Part 25
[141] The list of parts played by Miss Rehan before she began the acquirement of her more famous repertoire cannot, and need not, be made complete here. Some of them were: Isabelle in _Wives_; Cherry Monogram in _The Way We Live_; Donna Antonina in _The Royal Middy_; Psyche in _Cinderella at School_; Muttra in _Xanina_; Selina in _Needles and Pins_; Phronie in _Dollars and Sense_; Thisbe in _Quits_; Tekla in _The Passing Regiment_; Tony and Jenny O’Jones in _Red Letter Nights_; Barbee in _Our English Friend_; Aphra in _The Wooden Spoon_; Floss in _Seven-Twenty-Eight_; Nancy Brusher in _Nancy and Company_, and Etna in _The Great Unknown_.
The more important parts played by Miss Rehan during her twenty years with Mr. Daly were: Baroness Vera in _The Last Word_; Tilburina in _The Critic_; Oriana in _The Inconstant_; Julia in _The Hunchback_; Lady Teazle in _The School for Scandal_; Miss Hayden in _The Relapse_; Pierrot; The Princess in _Love’s Labours Lost_; Valentine Osprey in _The Railroad of Love_; Mrs. Ford in _The Merry Wives of Windsor_; Peggy Thrift in _The Country Girl_; Odette in _Odette_; Rose in _The Prayer_; Annis Austin in _Love on Crutches_; Doris in _An International Match_; Thisbe in _A Night Off_; Dina in _A Priceless Paragon_; Mrs. Jassamine in _A Test Case_; Hippolyta in _She Would and She Would Not_; Helena in _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_; Katherine in _The Taming of the Shrew_; Rosalind in _As You Like It_; Viola in _Twelfth Night_; Beatrice in _Much Ado About Nothing_; Letitia Hardy in _The Belle’s Stratagem_; Sylvia (and Captain Pinch) in _The Recruiting Officer_; Xantippe in _La Femme de Socrate_; Kate Verity in _The Squire_.
[142] “Ada Rehan is of a superior race of women. She can be enormously interesting simply standing looking out of a window, her back to the audience, immobile, but with a ‘calmness’ that sends off vibrations that stir the pulses very curiously, and make her always the magnet, the center. She pauses, but it is the pause of a fine balance of strong feelings. She is all alive; she whirls round and comes into the action with a bold ringing stroke that has been adjudged to perfection. She can stride--not like a man, for she is always a fine woman--but like the daughter of Fingal, the sister of Ossian. She can bang a door like a chord of martial music. She can precipitate herself headlong into a room, and seizing her opponent or her lover, for she is equal to all occasions, at the critical wavering movement, sweep in with a wrestler’s power and lift him metaphorically helpless off his feet. Yet in all these displays Rehan is never violent in a narrow way, or streaky, or hard, or wiry.... The beauty of repose is delightful in her, the calm musing meditation, and the deep harmonious passion of devotion; so also is the quick salient swerve of emotion wherein the soul is suddenly shaken to its depths by love, by fear, by admiration ... we find life and flesh and blood throughout, and everywhere the fire of the soul that animates it.” Arthur Lynch, in _Human Documents_, London, 1896.
[143] “Playing Katherine brought me much satisfaction, but a very bad reputation for temper,” she once said. “I have often been amused at seeing the effect that a first performance of the ‘Shrew’ in a strange place produced on the employers of the stage. They shunned me as something actually to be feared. During a long run I have heard it said that I hated my Petruchio. I looked upon this as a compliment.”
[144] For an enlightening exposition of Miss Rehan’s acting in her various rôles see his _The Wallet of Time_, Vol. II.
[145] On a later visit of the Daly company to London, Mr. Archer chewed and swallowed these words, thus: “‘Crude and bouncing.’ Ye gods! this of the swan-like Valentine Osprey of _The Railroad of Love_ and the divine Katherine of _The Taming of the Shrew_! True, it is six years since these lines were written, and Miss Rehan’s art may--nay, must--have ripened in the interval. I try to persuade myself that I may not have been so far wrong after all, but it won’t do.... There must have been beauties in the performance of six years ago to which I was inexcusably blind.”
[146] In spite of Clement Scott’s praise: “Acting of this kind, so beneath the surface, so distinctly opposed to the commonplace, and so eloquent with finest touches of woman’s nature, we do not believe has been seen since the death of Aimée Desclée.”
[147] October 30, 1891.
[148] She began her first “starring” tour at the Hollis Street Theatre, Boston, (on September 24, 1894) where many interesting events have taken place. Here Julia Marlowe, six years before, had won her first really genuine recognition. The Hollis Street Theatre was first opened in 1885, and is still often referred to as the best-equipped theatre (on the stage) in the country. It was built in the site of the old Hollis Street Church, where John Pierpont, grandfather of John Pierpont Morgan, and Thomas Starr King preached. The walls of the church building of 1808 were incorporated in the theatre. The opening attraction was _The Mikado_. In the course of its run of twenty weeks Richard Mansfield appeared as Ko-Ko.
[149] Mary Anderson was the child of a devout Catholic mother, her brief period of schooling was in Catholic schools, her beloved Pater Anton was of course a strong influence for her adherence to that faith, and, throughout her public life and since, her devotion to her church has been constant and earnest. One of her friends (Henry Watterson) expressed the conviction that to her religion she owed much of the fortitude that carried her through the ordeals and failures of her career.
[150] “The convent was a large, Italian-looking building, surrounded by gardens and shut in by high, prison-like walls. That first night in the long dormitory, with its rows of white beds and their little occupants, some as sad as myself, my grief seemed more than I could bear. The moon made a track of light across the floor. A strain of soft music came in at the open window; it was only an accordion, played by someone sitting outside the convent wall; but how sweet and soothing it was! The simple little melody seemed to say: ‘See what a friend I can be! I am music sent from heaven to cheer and console. Love me, and I will soothe and calm your heart when it is sad, and double all your joys.’ It kept saying such sweet things to me that soon I fell asleep, and dreamed I was at home again. From that moment I felt music a panacea for all my childhood’s sorrows.”--Mary Anderson, _A Few Memories_.
[151] While a mere girl, Mary learned to ride a horse. Twice a year a visit was made to an Indiana farm. She learned to ride spirited horses without saddle or bridle. Riding was always her favorite amusement. Long afterwards, in London, a riding-master once said to her: “Why, Miss Handerson, you ’ave missed your vocation. What a hexcellent circus hactor you would ’ave made! I’d like to see the ’orse as could throw you now.”
[152] One who was present told William Winter “that notwithstanding the conditions inseparable from youth and inexperience, it was a performance of extraordinary fire, feeling and promise. Its paramount beauty, he said, was its vocalism. Miss Anderson’s voice, indeed, was always her predominant charm. Certain tones of it--so thrilling, so full of wild passion and inexpressible melancholy--went straight to the heart, and brought tears into the eyes.”--_Other Days._
Throughout her career all observers noted the richness and expressiveness of Mary Anderson’s voice, especially its thrilling lower tones. After she retired from the stage, indeed, she paid considerable attention to singing, and once sang in public, in a small way, for charity.
[153] Henry Watterson, the journalist of Louisville and one of Miss Anderson’s earliest friends and advisers, tells this story to indicate the self-reliance that was the cue to her success: “On one occasion, after a long discussion, the counselor whom she had sought, quite worn out with his failure to convince her, exclaimed with some irritation: ‘Don’t you know that I am double your age, and have gone over all this ground, and can’t be mistaken?’ ‘No,’ she coolly replied, ‘I don’t know anything I have not gone over myself.’ She considered everything that was relevant, consulted everybody who could give information, and decided for herself.”
[154] It was during this engagement, that the young actress played for the first time the character of Meg Merriles, thus, perhaps unwisely, challenging comparison with Charlotte Cushman, who had made the part peculiarly her own.
[155] It does Mary Anderson nothing but credit to point out that at the time she was first claiming the attention of the East she had not yet grown to be quite the Mary Anderson the world remembers. She was already beautiful, but she was as yet a comparatively friendless, inexperienced young girl, ignorant of much of the art of the theatre and with undeveloped taste in dress; yet self-confident and perhaps just a bit spoiled. The manager of the theatre at which she played her first engagement in New York (in November, 1877) long afterward remembered its details. On the opening night “there was about three hundred dollars in money and a good paper house. Never was a Pauline attired in such execrable taste. The ladies of the audience could not conceal their smiles; but in the cottage scene Miss Anderson’s fine voice and her beauty captured everybody. Other plays followed. As Parthenia she looked a picture in her simple costume, and her manner of saying ‘I go to cleanse the cup’ enchanted the audience. As Bianca in _Fazio_ she wore modern costumes, and but for her youthful beauty would have been absurd.
“On the first night, after the performance, I started home for supper, when it occurred to me that perhaps Miss Anderson would like something to eat after her hard work. So I called at Dr. Griffin’s rooms in West Twenty-eighth Street and found the future Queen of Tragedy eating a cold pork chop as she sat on a trunk. The whole party accepted my invitation and we went to the nearest restaurant. On our way we passed a candy store and Mary looked so longingly at the window that I asked whether she would like some candy. ‘Oh, yes!’ she cried, and jumped up and down on the pavement with pleasure. She selected a pound of molasses cream drops and commenced to eat them at once. The supper began with oysters on the half shell. To see Mary Anderson eat oysters and candy alternately was terrible; but a handsome girl may do anything unrebuked.
“The papers were very kind to Miss Anderson during her first engagement. She made a success of youth and loveliness; but the public did not rush in to see her.
“After a while, Henry Watterson, who had known her in Louisville, came to town and took an interest in her. He brought with him ex-Governor Tilden, who was taken behind the scenes to be introduced to the new star. He whispered to me, ‘What a remarkably handsome girl! No actress, but how very handsome!’”
[156] Her repertoire at this time (1879) was: Bianca in _Fazio_; Juliet in _Romeo and Juliet_; Lady Macbeth (the sleep-walking scene); Parthenia in _Ingomar_; Berthe in _The Daughter of Roland_; Julia in _The Hunchback_; Pauline in _The Lady of Lyons_; Meg Merriles in _Guy Mannering_; Evadne in _Evadne_; Duchess of Torrenucra in _Faint Heart Never Won Fair Lady_; Ion in _Ion_; soon afterwards she added the Countess in Knowles’ _Love_, Galatea in _Pygmalion and Galatea_, and Desdemona in _Othello_ (once only).
[157] Miss Anderson said that during this search she considered W. S. Gilbert’s _Brantingham Hall_, but, as the chief character was not adapted to her, she declined it. Gilbert amusingly asked her if this was because she found anything gross in it. “For,” he said, “I hear that you hate gross things so much that you can hardly be induced to take your share of the gross receipts.”
[158] On the occasion of the one hundred and fiftieth performance of _The Winter’s Tale_ at the Lyceum, Miss Anderson was presented with a large laurel wreath from which were suspended a number of streamers in blue and gold, and bearing the names--three hundred and ninety-two in number--of all the members of the company and staff of the theatre, even to the call boy. In the center of the wreath, and supported by chains, was a brass tablet with the inscriptions: “_En Souvenir_ of the One-hundred and Fiftieth performance of _The Winter’s Tale_, presented to Miss Mary Anderson by the members and employees, Lyceum Theatre, London, March 2, 1888,” and on the other side:
“‘The hostess of the meeting, pray you, bid the unknown friends to us welcome.... Come, quench your blushes, and present yourself that which you are, mistress o’ the feast.’...”
_The Winter’s Tale_, Act IV, Scene 4.
[159] _A Few Memories_--1896.
[160] It would be an impertinence to doubt the good faith of Mary Anderson’s own statement as to the immediate cause of her retirement in March, 1889. It is nevertheless interesting to observe that at the time, and later, the newspapers freely discussed circumstances which do not enter into her account. One theory was that adverse critical comment, which was found in many reviews of her acting, disturbed her seriously, and preyed more and more upon her mind until she lost faith in her own power, and underwent in consequence a somewhat severe nervous prostration. There was even a wide-spread report that she became mildly insane,--which was promptly discredited and which was of course merely a piece of sensationalism. Particular mention is made of one Louisville critic who, during Miss Anderson’s early years was one of her friends and advisers, but who, when she returned at the height of her career, sincerely believed her spoiled and a much less fine actress than she had given promise of becoming. He therefore wrote a frank and fearless analysis of her acting, in which he found much to dispraise. It is impossible to tell with accuracy how much truth there is in this story. Miss Anderson herself says that it was never her habit to read newspaper criticisms of her work, except that someone kept for her those that might prove helpful and that these were used as possible hints when she began work another season.
[161] William Winter.
[162] Duse furnished the only previous instance.
[163] At Little Rock, Arkansas.
[164] At different times, and as the exigencies of engagements permitted, in Montreal, New Orleans, Louisville, the Ursuline Convent in St. Louis, a French school in Cincinnati, and other private schools.
[165] “A person less given to reminiscence than Mrs. Fiske I cannot imagine. Upon revisiting in her professional tours the scenes of her childhood days one would naturally expect a great actress to remark, ‘Here is where I made my first appearance,’ or ‘Here I played the Widow Melnotte when I was only twelve’; but I do not recall that I ever heard Mrs. Fiske make the slightest allusion to persons or places, with one or two exceptions. She was appearing at Robinson’s Opera House, Cincinnati. As she entered the dressing room on the opening night she glanced about, and then at me, as if to determine whether or not it was safe to intrust me with the information. She then remarked that when a child she was brought into that room to see Mary Anderson in reference to playing some child character in one of Miss Anderson’s plays,--_Ingomar_, as she thought.”--Griffith, _Mrs. Fiske_.
[166] The parts she played in this childhood period included: Duke of York in _Richard III_; Willie Lee in _Hunted Down_; Prince Arthur in _King John_, and others of Shakespeare’s children; Damon’s son in _Damon and Pythias_; Little Fritz in _Fritz_; Paul in _The Octoroon_; Franko in _Guy Mannering_; Sybil in _The Sheep in Wolf’s Clothing_; Mary Morgan in _Ten Nights in a Barroom_; the child in _Across the Continent_; the boy in _Bosom Friends_; Alfred in _Divorce_; Lucy Fairweather in _The Streets of New York_; the gamin and Peachblossom in _Under the Gaslight_; Marjorie in _The Rough Diamond_; the child in _The Little Rebel_; Adrienne in _Monsieur Alphonse_; Georgie in _Frou-Frou_; Heinrich and Minna in _Rip van Winkle_; Eva in _Uncle Tom’s Cabin_; the child in _The Chicago Fire_; Hilda in _Karl and Hilda_; Ralph Rackstraw in _Pinafore_; Clip in _A Messenger from Javis Section_; the sun god in _The Ice Witch_; children and fairies in _Aladdin_, _The White Fawn_ and other spectacular pieces; François in _Richelieu_; and Louise in _The Two Orphans_.
[167] “The extraordinary thing about Mrs. Fiske’s early career is that she should have been even _permitted_ to play the range of characters that she did.... Frequently a young woman who is physically well developed easily passes for a much older person, and the eye is satisfied even if the ear be not, but little Minnie _was_ little, and held her audiences then by her genius, as she subsequently has continued to do.”--Griffith.
[168] It is of this period that Mildred Aldrich wrote, in her article on Mrs. Fiske in _Famous American Actors of To-day_: “It was twilight on a very cold day when I knocked at her room at Hotel Vendome. A clear voice bade me enter and in a moment I had forgotten my cold drive. It was a voice which I can never forget, and which even as I write of it comes to my ear with a strange delicious insistence. As the door closed behind me there rose from the depths of a large chair, and stood between me and the dim light from the window a slender, childish figure, in a close-fitting, dark gown. The fading light, the dark dress, threw into greater relief the pale face with its small features and deep eyes, above and around which, like a halo, was a wealth of curling red hair. I had been told that she was young; but I was not prepared for any such unique personality as hers, and I still remember the sensation of the surprise she was to me as a most delightful experience. This was not the conventional young actress to whom I have been accustomed; this slight, undeveloped figure, in its straight, girlish gown reaching only to the slender ankles. There was a pretty assumption of dignity; there was a constant cropping out in bearing, in speech, in humor and in gestures of delicious, inimitable, unconcealable youth which was most fetching and which had something so infinitely touching in it.
“I have never encountered a face more variable. At one moment I would think her beautiful. The next instant a quick turn of the head would give me a different view of the face and I would say to myself, ‘She is plain’; then she would speak, and that beautiful musical _mezzo_, so uncommon to American ears, and from which a Boston man once emotionally declared ‘feeling could be positively wrung, so over-saturated was it,’ would touch my heart and all else would be forgotten. Such was Minnie Maddern when I first met her on her eighteenth birthday.”
[169] This was not her first marriage. She had been married when she was about sixteen to LeGrand White, a musician and theatrical manager. They were divorced about two years before she married Mr. Fiske.
“For two years before her marriage [to Mr. Fiske] she had been continually worried with the theatre and her rest was a welcome one. She had many interests beside the stage, and loved to get away to a little cottage, at Larchmont, where she took an active part in all the doings, and where she was a familiar figure driving a little yellow cart madly over the roads, more often bare headed than not, and always with that wonderful red hair flying in the wind.”--Mildred Aldrich.
[170] The list of productions beginning with Mrs. Fiske’s return to the stage in 1893, and not including revivals, is as follows: _A Doll’s House_, and _Hester Crewe_ (by Mr. Fiske), 1893; _Frou-Frou_, 1894; _The Queen of Liars_ (_La Menteuse_) and _A White Pink_, 1895; _A Light from St. Agnes_ (by Mrs. Fiske) and _La Femme de Claude_, 1896; _Divorçons_ and _Tess of the D’Urbervilles_, 1897; _A Bit of Old Chelsea_ and _Love Finds a Way_ (_The Right to Happiness_) 1898; _Little Italy_, _Magda_, and _Becky Sharp_, 1899; _The Unwelcome Mrs. Hatch_ and _Miranda of the Balcony_, 1901; _Mary of Magdala_, 1902; _Hedda Gabler_, 1903; _Leah Kleschna_, 1904; _The Rose_, and _The Eyes of the Heart_ (one-act plays by Mrs. Fiske), 1905; _Dolce_, and _The New York Idea_, 1906; _Rosmersholm_, 1907; _Salvation Nell_, 1908; _Hannele_, _The Pillars of Society_, and _Mrs. Bumpstead-Leigh_, 1910; _The New Marriage_, 1911; _Lady Patricia_ and _The High Road_, 1912; _Lady Betty Martingale, or The Adventures of a Hussy_, 1914.
[171] H. T. Parker in the _Boston Transcript_.
[172] W. P. Eaton.
[173] H. T. Parker.
[174] In 1907 Mrs. Fiske took _The New York Idea_ on an unprecedented tour throughout the West. She played not only as far South as the Mexican border, and along the Pacific coast, but even went into the Canadian Northwest as far as Edmonton, appearing in many towns that had never before seen a theatrical company of the highest grade. And _The New York Idea_, a sophisticated comedy addressed to Eastern audiences, was successful everywhere. At Globe, Arizona, the audience contained hundreds who had come from long distances by train, stage or horse-back. Calgary demanded a return engagement. At Edmonton the play was given in a rink on an improvised stage, and lasted from eleven o’clock--the time of the arrival of the belated train--till two of the early northern dawn.
[175] “There never was a case of lame or scurvy dog that fell under Mrs. Fiske’s notice that did not get instant relief. A mangy and ownerless mongrel cur on the street never failed to find a friend in her. If she were in a carriage, no conveyance was too good for Towser or Tige. Towser or Tige might never have had a bath during all of his unhappy dog days, but into the carriage went the friend of man, and the coachman was directed to steer for the nearest veterinarian, who was forthwith subsidized to make a good dog out of a very much frazzled one, and send the bill to Mrs. Fiske. All over this glorious country dogs were being repaired, boarded, and rebuilt as good as new, when masters were adopted for them, and ‘the dog that Mrs. Fiske saved’ lived his allotted span and expired loved, honored, and respected. With horses, too, it was just the same. I believe if she were on the way to a matinée with the house all sold out, and an abused or otherwise pitiful case of horse attracted her attention,--and it _would_--she would sacrifice that matinée before she would the horse.”--Griffith.
[176] Mrs. Fiske at one time was fond of visiting the motion-picture theatres, heavily veiled and sitting in the back of the house. The better grade of foreign films interested her. And she has recently shown more broad-mindedness toward a growing art than some actresses much lower than she in the artistic scale; for she has herself recently acted _Tess_ and _Becky Sharp_ for the motion-picture camera.
“When attending another theatre, as she sometimes does on a Wednesday afternoon, she would like, if she could, to occupy an obscure balcony seat, or at the back downstairs; but if that is not feasible, and a box must be taken, she generally ensconces herself behind the drapery, in as inconspicuous a place as possible. There is absolutely nothing of the spectacular or ‘theatrical’ about Mrs. Fiske.”--Griffith.