Chapter VII: Appendix: 368 (6)

Daly’s Theatre, in the days when Ada Rehan was at the height of her charm and power, was sometimes called “the _Théâtre Français_ of America.” The leading man was John Drew (who did not become an independent “star” until 1892); the comedian was James Lewis, a talented, intelligent, genuinely comic actor;[139] the “dowager parts” were played by the incomparable Mrs. James Gilbert; and the younger women of the company were Isabel Irving and Kitty Cheatham, both clever actresses, though they paled beside Rehan. At Daly’s one saw acting that dispelled any impression of theatricalism. Mr. Daly’s rule was rigorous, his standards exacting.[140] He was altogether an exceptional manager, scholarly and thorough; and his instructions and advice were of immense benefit to the actors in his company,--a fact that Ada Rehan always freely acknowledged.

The list of parts that Miss Rehan in the twenty years between 1879 and 1899 acted in Mr. Daly’s company is simply amazing in its extent and range. We think of her as Katherine, as Viola, Rosalind or Beatrice, but she had been with Mr. Daly several years before the company attempted Shakespeare. Before, there had been a long succession of plays whose names mean nothing to us nowadays. Many of them were adaptations, made by the versatile Mr. Daly himself, from the German. Adaptations from the French, the American, and English stage had seen in plenty; but the German comedies afforded Mr. Daly a comparatively unworked field of which he made the most. One gets a satisfying sense of the essential improvement since 1890 in the art of playwriting in America upon reflecting that these translations and rearrangements of pieces grown on a foreign soil would seem, if presented in our theatres today, peculiarly thin and artificial. Miss Rehan’s more discerning admirers regretted the waste of her great talent in them, but then, as now, the theatre had to be made a paying institution in order to exist at all, and these plays indubitably succeeded. The finished acting of the Daly company, admirable both in individual impersonation and in _ensemble_, made them one of the keenest of the theatrical pleasures of the day.[141]

Miss Rehan did not at once leap into recognition as the leading American actress of the day. For a long time she was thought of merely as a prominent member of an excellent organization. Gradually, however, by sheer merit, her preëminence became evident. With confidence she undertook all kinds of rôles, and, in the midst of her work, there would occasionally flash forth an impersonation that would seem, what it often was, acting of unique quality.

Rehan was essentially a queen of comedy. Though she attempted from time to time impersonations of a grave and even of a tragic nature, and by virtue of sincerity and womanliness gave them much appeal, she never would have gained her preëminent position by such means. Her range was as wide, however, as the true meaning of the word “comedy,” and extended from the graceful performance of the mirthful or sentimental foolery of Daly’s adaptations, through the satire of _The Critic_ to the farcical comedy of _The Shrew_, the tenderly romantic comedy of _As You Like It_ and _Twelfth Night_, and the sophisticated “high comedy” of _Much Ado_.[142]

It is difficult for one who has seen her in the part to think of Shakespeare’s Katherine, in _The Taming of the Shrew_, without at once thinking of Ada Rehan. The pride, the majesty, the complete identification with the varying moods of the character, and the humanity she gave to what can easily be made merely a stage figure, were quite irresistible. Perhaps she succeeded so well in this part because it was in many ways a reflection of her own personality.[143]

Her Rosalind, by all accounts, was probably the best, possibly excepting Adelaide Neilson’s, that the American stage has seen; her Viola “manifested a poetic actress of the first order.” Add to these her Beatrice, her Mrs. Ford, her Helena, her Portia, not to speak of the half dozen heroines of Shakespeare she played before she joined Daly’s company, and you have a well rounded accomplishment as a Shakespearean actress, which, if she had done nothing else, would have won her fame.

And she did much else. One of Mr. Daly’s noteworthy departures from the ordinary theatrical routine was his revival of various specimens of old English comedy: _The Country Wife_ (in Garrick’s version called _The Country Girl_), _The Inconstant_, _She Would and She Would Not_, _The Recruiting Officer_ were all Restoration comedies, modified by Mr. Daly to suit modern taste; and _The Critic_ was his one-act rearrangement of Sheridan’s famous three-act satire of that name. These pieces all involved difficult tasks for a modern actress, for their language is of another time, their feelings of a different civilization. The plays are never professionally revived nowadays; and Mr. Daly’s ventures with them succeeded mainly through the conspicuous ability of Miss Rehan to give her characters, whatever their dress or speech, naturalness and vitality.

There was some surprise when Mr. Daly produced Coppée’s _The Prayer_, for the usually buoyant Rehan had now to portray a thoroughly serious character. Yet, says Mr. Winter:[144] “No one acquainted with her nature was surprised at the elemental passion, the pathos, and the almost tragic power with which she expressed a devoted woman’s experience of affliction, misery, fierce resentment, self-conquest, self-abnegation, forgiveness and fortitude. She did not then, nor at any time, show herself to be a tragic actress, but she evinced great force and deep feeling.”

It further strengthens one’s impression of Miss Rehan’s really triumphant versatility to read the records of her Lady Teazle, which subtly suggested the country girl within the fine lady; of her Letitia Hardy with “its intrinsic loftiness of woman’s spirit”; of her Jenny O’Jones, an irresistibly comic figure done in the spirit of frank farce; or of any of her half hundred impersonations in modern comedy, on which she lavished the spirit, the beauty, the technical proficiency that were always in evidence, whether or not the material she worked with was wholly deserving of her gifts. She was always ambitious, always a patient hard worker, and she never slighted her tasks.

In 1884, when Miss Rehan and the reorganized Daly company had been working together for five years, they made their first visit to London, where they played a six weeks’ summer season at Toole’s Theatre. London did not take kindly either to Mr. Daly’s pieces from the German, which then formed their repertoire, or to Miss Rehan herself, whose style of acting was a surprise to conservative eyes. William Archer wrote in _The World_: “The style of Miss Ada Rehan is too crude and bouncing to be entirely satisfactory to an English audience. She makes Flos a painfully ill-bred young person,--surely not a fair type of the American girl; and her way of emphasizing her remarks by making eyes over the footlights is certainly not good comedy.”[145] Clement Scott, on the other hand, praised her. No great impression was made, on the whole, but two years later, (1886) when Mr. Daly again took his company to London, Miss Rehan really made a name for herself, although the plays were as yet what seem to us now paltry pieces for such an actress: _A Night off_, and _Nancy and Company_. At this time Mr. Daly offered his company in the English provincial cities and even ventured to present them in Hamburg, Berlin and Paris, where they met some success.

Mr. Daly continued his biennial visit to London. In 1888, after the failure there of _The Railroad of Love_,[146] he offered London its first glimpse of Rehan’s Katherine the Shrew. The immediate result was a grand chorus of critical praise, and a remarkable exhibition of public interest. If on her first entrance “she ‘took the stage’ in a manner that astonished even the oldest playgoer,” and if, as one paper said, “Katherines had been seen before, but never such a Katherine as this,” it is true that the actress herself also “took the stage” in popular fancy. Rehan at home was something of a recluse, but now in London she allowed “society” to pay her its tribute in its own way. She was fêted, and dined, and given a public reception. Different this from her habits in New York, where reading, and walks with her dogs, made up the sum of her leisurely activity. During the 1888 tour Miss Rehan played Katherine at Stratford-on-Avon (where her portrait in that rôle was hung in the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre), and in Paris, where Victorien Sardou assisted in her “great triumph.”

After another two years, in June, 1890, the company again appeared in London, and this time, in the estimation of the critics, her Rosalind--“a Rosalind who is a very woman, and never an actress!”--surpassed even her Katherine.

From now on the trips to London became more frequent and it soon became part of Mr. Daly’s programme to complete each season with a few months in the English capital. He built there his own theatre, and it was Ada Rehan who laid its corner-stone.[147] She visited Tennyson, who read to her his play _The Foresters_, which Daly later produced with Miss Rehan as Marian Lea.

In June, 1893, the new Daly’s Theatre was completed, and the company deserted America for more than a year to go to London to establish the success of the new house. It was dedicated by Miss Rehan’s performance of the Shrew on June 27. _The Foresters_, _The School for Scandal_ and _The Country Girl_ followed, and then in January, 1894, she acted for London her Viola, which was new to her repertoire. Again a triumph, for _Twelfth Night_ ran for one hundred and eleven performances. And again Miss Rehan consented, as still she had never done in Now York, to indulge in the life of society.

It was when she returned this time--after spending the summer of 1894 wandering about the Continent--that Miss Rehan became, for the first time, a “star” in her own right. Miss Rehan’s loyalty to the Daly company--or at least her steadfastness in refusing to be weaned away from it--was rather remarkable. When the opportunity was offered her to appear as a “star” and not merely as a member, drawing a fixed salary, of Mr. Daly’s company, she at first refused. Finally she consented to a brief tour, to supplement her usual work with Mr. Daly. Again, while she was abroad she had received an offer from Possart to appear with him at his theatre in Munich, another from Blumenthal, a third from Sarah Bernhardt, and still another from a syndicate in London to manage and head a company there. In New York, one of Mr. Daly’s rival managers offered her “backing” as a “star” to the extent of $50,000. Miss Rehan refused all these offers, and remained content as leading woman of the Daly stock company. Even now the independent tour was limited to ten weeks; then she returned to New York and her usual duties.[148]

In 1897 Mr. Daly sent Miss Rehan and his company on another English tour. Beginning (on August 26) with a performance of _As You Like It_, at Stratford-on-Avon, on the sward of the Shakespeare Memorial (of which Miss Rehan was made one of the life governors) they proceeded to the larger provincial cities, as far as Glasgow and Edinburgh, playing _The Taming of the Shrew_, _As You Like It_, _Twelfth Night_, _The School for Scandal_, and _The Last Word_. The results of the tour were all Mr. Daly could have hoped. Miss Rehan, as Katherine, in particular, swept all before her.

It was during this English visit that George Bernard Shaw, then dramatic critic of the _Saturday Review_, wrote that he never saw Miss Rehan act without burning to present Mr. Augustin Daly with a delightful villa in St. Helena. He thought Mr. Daly was wasting Miss Rehan’s rare talent, just as that other rare talent, Miss Terry’s, was wasted by her enmeshment at the Lyceum. “Mr. Daly was in his prime an advanced man relatively to his own time and place,” wrote Mr. Shaw. “His Irish-American Yanko-German comedies, as played by Ada Rehan and Mrs. Gilbert, John Drew, Otis Skinner and the late James Lewis, turned a page in theatrical history here, and secured him a position in London that was never questioned until it became apparent that he was throwing away Miss Rehan’s genius. When, after the complete discovery of her gifts by the London public, Mr. Daly could find no better employment for her than in a revival of _Dollars and Cents_, his annihilation and Miss Rehan’s rescue became the critic’s first duty.” Mr. Shaw’s predilection for the psychological, realistic modern play led to his irritation with Miss Rehan’s labors, as with Miss Terry’s, and even to some doubt as to whether she was a creative artist or a mere virtuosa. “In Shakespeare she was and is irresistible.... But how about Magda?” Yet, with unwonted complaisance, Mr. Shaw also says, “I have never complained; the drama with all its heroines levelled up to a universal Ada Rehan has seemed no such dreary prospect to me; and her voice compared to Sarah Bernhardt’s _voix d’or_, has been as all the sounds of the woodland to the clinking of twenty-franc pieces.” And again, “Her treatment of Shakespearean verse is delightful after the mechanical intoning of Sarah Bernhardt. She gives us beauty of tone, grace of measure, delicacy of articulation: in short, all the technical qualities of verse music, along with the rich feeling and fine intelligence without which those technical qualities would soon become monotonous. When she is at her best, the music melts in the caress of the emotion it expresses, and thus completes the conditions necessary for obtaining Shakespeare’s effects in Shakespeare’s way.”

The memorable part of Ada Rehan’s career was now about to close. Before Mr. Daly’s death in 1899 she added to her long list of impersonations Roxane in _Cyrano de Bergerac_, Portia in _The Merchant of Venice_, and Lady Garnet in _The Great Ruby_, but none of these brought her any added fame. Augustin Daly died, in Paris, in June, 1899, and the great chapter in Rehan’s life ended. Subsequently she was the star of companies organized for her by new managers, and in 1900 she appeared in a new play, _Sweet Nell of Old Drury_, in which she impersonated one of her famous predecessors, Nell Gwynn.

In the spring of 1901 Miss Rehan suddenly ended her tour in this play, and sailed to Europe, there to repair her broken health by living for awhile at her bungalow on the coast of the Irish Sea. She had been more or less ailing all the season, and the loss of her mother in January, 1901, added to her troubles. In 1903–04 she acted with Otis Skinner as a “co-star” in plays from her old repertoire, _The Taming of the Shrew_ and _The Merchant of Venice_ among them. One more season she played, 1904–05, this time with Charles Richman as her chief support, and then, on May 2, 1905, she appeared on the stage for the last time, when she took part in the farewell to Modjeska at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York. Rehan herself has never had such a testimonial, though she deserved one as richly as the great Polish actress. Unostentatiously she entered her profession, so she pursued it, and so she left it, slipping out of public life so quietly that many playgoers were half consciously expecting her reappearance years after she had quit the stage for good. But she can have, as long as she lives, the reward of as genuine a success as can come to any actress. And it is also not beneath notice that she accumulated a fortune. Like Lotta Crabtree, Ada Rehan took good care of her money. In 1891, when she had been in Mr. Daly’s company twelve years, she was “worth something like $300,000.” “She owns,” says a contemporary account, “a $30,000 house in New York, possesses mortgages on adjoining property, and holds almost enough stock in a New Jersey railroad to entitle her to the position of director. She is not extravagant in anything except her love for dogs.”

Of dogs, and other animal pets, she was fond. She had a monkey, which Mr. Winter, with a noticeable lack of enthusiasm, described as “an interesting creature of its kind”; and she had, wherever she traveled, a dog or two. “I have seen her wandering with her dog,” says Mr. Winter “on the broad, solitary waste of the breezy beach that stretches away, for many a sunlit mile, in front of her sequestered cottage on the Cumberland shore of the Irish Sea. She was never so contented, never so radiant, never so much herself, as in that beautiful retreat.... There, encompassed by associations of natural beauty and of historic and poetic renown, and surrounded by her books, pictures, relics, music, and her pets, she was happy.”

Ada Rehan still lives, but, her work done, she remains out of the public eye. She never appears in the public print. She is not yet an old woman, and has many years to enjoy the memories of as true a triumph as an actress can have. For by her exceptional, regally endowed equipment and her devotion to her art, she upheld the gospel of the actress,--poetry, beauty, life.

MARY ANDERSON

Though a stage career was inevitable for her, Mary Anderson did not come of theatrical people. Her father, who died when she was four, was of English birth and Oxford education, and as he was a personally charming man of artistic tastes and devoted to books and the drama, it was undoubtedly from him that she derived much of her temperamental equipment for her work. Her mother, Marie Antoinette Leugers, was a Philadelphian of German parentage, one of a large family rigorously trained in the Catholic faith. Pious books, and not plays, formed the mental food of that household, and the children were forbidden to enter the theatre. The young Marie had been but little outside this austere circle when she met and loved the also youthful Charles H. Anderson, who then lived in New York. Opposition to the match was natural, as young Anderson was not only not a Catholic but was looked on by Marie’s parents as one of the worldly. He seems to have been a thoroughly estimable young man, however, who was merely not of their stamp. When the young couple were forbidden to see each other, it did not take long for a secret correspondence to lead to an elopement. Anderson was apparently of some means. He and his young wife, then but eighteen, spent a leisurely year in New York and Philadelphia, and in 1859 went by sea to California. In Sacramento, at the Eagle Hotel, on July 28, 1859, was born their daughter. She was given almost her mother’s name--Mary Antoinette Anderson. The young mother, it will be remembered, was of a German family. It is perhaps not too fanciful to think that the beauty of Mary Anderson, which was later the treasured boon of two countries, was in part noticeably Teutonic and traceable to her mother. But this beauty did not manifest itself at once. The babe was red and ugly, in the manner of babes, and the still childlike mother was a week or so in reconciling herself to her child’s unpromising aspect. Then, however, also as usual, it was clear to her that there never was such another baby.

The mother’s family had never forgiven her for her marriage. When, therefore, her husband was called to England, she took her year-old Mary, and in 1860 moved to Louisville, Kentucky, where her uncle was the pastor of a suburban German Catholic congregation. This Pater Anton was a remarkable man. Born and educated in Germany, he lived in Rome ten years, and then in Texas. Learned and eloquent, striking in appearance, kind and simple, he was a great favorite with old and young. He was soon to be a necessary guardian of the little Anderson family, for Charles Anderson, who had returned from England and was an officer in the Confederate army, died in 1863, still under thirty. Mary was not yet four, and her little brother Joseph had been born but a few months. It became the plan of the good Pater Anton to train little Joseph as his medical assistant, and Mary he thought some day might be his housekeeper, his helper with the poor, his assistant with the choir, and his organist. How different this from the career she was actually to have![149]

When Mary was eight her mother was married again, to Dr. Hamilton Griffin, who had been a surgeon-major in the Confederate army. He was to become, during Mary’s later career, her wise guide and her business manager.

At the time of this marriage Mary was sent for the first time to school. She was taken to the Convent of the Ursulines, near Louisville. She was not at all a diligent student. She developed early a liking for music, which with a little German was about all she could bring herself to study. It is clear that, with a likable nature and a good disposition, she was still somewhat of a problem for the good nuns who were her teachers. At first she was utterly homesick,[150] but after a term or so she began to like the convent. Then her serious sickness with a fever kept her at home, but after a year’s rest she began school again, this time at the Presentation Academy, a day school. In reading she stood at the head of her class, but she was indifferent to her other studies and was continually punished for not knowing her lessons. Mary Anderson, on whom thousands were later to gaze as she stood, as Galatea, on the statue’s pedestal, long before had practice when she stood in the corner with a book balanced on her head, or sat on the dunce-stool; this second punishment she positively liked for she could “see the girls better, and the seat was so much more comfortable than the hard benches.”

The little Mary Anderson of that day was a high-spirited girl,[151] keenly intelligent in spite of indolence in school, who better than study liked acting childish plays with her baby sister and brothers. One night, when she was twelve, she heard for the first time the name of Shakespeare and heard _Hamlet_ read. It marked the beginning of an epoch in her life. For days she could think of nothing but _Hamlet_ and the wonderful book which had “suddenly become like a casket filled with jewels.” A few nights later she entered her surprised family circle wrapped in a cloak and reciting a garbled version of one of Hamlet’s speeches. From then on Shakespeare was her constant companion and inspiration. About the same time she saw her first play--_Richard III_. Impressed and delighted with this and other plays, she gradually became a less forgetful and mischievous and a much more thoughtful little girl. She and her brother would go to the Saturday matinées, arriving hours before the performance for the pleasure of merely being in the land of enchantment as long as possible.

When Mary was fourteen Edwin Booth came to Louisville. Here was a turning point in her life. After seeing him in _Richelieu_--the first great acting she had seen--she spent a sleepless night, her brain teeming with her impressions of his art and with disturbing thoughts as to her own destiny. She then and there decided on a stage career, and resolved to study and to train herself. She kept her object a secret, but made a bargain with her mother whereby she promised to study diligently if allowed to do so at home, for school had become unendurable. The mother accepted, for Mary could at least do no worse than she had at the Academy. Now began a course of self-instruction in Mary’s little room at the top of the house. Not only did she make better progress than ever in the ordinary branches, but she carefully trained her own voice, worked hard to overcome a natural awkwardness by fencing and other exercises, and, above all in her own mind, she memorized parts--Richard III, Richelieu, Pauline in _The Lady of Lyons_, and the Joan of Arc of Schiller. One evening she astonished her mother and Dr. Griffin with a scene from _The Lady of Lyons_. Especially, was her stepfather impressed with the power which Mary had suddenly revealed. At his solicitation an actor from the local theatre called to hear her read. This Henry Wouds was in turn enough impressed to speak of the young Miss Anderson to Charlotte Cushman, in whose company he soon afterward acted. He sent word that Miss Cushman would like to see the young aspirant and hear her read. So Mrs. Griffin reluctantly allowed herself to be persuaded to take her daughter to Cincinnati, where Miss Cushman was playing. The hearing took place in the great actress’s hotel. Richelieu and Joan of Arc were the parts selected. When the trial was over, Miss Cushman, somewhat to the mother’s dismay, not only took Mary’s career as an actress for granted, but thought it possible for her to begin, not as usual at the bottom but, with a little more training, in parts of importance. She counseled a course of lessons from George Vandenhoff, a veteran New York teacher of stage technique.

At this point Mrs. Griffin’s thorough interest and sympathy were won. She and Mary went to New York, and the short term of ten lessons of an hour each was undergone, not with entire comfort for Mary, for her teacher found it constantly necessary to repress her enthusiasm and crude excess of vigor. The lessons were beneficial, however (they were the only formal training in stage work Mary Anderson ever had), and she returned to Louisville and her attic stage with unabated ambition. With no one but her mother to guide her, Mary bent laboriously to her task, renouncing all else. A year of this, and she began to be discouraged, for there seemed to be no prospects of actual appearance. Then John McCullough came to Louisville. As one of the most distinguished actors of that day, his opinion and approval of Mary was sought by the thoroughly enthusiastic Dr. Griffin. McCullough came reluctantly to the Griffin home, openly skeptical as to the beginner’s claim to attention, and determined to stay but a quarter of an hour. He stayed for several hours, acted with Mary scenes from all the plays she knew, called frequently thereafter to act Shakespeare with her, and ended by introducing and recommending her to Barney Macauley, manager of the Louisville Theatre, as an actress of great promise.

It was this manager who gave Mary her first opportunity to appear on a real stage. Casually calling with Dr. Griffin at the theatre one day, Mary was astonished and delighted to be asked to play Juliet at a special performance, but two nights later. She knew the part well, joyfully accepted, and literally ran home to tell the news to her mother. The published announcement ran as follows:

Saturday evening, November 27, 1875, Miss Mary Anderson, a
young lady of this city, will make her first appearance on any
stage as Juliet in Shakespeare’s _Romeo and Juliet_; Milnes
Levick as Mercutio, and a powerful cast of characters.

There was but one rehearsal, on the day before; and on this occasion Mary’s ideals suffered their first severe blow. The other actors regarded her as an unpromising, awkward upstart, and were markedly unhelpful and even hostile.

At this time she was sixteen; the train of her gown was the first she had ever worn; she had never before faced a real audience from a real stage; she had had but one imperfect rehearsal with her fellow actors; yet she roused the house to genuine enthusiasm. This cordial reception was partly due to the first appearance of a townswoman, and her impersonation was certainly not without its crudities; yet the newspaper accounts of the evening contain such comments as these: “We are sure that last night saw the beginnings of a career which will shed radiance on the American stage”; “Her achievement last night may be fairly classed as remarkable”; “With but little further training and experience she will stand among the foremost actresses.” The audience was thrilled by her rich and powerful voice, and impressed by her beauty and vigor.[152]

Mary Anderson’s career was thus suddenly and on the whole auspiciously begun. It was the old story of being prepared when the opportunity presented itself.[153] After waiting three months, during which she learned new parts, she was offered a week at the Louisville Theatre, in which she was to act, besides Juliet, Bianca in _Fazio_, Julia in _The Hunchback_, Evadne in the play of that name, and Pauline in _The Lady of Lyons_. This week was a disappointment, for the Louisville public did not turn out in the numbers anticipated to see their young actress. But in the week in St. Louis which soon followed she was moderately successful. Then came two weeks in New Orleans. Miss Anderson’s reputation had not reached so far, and the house had to be heavily “papered” the first night to insure a respectably sized audience. The business steadily improved, however, and by the end of the two weeks her success was almost overwhelming,[154] coming as it did in a strange city and on the heels of moderate fortune at home. The students of the Military College showered her with flowers, she was made an honorary member of the famous Washington Artillery Battalion, and as she rode away from the city in the special car which the railroad had placed at her disposal, Generals Beauregard and Hood and other distinguished Southerners were at the station to bid her farewell.

But if the New Orleans engagement was little less than a triumph, her next important venture, in San Francisco, was nothing more than a disaster. It is an example of the heart-breaking trials that come to the most successful actors that Mary Anderson, phenomenally fortunate so far, failed dismally in San Francisco with both public and press. The engagement was at John McCullough’s theatre, and it was only on the last two nights that she made the anticipated favorable impression. Much of this trouble originated with the indifference or worse of her fellow actors, the members of the resident stock company. In those days a traveling “star,” instead of taking with him on his tours his own company, as at present, went practically alone and depended for support on the permanent stock company in each town--a system which did not make for artistic excellence, and which often gave occasion to just such jealousy and hostility as helped to make Mary Anderson’s stay in San Francisco unhappy. There was one bright spot, however. Edwin Booth was in the city, and she met him for the first time. When she was tempted to quit the stage disheartened, he said to her: “I have sat through two of your performances from beginning to end--the first time I have done such a thing in years--and I have not only been interested but impressed and delighted. You have begun well. Continue, and you are sure of success in the end.” The words were of immense encouragement.

There followed a tour of the South. In contrast to the venture in the state of her birth, Miss Anderson was successful everywhere. She grew fond of the South and made in Washington and elsewhere several of those friendships for which her career was noteworthy. There was a quality in Mary Anderson that attracted and held the interest and affection of the people best worth knowing. In Grant she found a modest simplicity which she greatly liked; in Sherman, a hearty personality and an interest in what directly interested her--the stage. General Sherman was a good enough friend, indeed, to consider himself entitled to correct the growing girl’s tendency to stoop, and her illegible handwriting.

Still in her ’teens, Mary Anderson was by now firmly established in her chosen profession. The period just past had been full of discouragements and difficulties, as well as triumphs. Plunging as she did, without any training to speak of, at once into the impersonation of leading parts was an ordeal bound to result in occasional failure. She afterwards said that she would not wish her dearest enemy to pass through the uncertainties and despondencies of these early years--circumstances which she left out of account on that sleepless night after seeing Booth in _Richelieu_. She had come through the San Francisco ordeal, which was enough to crush the spirit of a girl of seventeen. She still suffered from want of systematic training, she was still painfully conscious of the crudities of her own work, and she lacked even the experience of seeing others in the rôles in which the public compared her with tried favorites. She had seen Charlotte Cushman as Meg Merriles, but as for Juliet, Evadne and Bianca, her own feelings had been almost her sole resource. Like that of Fanny Kemble and Garrick, her novitiate, had, after all, been extraordinarily brief.

There followed extensive tours which took her throughout the South and Middle West, to Canada and finally to the goal of American actors, the larger Eastern cities, Philadelphia, Boston, New York. In New York she profited by the expert advice of Dion Boucicault and William Winter, and the friendship of her elders in the profession--Lawrence Barrett, Edwin Booth, Joseph Jefferson and Clara Morris. In Boston she formed another of her invaluable friendships--with Longfellow. The old poet and the young girl-artist delighted in each other’s company and after her engagement was over, they went several times to the opera together. Her professional success in the Eastern cities was such that she could now feel that the ordeal was passed--that she had attained fame. Not that she was by any means universally admired and approved; a part of the public and some of the critics were not won over. Such, while admitting her beauty and her promise, suspected her success. It was, they said, too triumphant, too easy. Yet the undoubted fact was that she had won her public. The Boston engagement was unmistakably successful and in New York she enjoyed a “run” of six weeks.[155]

When she was nineteen Mary Anderson went abroad, not to appear professionally, but for a vacation. In England she went the round of conventional sight-seeing, much like any other tourist, but in Paris she saw something of the French theatre and its actors. Herself accustomed to the broad effects in acting, she was at first disappointed by the restraint and _finesse_ of the French method. Bernhardt, then in her early prime, received her cordially, saw much of her, and even invited her to play Juliet in Paris; but Miss Anderson, commendably conscious of her own as yet imperfect technique, declined. Now a privileged visiting artist behind the scenes of the _Comédie Française_, she recalled the days, not many years before, when she and her small brother felt so privileged when allowed to sit before the curtain of the old theatre in Louisville. Ristori, another great actress, was friendly to Miss Anderson; but her greatest pleasure she found in the treasures of the Louvre.

She returned to America refreshed in spirit and broadened in outlook. She was now in her twentieth year. One of the recognized stars of the day, her name and her acting became increasingly familiar.[156] There came invitations from various English managers to appear in London, but Miss Anderson did not yet feel ready to face such a test of her powers. She contented herself with starring tours which took her here and there in the United States and Canada. The artistic success of these years was a varying quantity. As we shall see, she never succeeded, in some eyes, in attaining great heights. For herself, she felt that her work had accomplished some good, that her dream of early girlhood was to a degree fulfilled. One great satisfaction was that she was often assured in letters from young men and women that her Ion or Evadne or Parthenia had helped them over crises of despondency and temptation. It speaks well for her nobility of nature that in such tributes she found her most gratifying applause. She had no reason to be dissatisfied with her measure of success. Yet stage life had already begun in some ways to be distasteful to her. She disliked the constant travel; she sadly missed the home comforts at the command of the humblest in her audiences; the lack of ideals in those with whom she had to work was often a keen disappointment; and above all she was acquiring a keen distaste for the extreme publicity of stage life--the necessity of constantly submitting herself to the public gaze. She began to long for the quiet of domestic life, but the die was cast; it was too late to alter the tenor of her life, and she bent all her energies toward success in a new opportunity that presented itself.

This was an invitation that came when she was twenty-four, to act in London, at Henry Irving’s own theatre, the Lyceum. Henry E. Abbey had taken the house for eight months and relied upon Miss Anderson to keep it open all that time--a formidable task for an American actress new to London. She was extremely apprehensive as to the outcome. Arriving in England in the summer of 1883, she passed some time quietly in the country before going up to London. Rural England charmed and rested her. At Stratford she studied her Shakespeare in Shakespeare’s own house, and spent many happy hours in the scenes familiar to the poet so long her idol. She arrived in London three months before the date of her first appearance. She faced the greatest trial of her career with a foreboding that was not decreased by seeing the great acting of Irving and Terry. When she chose _Ingomar_ for the opening bill, she heard predictions of failure on every hand--the play had not been seen in London for years and was called old-fashioned and stilted. But Miss Anderson had wisely followed the sound advice of William Winter in choosing Parthenia for her first London part, as she thereby avoided awkward and possibly unfriendly comparison with English favorites.

When the opening night came the thought that almost on the scene of the triumphs of Siddons, Garrick and Kean she was to venture before a strange audience, filled her with dread. She found in her dressing-room flowers from actor friends and telegrams from Booth, McCullough, Lawrence Barrett, Henry Irving, Ellen Terry and other cordial well-wishers. When she made her first entrance she was greeted with the longest and heartiest burst of applause that she had ever received. The first scenes past, and her apprehension and despondency somewhat allayed by such encouraging cordiality, her feelings made it difficult for her to speak loudly. A kindly voice from the pit called out, “Mary, please speak up a bit!” Her nervousness then fled, and by the time the play was over it was plain that Mary Anderson had scored a brilliant success. Her youth and beauty, her admirable vigor, and her eight years of patient, hard-working acquirement of her art, had their reward. The Lyceum was crowded nightly, and Mr. Abbey, who was prepared to close the theatre in case the venture was a failure, kept it open for eight months. There were a few weeks of _Ingomar_ and _The Lady of Lyons_ and then for the remaining time _Pygmalion and Galatea_. On one of the first nights the Prince and Princess of Wales asked to be presented to the actress.

During the first months of her stay in London she made her home--with her mother and stepfather, who were with her constantly--in Maida Vale, a secluded spot where she was free from intrusion and noise. She made many quick expeditions to scenes made famous by Dickens, and went again to Stratford. After a while, however, she moved to a larger house in Kensington, and here London society, at its best, began to find her out. As in America, the choicest spirits seemed naturally to gravitate toward her. To her informal Sunday afternoon receptions came artists, literary men, and statesmen. The “little bent figure with its great kind heart” of the novelist Wilkie Collins became familiar; Alma-Tadema, the artist, was another; W. S. Gilbert of Gilbert and Sullivan, and author of _Pygmalion and Galatea_, naturally took a personal interest in that play, and wrote for Miss Anderson a new “curtain-raiser” for it, _Comedy and Tragedy_. Browning she frequently met and he seemed to her more like one of the old-school Southern gentlemen than a mystic poet. Either during this first season or the next she numbered among her friends Mrs. Humphrey Ward, James Russell Lowell, then American ambassador, Edmund Gosse, Lord Lytton, the artist Watts, Gladstone, the novelist William Black, Cardinal Newman, and Tennyson. She enjoyed to the full the art galleries of London, the opportunities to hear the best music, and all the various activities and interests which make London the capital of the English-speaking world.

Mary Anderson’s success in London was duplicated when she appeared elsewhere in the British Isles. She was enthusiastically received in Edinburgh and in Manchester. In Dublin, the good-natured crowd every night took the horses from her carriage and dragged it through the streets, while those running alongside shouted “Hurrah for America!” and “God bless our Mary!” It was in Dublin, too, that the ingenious “gallery gods” sent baskets of flowers down to the stage over a rope.

_Romeo and Juliet_ was the play determined upon for the next season in London. A trip to Verona in quest of local data and sketches was to occupy the summer. “What!” exclaimed James Russell Lowell when he heard of this, “going into that glorious country for the first time, and in the flush of youth! I am selfish enough to envy you.” While visiting in Paris Miss Anderson had a charming interview with Victor Hugo, who proposed a reception in her honor. But she pressed on to Verona, and, like many another before and since, found the old city irresistible.

The Mary Anderson production of _Romeo and Juliet_ at the Lyceum in 1884 was lavish. So much of her time indeed was taken by the details of the preparation of scenery and other accessories that she had scant opportunity for re-studying her own part. But her excellent memory helped her immensely. Once, after _Ion_ had been dropped from her repertoire for three or four years, she rehearsed her entire long part without in the meantime reading it, and with hardly a mistake. The circumstances of the dress rehearsal of this production of _Romeo and Juliet_ show how far the stagecraft of the day had departed from the Elizabethan custom. The scenes were so many and so elaborate that though the rehearsal began at seven in the evening, at five in the morning Romeo, Juliet and Friar Laurence were still waiting for the last act to be set. At eight in the evening the public would be there. Discouraged and weary, Miss Anderson could not sleep; when she came to the theatre to face the “first nighters,” she was tired in mind and body and unfit for her work. The strain of that performance was nerve-racking. Yet the audience was unaware that Juliet had all she could do to get through her lines, and the cumbersome scenery was set with amazing rapidity. The play was over at half after eleven, a great success; yet to the actress herself her work that night was more painfully unsatisfactory than any other she ever did. But she was hard to please where her own impersonations were concerned. In her fourteen years before the public, she was satisfied with her acting only once as Bianca, once as Ion, never as Perdita and only once as Hermione. _Romeo and Juliet_ ran, however, for a hundred nights. Mary Anderson became so imbued with the sufferings of Juliet that she continually spoke of them in her sleep. It is typical of her that, profoundly dissatisfied with her impersonation, she constantly restudied and remodeled it until she liked it better. The brother Joe, who used to gaze with Mary on the green curtain of the Louisville Theatre, was the Tybalt of this production.

At this time (1885) it was proposed that Mary Anderson play _As You Like It_ in the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre at Stratford, and she gladly accepted. She had never played Rosalind, and she studied the character carefully. The occasion aroused great interest, and the usually placid village was a gay place. The journalists were there from London, people came from far and near for the play, the stage was decorated with flowers from Shakespeare’s own garden. The audience was distinguished and appreciative. The dean of American critics, William Winter, was present, and, in his words, “It was for her [Miss Anderson] that the audience reserved its enthusiasm, and this, when at length she appeared as Rosalind, burst forth in vociferous plaudits and cheers, so that it was long before the familiar voice, so copious, resonant, and tender, rolled out its music upon the eager throng and her action could proceed. Before the night ended she was continually cheered.” After a provincial tour ending in Dublin, where her admirers gathered in thousands under her window and sang _Come Back to Erin_, Miss Anderson in September, 1885, returned to her own country after an absence of two years.

The accounts that preceded her of the remarkable scene that took place in the Lyceum on her last night in London added interest to her reappearance in America. One who was present that night wrote: “During the evening it was manifest from the fervor of the applause with which she was favored during the performance of _Pygmalion and Galatea_ and _Comedy and Tragedy_ that the audience was exceptionally sympathetic, but no idea of the scenes which followed the descent of the curtain even entered the wildest dreams of any one present. The audience had been all the evening quivering with emotion. As the curtain fell Miss Anderson was loudly called for, and after the storm of applause which greeted her presence had subsided to some extent, the lady, who was transfigured with the excitement of the moment, said: ‘Ladies and gentlemen--the dreaded last night has come--dreaded at least by me. I have to part with you who have been so kind to me. The delight I naturally feel at the prospect of returning to my native country is tempered with a great regret, saddened by the thought that I must leave you. I little imagined when I came before you for the first time, a stranger feeling very helpless, tremblingly wondering what your verdict on my poor efforts would be, how soon I should find friends among you or what pain it would cost me to say, as I must say to-night, “good-bye” to you. You have been very, very good. I have tried hard to deserve your goodness. Please do not quite forget me. I can never forget you or your goodness to me. I hope I am not saying good-bye to you forever. I want to come back to you. [Tumultuous applause and cries of ‘Do! Do!’ ‘Why leave at all?’] Dare I hope you will be a little glad to see me. [Loud cries ‘We will!’ ‘Yes!’ etc.] I shall be very glad to see you. [Immense cheers.] Until I do, good-bye. I thank you again and again.’ At the conclusion of the speech the cheering and applause continued without interruption until Miss Anderson--down whose cheeks tears were pouring--had again come eight times before the curtain. The audience, which by this time was on its feet in every part of the house, and wildly waving handkerchiefs and hats, seemed struck by one thought, and the first strain of _Auld Lang Syne_ seemed to burst simultaneously from stalls and gallery. People who had never met before seized and wrung each other’s hands. Ladies wept and flourished their handkerchiefs hysterically. It is impossible to describe the scene. When I tell you that it lasted for fully half an hour, you will get an idea of what the Englishman, whom you Yankees call phlegmatic, can do in the way of enthusiasm when you touch his heart. It was an ovation which might have affected a monarch.”

The American tour that followed, in the season of 1885–6, took Miss Anderson and her company (the custom by now was that of the traveling organization) not only to New York, Boston, and the other cities in the East and South, but to the Pacific coast. New York did not take to _As You Like It_, but _Romeo and Juliet_ was a brilliant success. A public reception in Sacramento proved the affection for Mary Anderson of the city of her birth, but, strange to say, in the single night she played there, the people of Sacramento provided her with only a meagre audience. In San Francisco the warmth of her reception was very different from the crushing disappointment she experienced there a dozen years before.

Now came an entire year of rest. Offers to play in Spain, Germany, France and Australia were refused. The glamour of stage life was a thing of the past with Mary Anderson. By no means blind to the artistic possibilities of the drama, and with still a high faith in its moral function, a stage life for herself was becoming more and more repugnant. She felt the need of calm, of normal life away from the glare of the footlights. The winter of 1886–7 she spent in Paris, in general study and particularly with her French and music. It is characteristic of her that with a chance for recreation and social life, and with all her triumphs behind her, she still sought to mend an education she knew to be faulty.

The Lyceum in London was engaged for the following year (1887–8). After casting about for some time for a suitable new play,[157] she again fell back on Shakespeare and decided to give _The Winter’s Tale_, “doubling” Perdita and Hermione--that is, playing both parts. It was not an easy task. To Tennyson she mentioned her fear that the critics would not receive the venture well. His reply was: “Thank God the time is past for the _Quarterly_ or the _Times_ to make or mar a poem, play or artist! Few original things are well received at first. People must grow accustomed to what is out of the common before adopting it. Your idea, if carried out as you feel it, will be well received generally--and before long.”

_The Winter’s Tale_ was not enthusiastically received on its first night. But if it was not at once a critical success, it was a popular one, for it ran a hundred and sixty-four nights and could have continued longer. This was the only time that Mary Anderson acted the same play throughout a season. It is worth mentioning that the Leontes of this production was J. Forbes-Robertson.[158]

It was during this London engagement that Miss Anderson saw much of Tennyson. She visited him in his Surrey home, and on the Isle of Wight; she joined him in long walks, rain or shine, in the country; he read and talked to her for hours together at his own fireside. He prepared for her a play _The Foresters_, a version of his pastoral _Robin Hood_, and they visited the New Forest together in search of ideas for scenery; but the play she never produced.

Mary Anderson was to have but one more season, or rather part of a season, before retiring from the stage forever. She has become the classic example of the actor retiring in the midst of a highly successful career. She has herself[159] indicated the chief reason for her choice: “After so much kindness from the public, it seems ungrateful to confess that the _practice_ of my art (not the study of it) had grown, as time went on, more and more distasteful to me. To quote Fanny Kemble on the same subject: ‘Never’ (in my case for the last three years of my public life) ‘have I presented myself before an audience without a feeling of reluctance, or withdrawn from their presence without thinking the excitement I had undergone unwholesome, and the personal exhibition odious.’ To be conscious that one’s person was a target for any one who paid to make it one; to live for months at a time in one groove, with uncongenial surroundings, and in an atmosphere seldom penetrated by the sun and air; and to be continually repeating the same passions and thoughts in the same words--that was the most part of my daily life, and became so like slavery to me that I resolved after one more season’s work to cut myself free from the stage fetters forever.”