tuesday evening, and with one rehearsal played the part the following night, and for the re- mainder of the Boston engagement, sailing for England May 5, 1897, and opening with '< Secret Service," at the Adelphi Theatre, London. On her return to America she played for two weeks with "Secret Service," at the Empire Theatre, New York, then with Sol Smith Russell in " A Bachelor's Romance," at the Garden Theatre. In January, 1898, she returned to the Empire Theatre, playing Jeanne Marie in "The Conquerors." On May twentieth, she joined the Herald Square Blanche Walsh, 8i stock company. She next became leading lady of the Manhattan Beach Stock Com- pany of Denver, which position she left for her starring tour in the Sardou drama with Melbourne MacDowell. 't^x CHAPTER VII. ANNIE RUSSELL. In England they called Annie Russell " the Duse of the English-speaking stage." This appellation, flattering though it may seem, does not convey a correct idea of Miss RusselFs personality. It is true that in the superficial aspects of her art, in her method of physical expression, in the quiet- ness of her acting, and in her freedom from merely conventional pantomime. Miss Rus- sell does remind one of the great Italian ; but in the fundamental factors of individual- ity and temperament, the two are widely dif- ferent. Duse is an actress of tremendous emotional power, a woman of suffering, the epitome of passion and tragedy ; Miss Rus- 82 ANNIE RUSSELL As Catherine in '* Catherine " Annie Russell, 83 sell, on the other hand, is a tender, sensitive plant, pathetic rather than emotional, and she no more suggests passion than an iceberg suggests the tropics. Duse, too, is entirely out of sympathy with the spirit of comedy, while Miss Russell has a quaint, delicate humour that is like a burst of sunshine on an April day. Thoroughly honest and sin- cere, loving and believing in her art, sweetly ^j^^ ji womanly and beautifully sympathetic by na- ture, Annie Russell stands alone as a subtle portrayer of sentiment, that keenly sensitive emotion which a false touch so quickly trans- forms into mawkishness and ridicule. Miss Russell was born in 1864, '^^ Liver- pool, England, but went with her family to Canada when she was very young. None of her family ever had anything to do with the stage, and her becoming an actress was largely a matter of financial necessity. " It never entered my head as a girl that I should ever be an actress,'* said Miss Russell, in 84 Famous Actresses of the Day, speaking of her early life. " If I had uttered such a thought I should at once have received a mild rebuke from my mother, who at that time shared the almost universal prejudice against the stage of country people of her generation. I am sure she would have fainted if any one had told her that not only her two daughters, prim little girls, but also baby Tommie — afterward one of the best known of the Little Lord Fauntleroys, but then just beginning to lisp his first words — would in after years be * stage folk.' "From a little child,'' added Miss Russell, "my ambition was to be an authoress. My first and only attempt in the realms of liter- ature was received in terms of unstinted praise by the few friends that were permitted to read the manuscript. After a great deal of thought as to which of the weekly papers should be allowed to launch a new star on the literary firmament, I sent my story to a well-known periodical, accompanied, more as Annie Russell. 85 a matter of form than anything else, with stamps for its return. After two weeks of anxious waiting, one morning I received a suspiciously thick package, bearing in the corner the name of the paper to which I had sent my story, ft hurried up-stairs to my own little room, imagining all kinds of causes for such a lengthy reply.^ Perhaps they wanted me to write another and longer story, and had sent me a rough outline of the plot, together with further instructions. *Yes, that must be it,' I thought. I broke the seal, opened the folded sheets and was con- fronted by my own story, together with a printed slip informing me that my manuscript was returned, not necessarily because of lack of literary merit, but it was not exactly suited to their pages. It was a death-blow to my literary ambitions. I laid the story away in a bureau drawer, and I never was guilty of a second offence.'' Miss Russell's fondness for the stage was e 86 Famous Actresses of the Day, developed by amateur theatricals, and her first appearance was at a church fair. The leading woman in the play that was to be f^ presented was taken ill at the last moment, and Annie Russell, then a bit of a girfwith a reputation among her schoolmates for rapid memorising, was called into service. She surprised herself by being the hit of the piece. Then she became a member of a dramatic club, and from that to the profes- sional stage proved to be but a step. The circumstances of her d^but at the age of ten years Miss Russell relates as follows : # " Miss Rose Eytinge was coming to Mon- treal to play ' Miss Mult on,' and as she car- ried only one child to play the boy, Paul, she wrote to the local manager, requesting ^ ^ him to engage a girl for the part of Jeanne \h irJ.and to have her perfect by the time of the Jy^ star's arrival. The manager advertised for j^X a young girl, mamma took me down, and in >A, the end I was given the part. I need scarcely Annie Russell. Sy say I was very proud, for it was quite long and important. Miss Eytinge arrived, and I was summoned to rehearsal. When she saw me she was dreadfully put out. She sent for the manager. * What's this.?' she cried, pointing to me. * The child you asked me to get,' he answered, meekly. * I said a girl, not a child. Go and get me a girl, or a young woman who can play a girl. Get me somebody.* The manager protested that the desired article was not to be found in Montreal. 'Don't tell me that,' returned Miss Eytinge. 'Go and scour the town,' and then she reiterated her formula, * Get me somebody.' "The full significance of this scene had slowly dawned upon me. I retired in the wings and set up a dismal howling. * Come here, child,' said Miss Eytinge, whose atten- tion had been attracted — it couldn't well help having been attracted — by my vigorous outburst of grief. 'Do you want to play 88 Famous Actresses of the Day, this part very much ? ' I assured her I did. 'Well, if you have learned it, let me hear you/ She went through the lines with me and she seemed satisfied. Of course Jeanne ought really to be about thirteen or fourteen, but I pleased her, and she arranged with mamma to take me into her company for the remainder of the season. When that closed she advised that I should go to New York. The advice was followed, and I soon got an engagement with that stage children's cata- pult, Hayerly's juvenile fPinafore.' At first I was only in the chorus, but afterward I sang Josephine. I was two years with Haverly." When Miss Russell left Haverly she ob- tained an engagement with E. A. McDowell to play in the West Indies, and she appeared as everything from young girls to old women. " I shouldn't have had as much experience in five years in a city theatre," she said. Her first important engagement was as Es- Annie Russell, 89 meralda at the Madison Square Theatre, New York, when she was sixteen years old. How she successfully fooled the stage manager, and was engaged for the title role, is best told in her own words : ^ "My dresses even then were not very long, and my hair flowed down my back. The manager looked down on me from his . . towering height, and decided in his wisdom .^^^ that I was too youthful. » He and I only exchanged a few words, and as I felt sure that among the multitude of applicants he would not remember me, I determined to play a little trick. So I went home, put on a long dress, did my hair up neatly, and, assuming as ancient and demure an expres- sion as I could, went to see him again. He fell into the snare, and I got the part.'* "Esmeralda'* was one of the great suc- cesses of stage history. Miss Russell, her- self, appeared in the play about nine hundred times, 350 of them in New York. She gave 90 Famous Actresses of the Day, up the part in 1882 when she was married to Eugene Wiley Presbrey. Her next ven- ture was in another great success, ** Hazel Kirke/* After that she played Fusha Leach in " Moths/' but her attempt to carry off the breezy American girl visiting Euro- pean watering-places was more diverting than successful. Later came Maggie, the Highland lassie in Gilbert's "Engaged;'* Lady Vavir in Gilbert's fairy-like comedy, " Broken Hearts ; " Sylvia Spencer in " Our Society," and Ada Houghton in "Sealed Instructions." But her greatest success, next to " Esmer- alda," was in " Elaine," which was produced at the Madison Square Theatre in Decem- ber, 1887. The drama was by Harry Ed- wards and George Parsons Lathrop, and it was given a remarkable production and a memorable cast, in which were, among others, Alexander Salvini, Marie Burroughs, Minnie Seligiman, who made her debut in Annie Russell, 91 this play, and E. M. Holland. "Elaine/' however, pictorial as it was, could hardly be called a success, but regarding Miss Russell's work another verdict must be recorded. " No one who ever saw that play," said a Boston critic, " needs to be reminded of Miss Russell's performance of the title r61e. The word exquisite is not misapplied in speaking of it. Bostonians had in their imaginations an ideal of the appearance of Elaine, inspired by Rosenfeld's painting, but his Elaine was much less spirituelle than the one that Miss Russell presented. The Elaine of the painting was a robust, healthy, but beautiful creature. The Elaine of Annie Russell was the ethe- real being that a breath might have blown away, and who looked as if she might indeed fade away to death as her heart broke. In no part that Annie Russell ever attempted was she so completely lost as in Elaine. It was a most complete and harmonious, a most poetic yet real performance.'* 92 Famous Actresses of the Day, Miss Russell had decided opinions about Elaine, as, indeed, she has about all her characters. When asked if she considered it the most satisfactory part that she had ever played, she answered : " I am not quite sure it was. I never felt absolutely convinced that I succeeded in doing what I hoped to with the part, or all X that could be done. h. tried to avoid what is ' usually called 'acting,' and to impersonate Elaine, if you understand what I mean. I wanted to live, move, breathe the part, — to be, in fact, Elaine. I was convinced that the simpler I was in such a role the more artis- tic I would be. But I was never wholly satisfied. To me there were always touches in it that seemed theatrical. But then, I am my own most severe critic, and the moments of elation in which one feels an inward con- viction that one has been right and achieved worthily what one wished, moments which all players must have, come very rarely to Annie Russell, 93 me. Yet I am very ambitious. No actress was ever more anxious to have things to do, parts that demand something of me, that I can think out and then give Ufe to out of myself. But such opportunities, I need not tell you, come but seldom to any of us." / Miss Russeirs last appearance before her retirement from the stage in 1889, on account of ill health, was in " Captain Swift,'' made famous in London by Beer- bohm Tree. Five years of pain and suffering followed, and for a long time it was not ex- pected that she would ever act again. She recovered her health, however, and 1894 returned to the theatre, presenting first a one-act play called *'Lethe.'' Then she was seen in "The New Woman'* and "The Fatal Card." Then she became Nat Good- win's leading lady, appearing as Ruth in " Ambition," Ada Ingot in " David Gar- rick," and in "The Gilded Fool." The fol- lowing year she produced the one-act play, 94 Famous Actresses of the Day, "Dangerfield, '95," which made a great hit, and starred in " Sue/' a Bret Harte drama of sentiment, which was also very successful. These two plays she took to London in the spring of 1898, and both were kindly received. Miss RusselFs account of her London ex- periences is amusing : " I arrived in England Saturday and made my London debut the following Thursday. In between I came to the realisation that I was to be the last straw. Every one told me there had been so many American actors, — that, in fact, the English were antagonistic to this continuous American invasion, — and here was I, the final blow ! Then, to add to my discomfort, — my terror, — I had made a tour of the London theatres. I was to appear in seirs convincing acting. ^^ / CHAPTER VIII. ISABEL IRVING. When Isabel Irving played in London with Augustin Daly's company several seasons ago, she was dubbed "a dainty rogue in porcelain," and one might search for a long time, and then not find a phrase that so accurately describes the impression made upon one by the actress's naive personality and her ingenuous and delicately artificial method of dramatic expression. On the stage she never suggests any great depth or underlying force of character, and she could never successfully impersonate a char- acter calling for passion or grief. Her dis- position is sunshiny and bright ; she is a child of joy and innocent pleasure, whose ISABELLE IRVING Isabel Irving, 90 nature would instinctively shrink from pain, and whom suffering would kill. One sees in her face — a face that one instantly calls pretty, as distinguished from handsome — refinement and youthful interest. "It is the spring violet order of beauty, frank, delicate, and innocent,'* declared C. M. S. McLellan. " It lacks dramatic lumi- nousness, is more suffused with tender sur- prise than kindled with fiery emotions. Miss Irving looks always as if she had been startled, but only by a noise, not by a vul- garity. She scarcely suggests art. She suggests gleams and visions. Instead of sustaining a theatric situation, she sustains the purple bloom of youth's delicious fancies.'* I can imagine no r61e more fitted to Miss'\i \ ^ Irving' s peculiar temperament than that of J Lady Jessica, which she acted last season with John Drew's company in Henry Arthur Jones's satirical comedy, "The Liars.*' The lOO Famous Actresses of the Day. character was that of a butterfly of fashion married to a Londoner of somewhat prosaic notions. Finding her home Ufe a little dull and monotonous, and her husband more practical than romantic, Lady Jessica en- tangled herself in an audacious flirtation with a passionate African explorer, whom nothing would satisfy short of an elopement and an idyllic existence in some far-away place where they two should be the whole world. Frightened at his impetuosity and at the results of her own naughtiness, the little woman wrung her hands helplessly, and finally solved the problem by shifting the burden of responsibility for her salvation on the shoulders of her friends. Freed from the idea that she must do something for herself, the frivolous wife recovered her natural gaiety of manner, while she regarded with complacency the efforts of others to ward off a public scandal. Occasionally, she interested herself enough in the affair to Isabel Irving. ioi offer advice, which was ridiculously foolish and vexatiously inadequate. Miss Irving acted the part deliciously, and without appar- ent effort made Lady Jessica so delightful and fascinating that one could not help loving her, even at the moments when he most of all wanted to box her ears, and send her supperless to bed. Miss Irving was born in Bridgeport, Conn., and before she went on the stage, just after she left school, she had never even so much as acted in private theatricals. Her first engagement was with Rosina Voices, and her d6but was made at the Standard Theatre, New York, in February, 1887, as Ermyntrude Johnson in Pinero's farce, " The School Mistress." Later she was given the part of Gwendolin Hawkins in the same play. During her next season with Miss Yokes she acted such roles as the maid Perkins in "A Double Lesson,*' Miss Violet in "A Pantomine Rehearsal," I02 Famotis Actresses of the Day. Rose Dalrymple in " In Honour Bound," and Edith Leslie in "The Widow's Device." In spite of the fact that Miss Irving was absolutely ignorant of stage requirements when she became a member of Miss Vokes's company, she is said to have played her first part at short notice. She undoubtedly owes much of her success to Miss Yokes, who was not only an admirable stage director, but also a woman whose very personality inspired confidence and afforded encourage- ment. In the fall of 1888 Miss Irving joined the Daly company, with which she was con- nected six years, in that time visiting Eng- land three times with the organisation. She also accompanied the Daly players to Paris, where she acted one week, appearing in Ada Rehan's part in "The Lottery of Love," at the Vaudeville Theatre, where this play was originally produced in French as " Les Surprises du Divorce." Some of her best Isabel Irving, 103 known characters while with Mr. Daly were Audrey in "As You Like It," Oberon in "A Midsummer Night's Dream," Helen in "The Hunchback," and the juvenile comedy parts in " Nancy & Co.," " Railroad of Love," " A Night Off," and " The Orient Express." In the middle of the London engagement of 1894 Miss Irving resigned her position in the Daly company, and that fall she was engaged by Daniel Frohman to play Lady Noeline in "The Amazons," in one of his road companies. Soon after, when Georgia Cayvan retired from the Lyceum Theatre Company, Miss Irving succeeded her as leading lady, appearing first as Dorothea March in Sardou's play, "A Woman's Silence." For the last two seasons she has been with John Drew, whose chief support she became when Maude Adams left his company. r\ CHAPTER IX. MAXINE ELLIOTT. Maxine Elliott began her theatrical career as a stage beauty. Unmistakably a brunette, with hair and eyes of inky blackness, '^ she had none of the warmth that is associated with the brunette type. ' She was a New Englander by birth, and a New Englander in spirit, and in those early days she exhibited in abundance all the cold- ness and indifference of an unsympathetic temperament so often characteristic of the descendants from Puritan ancestry. Stat- uesque described her exactly. A face and a figure chiselled in marble by a master hand could have been no more perfect than were hers, nor could they have been more 104 MAXINE ELLIOTT As Alice Adams in " Nathan Hale " Maxine Elliott, 105 expressive of self-centred and self-possessed dignity ; neither would the marble image have conveyed any more surely the sense of inanimateness than did the living woman. For, while there was physical perfection in the first Maxine Elliott, and classic beauty in those features, clear-cut as a cameo, nowhere was there aught to indicate human sympathy. Her acting, too, was chaste and formal, without inspiration, without convic- tion, and without colour. Her temperament appeared dramatically sterile, and its cold- ness and reserve seemed to partake of the barrenness and bleakness of her native wintry State of Maine. ^•The New Englander is naturally not an actor, chiefly because of the New England conscience, which is a genuine handicap, even to those that have wandered far from the paths of correct living and truth, as marked out by the fathers. The New England conscience, as you would know if you had Ar V 1 06 Famous Actresses of the Day, one, is a tragic reality, which, with smirk- ing hypocrisy, and under false pretences, has for over two centuries been mercilessly throttling all the pleasures in life that it could get its hands on. It is not a con- science like those that the little boys and girls have whose lives make such interesting and instructive reading for Sunday school scholars ; it is not a voice that wakes chil- dren, usually between midnight and two o'clock in the morning, and tells them what is good and what is evil. The New Eng- land conscience does not talk much, and its instinctive judgments are generally so silly that they do very little harm. What, it does persistently provoke, however, is in- voluntary and undesirable self-examination, which in turn leads to exasperating self- sciousness. Self-consciousness breeds reserve and the accompanying suppression of all outward expression of the emotions. Here you have the explanation of the New Eng- Maxine Elliott 107 lander's coldness. Moreover, emotion, con- stantly suppressed, does not develop. That is the reason for the New Englander's lack of sympathy. In a person without warmth, without sympathy, and without emotional activity, one can hardly expect to find the dramatic temperament. And Maxine Elliott was a typical New Englander when she went on the stage. Xhen suddenly and unexpectedly she changed in a most astonishing and com- plete fashion. ^The grovelling worm became a beautiful butterfly.^ The emotionally un- responsive being somehow or other shook off the plethora of the New England con- science, and bloomed forth into glorious womanhood. She stopped posing, for she knew how to act ; she acquired spontaneity, passion, and sincerity ; most wonderful of all, she developed a touch of humour. Her beauty, more fascinating than ever in its animated loveliness, lost its statuesque un- io8 Famous Actresses of the Day. reality and immobility, and became human. Miss Elliott is not the first actress to be developed from apparently unpromising mate- rial, and the mystery in her case comes from the amazing abruptness of the change. Her growth first became overwhelmingly evi- dent last season in her impersonation of Alice Adams, in ** Nathan Hale." This was a curious play, embracing farce, tragedy, comedy, and melodrama, whose merits were absurdly overrated. It was very well acted, and its patriotic sentiments made it go with its audiences. Miss Elliott's role was quite the dominating feature, and she was by far the most interesting person on the stage. This was due to the fact that she was positive in speech and action, while Mr. Goodwin's Nathan Hale was largely nega- tive, a character that was continually being acted upon, and which almost never took the initiative. Miss Elliott's love-making and coquetry in the early acts of the play were Maxine Elliott, 109 delightful. Her playing of the parting scene with Hale, after he had volunteered as a spy, was especially strong, and the difference between the three varieties of pathos — the unsuccessful plea, the resentful pride that followed failure, and the despair when she was left alone — was finely indicated and forcibly presented. The sobbing farewell just before Hale's death, in which no word was spoken, was a masterly pantomimic triumph. Miss Elliott was born in Rockland, Maine, and was educated in the Notre Dame Acad- emy in Roxbury, Massachusetts. After she finished school she went with her father, who was a sea-captain, on a voyage to South America and Spain. When she returned, she started for New York, determined to go on the stage. She was then about sixteen years old, and apparently stage-struck to the very last degree. She wanted a career, she said, and she wished to be independent. The best she could do at first was to fill a think- no Famous Actresses of the Day, ing part in A. M. Palmer's company ; to put it plainly, she was a "supe/* Then her beauty got her an engagement with T. Henry French to appear as an Oriental houri or something like that in <* The Voyage de Suzette." This spectacle was a dreadful failure. Her serious dramatic work began when she became a member of E. S. Willard's company in 1 890, during the English actor's first tour of this country. Her first role was Felica Umfraville in " The Middleman," and she also played Virginia Fleetwood in "John Needham's Double.'' The next season she remained with Willard, and was advanced a peg, being given the part of Beatrice Selwyn in <*A Fool's Paradise," and later, that of Lady Gilding in "The Professor's Love Story." In the spring of 1893, she was the original Violet Woodman in "The Prodigal Daughter," when that play was produced at the American Theatre in New York. The Maxine Elliott, III following spring she was the Kate Malcolm in " Sister Mary " with Julia Arthur, and then she joined Rose Coghlan, appearing as Dora in " Diplomacy," Grace Harkaway in " London Assurance," Alice Varney in " For- get-Me-Not," and Mrs. Allenby in ** A Woman of No Importance." While a member of Augustin Daly's com- pany, with which she became connected after leaving Miss Coghlan, Miss Elliott improved much in finesse and in stage deportment. She went with the company to London in 189s, which was her first appearance in that city, and her marvellous beauty attracted any amount of attention. Miss Elliott made her ddbut at Daly's in the title role of " A Heart of Ruby." She also appeared in "The Orient Express," "A Bundle of Lies," and " A Tragedy Rehearsal." Her first Shake- spearian part was Silvia in " Two Gentlemen of Verona," and her other Shakespearian rdles were Hermia in " A Midsummer Night's 112 Famous Actresses of the Day. Dream'' and Olivia in "Twelfth Night/' After closing with Daly, Miss Elliott played a summer engagement with the Daniel Fraw- (N^ ley company in San Francisco. When Nat Goodwin, whose wife she now is, returned from Australia in 1896, she joined his com- pany and since that time she has continued to be Mr. Goodwin's leading lady. At the end of last season she went with him to ^ London, appearing in " The Cowboy and the f"**^ Lady" and " An American Citizen." Copyright, 1897, by Aime Dupont, N. Y, ADA REHAN As Beatrice in " Much Ado About Nothing " CHAPTER X. ADA RERAN. After a quarter-century on the stage, during which time she has played over 150 parts, Ada Rehan is to-day, as, in fact, she has been for the past ten years, America's representative actress. Not only have her exceptional and versatile talents afforded pleasure to thousands of theatre-goers on this side of the Atlantic, but she is equally well known abroad, where her fine art and graceful personality are held in the highest esteem. Beginning at the bottom of the histrionic ladder and climbing upward by means of faithful endeavour and increasing artistic worth, she reached, as leading lady of Augustin Daly's company, and later as "3 114 Famous Actresses of the Day, star, a foremost position in the dramatic world, a position which she has retained through an ability not far from genius. Ada Rehan was born in Limerick, Ireland, April 22^ i860. Her family name is Crehan, and the interesting anecdote is told that when she made her debut on the stage some blundering printer gave her the name on the playbill of Ada C. Rehan. She liked the change, and adopted ** Rehan ". permanently. The story seems likely enough, but it is probably not true. Certain it is that she made her first theatrical ventures as a Crehan, as is shown by an old playbill of the Arch ^Street Theatre, Philadelphia, under date of \J^' 1874, which plainly announces her as Ada Crehan. Miss Rehan was brought to this country when she was five years old, and her childhood was passed in Brooklyn, New York. '" Her two older sisters, one Mrs. Oliver Doud Byron and the other Mrs. R. Fulton Russell, known to the playgoing pu^ J^G'VvOk Ada Rehan. 115 lie as Miss Hattie Russell, both adopted the dramatic profession, and it was undoubtedly this fact that turned the youngest sister's steps toward the theatre. She was thirteen years old when she made her first appear- ance, at Newark, New Jersey, in Oliver Doud Byron's play, ** Across the Continent," in which she acted Clara for one night only to fill a vacancy caused by a performer's ill- ness. Her first appearance on the New York stage was during the same season at Wood's Museum, where she played with Mr. Byron's company a small part in " Thoroughbred." Her first regular professional engagement was at the Arch Street Theatre, Philadelphia, then under the management of Mrs. John Drew. Miss Rehan became a member of this company in 1873 and remained with it for three seasons. It is a curious fact that in the company at the time, and also as a beginner, was John Drew, who for so many years played opposite parts to Miss Rehan 1 1 6 Famous Actresses of the Day, in Daly*s Theatre. Leaving Philadelphia, she acted for a season in Macauley^s Theatre, Louisville, and she was a member of the company when, in November, 1875, Mary Anderson made her first appearance on any stage. Miss Rehan was then for two years with Xohn W.^^, A company, acting sometimes in Albany, New York, and some- times in Baltimore. During this engage- ment she Was associated with such stars as Edwin Booth, Adelaide Neilson, and John McCullough, playing, among other characters, Ophelia to Booth's Hamlet and Queen Anne and Virginia to McCullough's Richard III. and Virginius. A few of the many parts that Miss Rehan played in these early times were: Anne Leigh, "Enoch Arden ; '* Bar- bara Hare, **East Lynne;'' Bianca, "Tam- ing of the Shrew;'* Celia, "As You Like It;'' Cordelia, "King Lear;" Desdemona, " Othello ; " Esther Eccles, " Caste ; " Grace Harkaway, " London Assurance ; " Lady Ada Rehan. 117 Florence, " Rosedale ; " Little Em'ly, " David Copperfield ; '' Olivia, " Twelfth Night ; '' Pauline, " Lady of Lyons ; " Queen Eliza- beth, "Mary Stuart;" Ursula, "Much Ado;'' Winnifred Wood, "Jack Sheppard/' It was during the season of 1878, Miss Rehan' s last with the Albaugh company, that Augustin Daly first saw her. His attention was again called to her in April, 1879, while she was playing Mary Standish in "Pique" with Fanny Davenport at the Grand Opera House, New York. She was engaged by Mr. Daly and first appeared under his management at the Olympic Theatre, New York, as Big Clemence in Daly's version of " L'Assommoir." The story, which may or may not be true, so uncertain are theatrical anecdotes, connected with this engagement is as follows : Maude Granger and Emily Rigl played two leading parts in " L'Assom- moir." There was a scene in the play where they threw pails of water at each other. 1 1 8 Famous Actresses of the Day. The two actresses were great rivals theatri- cally, and it is said that they spitefully threw the water in each other's faces instead of on their skirts, underneath which were worn rubber petticoats. Of course both denied it, yet the circumstance was used to work up some advertising, and the young men about town would take in that one scene every evening to see the ** fight" between the pretty washerwomen of " L'Assommoir." Finally Miss Rigl suddenly withdrew from the company. It was during hot summer weather, and Mr. Daly, not caring to increase his expenses, looked through the company to take out one of the female super- numeraries to fill Miss RigFs place for the short time the piece was to run. The part was called Big Clemence. Now it so hap- pened that Ada Rehan was playing a part of a few lines. She was tall and would look the part of Big Clemence ; so she had it given over to her keeping. Ada Rehan. 1 19 On September 17, 1879, Augustin Daly opened his theatre on the present site, for- merly Wood's Museum, and Miss Rehan became the leading woman, appearing for the first time as Nellie Beers in ** Love's Young Dream,'' which was played with Olive Logan's play, " Newport," as an opening bill. Two weeks later " Divorce " was revived, and Miss Rehan appeared in the r61e created by Fanny Davenport six years before, Lu Ten Eyck. It is only necessary to glance at the parts that Miss Rehan acted during her years as the foremost member of Mr. Daly's famous company to understand what is meant by a thorough artistic training and to realise that the actress's unique versatility has been honestly acquired. Among her impersona- tions have been Valentine Osprey in "The Railroad of Love," Jo in "The Lottery of Lave," Xantippe in "The Wife of Soc- rates," Tilburnia in " Rehearsing a Tragedy," I20 Famous Actresses of the Day, Phronie in *' Dollars and Sense/' Oriana in "The Inconstant," Kate Verity in "The Squire," Doris in "An International Match," Katharine in " The Taming of the Shrew," Audrey Ollyphant in " Samson and Delilah," Niobe in "A Night Off," Plos in "7-20-8," Tryphena Magillicuddy in " The Golden Widow," Etna in "The Great Unknown," Rosalind in "As You Like It," Donna Hypolita in " She Would and She Wouldn't," Peggy in "The Country Girl," Dina Fau- delle in "A Priceless Paragon," Mile. Rose in "The Prayer," Helena in "A Midsummer Night's Dream," Miss Hoyden in "Miss Hoyden's Husband," Nancy Brasher in "Nancy & Co.," Elvira Honiton in "New Lamps for Old," Baroness Vera von Boiira- neff in "The Last Word," Lady Teazle in "The School for Scandal," Pierrot in "The Prodigal Son," the Princess of France in " Love's Labour Lost," Aprilla Dymond in "Love in Tandem," Maid Marian in "The Ada Rehan, 121 Foresters/' Rena Primrose in " Little Miss Million," Juno Jessamine in "A Test Case/' Julia in " The Hunchback/' Mockwood in "The Knave/' Letitia Hardy in "The Belle's Stratagem/' Viola in " Twelfth Night/' and last season Roxane in Daly's adaptation of Rostand's " Cyrano de Bergerac " and the London jeweller's wife in the English melo- drama, "The Great Ruby/* Miss Rehan first played in London in 1884, opening at Toole's Theatre on July 19th, in "7-20-8, or The Casting of the Boomerang," the production of which was received with much adverse comment. Since that time her visits abroad have been many, and the Daly company may be said to have been almost as much at home in England as here. The second London engagement in 1886 of nine weeks at the Strand Theatre was much more successful than the first, Miss Rehan attracting considerable attention by her work in a small part in " A Night 122 Famous Actresses of the Day, Off," and afterward by her acting in " Nancy & Co." After playing in London, the com- pany toured the English provinces and then played in Germany and in Paris, which re- ceived the American actors with great cool- ness, due as much as anything to the fact that the Frenchmen could not, and, indeed, did not care, to understand the foreign players. In 1888, at the Gaiety Theatre, Miss Rehan first showed the Londoners her most brilliant Shakespearian character, Katharine in "The Taming of the Shrew," and forth- with the London theatre-goers accorded her the fullest recognition and the heartiest sup- port. This splendid impression was height- ened when she occupied Henry Irving's .Lyceum Theatre during the summer of ^ 1890, presenting "The Daughter of Com- edy'* and her delightful impersonation of Rosalind in "As You Like It.'' The Lon- don critics, one and all, enthusiastically Ada Rehan. 123 praised this beautiful performance. In Sep- tember, 1 89 1, Miss Rehan was again in London, and two years later Mr. Daly real- ised his ambition to become a London manager. Daly's Theatre was opened June 27, 1893, with Miss Rehan as Katharine. During her tours of England Miss Rehan has played in Dublin, Glasgow, Edinburgh, and in the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre at Stratford-on-Avon. In 1894 she became a star, supported by Mr. Daly's company, although the change was merely a formal announcement of a fact that had long been accepted by the public. Ada Rehan is a superb comedy actress, equally at home as the hoydenish, mutinous, and mischievous Peggy Thrift in "The Country Girl," as the delicately humorous and quietly pathetic Viola in "Twelfth Night," as the vivacious and womanly Lady Teazle in " The School for Scandal," and in the many light comedy r61es in the adapta- 124 Famous Actresses of the Day. tions from the German that were such promi- nent features of the Daly repertory in the eighties. 'Gifted with a voice of rare musical charm, a stage presence that is both gracious and dignified, a radiant individuality, and a fine sense of humour, she is especially suc- cessful in characters that mingle fun with sentiment and require buoyancy of spirits without coarseness. She has uncommon eloquence in the expression of woe, and she often deeply moves her audiences with the wealth of her emotion. 'Her pathos is simple and true and is conveyed with artistic subtil ty. Her tragic powers have not been tested of late years, though it is by no means certain that tragedy is beyond her range. i A 1 i i 1 VIRGINIA HARNED As Julie in " An Enemy to the King ' CHAPTER XL VIRGINIA HARNED. Virginia Harned was the creator in this country of the character of Drusilla Ives in Henry Arthur Jones's sensational comedy, (jP ^ " The Dancing Girl ; " she was also the original Trilby in Paul Potter's dramatisa- tion of George Du Maurier's novel, which was produced in Boston in 1895 ; and she created the r61e of Lady Ursula in Anthony Hope's romantic comedy, "The Adventure of Lady Ursula," when that drama was originally acted at the Broad Street The- atre, Philadelphia, on December 6, 1897. These are her three best parts, and their wide variance shows conclusively her ver- satility as a comedy actress. Physically, 125 126 Famous Actresses of the Day. Miss Harned, who, as is well known, js not Miss Harned at all, but Mrs. E. H. Sothern, the wife of the popular star, is a buxom young woman, whose bracing and frank personality carries with it exuber- ance of spirits, life, freedom, and happiness. Her dramatic temperament is sumptuous, warm, and full of colour, suggesting volup- tuous ease, love of pleasure, and a fondness for luxurious refinement. There is nothing spirituelle about her ; her stage presence is distinctly material and very much of the world ; she seems a woman with a streak of Bohemia in her make-up, whose heart is as true as steel and whose sympathy is easily aroused and bountifully expended. Such a personality and temperament fitted admirably the personality and temperament of Drusilla Ives, the wilful daughter of. Quaker parents, whose craving for gaiety and for the bustle of worldliness drew her from the safe confines of her quiet home Virginia Harned. 127 into an environment of sin and wickedness/ Her whirlwind of pleasure soon brought sorrow, shame, and despair. It was a com- mon enough story, of course. But it is the common enough stories that keep a permanent hold on human interest. Dru- silla Ives was practically the star part of the play, through which Miss Harned moved with sensuous charm, an insinuating smile, an enticing voice, and a fascinating grace, thoroughly characteristic ; for Drusilla was sensuous in look and act ; she had all the fascinations of a beautiful woman who was purposely a temptress and who delighted in being a temptress^ Some one called Drusilla brazen. If he meant that she was brazen as Miss Harned portrayed her, I cannot agree with him. There was an undercurrent , of sorrow in the impersonation, a touch of regret and of conscience-stricken remorse, sentiments unconsciously conveyed by the actress, perhaps, that always strongly im- 128 Famous Actresses of the Day. pressed upon me the pathos of Drusilla Ives's experience. } Miss Harned's concep- tion did not suggest to me a woman totally depraved. The actress constantly reminded one that Drusilla was, after all, only a girl, country-bred and ignorant or unappreciative of the consequences of evil, whose reckless- ness was at first but another name for the unenlightened innocence of a person naturally pleasure-loving and impatient of restraint. Miss Harned's Trilby was probably a more artistic performance than her Drusilla Ives ; it was more of an impersonation, for, if we except the Bohemian quirk in her tempera- ment. Miss Harned did not in the least sug- gest the statuesque Trilby. Du Maurier described his heroine with the greatest care. " She was one of the tallest of her sex," he wrote, and again, "Not a giantess by any means. She was as tall as Miss Ellen Terry, and that is a charming height, I think." Now, Miss Harned could not reach that height by Virginia Harned, 129 several inches, but she had the advantage of suggesting physical perfection, which from the viewpoint of the stage, where a few inches more or less do not count for much, was of greater importance. However, it was a sympathetic spirit with which she regarded Trilby, and the fine art by means of which she gave life to her conception, that won for her a great success and fixed the pattern that the many later Trilby s were compelled to follow. <^I do not think Trilby was a bad girl,'0 Miss Harned answered, when asked her opinion of the character. " How can a woman who has never associated with pure women know that she is not good } I am not upholding the sort of life that Trilby led before she made friends with the trio, only saying that she really had not stopped to think; no one had made her, so why should she be blamed } It was all so differ- ent to her afterward. Surely, one must be 130 Famous Actresses of the Day, very narrow-minded to think that Trilby was a bad girl/' Lady Ursula was a r61e entirely different from either Drusilla Ives or Trilby. It was a fanciful character, full of obstinate feminin- ity and replete with the charm of fun-loving girlhood. There was later a delicious touch of sentiment, when the woman, proud and independent, surrendered herself to the man she loved. Miss Harned's acting was dainty and full of spirit. The comedy in the duel scene was well conveyed, though here and there one became conscious of a touch of artificiality that somewhat marred the pic- ture. This fault was hardly prominent enough, however, seriously to affect the general excellence of the personation. Ik Virginia Harned first saw the light of day ^t -- th Boston, but her parents left that city when she was a baby, and she does not know even the name of the street on which she was born. Previous to going on the stage she Virginia Harned, 13 i lived abroad for many years, in England and on the Continent. Her early theatrical ex- periences were with road companies, her first engagement having been with a com- pany playing Robson and Crane's old suc- cess, " Our Boarding House." In the spring of 1887 she was the leading lady with George Clarke of the Daly Company, when he toured New England for a few weeks in " The Corsican Brothers '* and " False Shame.*' The experiment ended in financial disaster. For two years she acted, throughout the South and West, Liobe in "A Night Off," the part that Ada Rehan made famous. Then she started out with Harry Lacy in "The Still Alarm," but be- came involved in a legal controversy with the management before the season was ended. Her first New York engagement followed in Sedley Brown's " A Long Lane," at the Fourteenth Street Theatre, after which she joined Louis Aldrich's company, playing the 13^ Famous Actresses of the Day. comedy part of Florence Fetherley in " The Editor." While she was with Mr. Aldrich Daniel Frohman saw, her act and engaged her as E. H. Sothern's leading lady. Her first character with Mr. Sothern was Clara Dexter in "The Maister of Woodbarrow." "You have no idea," said Miss Harned, recalling that time, " what a slip of a girl I was then, and so thin and unimportant look- ing.* I had broad enough shoulders and a full neck and chest, but otherwise my dresses were full of pads to give my figure some sort of maturity and weight. I came across one of the dresses I wore that season, when look- ing over a trunk the other day, and I was amazed at it. Why, even when I first played with Mr. Sothern in ' The Maister of Wood- barrow ' my gowns were all padded.'' During her first connection with Mr. Sothern Miss Harned appeared in "Lord Chumley,'' "The Dancing Girl," and as Fanny in " Captain Lettarblair." Leaving Virginia Harned, 133 Daniel Frohman*s management, she joined A. M. Palmer's stock company, scoring her first success as Mrs. Erlynne in " Lady Win- dermere's Fan," and afterward acting such rdles as Letty Fletcher in " Saints and Sin- ners," and Mrs. Sylvester in "The New Woman." Her creation of Trilby followed, after which she rejoined Mr. Sothern, with whom she has acted off and on ever since, appearing in " Lady Ursula," ** The Lady of Lyons," and " A Colonial Girl," when that play was produced in Philadelphia in August, 1898, under the name of **A Shilling's Worth." CHAPTER XIL VIOLA ALLEN. Viola Allen has been a star just one season, and she is accounted one of the most fortunate actresses before the public. The play in which she appeared last season, — Hall Caine^s dramatisation of his own novel (*.' The Christian," — while far from being high art, strongly appealed to the popular fancy, and the result was big houses and great financial prosperity. The best sum- ming up of " The Christian '* that I ever heard was made by Henry Jewett, who played John Storm during the run of the drama in Boston. "There's lots of bun- combe in it,'' he said, "lots of buncombe." 134 VIOLA ALLEN Viola Allen. 135 ** The Christian '' was produced in Albany, N. Y., August 23, 1898, and after a pre- liminary tour it opened in New York on October lOth, remaining there until March 5 th, when it was taken to Boston, where it ran out the season. ^^ It is a strictly theatrical play, and its characters are largely of machine make. It chiefly appeals to persons on whom the theatre-going habit is not per- manently fixed, and who, therefore, are not analysers, consciously or unconsciously, of dramatic effects. The sentiments in the speeches of John Storm, speeches that are uttered by the actor with all the solemnity of complete conviction, strike the unsophis- ticated with peculiar force, and these hifalutin words and preachy conventionalities, together with a certain dramatic power that is the only reason for the existence of the mechan- ical drama, account easily enough for the popular success of the play? If one tears away this cant and insincerity, he finds that 136 Famous Actresses of the Day, the core of the play is the love of John Storm for Glory Quayle, the one a visionary ascetic, almost a fanatic, with a great desire to help the poor and downtrodden, and with a greater desire to wed the beautiful Manx girl, lovely in character, pure-minded, tal- ented, ambitious, but absolutely without the martyr spirit that is so essential a part of Storm's self-centred nature. Storm, in- tensely earnest, immensely sympathetic with the mob, is still curiously selfish, besides being absolutely wanting in power of self- analysis. Without knowing it, he is a thorough pessimist. The author's problem is to unite Glory, the actress, the light- hearted, fun-loving girl, and the honest, true-hearted woman, and Storm, the uncom- promising, to make one the optimist and the pessimist, a problem that apparently has no logical solution, — at least, none so far as Mr. Caine is concerned. His way of doing it is to wrench Glory from her world, and p^i^Alhn. 137 throw her into Storm's arms, and this is what they call a happy ending. Miss Allen's acting was far better than the play. She is personally a woman of much charm, and professionally an actress ^ ■ fwq of well-rounded art. While she has no great 1 spontaneity of method, nor a temperament whose dramatic qualities especially impress one, she has fine tact, much intelligence, and emotional gifts of no mean order. Her ver- satility is adequate, though by no means ex- traordinary, and her comedy — especially in situations that call for vivacity and girlish gaiety — is less apt to ring true than her acting in moments that require the por- trayal of quiet and deep emotion. This, of ^ , CQPXse, .is but. ^.another way of saying ^^^^^ that she does not laugh well, for the secret (/- of success in girlish characters of the light comedy order is, a Joyous laugh that sounds perfectly natural. ^ Viola Allen comes of a theatrical family. 138 Famous Actresses of the Day, Her father is C. Leslie Allen, an accom- plished character actor, who first appeared on the stage in 1852 in the Howard Athenaeum in Boston, and a short time after in the old Boston Theatre on Federal Street. He spoke the last words uttered to an audience in the latter house before it was burned. Mr. Allen acted in many of the old-time stock companies, playing especially well such parts as Uriah Heep in "David Copperfield," Malvolio in "Twelfth Night," Saunders in " The Man o' Airlie," Bardolph in " The Merry Wives of Windsor," in which he supported James H. Hackett, the famous Falstaff ; Moneypenny in "The Long Strike," and Old Rodgers in " Esmeralda." Miss Allen's mother was also on the stage. She was born in England and came to this country at an early age. The first character that she ever acted was the Player Queen in " Hamlet." She was married to Mr. Allen in 1862, and for many years they were Viola Allen. 139 together in the same companies. Mrs. Allen's speciality was " old woman '' parts. Miss Allen was born in the late sixties in Alabama, where her parents were play- ing, but she spent nearly all her childhood in Boston, where she attended school, and, indeed, lived and grew up in much the same way as does the average girl, for her father and mother, who were connected with the Boston Theatre company during that time, were able to maintain a home, that rarest of an actor's blessings. When she was thirteen or fourteen years old, her parents obtained engagements in New York, and the family moved to that city, where Miss Allen continued in school. Her debut on the stage came about unexpectedly when she was about fifteen years old. Her father was playing in the Madison Square Theatre Company in support of Annie Russell, who was making a great success in New York in " Esmeralda." Miss Russell retired from 140 Famous Actresses of the Day. the cast, and the question came, who should take her place. Miss Allen had never even s^^^n a dozen plays in her life, much less acted in any ; but she had the instinct, and when the chance was given her to succeed Miss Russell, she jumped at the opportunity. /As is often the case, in spite of her igno- ^ V ranee of the stage and lack of time in which to study the character, she made a success. ' " Where did you get your dramatic train- ing } '' Miss Allen was once asked. " I can't tell you," she replied. " I have naturally enough been interested in dramatic matters ever since I can remember, and I ^\ have read and studied Shakespeare since I could read at all, always, of course, under the guidance of my father. But all the training of practical value that I have had I got upon the stage. '''^ After a season on the road with " Esme- ralda,'' Miss Allen became leading lady for John McCullough for the season that proved Viola Allen. 141 to be the actor's last. With him she acted Virginia, in which she has been described as " the sweetest, almost, that ever was seen — so winning, so young, so fragile-looking ; " Desdemona, an impersonation that has clung to the memories of those that saw it ; Parthe- nia ; and Julia in " The Gladiator," Doctor Bird's version, a totally different play from the one of the same name presented by Salvini. In those days a writer characterised Miss Allen thus : " As dainty as she is young and as promising as she is natural.'* After her ^"^ngagement with McCuUough she joined ^ Lawrence Barrett for the production of Browning's " Blot on the 'Scutcheon," and the next season she supported the elder Salvini, with whom she assumed such r61es as Cordelia in "King Lear," Desdemona in '* Othello," Neodamia in the Salvini version of "The Gladiator," and the wife's part in "Le Mort Civile]" On the off nights, when Alex- ander Salvini played, she was Juliet to his 142 Famous Actresses of the Day, Romeo. Miss Allen was asked if she found it difBcult to follow Salvini in English while he spoke in Italian. " Oh, not at all," she replied. ** He was so wonderfully eloquent of face and gesture, I could always tell the mean- ing of what he was saying even though I could not understand a word." Miss Allen's death scenes were much admired, and regarding them she once ex- pressed herself as follows : " I have endured many deaths. One of them was in then in vogue, — so delicately indicated in ^ the third act, both evidence a dramatic force ^ that the character makes little demand upon. JULIA ARTHUR As Mercedes in " Mercedes " V CHAPTER XV. JULIA ARTHUR. Ambitious to win a foremost position on the English-speaking stage, and thoroughly- honest in her resolve to make her fight only along the highest lines of artistic endeavour ; of surpassing beauty of face, exceptionally- endowed with the dramatic temperament, well schooled in the art of acting ; intelli- gent, cultured, sincere, and mentally inde- pendent ; a woman who fears not hard work, Julia Arthur challenges serious attention and deserves every encouragement. " Should you ask if Julia Arthur is to be considered a great actress, I should unhesitatingly reply that she is not. She has limitations that she as yet shows no indications of going beyond. i6i 1 62 Famous Actresses of the Day, I do not believe, for instance, that she will ever play straight comedy with any great distinction, though I do not deny that she may learn to play it with authority. Miss Arthur, however, has still to reach her full artistic stature, and the tragic depths of her ,^^ temperament have only partially been re- vealed. Ujimstakably „ an aQLr^^^^^ she is, moreover, one of the three or four persons in this country who are actually — and at some personal sacrifice, too — accom- plishing something for the drama as an art. What is the most remarkable characteris- tic of Julia Arthur's acting } Emphatically it is her power to burn into the memory of the person that sees her in any r61e whatso- ever an impression that never wholly fades away. This is a most exceptional gift, for no artistic endeavour is so ephemeral as the actor's. He creates for the passing moment only. He is a sculptor carving imaginary statues. He may have genius, strengthened Julia A rthur. 1 63 by years of observation and study, yet all he can expect is to live a little while in the memories of those that have themselves seen him. The most appreciative of critics cannot help him, for the essence of the art of acting, the great personal equation that, after all, is the backbone of a stage impersonation, cannot be conveyed in words. Less than ten years ago, when a member of A. M. Palmer's Madison Square Theatre Company, Julia Arthur first demonstrated that she had exceptional talent. At that time she revealed a power, the full possibili- ties of which she has not yet realised. The play was "Lady Windermere's Fan," an exotic, in which, nevertheless, Miss Arthur noiade plain the tragic element that is so much a distinguishing trait of her dramatic person- ality, and which has been since more deeply felt in her " Mercedes." She was scarcely more than a girl in those days, a brunette of 164 Famous Actresses of the Day. the most pronounced type, a face Madonna- like, with eyes coal black and limpid, soft and caressing in moments of tenderness, welling full of tears in moments of sorrow, flashing, burning, scornful in moments of passion, wonderful -.ey^s. of abiding fascination, ap- proaching those of Edwin Booth in their powers of expression. Within this girl there stormed and raved a turgid temperament, which she had not learned to control. She was in the same predicament as an untaught singer, whose great voice threatens to tear his throat to tatters. Miss Arthur's temperament was not refined nor subtle ; it dwelt among the basal elements of human nature, among the passions of primitive mankind, the fierce passions of unreasoning hate and unreasoning love. Such was the Julia Arthur of the early days, and such, essentially, is the Julia Arthur of to-day, for hers is not a tempera- ment to change materially, grow and develop .-t^' Julia Arthur, 165 however much it may. She is a woman of magnificent depth of feeling, of great emo- tional force, but a woman in whom feminine charm, as a dramatic value, is quite non- existent. Julia Arthur was born in Hamilton, On- tario, May 3, 1869, and her stage life began fourteen years later, when she became a member of the company of Daniel E. Band- mann, an eccentric German tragedian, who probably played Shakespeare in more out- landish places than any actor that ever lived. After three years with Bandmann, and a visit abroad, she played in stock companies in San Francisco, Savannah, and Halifax, Nova Scotia. Then followed a year with "The Still Alarm," and another year with a Canadian company. In August, 1891, she appeared at the Union Square Theatre, New York, in " The Black Mask." In November she joined A. M. Palmer's company, playing Jeanne in "The Broken Seal." The sum- 1 66 Famous Actresses of the Day, mer of 1892 was spent with the Jacob Litt's Company in Minneapolis and St. Paul. Returning to Mr. Palmer's company in the fall, she created in America the part of Lady Windermere, which was followed by her greatest success in Thomas Bailey Aldrich's adaptation from the Spanish, ''Mercedes." After leaving the Palmer company Miss Arthur joined Henry Irving's forces in England, creating Rosamond in Tennyson's " Becket," and later appearing with Mr. Irving during his American tour. In October, 1897, Miss Arthur started out as a star in *'A Lady of Quality," by Stephen Townsend and Mrs. Frances Hodg. son Burnett. Her season was interrupted during her Boston engagement by illness, and at this time, also, her marriage to Ben- jamin P. Cheney, of Boston, was announced. This alliance put abundant means at Miss Arthur's disposal, which she has utilised in elaborate productions of Shakespearian and Julia Arthur, 167 classic dramas. Miss Arthur's roles of last season were Clorinda Wildairs in "A Lady of Quality/' Parthenia in " Ingomar," Ros- alind in '*As You Like It," Galatea in " Pygmalion and Galatea," Juliet in *< Romeo and Juliet," and Mercedes. ** Mercedes " is a sordid tale of love, jeal- ousy, and revenge, and in it Miss Arthur finds as she has found in no other play, oppor- tunities to reveal in all their brutality the animal passions of ^a woman unrestrained by even the conception of refinement. Such a woman fits perfectly into the Arthur tem- perament, and the characterisation is won- / derfuUy complete. ^ " A_LadyL,Qf QualityJl_ la . „a poor play, which last season met its just fate in Eng- land, where it failed completely. In this country it had considerable vogue, which, it is but fair to say, was entirely due to Miss Arthur's art. At least, her art was sufficient to conceal from the public the 1 68 Famous Ac'tresses of the Day, crudity of the Burnett-Townsend product. Miss Arthur, however, was not led astray by the popular approval of '*A Lady of Quality/' She soon realised what a wretched work of art it was, and she was ready to break away from it long before those inter- ested with her financially were willing that she should. The character of Clorinda Wildairs, apart from the play, was not an uninteresting one. Here was a girl of fearless, passionate dis- position, a girl, motherless, who fought her way into womanhood side by side with roistering men, and through it all — here is the inconsistency of the character — remained so innocent that she succumbed to the wiles of the first man that assailed her virtue. Proudly independent, she looked the world, man-like, face to face. With superb courage she brought her deceiver grovelling to her feet. When he refused longer to grovel she killed him» Julia Arthur. 169 It will readily be seen that there were phases in the character particularly suited to Miss Arthur. But Jj^clmract^ no means artistically developed in the play, for one saw no growth, only results. Con- sequently the great blemish in Miss Arthur's acting seemed especially prominent in this characterisation. As Clorinda, Miss Arthur had great moments, but these moments were rarely reached by a crescendo of passion ; she seemed to leap into them ; they were like lightning flashes, startling in their in- tensity and brilliancy, convincing because of the inherent dramatic force behind them, but unsatisfying because of the inartistic way in which they were broached. Matters on the stage seemed to be moving along in a mildly interesting fashion, when unex- pectedly, without warning,, came one of those Arthur flashes that set the nerves to tingling. Miss Arthur had dramatic power in abundance at such times. She under- 170 Famous Actresses of the Day, stood and was able to impress forcibly the elementals in human nature; she sounded with positiveness the simpler tragic notes, scorn and hatred. Despair, as an element, did not entirely escape her, but, strangely enough, she did not seem to be able to depict a woman's despair. After Miss Arthur made up her mind to try herself in Shakespearian roles, she naturally enough first essayed Rosa- lind in "As You Like It." Her Rosalind proved to be a strikingly original concep- tion, abounding in a peculiarly sardonic humour and lacking in pure poetic senti- ment. It has been extravagantly praised — some comparing it to the Rosalind of Adelaide Neilson — and it has been extrav- agantly blamed. Perhaps as fair an esti- mate of her impersonation as any was that of Henry Austin Clapp, who said : "The most striking peculiarity of Miss Arthur's Rosalind is its avoidance of nearly JULIA ARTHUR As Rosalind in " As You Like It ** Julia Arthur, 171 every manifestation of mirthful ebulliency OJ^^^ and effusion. She laughs seldonij^j-^ almost / not at jLJl, indeed, -—and ^inthis^ defies the best held theories of the part. Shake- speare's heroine is essentially refined, but she is robust of temperament and a hearty, persistent lover and practiser of frolic. For this well-established scheme Miss Arthur substitutes her own, with a perfectly definite effect upon the spectator and auditor. Her Rosalind is sweet and gentle emotionally; intellectually, she is distinguished, shrewd, and, above all things, piquant. A fine arch- ness, a distinct reserve, a temperamental coolness, a great gift in insinuation instead of a splendid frankness of statement, are combined with effect.'* There is a tradition that Juliet was one of Miss Arthur's earlier impersonations. Cer- tain it is that her Juliet seems in all particu- lars a mature conception. There are many moments of great beauty in her reading. 1/2 Famous Actresses of the Day, The last half of the drama she plays with increasing dramatic force that culminates in a death scene of touching delicacy and pa- thetic import, a death so free from horror that it is difficult to realise how full of horror and raving it might be. She also has moments of quiet intensity and moments of sincere emotion that force home powerfully the cruel fate that is bearing so remorse- lessly on the lovely Veronese. However, Miss Arthur, with all her mar- vellous beauty, with all her natural equip- ment of passionate power, is not an inspired Juliet. Her grasp on the poetry of the r61e is weak, and her limitation of temperament or narrowness of conception permit her to fill only here and there the full measure of Juliet's character. Unfortunately, she never displays any great sustained emotion nor strikes even ever so faintly the note of tragic genius. Following tradition closely at all times, she too often allows her act^ Julia Arthur. 173 ing to become monotonous and without colour. In the balcony scene she was surprisingly effective. It was acted without a touch of coquetry and with none of the maidenly modesty that speaks and retracts and speaks again. JjiUet was made a woman' telling frankly, passionately of her love, and planning deliberately and without shame her clandestine marriage. The meeting with Romeo in Friar Laurence's cell was an- other fine moment, and there was much pathos in her acting of the quarrel scene between father and daughter. The casting aside of the nurse, when she advised the marriage with Paris, was also well conceived. The potion scene passed quietly, with a com- mendable absence of heroics and without ranting. Indeed, Miss Arthur was always artistic in the matter of suppression, and $he never tore a passion to tatters. CHAPTER XVI. MAY IRWIN. May Irwin is a personality rather than an artist, an entertainer more than an actress. Her career has vacillated between the variety- stage and the legitimate, until at last she has become identified with that hybrid species of the theatrical amusement called farce- comedy. Miss Irwin is a famous fun-maker ; of jolly, rotund figure, and with a face that reflects the gaiety of nations, she is the per- sonification of humour and careless mirth, a female Falstaff, as it were, whose sixteenth century grossness and ribaldry has been refined and recast in a nineteenth century mould. The old saying, " Laugh and the world laughs with you," fits her perfectly, 174 May Irwin, 1 75 for no one apparently gets any more enjoy- ment from her jests than does she herself. Her good nature is infinite and her buoyancy of spirits irrepressible. Her good-fellowship is infectious, and she has a great facility for getting on intimate terms with her audi- ences, making herself, for the time being, the personal friend of every man, woman, and child in the theatre the instant that she appears on the stage ; and hers is a whole- souled, generous friendship, even if on the verge of Bohemia. May Irwin was born in Whitby, a little town in Ontario, Canada, about twenty miles from Toronto, and she lived there until she went on the stage. When she was only eight years old she was the soprano in the Episcopal church choir in her native village. " Singing came naturally to me," she said. "My voice never had any cultivation. I harmonised as naturally as I talked, my voice was naturally placed. 1^6 Famous Actresses of the Day, and I produced tones by the law breathing taught me, not by any other rule. All through my childhood I sang in all the cantatas and such folly that is a part of going to school." May and her sister Flora made their debut on the variety stage in Buffalo, New York, when they were little tots in short dresses. That was in December, 1875, and the salary that they received was thirty dollars a week. The first thing they sang was " Sweet Gene- vieve." Poor Flo was so nervous that after it was over she fainted away, and May had to sing the encore alone, which she did with all the assurance in the world. In fact, I do not believe that May Irwin could faint if she tried. Engagements in variety theatres on a circuit that included Cleveland, St. Louis, and Cincinnati followed, and then the chil- dren did their first sketch, which was called "On Board the Mary Jane." Their third season found them at Tony Pastor's in New May Irwin, 177 York, and how that came about Miss Irwin tells as follows : " It was a great thing for us, for Pastor's was the Mecca of all ambitious variety per- formers, — it was like heaven to the pious. Just to get to Tony Pastor's and be happy was in the mind of every struggling variety artist the length and breadth of the land. Our engagement came about in this way. We were appearing in Detroit. It was late in the season of id>y6-yy. We had been engaged for two weeks, and had been so successful that we stayed six. Tony Pastor's company was on tour, making, even in the cities, one night stands. On the day the company reached Detroit we had a matinee, and Pastor came to see us. He left town that night to go on to the next stand, and he wired back to us, * Could you open in New York at my theatre September 13th.? Wire terms.' Could we "^ Weren't we just crazy to .? Sister and I sat up all that night 173 Famous Actresses of the Day. talking about it. Seemed 'sif we were to go to sleep that engagement might get away. It didn't, and we made our d^but in New York, September 13, 1877, — pretty good for two children. We stayed there seven years. We were engaged for sixty dollars a week, and at the end of our connection there we were getting eighty dollars. It was a small salary compared with what is paid now, and I realised it was small then for what we did. Our first sketch was * A Rural Stroll,' which we played for four years. I own that it was great training, for we had to keep our sketch right up to the times. In addition to my turn with Flo, I used to do the leads in the burlesque which always wound up the evening, and those burlesques were not written out, you know. I used just to get instructions, so to speak, and go on and carry them out. It's great training, throws you on your own resources so. Why, I played everything May Irwin, 179 from babes in arms — fact — to decrepit old women." Then came the most remarkable event in Miss Irwin's theatrical experience, her jump from variety at Tony Pastor's to the classic atmosphere of Augustin Daly's temple of dramatic art. "Oh, I was ambitious," Miss Irwin declared, when asked how it happened, "and in an ambitious person's career all advances seem like heavens — like the Bud- dhists, you see, we have a series of heavens. Mrs. Gilbert and Miss Rehan used to come to Tony Pastor's very often, and finally we were playing in Chicago at one theatre while Daly's company was playing at Hooley's, and Richard Dorney came up to see me one day and asked me if I would like to join Daly's. Would I } Well, you could not have kept me from it the moment the door was opened. The very next morning I met Mr. Daly by appointment and signed for three years. At the end of that time I reengaged, but only i8o Famous Actresses of the Day. stayed another year, — four in all. It was very legitimate and delightful, but it was not profitable, and when an offer of three times my Daly salary came, just to do a single turn with the Boston Howard Athe- naeum Star Specialty Company, — well, I couldn't resist it." Miss Irwin has distinct remembrances of her first rehearsal at Daly's. She had been accustomed so long to the free and easy way of doing things at Pastor's that she had quite forgotten what discipline meant. The play was Pinero's "Boys and Girls," and Miss Irwin was cast for a maiden lady about thirty-five years old. She went to rehear- sal with her lines nicely memorised and her ideas of how the part should be played firmly fixed. This is how she tells the story : " Now, I had to go on just after the cur- tain went up. I was supposed to smell an odour of burned fish, and Mr. Daly's direc- tions to me were to come down, sniff, look May Invin, i8i around and sniff harder. I at once objected right out loud. *Why, no,' I said, 'that would be absurd. I should never look around for a moment. I should go straight to the fireplace, where the smell came from, of course. Why, Mr. Daly, do you suppose if I smelled something burning in my flat I wouldn't know enough to go to the range t * "The Guv'nor — that's what we called him — must have been thunderstruck ; every one else was ; for the slow voice in which he said, * Miss Irwin, I don't allow this,' was the least bit choky. I saw what I had done, of course. *Very well,' I said, 'I'll try it your way.' And I did try, but I couldn't do it. I knew I was right, and he was wrong, or I thought I did, which is just the same thing, and this square jaw of mine just wouldn't let me. However, time after time we went over it. I think we must have done it twenty times, and then it was not much nearer what he wanted, but at last we went on. 1 82 Famous Actresses of the Day, "Well, we reached in a few days the sec- ond act, and at once struck a familiar snag. The Guv'nor was sitting down in the audi- torium, and his solemn voice informed me, ' Not in the least like it ! ' * Well, I'll -try again,* and I did. Then up to me came the remark, ' I wonder where you have left your intelligence this morning/ It was the last straw. I had never been spoken to like that in my life. And before all the company ! I tried to take a brace, but I could not, so I broke down and blubbered. It was the first time I ever did such a thing. " * Go on,' said the inexorable voice, but I could only sob, 'Well, now, I guess you'll have to wait for me ! ' ' Very well ; skip that and go on,' and I retired to a dark corner and cried as if my heart were broken. Pretty soon Daly hunted me up. 'Come, come,' said he, 'you mustn't do this. I treat all my people alike. If you don't do well, you, as well as I, will be criticised. It May Irwin. 183 is for your sake as much as for mine.' And that was the last encounter of that kind that we ever had. It did not take me long to understand that Mr. Daly knew more than I did, and to learn that to follow him was to make a hit." While with the Howard Athenaeum Com- pany the Irwin sisters, as May and Flo were billed, produced John J. McNally*s first dra- matic work, a sketch called " Home Rule." During the summer of 1888, Miss Irwin played on the Pacific coast, acting Martha in Richard Golden's "Jed Prouty" company. Another year with the Howard Athenaeum Company followed, and then Miss Irwin became a member of Russell's "The City Directory " company, perhaps the finest farce comedy organisation that was ever gotten together. In 1891 she joined Charles Frohman's forces, appearing with Henry Mil- ler in "The Junior Partner" and after that in a burlesque called "The Poet and thQ 184 Famous Actresses of the Day, Puppets." It was in this burlesque that she introduced to the public the famous song, "After the Ball/' At an after-the- theatre supper in her room she heard Alex- ander Martinetti pick out the air on a guitar. The melody pleased her, and she had him write it down and fit some words to it. Mr. Frohman was opposed to her singing a senti- mental song in a burlesque, but he yielded to persuasion and let her try it. The song was a great hit. After " The Poet and the Puppets " Miss Irwin became associated with Peter F. Dailey in McNally*s farce, "The Country Sport." For the last three seasons she has starred, producing first Mr. McNally's farce-comedy, "The Widow Jones,'* and incidentally mak- ing herself famous through her " coon " songs and the broad humour and great unc- tion that she put into her "rag-time," that latter-day syncopated musical freak, whose father is the old-time " nigger " minstrel. Her May Irwin. 185 first "rag-time'* was "The Bully/' in which she made great sport by bringing a little coloured boy on the stage with her. Miss Irwin says the way to learn to sing "rag- time '* is to catch a negro and study him. " I heard during one of my summer vaca- tions," she continued, "some particularly catchy music sung by negroes working at the hotel where I was stopping. The idea occurred to me to try it myself. I did try it, and I failed. After successive failures I decided to find out from headquarters how it was sung, and I gave a reception to that coloured musical talent. That was the best social investment I ever made. By keeping everlastingly at it, I finally discovered that the rag-time was obtained, not by the voice, but by the instrument. With the negroes it had been the result of the use of the < thumbstring ' on the banjo, by thrumming which there was produced the effect of a weird chant. The fact that the negroes are l86 Famous Actresses of the Day. so successful in the singing of * rag-time ' is because they have learned to sing to this very sort of an accompaniment/' In the fall of 1 897 Miss Irwin brought out "The Swell Miss Fitzwell," which she fol- lowed last season with another farce-comedy, « Kate Kip, Buyer/' EFFIE SHANNON CHAPTER XVII. EFFIE SHANNON. Effie Shannon, who for several seasons has starred with Herbert Kelcey in Clyde Fitches ''The Moth and The Flame/' in which she played the leading jemotjonal character^ first attracted attention as the ingenue of Daniel Frohman's Lyceum Thea- tre Company, in the days when Georgia Cayvan and Mr. Kelcey were the chief actors, and Fritz Williams the youthful come- dian of that organisation, and when such sentimental plays as "The Wife*' and "The Charity Ball " were considered the height of artistic dramatic achievement. Miss Shannon, although her name is good, honest Irish, is a genuine Yankee. Her father was 187 1 88 Famous Actresses of the Day, a native of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and her mother was born in Haverhill, Mas- sachusetts. Miss Shannon herself claims Cambridge, Massachusetts, as her birthplace, and there she lived when she received her iJ^^ initiation into stage life as a child actress in several of the Boston theatres. Her debut was made in John McCullough's revival of " Coriolanus '' at the Boston Theatre. All that she remembers of this performance was the fact that she appeared with many others, and threw wreaths in front of the triumphant hero. " It was a pleasant expe- rience, however,'' Miss Shannon added, " and it gave me a taste of the life in which I have found so much enjoyment.'' Her second character was Eva in " Uncle Tom's Cabin," which she played at the Howard Athenaeum in Boston, then under the management of the late John Stetson. James S. Maffit, the pantomimist, afterward so long identified with the character of the Effie Shannon. 189 Lone Fisherman in "Evangeline" was the Lawyer Marks. Luke Martin was the Legree, and Mrs. Morse, who was one 01 the actors in the original production of the first drama- tisation of Mrs. Stowe*s novel, played Aunt Ophelia. The company, on the conclusion of the Boston engagement, toured New England. " I shall never forget the feeling of pride which I experienced when I saw the bills of that production of * Uncle Tom's Cabin,'*' Miss Shannon remarked. '"There in big letters could be read, ' Eva, La Petite Shan- non.' And I would stand in front of the bill-boards for hours, reading and re-reading my own name, wondering why larger crowds were not attracted by those delightful letters." A little later Miss Shannon appeared in children's parts with Lawrence Barrett at the Boston Museum, and she was also in the children's production of "Pinafore" I go Famous Actresses of the Day. at the same theatre, regarding which she tells the following amusing story : "I was merely one of the sisters and cousins and aunts, because my singing voice was never phenomenal, and although I served as understudy to some of the other girls I never had an opportunity to appear. Do you remember that cast ? There was Ida Miille, the Josephine, and then Fritz Williams was the Sir Joseph Porter, and how we girls adored him ! ^ There was not a tot in that chorus who was not madly in ^^>^' love with the Admiral as he strutted around the stage in all the dignity of his position/ I remember very well how I brought my auto- graph album for him to write in, and how he scrawled in his round, boyish hand, *I am the monarch of the sea. Fritz Williams.' In later years, when Mr. Williams and I were members of the Lyceum Company in New York, I produced that autograph album and confronted him with it. It was the first time Effie Shannon, 191 that he had suspected that we had ever been in the same company before, and he was greatly surprised as he exclaimed, * Were you that little yellow-haired girl ? ' and I admitted that I was/' When the " Pinafore " run came to an end Miss Shannon's mother took her to New York, where she received her education. Her first appearance in adult parts was with a company playing " The Silver King." Then she travelled with Robert Mantell, after which she was with^the Daly company for a year and a half. This proved an excellent school for her, but, iji common with other talented players who have been members of- tha,t company, she was given few chances to demonstrate her ability, f From Daly's she went to the New York Lyceum Theatre, and there met with her greatest successes. As the romp, Kittie Ives, in "The Wife," and as the piquant, saucy Kate in "The Idler," she showed the genuine soubrette talent, 192 Famous Actresses of the Day, while as Bess in "The Charity Ball" she combined with it that sweet, sympathetic quality that the French termed "ingenue.** In 1893 Miss Shannon joined Rose Cogh- lan's company, playing Dora in "Diplomacy,** a role of which she is very fond. After that she was with Mrs. Lily Langtry in her unfortunate production of "The City of Pleasure," and her next engagement was in support of Olga Nethersole. Then came her starring tour with Mr. Kelcey, after the successful run of "The Moth and the Flame" in New York City. MRS. LESLIE CARTER CHAPTER XVIII. MRS. LESLIE CARTER. Mrs. Leslie Carter's stage career began on November lo, 1890, when she made her debut in New York in "The Ugly Duckling." Since that time she has publicly acted just three parts, the Quakeress in "Miss Hel- yett," Maryland Calvert in "The Heart of Maryland," and Zaza in " Zaza," and yet at present she is accounted one of the leading actresses on the American stage. Surely this is a record unique in theatrical history. 'Let it not be thought, however, that Mrs. Carter's stage life has been all cakes and ale. Far from it. Nine years of hard work and constant study lie behind her, and while she has publicly acted only four charac- 193 1 94 Famous A dresses . of the Day, ters, she has thoroughly prepared and pri- vately played time and time again over a score of parts. Mrs. Carter's phenomenal success is due to the professional skill, critical judgment and untiring efforts of Mr. David Belasco, who took charge of her dramatic training just before her appearance in "The Ugly Duckling." When he accepted her as a pupil, Mr. Belasco showed the keenest acu- men. At that time Mrs. Carter seemed to have but few of the physical advantages that one associates with success on the stage. Indeed, it might be said that her only favour- able point apparent at first sight was her hair, wonderfully heavy and a fiery red, that framed her pale face in a burning halo. Per- haps Mr. Belasco noted her eyes, deeply gray and serious; possibly he was attracted by the expressive play of her features, or may- hap he pinned faith on that firmly set mouth and stern lower jaw. However it Mrs. Leslie Carter, 105 came about, the contract was made, and Mrs. Carter gave herself unreservedly into her trainer's keeping. She became for all practical purposes Mr. Belasco's willing slave. Mrs. Carter's work in "The Ugly Duck- ling " was plainly that of a novice. " Crude but full of promise," was how Mr. Belasco characterised it, and it may be said that he was sanguine rather than otherwise. "I shall never forget the first night I played," said Mrs. Carter, in describing her debut. / " I stood like a dummy waiting for my time to come for walking on the stage, and when that soft, swelling music that heralded my ^'^ approach reached my ears didn't I wish to die right there! ^ I stood as if chained to where I was until it was almost past the time. Douglas Oakley, the hero in * The Ugly Duckling,' said : * Kate, bonnie Kate ! ' as he lay on the hearth looking at my picture, — not my own real picture, of course. Then Mr. Belasco said, ' Move now 196 Famous Actresses of the Day, or the play is ruined/ You may be sure I felt far from being a * bonnie Kate ! ' The clapping of hands brought me to my senses and then I warmed to my work. Somehow or other the very naturalness of the first incidents helped to reassure me." "Miss Helyett/' which followed, was a musical comedy, and in it Mrs. Carter really met with much success. It was an awkward little part, demure and quiet. She continued with it, improving constantly, until March, 1 893, when she closed her season in Kansas City and disappeared. No one knew what had become of her ; in fact, no one cared very much, and when, in October, 1895, she emerged from her retirement to make an astonishing success in Mr. Belasco's play, "The Heart of Maryland," the surprise was complete. What Mrs. Carter did during that mysterious year and a half, which was passed in her New York apartments at 6^ Clinton Place, is best related in her own words. Mrs, Leslie Carter. 197 " Ah, yes, I was a crude beginner in < Miss Helyett,' yet before I got through with that rdle I had learned a great deal. One thing I did obtain was muscular control. It gave me equipoise, repose. OBut it was during my retirement that I began to study with brain and will. In that time I went through fifty- eight plays with Mr. Belascorj I set my teeth and always kept before me the play he was writing around me, so to speak, and I was determined nothing should dash my energies. I would rehearse every phase of an emotion, until I could portray it with more or less facility. " How were all my little rehearsals at home conducted t Ah, they were pretty sad at times. Mr. Belasco would select a r61e, talk with me upon it, make suggestions, an- swer questions, and then leave me to work it out. I would not see him, probably, for a week or ten days. Meanwhile, I acted and reacted, and posed and posed, and worked 198 Famous Actresses of the Day, often with one single gesture or one single vocal inflection for half a day at a time. One thing I always did attend to, I never forsook the weak place to return to it again. I went on to nothing else until I had in some sensible way conquered the difficulty. And this was where I found the horrible discour- agement of dramatic technique. If you write or if you sew, you see the result of your labour before your eyes ; you are buoyed up in your work by visible encouragement. In dramatic study you go over and over and see nothing for so long for your slavish repetition and expenditure of energy. You know simply you are aiming at something and you are not getting it. But, after awhile, I found out about that. It comes at once. Before you stop to realise, there is a lesson accom- plished; it becomes a spontaneous effort. You don't think any more of control. The action is part of yourself when merged in that role, and performs itself unconsidered. Mrs. Leslie Carter, 199 "After my days of work alone, Mr. Be- lasco would come in the evening, and then the chairs and tables were swept away, and we had a stage. He read the other parts and I rehearsed my role. Nine times out of ten I was all wrong at my first trial. * Not a bit like it,* Mr. Belasco would say, and then, in his corrections made upon my practical study, I learned my valuable lesson. It hurt sometimes, but when I set to study on the amended plan I always felt I had achieved something I was not going to lose again, and I realised my growing strength. " From what roles do I consider I derived most benefit } There are two uppermost in my mind. First, Beatrice, by all means. Her character has so many phases. It seemed to embrace almost everything I needed. I lived with Beatrice and thought with her, and made her moods my own, and then failed with her on my mimic stage when Mr. Belasco rehearsed me at night. 200 Famous Actresses of the Day, and went back again and conceived another Beatrice in this mood, and yet another Bea- trice in that, and changed my ideal a dozen times, always working faithfully on the new until at last Mr. Belasco approved me in the part as a whole. No study, however, no practice technically legitimate, is lost even where the ideal be fictitious. You gain flexibility in a detail which will fit in else- where. Leah is the other role which did won- ders for me in the mastery of the stronger emotions. Those long speeches of hers em- brace a volume of lessons, and after these two characters I have no special identification of improvement with the others. They brought about a general advancement." Mrs. Carter played Maryland Calvert in this country for three seasons, and then appeared in London in the same character, opening at the Adelphi Theatre, April 9, f 898. Her success there was all that could be de- sired, the play running for 145 performances. Mrs, Leslie Carter, 201 "Zaza," in which Mrs. Carter achieved such a triumph last season, was produced in Washington, December 26, 1898, and the dramatic critics of the capital immediately described the play as a masterpiece, and named the actress " the American Berrj- hardt.*' " Zaza " was originally a French drama written by Simon and Berton for Rejane, by whom it was brought out at the Vaudeville Theatre, Paris. The English version is by Mr. Belasco, who succeeded in the difficult task of ridding the work of the French audaciousness that charac- terised it in the original, still retaining in full the play's strong dramatic interest. Mr. Belasco's artistic touch was sure until the last act, when he erred for the sake of a happy ending. (.*'Zaza" tells the pathetic ^\ story of a music hall actress, who rises from a depth of illicit love to a height of pure self-abnegation. The ethics and morality of the cjrama ha ve been widely discussed, 202 Famous Actresses of the Day, and, as usual, the points raised have been answered strictly according to the particular arguer*s bias. Mrs. Carter's role calls for emotional acting of the strongest and most varied character, and there has been no great difference of opinion regarding the power and impressiveness of her personation.) The following critique is that of Franklin Fyles : "Good stage literature as the play was, and almost faultless as the stage craft of its representation was generally, there was one thing which eclipsed all else in a triumph seldom equalled in a theatre. That portion of the occasion's success, and much the largest cause of it, was the acting of Mrs. Leslie Carter. Not since Bernhardt was here had New York seen any approach to the Bernhardt kind of art in dramatic expression. It was a more versatile and varied performance, it is only the truth to say, than any other American player, man Mf's. Leslie Carter, 203 or woman, is capable of giving. Through the first act Zaza was no more than a wanton, not ashamed of herself, because she neither knew nor cared anything about virtue. The place was behind the scenes of a variety stage, and the depiction of life in the purlieus of the theatre was ruth- lessly illustrated. In it the low-bred hero- ine figured as the mischievous enticer of a man. In the next act she was shown with him in a home of forbidden love, happy in her faithfulness to him, and with never a thought or expectation of becoming his wife. In the third, she was at his house in Paris, wild at first with the desire of retaliation for his deception, then touched pitifully by the sight of his child that re- sembled him, and then won over to self- sacrificial silence. In the fourth, she was back at her home, well-nigh crazed by grief, utterly heart-broken, changeful of purpose, clinging desperately to a belief in the man's 204 Famous Actresses of the Day, love until convinced beyond hope that he would not let his mistress take him from his wife, and then madly vehement in her denunciation of him. It was at this climax that the assemblage let itself loose in a tremendously enthusiastic demonstration. "What Mrs. Carter had done to warrant so much approbation at that time will surely stand the severest test of calmer criticism, and still stand as proof positive of genius. She has passed from farcical moments to those of the deepest emotion ; from heart- less coquetry to passionate love ; from care- lessness to despair, and all with equal facility. In none of the sharply contrasting phases of the creature's experience had she lapsed a moment from the essential attributes of the character. Such a portrayal could have been based only on a thorough and minute analysis of the role which Mr. Belasco may have made for her, but the embodiment of it in a way to render it graphic down to the Mrs, Leslie Carter, 205 minutest detail, and to do this so that laughter and tears followed each other as she willed them to, was a triumph of her own genius. She had advanced steadily from crudity to the finest of artistic success.*' ^■ CHAPTER XIX. MARY SHAW. Mary Shaw had long been considered one of the finest leading women in this country, when she made the greatest success of her career at the close of last season as Mrs. Alving in John Blair's special produc- tion of Ibsen's ** Ghosts " in New York City. ^'Ghosts/' whatever one may think of its morbidness and its unpleasant investigations into medical science, is certainly one of the strongest acting dramas known to the mod- ern theatre, and its characters afford opportu- nities for wonderfully effective work to actors that have the ability and training to realise them. Miss Shaw's theatrical experience has been wide-extended. It has embraced 206 Mary Shaw. 207 many of the chief roles of the classic drama in addition to numberless parts in plays of less enduring worth. Her talents, too, are of an exceptional order. They found in the Ibsen play just the material they wanted, and the result was a success that astonished even her most enthusiastic admirers, who could hardly have expected so much from her in her first impersonation of an Ibsen creation. Mrs. Alving is, perhaps, the most com- plete character in the Ibsen drama. She .jsj^witliess of, rather than a participant in, the sins and weaknesses of mankind. Her life is devoted to concealing from public view the debaucheries of her husband, a libertine of the vilest sort, with the result that he dies universally respected, leaving a son to inherit all the father's mental and physical diseases. The son, ignorant of the evil which has been passed down to him, returns from school in the first stages of 2o8 Famous Actresses of the Day, paresis, imagining that his health has failed because of overwork. The end is incurable madness, for the mother, at the last moment, finds herself unable to administer the dose of morphia that was to end the boy's life when his mind failed entirely. It is a horrible play, frightfully depressing in its fatalism, but its dramatic strength is tremendous. ("""Ibsen's dramas will finally be made familiar by the actors because they afford such opportunities for the display of intelli- gence, power, and technical skill as are to be found in hardly any other plays in exist- ence,'* wrote a New York critic. ."Hardly -^"X- an Ibsen play is acted in New York without greatly bettenng the reputation of some one or two actors. When * Ghosts ' was first given, a few years ago, it revealed Courtney Thorpe as the paretic son in a wholly new light of intellectual capacity. ' John Gabriel Borkman ' revealed Maude Banks as very close to a great actress ; Mrs. Fiske's nota- Mary Shaw, ^09 ble advance in power was first shown in a matinee of *The Doll's House/ and New York had its only test of the talent of Elizabeth Robins in * Hedda Gabler.' Last night the honours fell to Mary Shaw, who has long been known as one of the most capable actresses on our stage, but whose Mrs. Alving shows an intellectual grasp of Ibsen^s idea and a command of resources of expression far beyond the reach of any but great actresses. As the chief actor of a theatre devoted to the modern intellectual drama, Miss Shaw would be a power." " Miss Shaw gave a most impressive reve- lation of Mrs. Alving' s general competency as a woman," declared Norman Hapgood. " In the scenes with the pastor she had a sweet and kindly manner of looking all around him and sizing him up. As she stood there reducing all organised society to a conventional spectre, she looked so beneficent and serious that the woman stood 2 Id Famous Actresses of the Day. out far above her rebellious theories and took the outlines of a great dramatic figure." Mary Shaw comes of an old New England family. Her father is Levi W. Shaw, who is connected with the Inspection of Build- ings Department of the city of Boston. The family originally lived in Wolfboro, N. H., where the homestead, now two hundred and fifty years old, still stands, and Miss Shaw has in her possession old pewter plates, fam- ily heirlooms, from which pieces have been cut to be moulded into Colonial bullets. She was born and educated in Boston, graduated from the grammar and high schools of that city, and before she went on the stage taught for a short time in the Boston public schools. Her voice gave out under the strain of school- room work, and that led her to study elocu- tion, which in turn directed her attention to the stage. She became acquainted with Annie Clarke, then the leading lady of the Boston Museum Stock Company, and through Mary Shaw, 211 her she met R. M. Field, the manager of the Museum. There did not seem to be any- opening in the Museum Company at that time, however, and, armed with a letter of introduction to Dion Boucicault from John Boyle O'Reilly, Miss Shaw went to New York. She was not successful in that city, either, and she returned home and for a time satisfied her histrionic ambition by appearing in amateur theatricals. One of her perform- ances in this line was Kate Hardcastle in "She Stoops to Conquer," which she played in the vestry of the East Boston Unitarian Church. Finally, in 1879, she was engaged as the Chorus in an extravaganza at the Boston Museum, called "A Robisonade," and her first appearance was made through the floor by means of a trap. The first play that she appeared in was a revival of "Diplomacy," and the occasion wa" also E. H. Sothern's first night. 212 Famous Actresses of the Day, "\5/je^had two small parts/' said Miss Shaw, recalling the incident. " He was a French valet and I the maid, and we had quite a little scene — perhaps ten minutes. Eddie^entered and spoke half a dozen words, looked at me wildly for a moment, and then fairly flew from the stage. I meekly fol- lowed him. We were fined five dollars n, , < ' apiece and retired to the positions of walk- y ing gentleman and lady for some time. The next time we were entrusted with parts was in 'Pippins,' in which Eddie did so well that he was quite restored to favour. He was a dear boy ! " Miss Shaw made her first pronounced hit at the Museum in a play called " A Midsummer Madness." She was advanced rapidly in the company, and, to use her own words, "simply played everything." After two years she went to Augustin Daly's com- pany in New York, securing this engage- ment through Fanny Davenport, whom Mary Shaw. 213 Miss Shaw supported at the Museum in ''Pique." "Miss Davenport met me after the play, in the wings," Miss Shaw said, "and, after compHmenting me on my performance, asked me if I didn't want to go with her. ' I can only give you fifty dollars a week at pres- ent,' she remarked. The sum appeared al- most fabulous to nie. It seemed like the instant realisation of all my fondest and most cherished dreams, and it came upon me so suddenly that I was nearly struck dumb with surprise and gratitude. I had all I could possibly do to keep from showing Miss Dav- enport that I was surprised, yes, more than that, astounded, at her liberal offer. I man- aged, however, to control my feelings suffi- ciently, and, thanking her for her kindness, said I would think it over, speaking as indif- ferently as though I had had a hundred offers equally as good. Then I went home, and that night I never slept a wink, because r 214 Famous Actresses of the Day. I was afraid she would change her mind and withdraw the offer." After a season with Daly, Miss Shaw sup- ported Miss Davenport on the road in the old comedies. She then appeared in " Young Mrs. Winthrop/' under Daniel Frohman's management, after which she joined Mo- djeska, with whom she remained five sea- sons, appearing in prominent rdles in the Modjeska repertory, which at that time in- cluded the rarely acted "Two Gentlemen of Verona'' and "Measure for Measure." It was while she was with Modjeska that Miss Shaw had a conversation with Mat- thew Arnold about her conception of Queen Elizabeth in " Mary Stuart." • " I met him," said Miss Shaw, "at one of Modjeska's receptions in New York, and he said, *I want to talk with you about your Queen Elizabeth.' I found that he objected to my impersonation as making her too feminine, too tender, dragged by fate, against Mary Shaw. 215 her will, to the execution of Mary. 'The Elizabeth you represent is not the Elizabeth of history/ he said. And I replied : * Mr. Arnold, when I was given that part I was not asked to play Mr. Hume*s, or Mr. Ma- caulay^s, or Mr. Froude*s Elizabeth, but Mr. Schiller's. Schiller saw in the story of these two women only deep humanity in all its environments, and he analysed them with his own heart and brain. He did not care for history. And when I read the part I tried to read Schiller into it, to feel as he felt, to see with his eyes, and so I dis- missed the historian.' Mr. Arnold leaned back in his chair and said, ing role was simply beyond question. From the beautiful, sensual creature of the first act to the broken-hearted, broken-spirited woman of the last act was a far reach, but there was no step in the intervening distance that the dramatist did not prepare with masterly sub- 220 Famous Actresses of the Day, tilty, and there was no point in the drama- tist's development that the actress did not seize upon with absolute surety and expound with convincing sincerity. Physically Miss Nethersole realised the character perfectly. Her exuberant beauty, which she so bounti- fully displayed in the first act, explained Tanqueray's infatuation almost without the sensuality of look and caress that she lav- ished upon him. Sensuality, it should be stated, vanished entirely after the first act, giving way before Paula's growing woman- liness. I have found it extremely difficult to write of Miss Nethersole's acting in this character, for she gave me no impression of detail and no idea of Olga Nethersole apart from Paula Tanqueray. Surely the art of acting can do no more than that. Olga Nethersole was born in Kensington, London, and was educated at private schools, partly in England and partly in Germany. Olga Nethersole. 221 The death of her father made it necessary for her to choose some vocation, and she decided on the stage. Prior to 1887 she had occasionally acted, but her professional career really began in the spring of that year, when she joined Charles Hawtrey's company at the Theatre Royal, Brighton, appearing in a low comedy part, Lettice Vane in Henry Hamilton's play, " Harvest." About a year and a half was spent by Miss Nethersole in the English provinces, and her first London appearance was made in July, 1888, at the Royal Adelphi Theatre, in **The Union Jack,'* by Sidney Grundy and Henry Pettitt. Other engagements in London at the St. James's Theatre, in "The Dean's Daughter," and at the Strand Theatre fol- lowed, and then at the opening of the Gar- rick Theatre Miss Nethersole became a member of John Hare's company, appear- ing in Pinero's '*The Profligate," in "La Tosca," and <* A Fool's Paradise/' 222 Famous Actresses of the Day, While still on the roster of this company, with which she was connected four years, she visited Australia with Charles Cart- wright, remaining there ten months and appearing in a varied repertory which in- cluded "The Idler,'' "Moths," and "The Village Priest." On returning to England she rejoined Mr. Hare's company at the Garrick Theatre, and immediately evidenced the remarkable improvement she had made in her methods by her experience in Aus- tralia. During the time she was with Mr. Hare she played successfully the part of Zicka in the memorable revival of Sar- dou's "Diplomacy." An engagement at the Criterion followed, where Miss Nether- sole achieved distinction in the leading role of Isaac Henderson's drama, "The Silent Battle," and in January, 1894, she leased the Royal Court Theatre and successfully produced "The Transgressor." The following fall she came to this couur Olga Nethersole, 223 try, making her American d6but at Palmer's Theatre, New York, on October 15th, and subsequently making a most successful tour of the country. She played besides "The Transgressor," Marguerite Gauthier in " Ca- mille," Gilberte in " Frou-Frou,*' and Juliet in '* Romeo and Juliet." In May, 1895, Miss Nethersole assumed the chief role in **The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith," at the Garrick, London, following Mrs. Patrick Campbell. That fall she again visited America, having added to her repertory "Denise" and "The Wife of Scarli." June 6, 1896, she produced " Carmen " at the Gaiety Theatre, London, which play made an immense sensation in this country the following winter. Last season, Miss Nethersole's fourth in the United States, was devoted to " The Second Mrs. Tanqueray," a poetical drama, "The Termagant," and "The Profligate." Miss Nethersole is a strikingly handsome woman, slightly under medium height, with 224 Famous Actresses of the Day, a figure slender, sinuous, and graceful. Her eyes are large and brilliant, a dark gray in colour, though it is difficult to be sure of this, for they change constantly with every passing thought and emotion. Her crowning glory is her luxuriant hair, which is of a peculiar tawny shade. She rarely wears a wig on the stage, though many have found it difficult to believe that the rich mass of hair, which sometimes seems a ruddy hue and other times almost bronze, is really her own. "The Transgressor'* by A. W. Gattie, in which Miss Nethersole made her first appear- ance in this country, was a somewhat crude play of the " problem '* order, and in it the actress's opportunities to show her emotional power were somewhat limited. Regarding her d^but, William Winter wrote : "Miss Nethersole gained the confidence and friendship of her audience at once, and earned the hearty greeting she received. She has the quality of charm which is so Olga Nethersole, 225 invaluable on the stage, and the lack of which cannot be counterbalanced by any amount of industry or study. She gains sympathy by the simple force of person- ality. In the technicalities of her art she is accomplished, but not always finished and matured. The fullness and roundness of her power are not yet reached. She has youth, beauty, grace, and self-command. Her voice is musical and her manner refined. With these qualities she will surely be admired and will make her way. Greater authority and command may'Eome hereafter. Through two acts last night Miss Nethersole had little to do but to be on the stage for a part of the time. Her talk was bright and snappy, and her face was gay and sunny. These things pleased so far as they went. They showed that the actress was at home on the stage and that it was likely to be agreeable at anytime to see her there. They showed that she had elegance and repose. 226 Famous Actresses of the Day, highly desirable qualities, essential indeed. But that was all. At the end of the third act she had a scene of a sort which it is com- mon to designate as ' strong.' It was not sen- sible, and it was not womanly. She could not enforce the conviction that such a woman as she had shown herself to be would do what she did. She did show that she could reach a fine emotional height, but the act of the J^i\ woman whose part she played seemed incred- ible, and she did not make it seem anything ' I else7> Miss Nethersole made her greatest suc- cess that first season in " Camille." It was an intensely realistic impersonation, deeply emotional and ardently passionate, an im- personation that moved one by its great dramatic vigour rather than by subtilty of conception or finish in acting. At that time Miss Nethersole displayed a certain crudity of method and a proneness to exaggeration which later developed into those unpleasant Olga Nethersole, 227 mannerisms of speech and gesture that so marred some of her work. Yet she made C^mille so affecting that at times her pathos touched the heart with a feeHng that was almost too genuine for comfort. She ^ was at her best in the scene with M. Duval, a scene which she played with uncommon dignity and a tender simplicity that rarely failed to win the tribute of tears. Last year Miss Nethersole introduced a novelty in ,,,^^ IjLgr performance of the. play,, by costuming the characters in the fashions of 1841, the y? time the drama was written. The idea, I believe, was originated by Sarah Bernhardt. Miss Nethersole's Juliet was not highly esteemed. While she had moments of genuine power, her acting as a whole was uneven, besides being hurt by undue force and intensity. Her balcony scene was well done, but the scene in which Juliet learns of Tybalt's death and Romeo's banishment, and especially the potion scene, she almost 228 Famotcs Actresses^ of the Day, ruined by overacting. Dr. William J. Rolfe, the Shakespearian scholar, however, found much to commend in the impersonation, re- garding which he wrote to Miss Nethersole : ** One of the best features of your ren- dering of Juliet, as it seemed to me, was the clear distinction you made between the girl of sixteen (or fourteen, as Shakespeare makes her, and I think you might retain the old text in that matter) and the woman she becomes under the influence of love and sorrow. I am aware that some of the professional critics find fault with you for this, but I think they should rather give you special praise for it. For myself, I liked all the points in which your persona- tion of the Veronese heroine differed from the conventional JuHet on the stage. I believe that if in some respects it does not now please critical judges, it will gradually commend itself to the best of them, if not to all. I have no doubt that I should enjoy Otga Nethersole. 229 it more a second or third time than I did at first, though, as I have said, I liked it exen then." / ^I should be pleased to omit any refer- ence to *' Carmen," but the notoriety of the Nethersole kiss will hardly permit that. The adaptation of the novel that Miss Nethersole used, made a filthy play in which lust and animal passion were shown with disgusting frankness. Even if one ignored the vileness, he found but a cheap melo- drama, poorly constructed at that, and abounding in mock heroics, false platitudes, and cheap sentiment. The play lacked a vestige of the romanticism that idealised the opera, and made it a thing apart from the essential nastiness of the theme. Miss Nethersole's acting was a study in lascivious- ness, marvellously vivid and marvellously true to life. Indeed, therein was the chief cause for censure.7 -'^ Before "The Termagant," by Louis N. 230 Famous Actresses of the Day. Parker and Murray Carson, was produced, Miss Nethersole spoke thus of the work : " It is a dramatic poem, beautiful and simple, as dainty as a gossamer. There is one scene in the second act that I like the best. There the love story is told simply, very simply, and an old well is there by which the cavalier and his loved one stand. It is in the days of Ferdinand and Isabella, you know, and the characters are dressed in the exquisite costumes of the fifteenth century. As the lovers talk they take the old well into their secret, and make of it their confidant, and trust their story to its deep waters. There is another scene where she tries to poison him, and in the last act the threads are gathered up, and the char- acters hold a court of love, just as they did in those old romantic days." Miss Nethersole, however, misjudged the play sadly, for it proved a failure from the first. It was an extremely artificial affair, Olga Nethersole, 231 with hardly a character of blood and sinew, About all that could be praised were the beautiful scenery and the handsome cos- tumes. The Princess Beatrix, whom Miss Nethersole played, was a purely theatrical personage, without any genuinely human characteristic on which the actress could found a convincing conception, a motiveless character of annoying fickleness. "The Termagant,'* however, was valuable in so far as it defined Miss Nethersole's sphere as a player, ^t plainly showed that she could not act a part that was untrue to nature. Apparently she must approach her characters from within, and not until she feels that the emotions inspired by the action /r are honest can she convey those emotions. with any convincing sincerity. Her man- nerisms seem to result when she tries to impress on her audience a mental state that does not logically existA Lillian Lawrence, 233 the stock company whose rule it is to change its bill every week. She seems to have an infinite capacity for hard work, and she has also the intuitive dramatic sense, without which no player can succeed in this hurry- skurry and extremely arduous variety of theatrical effort. She has considerable ver- satility, though she has not in abundance the faculty of differentiation. She realises with ability two widely different characterisations, such as, for example, June in "Blue Jeans" and Ann Cruger in *< The Charity Ball ; '* but give her two similar characters, such as Ann Cruger and Helen Truman in **The Wife," and one finds that she fails thoroughly to individualise them. This is, of course, the severest of all tests of a player's art, re- sources, and versatility, and it is not a test that can be applied with absolute fairness to an actress, who, like Miss Lawrence, cannot devote any length of time to developing the fine points of a character. In acting, as in f 234 Famous Actresses, of the Day, painting, it is the little lines that make the portrait stand out as something apart from others of its kind, 'and it is also the little lines that require the deepest study and the most careful consideration. Primarily, Miss Lawrence is an emotional actress of the old school ; her expression of sorrow and of passion is accomplished, ^loT so much by suggestion, as by actual demon- stration. Her pathos in many characters is sincere and touching, and even when she fails to sound just the right note in the por- trayal of grief and pain, her fine quality of embodying in her roles those elements of womanliness and feminine charm, which are so evident in her work, gains even for her poorest parts sympathy and interest. One would not call Miss Lawrence a great emo- tional actress, but in the wide field, whose boundaries fall just short of the point where the heartrending passions pass from emotion into tragedy, she is ably competent, and in Lillian Lawrence. 235 her appeal to persons whose susceptibiUties have not been deadened by too much theatre- going she is extraordinarily powerful. In comedy Miss Lawrence has not the touch-and-go style that marks the born comedienne, but she has intelligence, which enables her to present, with commendable ease and more than ordinary success, parts that are not naturally in her line. As js often the case with actors, whose comedy is the result of study rather than of inspira- tion, Miss Lawrence is on the whole better in eccentric comedy r61es than she is in those only slightly set apart from every-day life. This seems strange at first thought, but in reality it is a logical consequence and just what one might naturally expect. Eccentric ^comedy, in most of its phases, is but a bur- lesgue on nature, and there is nothing in the theatrical line quite so easy as burlesque, especially when the burlesquer is assisted by a make-up that of itself wins the first "N 236 Famous Actresses of the Day. encounter, J^dththe-audience. vTrue comedy, on the other hand, approaches more nearly to nature than any other form of acting. The personages in that variety of the drama are like ordinary men and women, and they do things that the average human being might reasonably be expected to do under similar circumstances. They have experiences that the average audience understands, and the actor's expression of the emotions caused by these experiences must be lifelike and genuine to escape critical condemnation. There is no higher form of dramatic art than first-class comedy acting."^ Lillian Lawrence was born in Alexandria, Virginia, in the middle sixties. When she was two years old her parents moved to San Francisco, and there Miss Lawrence passed her girlhood. When she was in the gram- mar school, Charles E. Lacke, manager of Bush Street Theatre in San Francisco, chose her as one of thirty-two children to Lillian Lawretue, 237 take part in a living chess spectacle at his playhouse, and thus her theatrical career began, when she was thirteen years old, as the Queen's Knight in the chess game in the operetta, "The Royal Middy." Miss Law- , ; renc^'s parents were opposed to her going ^ Qnjthe stage, but when they perceived that her heart was set on it, they relented. She remained with " The Royal Middy " after it was transferred to the California Theatre, and for three seasons she sang in light opera at that house in the company of which Emily Melleville was the prima donna. Then Miss Lawrence's voice failed, and she took her first engagement as an actress in a stock >i| company in Oakland, California, where she remained for two years. At the end of that time she retired from the stage for two years, but resumed acting when she was twenty years old as a member of a small dramatic company that toured California. One of the characters Miss Lawrence played at this time 238 Famous Actresses of the Day, was Sister Genevieve in <^ The Two Or- phans." Next she was with the Cordway Stock Company, which appeared principally in San Diego, California, and Portland, Ore- gon, presenting each week a change of bill. Miss Lawrence did not come East until 1892. Three days after her arrival in New York she was engaged to play Marie Louise to Hortense Rhea's Josephine. She acted with a Dayton, Ohio, stock company during the next summer, and in the fall she joined the Kate Claxton company, appearing as Henrietta in *^The Two Orphans." She returned to the Dayton company for the following summer, and that winter saw her filling special engagements in New York in "Lady Gladys," at the Madison Square Theatre with Minnie Seligman, and in ** Mrs. Dascott," at the Fifth Avenue with Kath- erine Clemmons. After " Mrs. Dascott," which was a failure, Miss Lawrence was for a short time with **In Old Kentucky/' Lillian Lawrence. 239 and she finished the season in Carrie Tur- ner's company, which was giving ** The Crust of Society." That summer she was a mem- ber of the National Theatre Stock Company of Washington, and at the beginning of the regular season she came under the manage- ment of Charles Frohman, acting in <* Men and Women." She was reengaged for the National Theatre Stock Company the next summer, and the following season found her playing( Shakespearian rdles with Thomas , W. Keene. The season before she came to*^ \ the Castle Square Company of Boston she^ was with "The Bachelor's Baby" and "The Great Diamond Robbery^T in addition to a short engagement at the Girard Avenue Theatre in Philadelphia. During her stay of two years and a half at the Castle Square Theatre Miss Lawrence has appeared in over seventy-five different characters. A complete list of the r61es that she played at this house up to the 24(5 Famous Actress.es of the Day, beginning of the last summer season fol- lows : Helen Truman, "The Wife;'' Jo, "The Lottery of Love;" Lilian, "The Banker's Daughter ; " Rosa Leigh, " Rosedale ; " Mrs. Page, " Alabama ; " Esther Eccles, " Caste ; " Margaret Knowlton, " The Lost Paradise ; " Rose Mumpleford, " Confusion ; " Georgia Gwynne, " The New South;" Bella, "School;" Mabel Renfrew, " Pique ; " Bessie Barton, " Woman against Woman ; " Nina Ralston, " Jim the Penman ; " Minna, " Little Lord Fauntleroy;" Clairette Monteith, "A Fair Rebel;" Mrs. Horton, "Doctor Bill;" Trilby O'Farrall, "Trilby;" Ann Cruger, "The Charity Ball;" Cicily Blaine, "The Galley Slave;" Mary Brandon, "My Part- ner ; " Agnes Rodman, " Men and Women ; " Leila Caprices, " A Social Highwayman ; " Lady Noeline, "The Amazons;" Gertrude Ellin gham, " Shenandoah ; " Mrs. Seabrookes, "Captain Swift;" Margaret Marrable, "The Lillian Lawrence. 241 Fatal Card;'' Kitty Verdun, "Charley's Aunt ; " Rosa Dartle, " Little Em'ly ; " Val- entine de Mornay, "A Celebrated Case;" Hazel Kirke, " Hazel Kirke ; '' Kate Vernon, " In Mizzoura ; " Countess Zicka, " Diplo- macy ; " Princess Flavia, "The Prisoner of Zenda ; " Mary Melrose, " Our Boys ; " Flor- ence Winthrop, " Americans Abroad ; " Con- stance, " Young Mrs. Winthrop ; " Agatha Posket, " The Magistrate ; " Alice Greer, "The Ensign;" Dora, " Christopher Jr. ; " Rachel McCreery, "Held by the Enemy;'* Lady Isabel, " East Lynne ; " June, " Blue Jeans;" Elizabeth Linley, "Sheridan, or the Maid of Bath ; " Niobe, " Niobe ; " JuHe De Varion, " An Enemy to the King ; " Fifi Oritanski, "All the Comforts of Home;" Bess Marks, " The Lights o' London ; " Lydia Ransome, " A Southern Romance ; " Suzzanne, " A Scrap of Paper ; " Edith Gar- land, " Across the Potomac ; " Armande Chandoce, " Led Astray ; " Carrie, " The 24^ Famous Actresses of the Day, Guv'nor;" Marion Paoli, "Mr. Barnes of New York;" Marguerite Otto, "Friends;" Mrs. Bulford, "The Great Diamond Rob- bery ; " Sophie Hackett, " Brother John ; " Roxane, "Cyrano de Bergerac;" Mrs. Gil- bert Brandon, "The Solicitor;" Fanny Ten Eyck, " Divorce ; " Martha Custis, " Col. George of Mt. Vernon ; " May Blossom, "May Blossom;" Anne of Austria, "The Three Musketeers ; " Ilda Barosky, " Dark- est Russia ; " Fanny Hadden, " Captain Let- tarblair ; " Queena Montrose and Mile. Rene, "Queena;" Rose Woodmere, "The Prodi- gal Daughter;" Kate Kennion, "The Girl I Left Behind Me;" Lady Hardy, "The Idler ; " Alice Ainsley, " Cumberland, '6i ; " Ruth, " A Temperance Town ; " Bethel Grant, "Just a Day Dream." BLANCHE BATES CHAPTER XXII. BLANCHE BATES. Blanche Bates was the histrionic sensa- tion of last season, and by her phenomenal success in "TJie Great Ruby," when that ipelodrama was produced at Daly's Theatre on February 9, 1899, and a month later by her remarkable acting of Miladi in Sidney Grundy's version of *'The Three Musket- eers," which was produced in Montreal on March 6th, with James O'Neill as D'Arta- gnan, she arose from comparative obscurity to a position of prominence on the American stage. She was born in Portland, Oregon, in 1873, and was the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. F. M. Bates, widely popular as leading man and 243 ^244 Famous Actresses of the Day. woman on the Pacific Coast and in Australia. At the time of her birth her father was manager of the beautiful Oro Fino Theatre in Portland, and also leading man in the company. Three years later he left Port- land and went to San Francisco, where he lived the rest of his life. Miss Bates's parents did not intend that she should be an actress. She was educated in the same way as are thousands of girls whose existence is to be passed in the usual walks of life, and her going on the stage was purely accidental. An old friend of her mother, L. R. Stockwell, manager of jtock- welFs Theatre in San Francisco, now known as the Columbia, had a benefit, and to please him Miss Bates took a part in a one-act play by Brander Matthews, called " This Picture and That." This taste of life behind the footlights only whetted her appetite for more, and, after acting for a short time in T. Daniel Frawley's stock company in San Blanche Bates, 245 Francisco, she went to New York, where, on the recommendation of Mr. Frawley, who was also a member of the company, she was engaged by James Neill for the Giffen and Neill company. She was with that organisa- tion for about twenty-five weeks, receiving a salary of thirty-five dollars a week, and appearing in Denver, Salt Lake City, and Portland. Then Mr. Frawley bought out the interests of Giffen and Neill, and Miss Bates continued with him during his San Francisco run, being in May, 1895, advanced to the leading comedy r61es. Her first great success was Mrs. Hillary in " The Senator,*' a part that she acted with great vivacity, although she was handicapped by her youth, which prevented her from looking the character. She assumed the comedy leads in ^ the successful Daly plays, such as "The Last Word," "The Railroad of Love,*' " 7-20-8,'' " Nancy & Co.," "The Great Unknown," "The International 246 Famous Actresses of the Day, Match/' and " Transit of Leo/' and also ap- peared in " Sweet Lavender " and " Captain Swift/' Her first emotional part was Phyllis in " The Charity Ball/' and it was followed with leading rdles in " The Wife/' " In Spite of All/' **The Dancing Girl/' "An Enemy of the King/' and "A Doll's House/' Her Nora was a great triumph, and attracted wide attention, for "A Doll's House" was the first Ibsen play to be presented on the Pacific Coast. In January, 1898, Miss Bates came under August in Daly's management, and played Shakespearian characters in his company until the end of the season, when she was loaned to Mr. Frawley, with whom she starred throughout the West. She returned to Mr. Daly to create in this country the character of the Countess Mirtza in "The Great Ruby," her first heavy part. She appeared in the r61e but twice, and her unexpected withdrawal from the Daly company gave rise Blanche Bates, 247 to any amount of gossip. Her success with James O'Neill followed. During the early- part of last summer she was again with Mr. Frawley, this time appearing with his stock company in Washington. Regarding her work in "The Great Ruby/' Norman Hap- good wrote : " Blanche Bates, by moderate, clear, and vivid acting, made the countess thief a fascinating person. This actress will be watched with interest in her New York career." Franklyn Fyles said: "A new one, Blanche Bates, distinguished herself by marked cleverness in the r61e of an adven- turess. She is a handsome and accomplished actress." CHAPTER XXIIL ELSIE DEWOLFE. When Mrs. James Brown Potter became a professional actress, thus resigning the leadership in New York amateur theatricals, which she had held for many years, the per- son that quietly slipped into the position was Elsie Anderson DeWolfe. Miss DeWolfe's career as an amateur actress was unusual enough to be worth recording. Her first important appearance was in iSBS ^^ Charles Wyndham's Criterion Theatre in London, when she acted in Douglas Jerrold*s comedy, "The White Milliner.'* The performance was for the benefit of some church charity, and the Prince and Princess of Wales were 348 ELSIE DE WOLFE Elsie De Wolfe. 249 among those present. The play was repeated a littliFIater for the benefit of the wives of the soldiers killed in the Soudan. On her return home to New York from her London visit Miss DeWolfe acted at Mrs. Eggleston's residence in Washington Square, in a play- called "The Loan of a Lover." She then appeared at the University Club Theatre in a drama entitled "Fete de la St. Martin.'* Even in those days, when any idea of the professional stage would have seemed the height of absurdity. Miss DeWolfe was a diligent student of the art of acting, and conscientious to a surprising degree in the preparation of her characters. She was thoroughly at home on the stage, and she had repose, a most uncommon quality among amateur actors. In the spring of 1886 Miss DeWolfe made a great hit as Lady Clara Seymore in S. Theyre Smith's one-act play, "A Cup of Tea," which was given at the University 250 Famous Actresses of the Day, Club Theatre under the auspices of the Amateur Comedy Club. Her "fall" in this piece was a nine days' wonder in the fashion- able world. In the autumn of the same year she again played Lady Clara, this time at the opening of the Tuxedo Club Theatre. Next she appeared as Maud Ashley in a dull play called "Sunshine." This performance was given by the Amateur Comedy Club in the assembly-rooms of the Metropolitan Opera House. A few weeks later, during car- nival week at Tuxedo, Miss DeWolfe acted Lady Gwendoline Bloomfield in Sir Charles Young's "Drifted Apart" and Helen in the comedy scenes from Sheridan Knowles's drama, "The Hunchback." These plays were afterward repeated in New York. Lady Gwendoline was a type of the cold, heart- less woman of society. As the play pro- gressed. Lady Gwendoline's womanly nature was developed, and the r61e became one re- quiring considerable emotional power. Miss Elsie De Wolfe. 251 DeWolfe was very good in the early scenes, but naturally enough she was hardly equal to realising the full possibilities of the last half of the play. Her performance of Helen was much better, and the coquetry and archness of the character were displayed with fine effect. She acted Helen eight times that winter, and each time showed great improve- ment, with the result that as an amateur actress she was without an equal, and judged by the professional standard she ranked only a trifle beneath the general average. Miss DeWolfe' s connection with amateur theat- ricals continued until she became a pro- fessional actress in 1891, -and her most successful parts were Mrs. Prettifet in "The Mousetrap,'' Rosina Vokes*s famous char- acter in Mrs. Charles A. Doremus's bright comedietta, "The Circus Rider," Lady Teazle in Richard Brinsley Sheridan's "The School for Scandal," and the leading role in "Con- trasts," an adaptation by Miss Elizabeth Mar- 252 Famous Actresses of the Day. bury of "Je dine chez ma mere." In this last drama, which was one of the most elabo- rate amateur productions ever made in New York, Miss DeWolfe had the advantage of Mr. David Belasco's instruction. She had also during her visits abroad constantly studied under leading dramatic artists, among them Mile. Bartet, Herman Vezin, and Mile. Marie Laurent. Elsie DeWolfe was the daughter of the late Dr. Stephen DeWolfe, of New York, and was born in New York City on December 20, 1865. Her father died in 1890, and after his estate had been settled Miss DeWolfe found that she would be obliged to earn a /livelihood. Her tastes and her training led ^' her to choose the stage, and she succeeded in getting an engagement with Charles Frohman, under whose management she has remained most of the time since. Her pro- fessional d6but was made at Proctor's The- atre, New York, on October 5, 1891, in h>'> Elsie De Wolfe, 253 Victorien Sardou's " Thermidor," in which she assumed the leading emotional r61e, Fabienne Lecoulteur. She prepared herself with great care for the part, going abroad and studying it in French under the direc- tion of Sardou himself and with the aid of her former tutor, Mile. Bartet, who cre- ated the character at the stormy production of the play in Paris. Under Mile. Bartet' s coaching, Miss DeWolfe gained wonderfully in emotional power. When the play was produced in New York, however. Miss DeWolfe was not a success, though later she retrieved herself, and in Boston achieved a genuine triumph. She has always ascribed her New York failure largely to her igno- rance of the art of making-up. *' I looked a perfect fright on the first night,'' she said, " more like a circus clown than a woman, and even my own friends did not recognise me when I came on the stage." While working with Sardou Miss DeWolfe 254 Famous Actresses of the Day, bfecameji , great adm French drama- tist, regarding whom she said : ."To me he is Httle short of a demigod. / He seems to know everything. You hunt up a subject and go to him with it. He knows all, and more than you can tell him. His erudition is perfectly appalling, and yet he is so simple, and his life is so quiet and so beautiful. r " I attended all the rehearsals of * Thermi- dor* at the Comedie Frangaise,^' she con- tinued, "the first outsider ever accorded such a privilege, and from that time until I came back, to make my own debut, I literally sat in Sardou's pocket, that is, when I was not vibrating between him and Mile. Bartet. Yes, I was there in Sar- dou's box, the Saturday night the play was produced, and with a party of friends on that dreadful second night, when Lissagaray led the mob and flung things at Coquelin, and Sardou sat quietly in his box and smiled Elsie De Wolfe, 2$ J at the tumult. Was I frightened ? Indeed, and indeed, I was. I never expected to get out alive; I knew we should be stoned to death. " Sardou,*' Miss DeWolfe added, " is the . best hated man in France, and he loves it ! ^ He often says that, if the day comes that sees his countrymen own that he has pro- duced anything great, he shall know that he / has reached the end of his career.'' After her appearance in "Thermidor,'' Miss DeWolfe spent two seasons on the road, acting leading parts in "Joseph," "Judge," and "The Four -in-Hand." Returning to New York she played at the American Theatre in " Sister Mary," her character being Rose Reade. Then she was enrolled as a member of the Empire Theatre Com- pany of New York. She assumed with dis- tinction such parts as Lady Kate Ffennel in "The Bauble Shop," with the John Drew Company, Lady Charley Wishanger in " The 256 Famous Actresses of the Day, Masqueraders,'* Mrs. Wanklyn in "John-a- Dreams/* Mrs. Glib in " Christopher Jr./* Mrs. Mellin Dale in "A Man in Love," Leah da Costa in **A Woman's Reason," and Mrs. Dudley Chumleigh in "Marriage." Last season Miss DeWolfe was a promi- nent member of the famous cast that pre- sented Henri Lavedan's " Catherine " in this country. Her Helene was in some respects the most remarkable characterisation in the play. The r61e itself was one of much diffi- culty, combining as it did the fiercest passion and the refinement of a woman of gentle birth and social position. Miss DeWolfe revealed a depth of emotion heretofore un- suspected in her, and her appeal to men was tremendous. Her acting was realistic in the extreme, quiet and subdued, marvellously simple, yet marvellously complex in the motives suggested. Her audacious appeal to the man she loved thrilled one and set the nerves to tingling as if from an electric Elsie De Wolfe, 257 shock. A magnificent creature, this Helene, a woman to serve twice seven years for, even as Jacob served for Rachel ! Miss DeWolfe's future is surely one of roseate hue. Her talent is unquestionably great, and her position on the American stage is sufficiently advanced to give her abilities excellent scope. Moreover, she has, in addition to a thorough stage training, the ^reat advantage of having known society life ^t first hand. Intelligent, ambitious, and a hard worker; personally magnetic and physically attractive; her face constantly charming with its wealth of varying expres- sion, and her voice equally fascinating with its melody and delicate modulations, she should find in the modern realistic drama a field in which to prosper and to win artistic triumphs. CHAPTER XXIV. ROSE COGHLAN. Rose Coghlan is an actress whom the critics praise mightily, but whom the public, outside of New York City, where she has a large personal following, who bear in mind her triumphs with Lester Wallack, has not appreciated at her full worth. Indeed, the public really knows very little about her, and this notwithstanding the fact that she has won approbation time and time again, — nay more, has compelled admiration in roles with which no actress in the country, unless it be Agnes Booth, of whom, for some reason or other, she always reminds me, could have begun to make the impres- sion that Miss Coghlan did. f Miss Coghlan 258 Rose Coghlan, 259 has been neglected, because, while she has as an actress moved the public emotionally and intellectually, she has never succeeded in touching the public's heart with a sense of her personal charm, has never succeeded in winning the public's love, if I may express it in that way. Consequently, she has never created in the public mind a tremendous desire to see her on the stage regardless of the play in which she appears. Maude Adams and Julia Marlowe are the two per- sons that have inspired to the greatest degree just such personal idolatry, yet neither of them can approach Rose Coghlan in genuine tragic force ; neither of them, for instance, can portray as she can the woman who loves mightily, hates bitterly, and, like a wild beast at bay, fights to the last ditch. \But they have in superabundance that little gift of individuality, which means so much to the player, personal magnetism. Every actor must have an appreciable amount of this 26o Famous Actress-es of the Day, most desirable quality to succeed at all ; a few — and they are fortunate beings, born with silver spoons in their mouths — have far more than their share, and they prosper accordingly. Rose Coghlan, magnificent dramatic artist though she is, is surely lacking somewhat in personal magnetism. She has been acting prominent parts in conspicuous productions in this country continuously for over twenty years ; she has always shown a fine average ability, and some things she has done extraor- dinarily well ; she is a woman of superb stage presence, and she is at that age when she should be at the very height of her power in characters that call for the display of the deeper and the gloomier emotions. .-"Yet where do we find her.? Playing an adventuress in an unusually lurid and sen- sational melodrama, and even occasionally appearing in vaudeville. Do not misunder- l stand me. I am not blaming Miss Coghlan ; Rose Coghlan, 261 I am simply outlining a condition and trying to give an explanation. Miss Coghlan prob- ably hates being in melodrama very much more than we hate to see her there. If any one is to be blamed, it is the public that has failed to appreciate an artist. Or, better still, if you must blame some one or some- thing, and do not think it profitable nor wise to censure a public that, after all, only fol- lows its instincts, why, blame nature. At any rate she can't answer back ! Rose Coghlan was born in Peterborough, England, in 1853, and came from a promi- nent Irish family. Her father was Francis Coghlan, the founder of Coghlan's Continen- tal Dispatch, the publisher of Coghlan's Con- tinental Guides, and the friend of Charles Dickens, Charles Reade, and other literary men of his time. The first wife of Rose's brother Charles was an actress. She got Charles, who was a lawyer when he married, on the stage, and later she did the same 262 Famous Actresses, of the Day. thing for Rose. Rose made her professional debut in Greenwich, Scotland, as one of the witches in " Macbeth." Soon after she had a chance to play in London, and made quite a hit as Tilly Price in a dramatisation of Dickens's "Nicholas Nickleby,'' at the Court Theatre, where she was also successful in various boys' parts. Engagements with Adelaide Neilson and John L. Toole followed, and then in 1871 E. A. Sothern brought her to this country to appear in a dramatisation of Wilkie Collins's novel "The Woman in White." The management collapsed, and Miss Coghlan sought refuge with , Lydia Thompson's famous blonde burlesquers. She was then at Wallack's Theatre one season, and in 1873 returned to England, playing for a short time with Charles Mathews in " The Liar." Miss Coghlan's next venture was in the provinces, being engaged for utility roles by Mr. Loveday, of the Theatre Royal, Cheltenham. Genevieve Roberts was the Rose Coghlan. 263 leading lady of the company. She was a good actress, but a woman of fiery temper. During a ''Macbeth" rehearsal she quarrelled with Albert Sydney, the stage manager, and threw up her engagement. Miss Coghlan was rushed in at short notice to play Lady Mac- beth, and made such a hit that she was permanently engaged for leading business. How this promising engagement came to an abrupt termination is thus related by Miss Coghlan : '* The amount of hard work that I had to do was simply astonishing. I would come home at night, light my candle in the hall- way below, go to my room, and study over a part until I could no longer see. Then when my brain seemed to give out and every letter and character in the book seemed like tiny specks, a multitudinous number, I would set my teapot over the flame and drink the tea as warm or hot as I could get it. Then I would begin to work and worry over my 264 Famous Actresses of the Day, gowns, and so with studying, cutting, and fitting, it was often daylight before I was able to take a much needed rest. The work was extremely hard, and I often felt discouraged, and decided to give it up. " Eventually I did make a change, and I don't believe any one will blame me for it when they learn how it came about. Mr. Barry Sullivan was at that time playing in London, and negotiations had been going on for some time to have him appear with us at Cheltenham for a week's engagement. After Mr. Loveday completed the arrangements, a * call ' was posted for a week of Shakespeare. I had never seen any of these plays, and although I had what we term a quick mem- ory, I knew I would never be able to commit Shakespeare's lines on such a short notice. I sent for Mr. Loveday, and told him that it would be impossible for me to appear with Mr. Sullivan, and that he would have to get some one to take my place. He argued with • Rose Coghlan. 265 me until I consented to try. That night I did not go to bed at all, but, try as I would, I could not memorise the lines of Portia. My brain was tired out and I knew I must have a rest. But could I tell Mr. Loveday } And the company, when they heard of it, wouldn't they laugh at and make fun of me ? I will run away, I said, and so I did. ** Within a few miles of Cheltenham there was an old friend of my mother's, and fre- quently she begged me to visit her, but my work made this impossible. In my despair I decided to go to her, and hurriedly packing my trunk, I engaged a carriage, and before the sun sank in the west on that bright Sab- bath day I was enjoying all the comforts of home." Miss Coghlan did play Shakespeare with Barry Sullivan later, however, after she had finished out the season with Mr. John Hare. Besides other characters, with Sullivan she acted Viola in "Twelfth Night '* over two 266 Famous Actresses of the Day, * hundred times. She was in the cast that first played *' East Lynne " at St. James's Theatre, London, and after that was the Lady Manden in Herman Merivale*s great success, "All for Her," which ran for four hundred nights at the same theatre. In 1877 Miss Coghlan again became a member of Lester Wallack*s New York company, this time as leading lady. Her first r61e was Clarisse Harlowe in Dion Boucicault's stupid play of the same name. She remained with Wallack nine years, with the exception of a short engagement in San Francisco and another at Booth's Theatre, New York, in a Boucicault play called " The Rescue." Miss Coghlan made her most brilliant success at Wallack's as Stephanie in Merivale's " Forget-Me-Not," forestalling accidentally Genevieve Ward, who expected to introduce this play into this country. "You see," said Miss Coghlan, "there was a delightful misreading of Miss Ward's Rose Coghlan. 267 contract with the author, and, under a mis- conception, Mr. Merivale sold the New York rights to Theodore Morse, of Wallack's, so that when Genevieve Ward arrived at quar- antine to tour this country, she had the pleasure of reading, while detained there, the criticisms on my performance of the part that was her own, — I had played it the night before, and made the hit of my life. Of course she easily got an injunction, but I had played it ; great part, too, though an adventuress never gets the full sympathy of the audience, however clever she is." Miss Coghlan once remarked that of all the characters that she has ever assumed she likes best of all Rosalind in "As You Like It ; " next Peg Woffington, in which, by the way, she was very fine, and after that Stephanie. After " Forget-Me-Not *' had been ruled out at Wallack's, Miss Coghlan originated the leading role in ' u The upshot of it all was that a friend told -me that, though I had talent, he thought, yet I'd never get an engagement if I said I had had no experience. What I must do was to >^ pretend I had. Before long I was engaged to play Diamond in 'The Hoop of Gold,' a melodramatic creation of the cast-off-daugh- ter-of-an-obdurate-father style. This was at May Robson, 333 the Madison Square Theatre. The morning of the first rehearsal came. I had been told to watch the others, and do just as they did. My turn came. 'Take the stage,' said the stage manager, old Mr. Morse. If he had told me to take the sky, I'd have been as wise. I clutched the table behind me and piped up my lines in a thin little voice, and was horribly conscious that the others were guying me for my greenness. The stage manager walked over to me and said, ' How long have you been on the stage } ' I never had told a deliberate lie, and it choked me. I hemmed and hawed and said, * Let me see, let me see.' * Let me see,' said Mr. Morse, looking straight into my eyes, *I should say about fifteen minutes.' *Yes,' I said, glad it was out, and expecting my walking- ticket. But he helped me after the rehear- sal, and the next day I wasn't so very dreadful. '^ There was a small character part, the 334 Famous Actresses of the Day, slavey Tilly, in that same play that I asked to be allowed to do, having even then a fondness for dialect and odd specimens of humanity. On the opening night I made a hit, but it was as the slavey, not as Diamond, and thereafter I was billed to play that part, while ' Di ' was put on the bills as played by some faked name. And that's how I went on the stage, without malice prepense, sure enough.'* After "The Hoop of Gold " Miss Robson was engaged by Daniel Frohman for the Lyceum Theatre. Later she came under Charles Frohman's management, and has for many seasons been identified with the Empire Theatre Company. In her way Miss Robson is something of an inventor, and her third leg in "The Poet and the Puppets," and her amazing wig in "The Councillor's Wife," are readily recalled as examples of her ingenuity. The leg was first used, some six months before "The May Robson. 335 Poet and the Puppets '* was produced, in "The Shining Light," but it was perfected and made a feature in the later show. "I invented the leg," Miss Robson ex- plained, "because I couldn't dance, and because I had to dance in my part as a caf ^ chantant woman in ' A Shining Light/ I had either to dance or to admit that I wasn't up to the business. Of course I couldn't do the latter, so I had to devise some way to do the dance. One day I was walking down Broadway when I happened to see in a win- dow one of those artificial legs on which they display stockings. An idea struck me, and I hurried home to try it. I stuffed a stock- ing, put a shoe on it, and then stuck my husband's cane into it. I put an extra skirt around this leg and tried the effect before the looking glass. It was funny, very funny. I then went to a maker of artificial limbs and told him what I wanted. Of course I altered the mechanism some afterward, as I found 336 Famous Actresses of the Day, by experience where changes had to be made. The leg was attached by a socket to a loose belt which I could easily shift, so that in a moment I could have the extra member hanging in front, at either side, or behind. The mechanism was so arranged that all I had to do was to start the leg in a certain direction, and up it went the rest of the way itself. Now my idea about this whole busi- ness was that the three legs should not be shown. When I danced I stooped in such a way as to conceal my real right leg under my skirts, and then the artificial limb took its place. I only showed all three limbs when I was leaving the stage and wanted to give the joke away." The wig in " The Councillor's Wife " was also something of a dancing wonder. The /audience on the first night thought, when I the bangs made a dive for the old lady's V:^ose, that it was all a mistake. The old lady's discomfiture, they thought, was that May Robson, 337 of the actress in not being able to control her wig, and the house rang with laughter as she straightened her bangs and her cork- screw curls. When the old lady became extremely angry and the bangs shot far back on the head, revealing six inches of bald pate, the audience howled with glee, as they watched the actress gesticulating and repeating her lines with great fervour, apparently unaware that her hair was coming off. At another time the bangs went over the right eye, and then over the left, and the audience still thought it was all a mistake. "There was really nothing remarkable about that wig," was Miss Robson's com- ment, when asked to explain how it was /dolne. "The hair was controlled by wires /^which ran around the head. They met at the top of the knot of my own hair, which ', was coiled at the nape of the neck. At that , place one wire was attached, which passed "down my back and under my arm, coming 338 Famous Actresses of the Day, out of a buttonhole in front. It was by this wire and a few artful shakes of the head that the bangs were thrown about the head. They could not fall off, as the wires would allow them to go only a certain distance each way." Miss Robson, in private life, is Mrs. Augustus H. Brown, the wife of a New York physician, whom she married after she became an actress, and her home in that city is a model of comfort and elegance. She has been before the public about fifteen years now. As representative of her work may be mentioned, in addition to those char- acters already noticed, her appearances as Miss Ashford in "The Private Secretary," Artemise in * JUN 1 7 2001 12,000(11/95) m 74956 U.C. BERKELEY LIBRARIES CD3112flh31 919709 THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY