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MODERN HEROINES SERIES EDITED BY WARREN DUNHAM FOSTER
HEROINES OF THE MODERN STAGE
MODERN HEROINES SERIES
EDITED BY WARREN DUNHAM FOSTER
_Now Ready_
HEROINES OF MODERN PROGRESS HEROINES OF MODERN RELIGION HEROINES OF THE MODERN STAGE
Each volume 12mo cloth
_Illustrated $1.50_
HEROINES OF THE MODERN STAGE
BY FORREST IZARD
_ILLUSTRATED_
New York STURGIS & WALTON COMPANY 1915
_All rights reserved_
COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY STURGIS & WALTON COMPANY
Set up and electrotyped. Published November, 1915
PREFACE
The following pages give some account of those actresses who stand out today as the most interesting to an English-speaking reader. The Continental actresses included are those who gained international reputations and belonged to the English and American stage almost as much as to their own.
All actresses have been modern, in a sense, for the acting of female rôles by women is distinctly a latter-day touch in that ancient institution, the theatre.[1] Thus a book on modern actresses might range from Elizabeth Barry to Mrs. Fiske. But while many volumes already exist that serve well to keep alive the names of the dead-and-gone heroines,[2] biographies of actresses whom we of today have seen, are, in general, insufficient or inaccessible. That is true even of such notable women as Sarah Bernhardt, Ada Rehan and Mrs. Fiske; while accounts in English of such Continental actresses as Duse and Réjane are altogether lacking. The author hopes that in these chapters he has done something toward making better known the careers of those actresses and of others who present themselves either in vivid recollection or in the light of present day achievement. The concluding chapter deals briefly with a number of American actresses of the present, who, although not rising in all cases to the eminence or popularity attained by those to whom separate chapters are given, yet have made some distinct contribution to our stage.
The author’s thanks are due to Mr. Edwin F. Edgett for the loan of material; to Mr. John Bouvé Clapp and to Mr. Robert Gould Shaw for the use of the originals from which some of the illustrations were made; and, for assistance of many kinds, to the editor of the series.
Boston, Massachusetts, October, 1915.
F. I.
CONTENTS
PAGE PREFACE v
CHAPTER I SARAH BERNHARDT 3
II HELENA MODJESKA 52
III ELLEN TERRY 93
IV GABRIELLE RÉJANE 126
V ELEONORA DUSE 171
VI ADA REHAN 203
VII MARY ANDERSON 230
VIII MRS. FISKE 265
IX JULIA MARLOWE 299
X MAUDE ADAMS 324
XI SOME AMERICAN ACTRESSES OF TODAY 347
APPENDIX 368
BIBLIOGRAPHY 377
INDEX 381
ILLUSTRATIONS
SARAH BERNHARDT _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE HELENA MODJESKA 52
ELLEN TERRY 92
GABRIELLE RÉJANE 126
ELEONORA DUSE 170
ADA REHAN 202
MARY ANDERSON 230
MRS. FISKE 264
JULIA MARLOWE 298
MAUDE ADAMS 324
HEROINES OF THE MODERN STAGE
SARAH BERNHARDT
“_Sarah-Bernhardt, Officier d’Académie, artiste dramatique, directrice du théâtre Sarah-Bernhardt, professeur au Conservatoire_;” so run the rapid phrases of the French “Who’s Who.” And, it might have added: “personality extraordinary, and woman of mystery.”
“The impetuous feminine hand that wields scepter, thyrsus, dagger, fan, sword, bauble, banner, sculptor’s chisel and horsewhip--it is overwhelming.” Thus the poet Rostand epitomized “the divine Sarah.” Her career, he said, gives one the vertigo--it is one of the marvels of the nineteenth century. And he might have added, of the twentieth, for Bernhardt, who began her stage career at the time of our Civil War, was only recently, at an amazing age, to be seen on the stage of London and Paris. There are many who think, with William Winter,[3] that she has been merely “an accomplished executant, an experienced, expert imitator, within somewhat narrow limits, of the operations of human passion and human suffering.” The fact remains, the woman has been a genius of work and achievement, “the Lady of Energy,” who has fairly earned the title of great actress. It is difficult to think of any woman the light of whose fame has carried to the ends of the earth in quite the same way. To be sure it has not always been from the lamp of pure genius. There have been self-advertising, scandal, extravagant eccentricity, to swell the general effect, but back of all this has been the worker.[4]
She was born in Paris, at 265 _Rue St. Honoré_, October 23, 1844.[5] Her blood is a mingling of French and Dutch-Jewish. Her real name is Rosine Bernard, and she was the eleventh of fourteen children. Of her father hardly anything can be learned. Sarah herself says that when she was still a mere baby he had gone to China, but why he went there she had no idea. Her mother was, by birth, a Dutch Jewess, by sympathy a Frenchwoman, by habit a cosmopolitan; “a wandering beauty of Israel,” forever traveling. As much because there was no home, therefore, as because the French have a custom of banishing infants from the household, Sarah spent her childhood in the care of a foster-mother, first in the Breton country, near Quimperlé (where she fell in the fireplace and was badly burned), then at Neuilly, near Paris. Her mother came seldom to see her, though there seems to have been affection, at least on the child’s side. It was a lonely childhood--made worse by the high-strung, sensitive nature that was Sarah’s from the beginning.[6]
When Sarah was seven she was sent away to boarding school at Auteuil, where she says she spent two comparatively happy years. Her mysterious father then sent orders that she was to be transferred to a convent. “The idea that I was to be ordered about without any regard to my own wishes or inclinations put me into an indescribable rage. I rolled about on the ground, uttering the most heartrending cries. I yelled out all kinds of reproaches, blaming mamma, my aunts, and Mme. Fressard for not finding some way to keep me with her. The struggle lasted two hours, and while I was being dressed I escaped twice into the garden and attempted to climb the trees and throw myself into the pond, in which there was more mud than water. Finally, when I was completely exhausted and subdued, I was taken off sobbing in my aunt’s carriage.”[7]
At the Augustinian convent at Grandchamp, Versailles, she was baptized and confirmed a Christian. She became extravagantly pious and conceived a passionate adoration of the Virgin. Nevertheless, she was fractious and was more than once expelled.[8]
When she left the convent Sarah was a capricious, sensitive, religious girl, who must indeed have constituted a problem for her mother. Sarah, strangely enough, was herself strongly inclined to be a nun. But her mother, who was a woman of the world and of means, had other plans and provided as “finishing governess” for Sarah a Mlle. de Brabander. One day, when she was fifteen, her fate was decided for her. At a family council her own ambition to be a nun was voted down and the decision was: “Send her to the _Conservatoire_.” Sarah had never even heard of the famous school for actors of the government theatres. That same evening she was taken to the theatre for the first time--the _Théâtre Français_. _Brittanicus_ and _Amphitrion_ moved her profoundly, and she left the theatre weeping, as much for the sudden shattering of her cherished plan as from the effects of the plays.
Thus she began her studies at the _Conservatoire_ (1860) with no love for the career chosen for her.[9] She was no beauty;--she was decidedly thin, had kinky hair, and a pale face. But she worked hard. Her extraordinary nervous energy and her intelligence had their effect and when she left the _Conservatoire_ she had won two second prizes.[10] The discernment of some of the judges[11] saw in her something of the artist she was to be, and she immediately had a call to the company of the _Comédie Française_. With the signing of her contract came her resolve, that if the stage were to be her working place, she would throw herself into her task with all her soul. “_Quand-même_,”--in spite of all,--was already her motto,--she would, in the face of any obstacle, win a place for herself.[12]
Though with wonderful success she has been busily pursuing that object from that day to this, the beginnings of her career were not promising. Her début (1862) in Racine’s _Iphigénie_ created no particular comment. She remembers, however, that on that occasion, when she lifted her long and extraordinarily thin arms, for the sacrifice, the audience laughed.[13] Other parts fell to her, but she did not long remain at the House of Molière. As other managers were later to learn, Sarah cared little for agreements and contracts.
The occasion of her first desertion of the _Comédie_ was trivial enough. Here at the great national theatre she expected to remain always, but one day her sister trod on the gown of Mme. Nathalie, another actress of the company, “old, spiteful and surly,” who in petty anger shoved the girl aside. Sarah promptly responded by boxing the ears of her elder colleague. Neither would apologize, and the quickly achieved result was that the younger actress retired.
She remained away from the _Comédie Française_ for ten years, and it was during this time that she laid the foundation of her fame. Brief engagements at the _Gymnase_[14] and the _Porte St. Martin_ were followed by an opportunity to join the company at the _Odéon_. MM. Chilly and Duquesnel were the managers. The latter was young, kind to Sarah, and discerning of her talents. As for Chilly, he was less enthusiastic: “M. Duquesnel is responsible for you. I should not upon any account have engaged you.”
“And if you had been alone, monsieur,” she answered, “I should not have signed, so we are quits.”
Mlle. Bernhardt’s career--once she had launched herself upon it--divides naturally into three periods: the six years (1866–1872) at the _Odéon_, the playhouse of the Latin Quarter, “the theatre,” she says, “that I have loved most”; another term (1872–1880) at the _Française_; and her long career since, during which she has been her own mistress, accepting engagements where it pleased her, managing theatres of her own, and traveling over all the world.
Her first taste of success came when she played Zacharie in _Athalie_, soon after she went to the _Odéon_. It fell to her to recite the choruses, and the “_voix d’or_” won its first triumph. She was now twenty-two. For four years, with plentiful interludes of temper and temperament, she had been striving for success. Now, at the _Odéon_, she worked and worked hard. “I was always ready to take any one’s place at a moment’s notice, for I knew all the rôles.” Chilly, who at first could see only her thinness[15] and not her ability, was brought round to Duquesnel’s view of her. “I used to think,” she says again, “of my few months at the _Comédie Française_. The little world I had known there had been stiff, scandal-mongering, and jealous. At the _Odéon_ I was very happy. We thought of nothing but putting on plays, and we rehearsed morning, afternoon, and at all hours, and I liked that very much.”[16]
At the _Odéon_ Sarah soon became the favorite of the students of the _Quartier_. Rather to the disgust of the older patrons of the house, the students were indiscriminate in their appreciation of the young actress, and applauded her indifferent work equally with her successes.
For successes she now began to have. With difficulty M. Chilly was induced to consent to the production of Coppée’s one-act play _Le Passant_. But so successful was it that it not only ran for a hundred nights, but Bernhardt and the beautiful Mlle. Agar played it for Napoleon and Eugénie at the Tuileries. In _Kean_, by Dumas, she was, by all accounts, admirable.[17]
George Sand came to the _Odéon_ for the rehearsals of her play _L’Autre_. Of her Bernhardt says: “Mme. George Sand was a sweet charming creature, extremely timid. She did not talk much but smoked all the time.”
In the midst of her term at the _Odéon_ came an astonishing episode in Bernhardt’s career--her activities during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71. The theatres were of course closed, but it was not in her nature to sit still and do nothing. Therefore she sent her young son[18] out of the city, and in the fall of 1870, after her own severe illness, proceeded to establish an army hospital in the foyers of the _Odéon_, with herself as its working head. With an executive ability and a zeal characteristic but none the less remarkable, she not only organized its commissariat, and kept all the records and accounts, but herself acted as one of the nurses. The section of her autobiography that deals with the siege of Paris and with her journey through the enemy’s country to Hombourg and back that she might bring home her family, will afford some future historian a graphic impression of one of the saddest days in the history of Paris.
When the _Odéon_ reopened, in the fall of 1871, Sarcey, the great critic, said of Sarah, who played (in _Jean-Marie_) a young Breton girl: “No one could be more innocently poetic than this young lady. She will become a great _comédienne_, and she is already an admirable artist. Everything she does has a special savor of its own. It is impossible to say whether she is pretty. She is thin, and her expression is sad, but she has queenly grace, charm, and the inexpressible _je ne sais quoi_. She is an artist by nature, and an incomparable one. There is no one like her at the _Comédie Française_.”
At the end of 1871 Victor Hugo, who had been practically an exile during the Empire, came back to France. His return, as it proved, meant another turning point in Sarah’s life, for when the _Odéon_ decided to produce his _Ruy Blas_, she was selected, after a good deal of bickering, as the Queen. Hugo she found, despite her strong previous prejudice against him, “charming, so witty and refined, and so gallant.”[19]
The play was produced on January 26, 1872. That night, in Bernhardt’s own words, “rent asunder the thin veil which still made my future hazy, and I felt that I was destined for celebrity. Until that day I had remained the students’ little Fairy. I became then the elect of the Public.” Hugo himself, on his knee, kissed her hands and thanked her. M. Sarcey, who from the beginning was Bernhardt’s staunchest admirer among the critics, praised her warmly: “No rôle was ever better adapted to Mlle. Bernhardt’s talents. She possesses the gift of resigned and patient dignity. Her diction is so wonderfully clear and distinct that not a syllable is missed.”
The _Comédie Française_ now made overtures for her return to its fold. Bernhardt at once accepted, which was wretchedly unfair to the _Odéon_, for she owed much to Duquesnel. When in 1866 he persuaded Chilly to take her on, she was comparatively unknown; now, in 1872, she was rapidly becoming the talk of Paris. Her contract with the _Odéon_ had yet a year to run, but Sarah demanded, as the condition of her remaining, an advance in the stipulated salary.[20] Chilly indignantly refused; so Mlle. Bernhardt hurried away to the _Comédie_ and forthwith signed her new contract. The _Odéon_ brought an action against her and she had to pay a forfeit of six thousand francs.
This sudden change of scene is but one instance of the directness, not to say unscrupulousness, of Bernhardt’s methods in advancing herself. “_Quand-même_” it was to be, at any cost. If she had merely followed her inclinations, however, she would probably have remained at the _Odéon_, for she has often protested the attraction for her of the scene of her first triumphs. The _Comédie_, on the other hand, had never this appeal to her. As is easily understood, her imperiousness and willfulness made her feel less at home at the more staid _Comédie_. The other members of her company, with a few exceptions, were unfriendly and jealous. Moreover she made almost a failure in her début (in _Mlle. de Belle-Isle_), but this was due not to stage-fright, as Sarcey guessed, but to her anxiety on seeing her mother, suddenly taken ill, leave the theatre. Sarcey loyally championed her early efforts, though he was often keenly critical also: “I fear,” he wrote (apropos of _Dalila_), “that the management has made a mistake in already giving Mlle. Sarah Bernhardt leading parts. I do not know whether she will ever be able to fill them, but she certainly cannot do so at present. She is wanting in power and breadth of conception. She impersonates soft and gentle characters admirably, but her failings become manifest when the whole burden of the piece rests on her fair shoulders.” Other critics, particularly Paul de Saint-Victor, were consistently hostile. She had in the company envious rivals who inspired attacks on her, and she clashed frequently with M. Perrin, the director of the theatre. With that indomitable persistence that is her finest trait, however, she kept right on, and won her way to genuine achievement. As Aricie in _Phèdre_ she made a secondary part notable. Thus Sarcey: “There can be no doubt about it now. All the opposition to Mlle. Bernhardt must yield to facts. She simply delighted the public. The beautiful verses allotted to Aricie were never better delivered. Her voice is genuine music. There was a continuous thrill of pleasure among the entire audience.”
That she had thoroughly arrived was soon to be proved and re-proved. Zaïre[21] was followed by Phèdre herself, Berthe in _La Fille de Roland_, Doña Sol in _Hernani_, Monime in _Mithridate_, and revivals of _Ruy Blas_ and _Le Sphinx_, each a personal triumph for the actress who was so rapidly filling the eye of Paris.[22]
For Sarah Bernhardt had by now succeeded in making herself, if not a universally acknowledged artist, at least a real Parisian celebrity. It was not a reputation confined to the actress _per se_. Designedly or not, Sarah set the tongues of Paris (and shortly of all Europe) wagging by a continuous exhibition of eccentricity that amounts to a tradition. To mention only what seem to be well authenticated manifestations of her caprice: She kept a pearwood coffin at the foot of her bed, slept in it and learned her parts in it. It is to be the veritable coffin of her last resting place.[23] She kept as a further reminder of her mortality a complete human skeleton in her bedroom. Years before she had a tortoise as a household pet. She named it Chrysogère and had a shell of gold, set with topazes, fitted to its back. Now she was keeping two Russian greyhounds, a poodle, a bulldog, a terrier, a leveret, a monkey, three cats, a parrot, and several other birds. Later she had lions, and an alligator! She made ascents in a captive balloon at the Exhibition and once in a balloon that was _not_ captive.[24] Perrin was outraged by this caprice and tried to fine her for “traveling without leave.” She wrote for the newspapers. She scorned the fashions. She dabbled in painting and sculpture, and, particularly with her chisel, her efforts were, if not noteworthy, at least respectable. Indeed, a group sculpture won an honorable mention in the Salon of 1876, though there were plenty to deny that it was really her work. Her studiolike apartment was the rendezvous of all artistic Paris.
In 1879 her poetic, restrained, and generally admirable impersonation of Doña Sol in _Hernani_ brought her general homage. On the night of the one-hundredth performance Victor Hugo presided at a banquet in her honor, and M. Sarcey, in behalf of her “many admiring friends,” presented to her a necklace of diamonds.
When it was proposed, in 1879, that the _Comédie Française_ company go to London, Sarah refused to go along unless she be made Associate “_à parte entière_.”[25] Her proposal was rejected, and at a meeting of the Committee M. Got represented the feeling that prevailed among the directors of the theatre by crying: “Well, let her stay away! She is a regular nuisance!” Sarah finally gave in, however, and in reward was made “_Sociétaire à parte entière_.”[26]
On the first evening at the Gaiety, Bernhardt was to make her bow to England in the second act of _Phèdre_. Just before she went on she had one of her occasional bad attacks of stage fright, and could not remember her lines. “When I began my part,” she wrote, “as I had lost my self-possession, I started on rather too high a note, and when once in full swing I could not get lower again; I simply could not stop. I suffered, I wept, I implored, I cried out, and it was all real. My suffering was horrible.” _The Telegraph_ next morning said: “Clearly Mlle. Sarah Bernhardt exerted every nerve and fiber and her passion grew with the excitement of the spectators, for when after a recall that could not be resisted the curtain drew up, Mr. Mounet-Sully was seen supporting the exhausted figure of the actress, who had won her triumph only after tremendous physical exertion, and triumph it was, however short and sudden.”
An American writer--probably Henry James--said at this time in the _Nation_: “It would require some ingenuity to give an idea of the intensity, the ecstasy, the insanity, as some people would say, of curiosity and enthusiasm provoked by Mlle. Bernhardt.... She is not, to my sense, a celebrity because she is an artist. She is a celebrity because, apparently, she desires, with an intensity that has rarely been equaled, to be one, and because all ends are alike to her.... She has compassed her ends with a completeness which makes of her a sort of fantastically impertinent _victrix_ poised upon a perfect pyramid of ruins--the ruins of a hundred British prejudices and proprieties.... The trade of a celebrity, pure and simple, had been invented, I think, before she came to London; if it had not been, it is certain that she would have discovered it. She has in a supreme degree what the French call the _génie de la réclame_--the advertising genius; she may, indeed, be called the muse of the newspaper.”