Chapter 12

The army of occupation withdrawn from France. King Frederick William III of Prussia, at the instigation of Metternich and the Russian Czar Alexander, having become an implacable opponent of liberalism and popular education, began to suppress schools and colleges. General discontent in Spain, and several abortive uprisings occurred against Ferdinand VII, whose misgovernment had left an empty treasury and an unpaid army. Andrew Jackson invaded Florida, and Congress refused to rebuke him; negotiations with Spain for the purchase of Florida. Illinois admitted to the Union, and the contest over the admission of Missouri commenced in Congress. Pensions granted to needy Revolutionary soldiers, and to the widows and children of Revolutionary soldiers--the beginning of the pension system. The number of stripes in the United States flag reduced to thirteen, the number of stars to be equal to the total number of States in the Union.

Polar expeditions sent out both from America and from England. In the latter country, Abraham Thornton, accused of murder, claimed the right to prove his innocence by meeting his accuser in battle; under an ancient statute this was possible, and as Thornton's accuser declined the proposed combat, the prisoner was set free. The obsolete law was thereupon repealed. Patent leather and strychnia discovered. Steam first used for heating purposes.

Independence of Chile finally declared, after eight years of fighting, on February 12.

=RULERS--The same as in the previous year, except that Charles XIV (formerly Marshal Bernadotte) succeeded Charles XIII as King of Sweden and Norway.=

1819

Most of the Cherokee Indians removed from Georgia to lands west of the Mississippi. Congress agitated by the Missouri discussion; bill to prohibit slavery in the territory of the Louisiana Purchase north of the parallel of thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes, excepting in Missouri, introduced, and passed the following year. Opposition to slavery increased in the Northern States. Yellow fever in New York. Alabama admitted to the Union. Würtemberg abolished serfdom. August Kotzebue, German playwright and leader of the opposition to liberal ideas and education, assassinated by Sand, a Jena student; severe measures of repression, under the influence of Metternich, the great Austrian minister, followed. Throughout the German States censorship of the press was established, wholesale arrests of liberals occurred, student societies were forbidden, and ninety-four students were executed for wearing black, red, and yellow ribbons, the emblems of liberalism.

Richard Carlisle, of London, arrested for reprinting Paine's "Age of Reason." Velocipedes, hobby-horses, and other forerunners of the bicycle became popular. Oersted, of Copenhagen, made important discoveries in electromagnetism.

Queen Victoria born; James Watt, Scottish inventor; General Blücher, Prussian soldier; and Warren Hastings, first governor-general of India, died.

=RULERS--The same as in the previous year.=

1820

Riego's revolt in Spain failed, but was followed by other movements in favor of liberalism. In Madrid, the prison of the Inquisition was stormed, and the political prisoners it contained set at liberty. King Ferdinand was forced to convoke the Cortes and agree to restore the comparatively liberal constitution of 1812. Divorce suit of George IV of England before the House of Lords; when the prosecutor had just started his opening address, the peers rose suddenly and rushed out in a body to witness an eclipse of the sun; the suit failed. Sir Walter Scott was the first baronet created by George IV.

The Duc de Berry, heir presumptive to the French throne, assassinated by Louvel, February 13. The Carbonari, or charcoal burners, forced Ferdinand I, King of Naples, to grant a constitution, which he swore to uphold, but almost immediately repudiated. The people of Portugal also rebelled and obtained a constitution. Russia sold to Spain a fleet of fighting vessels, which proved later to consist of rotting hulks.

In the United States, the Missouri Compromise Bill was passed and signed by Monroe, who was reelected to a second term in the Presidency. Maine was admitted as a State, and Spain agreed to cede her title to Florida for the sum of five million dollars.

Hydropathy introduced by Priessnitz. Ampère discovered the galvanometer. Caffeine separated by Oudry, and quinin by Pelletier and Caventou.

George III, King of England; Benjamin West, American artist; Henry Grattan, Irish statesman; and Arthur Young, political economist, died.

=POPULATION.--Washington, D.C., 13,247; New York, 123,706; London (Metropolitan District), 1,225,694; United States, 9,638,453; Great Britain and Ireland (1821), 22,566,755.=

=RULERS--United States, James Monroe; Great Britain, George III, died January 29, George IV succeeded; France, Louis XVIII; Spain, Ferdinand VII; Prussia, Frederick William III; Russia, Alexander I; Austria, Francis I; Pope Pius VII.=

The reason why so few marriages are happy is because young ladies spend their time in making nets, not in making cages.--=Jonathan Swift.=

POE AND LONGFELLOW

ON THEIR LOST LOVES.

Though the love of man for woman has been one of the most fruitful sources of inspiration to the poets, verses in which famous authors have sung the praises of women who have become their wives are comparatively rare. The belief is common that the natures of poets are more sensitive than those of other persons. If this is true, it is only reasonable to infer that a poet possesses the power of giving more forceful expression to his sense of bereavement than any other person would be capable of doing.

In the case of Poe, the poem "Annabel Lee," written shortly after the death of his beautiful young wife, is said to have been inspired by the writer's loss. Mrs. Poe, Virginia Clemm, a first cousin of the poet, became his wife before she was fifteen years old. Her wedded life was one of sorrow and hardship, and eleven years later she died of consumption.

The wife of Longfellow died in 1861. Shortly afterward the poem "Via Solitaria" was written. It was not intended for publication, and during Longfellow's lifetime it was not included in any collection of his poems, for the reason that its author regarded it as being too distinctively personal for the public eye.

ANNABEL LEE.

BY EDGAR ALLAN POE.

It was many and many a year ago In a kingdom by the sea That a maiden there lived whom you may know By the name of Annabel Lee, And this maiden she lived with no other thought Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child, In this kingdom by the sea, But we loved with a love that was more than love, I and my Annabel Lee; With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago, In this kingdom by the sea, A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling My beautiful Annabel Lee, So that her high-born kinsman came And bore her away from me To shut her up in a sepulcher In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in heaven, Went envying her and me. Yes, that was the reason (as all men know), In this kingdom by the sea, That the wind came out of the cloud by night Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love Of those who were older than we, Of many far wiser than we, And neither the angels in heaven above Nor the demons down under the sea Can ever dissever my soul from the soul Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams Of the beautiful Annabel Lee, And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes Of the beautiful Annabel Lee. And so all the nighttide I lie down by the side Of my darling, my darling, my life and my bride, In her sepulcher there by the sea, In her tomb by the sounding sea.

VIA SOLITARIA.

BY HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.

Alone, I walked the peopled city, Where each seems happy with his own; Oh! friends, I ask not for your pity-- I walk alone.

No more for me yon lake rejoices, Though moved by loving airs of June. Oh! birds, your sweet and piping voices Are out of tune.

In vain for me the elm tree arches Its plumes in many a feathery spray, In vain the evening's starry marches And sunlit day.

In vain your beauty, Summer flowers; Ye cannot greet these cordial eyes; They gaze on other fields than ours-- On other skies.

The gold is rifled from the coffer, The blade is stolen from the sheath; Life has but one more boon to offer, And that is--Death.

Yet well I know the voice of Duty, And, therefore, life and health must crave, Though she who gave the world its beauty Is in her grave.

I live, O lost one! for the living Who drew their earliest life from thee, And wait, until with glad thanksgiving I shall be free.

For life to me is as a station Wherein apart a traveler stands-- One absent long from home and nation, In other lands;

And I, as he who stands and listens, Amid the twilight's chill and gloom, To hear, approaching in the distance, The train for home.

For death shall bring another mating, Beyond the shadows of the tomb, On yonder shore a bride is waiting Until I come.

In yonder field are children playing, And there--oh, vision of delight!-- I see the child and mother straying In robes of white.

Thou, then, the longing heart that breakest, Stealing the treasures one by one, I'll call Thee blessed when Thou makest The parted--one.

The Beginnings of Stage Careers.

By MATTHEW WHITE, Jr.

A Series of Papers That Will Be Continued from Month to Month and Will Include All Players of Note.

BLANCHE BATES BALKED.

As a School Marm She Got Behind Footlights to Dodge Promotion from Kindergarten to Primary Grade.

I knew that Blanche Bates came of a theatrical family, and that, therefore, she had an open sesame to the stage, but I did not know just when she made her first appearance, and to learn this for THE SCRAP BOOK I sought her out in the brief interval of rest she has, without a costume change, between the first and second acts of "The Girl of the Golden West."

"How did I make my start?" she repeated in answer to my question. "Well, I rather think it was because I balked at the idea of being known as a 'school marm.' I'll tell you about it. Although both my father and mother were on the stage, I didn't care for the life in the least. In fact, in my small young mind, I set up to being a very grand lady.

"'An actress? No, indeed,' I told myself. 'Something much better than that for me.' I was interested in young children and became a kindergarten teacher in San Francisco, where my mother was playing with L.R. Stockwell. But it was my very success with the youngsters that brought about the close of my career as a teacher. If I could do so well in the kindergarten, the committee argued, I was worth promoting, so one day they came to me with the announcement that I had been advanced to the charge of a grade in the primary department.

To Teach or Not to Teach.

"I suppose I should have felt duly honored, but I didn't. I sat down and began to look ahead, through the vista of years to come. A teacher, a schoolmistress! That somehow didn't agree with the ideas of the grand lady my fancy had conjured up. And, at that psychological moment mother came home with a proposition from Mr. Stockwell.

"It seemed that they were to give him a benefit, and he suggested to her, by way of novelty in the bill, that I should appear in a one-act play. Coming as it did just as I was wavering in my mind about my prospects in the teaching business, the idea caught me, and I said: 'Yes, I'd like to do it.'

"The play was 'The Picture,' by Brander Matthews, and I was the only woman in it, with the gamut of all the passions to run in the portrayal of the part. But I was too young and inexperienced to be frightened at the notion. I went on, and got through, and with the smell of the footlights possessing me I became thoroughly set upon a New York appearance."

After her experience with the Stockwell forces, Miss Bates secured an opening with the Frawley stock as utility woman at twenty dollars a week, which led to the realization of her hopes in the way of a chance on Broadway. And this came in the shape of an engagement with no less famous a company than Augustin Daly's. She made her début in February, 1899, but lasted only two nights.

Too Good for Daly's.

"The resignation of Blanche Bates from Augustin Daly's theatrical company will give a good many persons the chance to say 'I told you so,' the dramatic critic of the New York _Sun_ observed at the time. "A short career for Miss Bates on that stage was predicted on the opening night of 'The Great Ruby; or, The Kiss of Blood.'

"She was called before the curtain four times after her best scene, and the applause was enthusiastic and genuine. That would have been enough to base the belief on. But there was a second and bigger reason, said the prophets, why her stay would be brief.

"The curtain later fell in silence on what should have been an impressive climax for Ada Rehan, and was lifted a single time after the ushers had incited a mild demonstration of personal regard for that favorite.

"It has never been customary to have at Daly's any other actress of dramatic strength than Miss Rehan. The rôles secondary in serious importance have been played by charming but weak young women. As soon as rivalry began, as in the case of Maxine Elliott, it was removed.

"In the sensational melodrama from Drury Lane, with the singularly felicitous title or sub-title of 'The Kiss of Blood,' is a Russian adventuress, who has an honest love affair, though she is a thief, and who is the only female character to figure in the heroics of the play. Miss Bates was assigned to it.

"She had come from California, and was unknown here. She proved to be handsome, fiery, forceful, and very talented. She was a revelation to the first audience, and it was disposed to go wild over her.

"Maybe it would have been better for Miss Rehan if the part had been given to her. Perhaps she had disliked to enact a wicked woman. Anyway, she had chosen instead to appear as a vain, frivolous, but clean and cheerful, wife of a London tradesman.

"This had been written as an eccentric character, and at the Drury Lane it had been played with irresistible drollery by Mrs. John Wood. But Miss Rehan had no mind to look grotesque, and as to low comedy, it is clear out of her line.

"In a serio-comic scene of somnambulism, where Mrs. Wood had been a fright in curl papers and a funny nightgown, Miss Rehan sacrificed nothing to the comic requirements. She was as dignified and stately as any _Lady Macbeth_. For those reasons the sleep-walking episode, which had been very valuable in London, counted for nothing here, and at its end the actress had good reason to know that it had failed with the audience.

"It was then that experts foretold the withdrawal of the California actress. She appeared at Daly's only one more night. She had not found Daly's Theater comfortable."

Naturally, Miss Bates did not long remain without an engagement. She was snapped up by the Lieblers for _Miladi_ in "The Musketeers," and soon caught the eye of Belasco, who featured her in "Under Two Flags." Her real arrival, however, was with "The Darling of the Gods," which brought her seven hundred and fifty dollars a week salary and a percentage of the receipts, not a mean advance from the twenty dollars she had been getting from Frawley less than five years before.

MILLER'S STAR OF DESTINY.

It Led Him from His Native London, Through Canada, and Finally to the Old Lyceum Stock Company.

Henry Miller was born in London, but brought up in Canada. He was only a schoolboy when he chanced to read a magazine article about Henry Irving. This fired him with the ambition to act, but he set about realizing it in a most matter-of-fact and sensible way.

Instead of running off to join some theatrical troupe as a super, he began the study of elocution under the late W.C. Couldock, best remembered perhaps as the worthy miller, father of _Hazel Kirke_. This was at Miller's home, in Toronto, and here he had four years of grounding in the text of Shakespeare.

He was barely nineteen when the chance came, at a Toronto theater, for him to show what his studying had taught him. He was assigned to the part of the bleeding _Sergeant_ in "Macbeth," and the very fact that the company was merely a scratch affair, not far removed from the barnstorming category, really worked to young Miller's advantage.

He was the first leading man with the old Lyceum stock, in "The Wife," and the second at the Empire. In 1899, he expressed his greatest ambition as being the management of a New York theater. This he has realized the past winter at the Princess, where he organized and produced "Zira" for Miss Anglin.

STORM FOR MISS RUSSELL.

As a Child of Ten She Excited Rose Eytinge's Anger Because She Lacked Experience.

Annie Russell, like Miss Bates, comes of theatrical stock, so the door to the stage was on the latch for her.

Miss Russell's first appearance took place in Montreal when she was ten years old, and was preceded by a heart-breaking episode. Rose Eytinge was playing "Miss Multon" against Clara Morris. Two children are needed in the piece, and when Miss Eytinge ascertained that one of them--_Jeanne_, assigned to Annie Russell--had never been on before, she was furious.

"Do you want to queer the show when so much depends on it?" she demanded of E.A. McDowell, her manager.

The girl, Annie, chanced to overhear her, and fell to weeping bitterly. Miss Eytinge noticed her, had her heart touched by the spectacle, soothed the child, and allowed her to play the part. Later on she appeared in the chorus of a juvenile "Pinafore" company, and was soon promoted to be _Josephine_.

Then she made a big jump--to the West Indies, to look out for her small brother Tommy, the "child actor" of the company, later one of the two famous _Fauntleroys_ and now a dramatic critic on a New York paper. While with this troupe she was pressed into service to fill a big variety of parts, giving her a good foundation on which to build her big hit in the sun-bonnet of "Esmeralda."

She followed this with another success, in an altogether different line--the poetical one of "Elaine," and then fell ill. For some years she remained off the boards, close to death's door, and returned to them finally in a weakling play by Sydney Grundy, "The New Woman."

She took the taste of this out of the public's mouth by a triumph both here and in London with "Sue," and then went into the background once more with "Catherine," from the French.

Her real arrival as a popular star was made in the autumn of '99, at the Lyceum, in "Miss Hobbs."

MEDAL SET MANTELL GOING.

He Was Encouraged to Become an Actor by a Prize Which, as a Boy, He Won for Proficiency in Declamation.

Mantell, now in Shakespeare, made his professional start as a sergeant. This was in 1874, in the Rochdale Theater, Lancashire, England, under the stage name of Hudson. The play was "Arrah-na Pogue." He was born in Irvine, Ayrshire, Scotland, on the 7th of February, 1854, but was brought up in Ireland, where he won a medal at school for his proficiency in declamation. This turned his attention to the amateur stage, where his first appearance was made as _De Mauprat_ in "Richelieu."

He came to America in the same year that he began to act professionally, and he procured an engagement with the Museum stock company in Boston. But he soon returned to England, where he remained for four years, acting in the provinces, and when the States saw him again it was in 1878, when he and Miller were with Modjeska.

His first real lift into popularity arrived when Fanny Davenport engaged him for _Loris_ in "Fedora." In this part he was accounted one of the best-looking men who had trod the American boards, and he established a vogue for himself that paved the way for his stellar career of several years in the one play "Monbars."

GILLETTE DESERTED LAW.

Abetted by Mark Twain, the Future Playwright and Star Took to "The Road," Which He Found a Thorny One.

William Gillette may be said to have reached the stage on the run, for he ran away from home in order to gratify his ambition to become an actor. His family were staid citizens of Hartford, Connecticut, where his father once ran for Governor of the State.

The idea was to make a lawyer of William, but after he got over a taste for mechanics, which led him to construct secretly a steam-engine in his bedroom, he conceived for the stage a craze that refused to be snuffed out by parental opposition.

Mark Twain, a neighbor in Hartford, was on the boy's side. His "Gilded Age" was being dramatized, and the author lent his influence to get young Gillette a place in the cast as foreman of the jury in the company of which John T. Raymond was the head. In this rôle he was entrusted with the onerous task of saying these four words in response to the question of the judge: "We have. Not guilty."

Gillette was barely nineteen at the time, and after the run of "The Gilded Age" was over he found himself in New Orleans without another engagement or the chance of obtaining one. Finally he secured an opening on these magnificent terms--agreeing to play without salary and to furnish his own costumes.

The post was that of leading utility man for a New Orleans stock company, and when, after serving for a while under these humiliating conditions for the sake of the experience it would bring, Gillette mildly suggested that he be paid a small honorarium, he was told there was one alternative that was always open to him--he could leave, which he did.

Thereupon ensued a rough and tumble period of existence for the young actor, who did not arrive at pleasant pastures again until he took to writing plays himself. And yet his first production to reach the footlights was by no means an overwhelming success. This was "The Professor," produced at the Madison Square Theater, with himself in the leading part, when that house was managed by an Episcopal clergyman and his brother.

Success Follows Failure.

It is such a superhuman task to secure a manager's attention for a play that the new playwright is prone to feel that the Rubicon has been passed once the manuscript has been accepted. But in reality this is only a halting-place on the roadside where he may tarry to obtain his second wind. And young Gillette needed all the recuperative powers possible, for when "The Professor" was brought to public attention the critics hurled at it their keenest shafts.

The actor-playwright managed to survive, although his play didn't, and, failing to be discouraged, he went ahead with his work on "Esmeralda." This was a story written by Frances Hodgson Burnett, in which the Mallorys of the theater had become interested, and the dramatization of which, in association with the author, they had entrusted to Gillette. This proved to be a big hit, with Annie Russell in the name-part, and ran to over three hundred performances.

Another adaptation success quickly followed--that of "The Private Secretary," in which Gillette also played. Meantime he was at work on another original piece, "Held by the Enemy," a war drama which almost beat "Shenandoah" on its own ground in the race for popularity.