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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14758 ***
+
+MARY ANDERSON
+
+by
+
+J.M. FARRAR, M.A.
+
+1885
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+AT HOME.
+
+
+Long Branch, one of America's most famous watering-places, in midsummer,
+its softly-wooded hills dotted here and there with picturesque "frame"
+villas of dazzling white, and below the purple Atlantic sweeping in
+restlessly on to the New Jersey shore. The sultry day has been one of
+summer storm, and the waves are tipped still with crests of snowy foam,
+though now the sun is sinking peacefully to rest amid banks of cloud,
+aflame with rose and violet and gold.
+
+About a mile back from the shore stands a rambling country house embosomed
+in a small park a few acres in extent, and immediately surrounding it
+masses of the magnificent shrub known as Rose of Sharon, in full bloom, in
+which the walls of snowy white, with their windows gleaming in the
+sunlight, seem set as in a bed of color. The air is full of perfume. The
+scent of flower and tree rises gratefully from the rain-laden earth. The
+birds make the air musical with song; and here and there in the
+neighboring wood, the pretty brown squirrels spring from branch to branch,
+and dash down with their gambols the rain drops in a diamond spray. A
+broad veranda covered with luxuriant honeysuckle and clematis stretches
+along the eastern front of the house, and the wide bay window, thrown open
+just now to the summer wind, seems framed in flowers. As we approach
+nearer, the deep, rich notes of an organ strike upon the ear. Some one,
+with seeming unconsciousness, is producing a sweet passionate music, which
+changes momentarily with the player's passing mood. We pause an instant
+and look into the room. Here is a picture which might be called "a dream
+of fair women." Seated at the organ in the subdued light is a young woman
+of a strange, almost startling beauty. Her graceful figure clad in a
+simple black robe, unrelieved by a single ornament, is slight, and almost
+girlish, though there is a rounded fullness in its line which betrays that
+womanhood has been reached. A small classic head carried with easy grace;
+finely chiseled features; full, deep, gray eyes; and crowning all a wealth
+of auburn hair, from which peeps, as she turns, a pink, shell-like ear;
+these complete a picture which seems to belong to another clime and
+another age, and lives hardly but on the canvas of Titian. We are almost
+sorry to enter the room and break the spell. Mary Anderson's manner as she
+starts up from the organ with a light elastic spring to greet her visitors
+is singularly gracious and winning. There is a frank fearlessness in the
+beautiful speaking eyes so full of poetry and soul, a mingled tenderness
+and decision in the mouth, with an utter absence of that
+self-consciousness and coquetry which often mar the charm of even the most
+beautiful face. This is the artist's study to which she flies back gladly,
+now and then, for a few weeks' rest and relaxation from the exacting life
+of a strolling player, whose days are spent wandering in pursuit of her
+profession over the vast continent which stretches from the Atlantic to
+the Pacific. Here she may be found often busy with her part when the faint
+rose begins to steal over the tree tops at early dawn; or sometimes when
+the world is asleep, and the only sounds are the wind, as it sighs
+mournfully through the neighboring wood, or the far-off murmur of the
+Atlantic waves as they dash sullenly upon the beach. On a still summer's
+night she will wander sometimes, a fair Rosalind, such as Shakespeare
+would have loved, in the neighboring grove, and wake its silent echoes as
+she recites the Great Master's lines; or she will stand upon the
+flower-clad veranda, under the moonlight, her hair stirred softly by the
+summer wind, and it becomes to her the balcony from which Juliet murmurs
+the story of her love to a ghostly Romeo beneath.
+
+A large English deerhound, who was dozing at her feet when we entered the
+room, starts up with his mistress, and after a lazy stretch seems to ask
+to join in the welcome. Mary Anderson explains that he is an old favorite,
+dear from his resemblance to a hound which figures in some of the
+portraits of Mary Queen of Scots. He has failed ignominiously in an
+attempted training for a dramatic career, and can do no more than howl a
+doleful and distracting accompaniment to his mistress' voice in singing.
+We glance round the room, and see that the walls are covered with
+portraits of eminent actors, living and dead, with here and there
+bookcases filled with favorite dramatic authors; in a corner a bust of
+Shakespeare; and on a velvet stand a stage dagger which once belonged to
+Sarah Siddons. Over the mantelpiece is a huge elk's head, which fell to
+the rifle of General Crook, and was presented to Mary Anderson by that
+renowned American hunter; and here, under a glass case, is a stuffed hawk,
+a deceased actor and former colleague. Dressed in appropriate costume he
+used to take the part of the Hawk in Sheridan Knowles' comedy of "Love,"
+in which Mary Anderson played the Countess. The story of this bird's
+training is as characteristic of her passion for stage realism as of that
+indomitable power of will to overcome obstacles, to which much of her
+success is due. She determined to have a live hawk for the part instead of
+the conventional stuffed one of the stage, and with some difficulty
+procured a half-wild bird from a menagerie. Arming herself with strong
+spectacles and heavy gauntlets, she spent many a weary day in the painful
+process of "taming the shrew." After a long struggle, in which she came
+off sometimes torn and bleeding, the bird was taught to fly from the
+falconer's shoulder on to her outstretched finger and stay there while she
+recited the lines--
+
+  "How nature fashioned him for his bold trade!
+  Gave him his stars of eyes to range abroad.
+  His wings of glorious spread to mow the air
+  And breast of might to use them!"
+
+and then, by tickling his feet, he would fly off: and flap his wings
+appropriately, while she went on--
+
+                           "I delight
+  To fly my hawk. The hawk's a glorious bird;
+  Obedient--yet a daring, dauntless bird!"
+
+Here, too, are her guitar and zither, on both which instruments Mary
+Anderson is a proficient.
+
+And now that we have seen all her treasures, we must follow her to the top
+of the house, from which is obtained a fine view of the Atlantic as it
+races in mighty waves on to the beach at Long Branch. She declares that in
+the offing, among the snowy craft which dance at anchor there, can be
+distinguished her pretty steam yacht, the Galatea.
+
+Night is falling fast, but with that impulsiveness which is so
+characteristic of her, Mary Anderson insists upon our paying a visit to
+the stables to see her favorite mare, Maggie Logan. Poor Maggie is now
+blind with age, but in her palmy days she could carry her mistress, who is
+a splendid horsewoman, in a flight of five miles across the prairie in
+sixteen minutes. As we enter the box, Maggie turns her pretty head at
+sound of the familiar voice, and in response to a gentle hint, her
+mistress produces a piece of sugar from her pocket. As Mary Anderson
+strokes the fine thoroughbred head, we think the pair are not very much
+unlike. Meanwhile, Maggie's stable companion cranes his beautiful neck
+over the side of the box, and begs for the caress which is not denied him.
+
+Night has fallen now in earnest, and the beaming colored boy holds his
+lantern to guide us along the path, while Maggie whinnies after us her
+adieu. The grasshoppers chirp merrily in the sodden grass, and now and
+then a startled rabbit darts out of the wood and crosses close to our
+feet. The light is almost blinding as we enter the cheerful dining-room,
+where supper is laid on the snowy cloth, and are introduced to the
+charming family circle of the Long Branch villa. Though it is the home now
+of an old Southerner, Mary Anderson's step-father, it is a favorite
+trysting-place with Grant, the hero of the North, with Sherman, and many
+another famous man, between whom and the South there raged twenty years
+ago so deadly and prolonged a feud. While not actually a daughter of the
+South by birth, Mary Anderson is such by early education and associations,
+and to these grim old soldiers she seems often the emblem of Peace, as
+they sit in the pretty drawing-room at Long Branch, and listen, sometimes
+with tear-dimmed eyes, to the sweet tones of her voice as she sings for
+them their favorite songs.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+BIRTH AND EDUCATION.
+
+
+Seldom has a more charming story been written than that of Mary Anderson's
+childhood and youth to the time when, a beautiful girl of sixteen, she
+made her _debut_ in what has ever since remained her favorite _role_,
+Juliet--and the only Juliet who has ever played the part at the same age
+since Fanny Kemble.
+
+There was nothing in her home surroundings to guide in the direction of a
+dramatic career; indeed her parents seemed to have entertained the not
+uncommon dread of the temptations and dangers of a stage life for their
+daughter, and only yielded at last before the earnest passionate purpose
+to which so much of Mary Anderson's after success is due. They bent wisely
+at length before the mysterious power of genius which shone out in the
+beautiful child long before she was able fully to understand whither the
+resistless promptings to tread the "mimic stage of life" were leading her.
+In the end the New World gained an actress of whom it may be well proud,
+and the Old World has been fain to confess that it has no monopoly of the
+highest types of histrionic genius.
+
+Mary Anderson was born at Sacramento, on the Pacific slope, on the 28th of
+July, 1859, but removed with her parents to Kentucky, when but six months
+old. German and English blood are mingled in her veins, her mother being
+of German descent, while her father was the grandson of an Englishman. On
+the outbreak of the civil war he joined the ranks of the Southern armies,
+and fell fighting under the Confederate flag before Mobile. When but three
+years old Mary Anderson was left fatherless, and a year or two afterward
+she and her little brother Joseph found almost more than a father's love
+and care in her mother's second husband, Dr. Hamilton Griffin, an old
+Southern planter, who had abandoned his plantations at the outbreak of the
+war, and after a successful career as an army surgeon, established himself
+in practice at Louisville.
+
+Mary Anderson's early years were characteristic of her future. She was one
+of those children whose wild artist nature chafes under the restraints of
+home and school life. Generous to a fault, the life and soul of her
+companions, yet to control her taxed to their utmost the parental
+resources; and it must be admitted she was the torment of her teachers.
+Her wild exuberant spirits overleaped the bounds of school life, and
+sometimes made order and discipline difficult of enforcement. She was
+never known to tell an untruth, but at the same time she would never
+confess to a fault. Imprisoned often for punishment in a room, she would
+steadfastly refuse to admit that she had done wrong, and, maternal
+patience exhausted, the mutinous little culprit had commonly to be
+released impenitent and unconfessed. Indeed her wildness acquired for her
+the name of "Little Mustang;" as, later on, her fondness for poring over
+books beyond her childish years that of "Little Newspaper." At school, the
+confession must be made, she was refractory and idle. The prosaic routine
+of school life was dull and distasteful to the child, who, at ten years of
+age, found her highest delight in the plays of Shakespeare. Many of her
+school hours were spent in a corner, face to the wall, and with a book on
+her head, to restrain the mischievous habit of making faces at her
+companions, which used to convulse the school with ill-suppressed
+laughter. She would sally forth in the morning with her little satchel,
+fresh and neat as a daisy, to return at night with frock in rents, and all
+the buttons, if any way ornamental, given away in an impulsive generosity
+to her schoolmates. It soon became evident that she would learn little or
+nothing at school; and on a faithful promise to amend her ways if she
+might only leave and pursue her studies at home, Mary Anderson was
+permitted, when but thirteen years of age, to terminate her school career.
+But instead of studying "Magnall's Questions," or becoming better
+acquainted with "The Use of the Globes," she spent most of her time in
+devouring the pages of Shakespeare, and committing favorite passages to
+memory. To her childish fancy they seemed to open the gates of dreamland,
+where she could hold converse with a world peopled by heroes, and live a
+life apart from the prosaic everyday existence which surrounded her in a
+modern American town. Shakespeare was the teacher who replaced the "school
+marm," with her dull and formal lessons. Her quick perceptive mind grasped
+his great and noble thoughts, which gave a vigor and robustness to her
+mental growth. Since those days she has assimilated rather than acquired
+knowledge, and there are now few women of her age whose information is
+more varied, or whose conversation displays greater mental culture, and
+higher intellectual development. Strangely enough, it was the male
+characters of Shakespeare which touched Mary Anderson's youthful fancy;
+and she studied with a passionate ardor such parts as Hamlet, Romeo, and
+Richard III. With the wonderful intuition of an art-nature, she seems to
+have felt that the cultivation of the voice was a first essential to
+success. She ransacked her father's library for works on elocution, and
+discovering on one occasion "Rush on the Voice," proceeded, for many weeks
+before it became known to her parents, to commence under its guidance the
+task of building up a somewhat weak and ineffective organ into a voice
+capable of expressing with ease the whole gamut of feeling from the
+fiercest passion to the tenderest sentiment, and which can fill with a
+whisper the largest theater.
+
+The passion for a theatrical career seems to have been born in the child.
+At ten she would recite passages from Shakespeare, and arrange her room to
+represent appropriately the stage scene. Her first visit to the theater
+was when she was about twelve, one winter's evening, to see a fairy piece
+called "Puck." The house was only a short distance from her home at
+Louisville, and she and her little brother presented themselves at the
+entrance door hours before the time announced for the performance. The
+door-keeper happened to observe the children, and thinking they would
+freeze standing outside in the wintry wind, good naturedly opened the door
+and admitted Mary Anderson to Paradise--or what seemed like it to her--the
+empty benches of the dress circle, the dim half-light, the mysterious
+horizon of dull green curtain, beyond which lay Fairyland. Here for two or
+three hours she sat entranced, till the peanut boy made his appearance to
+herald the approach of the glories of the evening. From that date the die
+of Mary Anderson's destiny was cast. The theater became her world. She
+looked with admiring interest on a super, or even a bill-sticker, as they
+passed the windows of her father's house; and an actor seen in the streets
+in the flesh filled her with the same reverent awe and admiration as
+though the gods had descended from their serene heights to mingle in the
+dust with common mortals. We are not sure that she still retains this
+among the other illusions of her youth!
+
+The person who seems to have fixed Mary Anderson's theatrical destiny was
+one Henry Woude. He had been an actor of some distinction on the American
+stage, which he had, however, abandoned for the pulpit. Mr. Woude happened
+to be one of her father's patients, and the conversation turning one day
+upon Mary's passion for a theatrical career, the older actor expressed a
+wish to hear her read. He was enthusiastic in praise of the power and
+promise displayed by the self-trained girl, and declared to the astonished
+father that in his youthful daughter he possessed a second Rachel. Mr.
+Woude advised an immediate training for a dramatic career; but the
+parental repugnance to the stage was not yet overcome, and Mary remained a
+while longer to pursue, as best she might, her dramatic studies in her own
+home, and with no other teachers than the artistic instinct which had
+already guided her so far on the path to eventual triumph and success.
+
+When in her fourteenth year, Mary Anderson saw for the first time a really
+great actor. Edwin Booth came on a starring tour to Louisville, and she
+witnessed his Richard III., one of the actor's most powerful
+impersonations. That night was a new revelation to her in dramatic art,
+and she returned home to lie awake for hours, sleepless from excitement,
+and pondering whether it were possible that she could ever wield the same
+magic power. She commenced at once the serious study of "Richard III." The
+manner of Booth was carefully copied, and that great artist would
+doubtless have been as much amused as flattered to note the servility with
+which his rendering of the part was adhered to. A preliminary rehearsal
+took place in the kitchen before a little colored girl, some years Mary
+Anderson's senior, who had that devoted attachment to her young mistress
+often found in the colored races to the whites. Dinah was so much
+terrified by the fierce declamation that she almost went into hysterics,
+and rushing up-stairs begged the mother to come down and see what was the
+matter with "Miss Mami," as she was affectionately called at home. Consent
+was at length obtained to a little drawing-room entertainment at home of
+"Richard III.," with Miss Mary Anderson for the first and last time in the
+title _role_. For some months the young _debutante_ had carefully saved
+her pocket money for the purchase of an appropriate costume, and,
+resisting, as best she might, the attractions of the sweetmeat shop,
+managed to accumulate five dollars. With her mother's help a little
+costume was got up--a purple satin tunic, green silk cape, and plumed
+hat--and wearing the traditional hump, the youthful, representative of
+Richard appeared for the first time before an audience in the Tent Scene,
+preceded by the Cottage Scene from "The Lady of Lyons." The back
+drawing-room was arranged as a stage; her mother acting as prompter,
+though her help was little needed; and, judged by the enthusiastic
+applause of friends and neighbors, the performance was a great success.
+The young actress received it all with even more apparent coolness than if
+she had trodden the boards for years, and made her exits with the calm
+dignity which she had observed to be Edwin Booth's manner under similar
+circumstances. Indeed, Booth became to her childish fancy the divinity who
+could open to her the door of the stage she longed so ardently to reach.
+She confided to the little colored girl a plan to save their money, and
+fly to New York to Mr. Booth, and ask him to place her on the stage. Dinah
+entered heartily into the affair, and at one time they had managed to
+hoard as much as five dollars for the carrying out of this romantic
+scheme. Some years afterward when the wish of her heart had been long
+accomplished, Mary Anderson made Mr. Booth's acquaintance, and recounting
+to him her childish fancy asked what he would have done if she had
+succeeded in presenting herself to him in New York. "Why, my child, I
+should have taken you down to the depot, bought a couple of tickets for
+Louisville, and given you in charge of the conductor," was the rather
+discouraging answer of the great tragedian.
+
+Not long afterward Mary Anderson's dramatic powers were submitted to the
+critical judgment of Miss Cushman. That great actress, then in the zenith
+of her fame, was residing not far distant at Cincinnati. Accompanied by
+her mother, Mary presented herself at Miss Cushman's hotel. They happened
+to meet in the vestibule. The veteran actress took the young aspirant's
+hand with her accustomed vigorous grasp, to which Mary, not to be outdone,
+nerved herself to respond in kind; and patting her at the same time
+affectionately on the cheek, invited her to read before her on an early
+morning. When Miss Cushman had entered her waiting carriage, Mary
+Anderson, with her wonted veneration for what pertained to the stage,
+begged that she might be allowed to be the first to sit in the chair that
+had been occupied for a few moments by the great actress. Miss Cushman's
+verdict was highly favorable. "You have," she said, "three essential
+requisites for the stage; voice, personality, and gesture. With a year's
+longer study and some training, you may venture to make an appearance
+before the public." Miss Cushman recommended that she should take lessons
+from the younger Vandenhoff, who was at the time a successful dramatic
+teacher in New York. A year from that date occurred the actress' lamented
+death, almost on the very day of Mary Anderson's _debut_.
+
+Returning home thus encouraged, her dramatic studies were resumed with
+fresh ardor. The question of the New York project was anxiously debated in
+the family councils. It was at length decided that Mary Anderson should
+receive some regular training for the stage; and accompanied by her mother
+she was soon afterward on her way to the Empire City, full of happiness
+and pride that the dream of her life seemed now within reach of
+attainment. Vandenhoff was paid a hundred dollars for ten lessons, and
+taught his pupil mainly the necessary stage business. This was, strictly
+speaking. Mary Anderson's only professional training for a dramatic
+career. The stories which have been current since her appearance in
+London, as to her having been a pupil of Cushman, or of other
+distinguished American artists, are entirely apocryphal, and have been
+evolved by the critics who have given them to the world out of that
+fertile soil, their own inner consciousness. There is certainly no
+circumstance in her career which reflects more credit on Mary Anderson
+than that her success, and the high position as an artist she has won thus
+early in life, are due to her own almost unaided efforts. Well may it be
+said of her--
+
+  "What merit to be dropped on fortune's hill?
+  The honor is to mount it."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+EARLY YEARS ON THE STAGE.
+
+
+Between eight and nine years ago, Mary Anderson made her _debut_ at
+Louisville, in the home of her childhood, and before an audience, many of
+whom had known her from a child. This was how it came about. The season
+had not been very successful at Macaulay's Theater, and one Milnes Levick,
+an English stock-actor of the company, happened to be in some pecuniary
+difficulties, and in need of funds to leave the town. The manager
+bethought him of Mary Anderson, and conceived the bold idea of producing
+"Romeo and Juliet," with the untried young novice in the _role_ of Juliet
+for poor Levick's benefit. It was on a Thursday that the proposition was
+made to her by the manager at the theater, and the performance was to take
+place on the following Saturday. Mary, almost wild with delight, gave an
+eager acceptance if she could but obtain her parents' consent. The
+passers-by turned many of them that day to look at the beautiful girl, who
+flew almost panting through the streets to reach her home. The bell handle
+actually broke in her impetuous eager hands. The answer was "Yes," and at
+length the dream of her life was realized. On the following Saturday, the
+27th of November, 1875, after only a single rehearsal, and wearing the
+borrowed costume of the manager's wife, who happened to be about the same
+size as herself, and without the slightest "make up," Mary Anderson
+appeared as one of Shakespeare's favorite heroines. She was announced in
+the playbills thus:--
+
+    JULIET   .    .    BY A LOUISVILLE YOUNG LADY.
+    (Her first appearance on any stage.)
+
+The theater was packed from curiosity, and this is what the _Louisville
+Courier_ said of the performance next morning.
+
+
+_Louisville Courier_, November 28th, 1875.
+
+"We can scarcely bring ourselves to speak of the young actress, who came
+before the footlights last night, with the coolness of a critic and a
+spectator. An interest in native genius and young endeavor, in courage and
+brave effort that arrives from so near us--our own city--precludes the
+possibility of standing outside of sympathy, and peering in with analyzing
+and judicial glance. But we do not think that any man of judgment who
+witnessed Miss Anderson's acting of Juliet, can doubt that she is a great
+actress. In the latter scenes she interpreted the very spirit and soul of
+tragedy, and thrilled the whole house into silence by the depth of her
+passion and her power. She is essentially a tragic genius, and began
+really to act only after the scene in which her nurse tells Juliet of what
+she supposes is her lover's death. The quick gasp, the terrified stricken
+face, the tottering step, the passionate and heart-rending accents were
+nature's own marks of affecting overwhelming grief. Miss Anderson has
+great power over the lower tones of her rich voice. Her whisper
+electrifies and penetrates; her hurried words in the passion of the scene,
+where she drinks the sleeping potion, and afterward in the catastrophe at
+the end, although very far below conversational pitch, came to the ear
+with distinctness and with wonderful effect. In the final scene she
+reached the climax of her acting, which, from the time of Tybalt's death
+to the end, was full of tragic power that we have never seen excelled. It
+will be observed that we have placed the merit of this actress (in our
+opinion) for the most part in her deeper and more somber powers, and
+despite the high praise that we more gladly offer as her due, we cannot be
+blind to her faults in the presentation of last evening. She is,
+undoubtedly, a great actress, and last night evidenced a magnificent
+genius, more especially remarkable on account of her extreme youth; but
+whether she is a great Juliet is, indeed, more doubtful. We can imagine
+her as personating Lady Macbeth superbly, and hope soon to witness her in
+the part. As Juliet, her conception is almost perfect, as evinced by her
+rare and exceptional taste and intuitive understanding of the text. But
+her enactment of the earlier scenes lacks the exuberance and earnest
+joyfulness of the pure and glowing Flower of Italy, with all her fanciful
+conceits and delightful and loving ardor.
+
+"We could not, in Miss Anderson's rendition of the balcony scene, help
+feeling in the tones of her voice, an almost stern foreboding of their
+saddening fates--a foreboding stranger than that which falls as a shadow
+to all ecstatic youthful hope and joy. Other faults--as evident,
+undoubtedly, to her and to her advisers, as to us--are for the most part
+superficial, and will disappear in a little further experience. A first
+appearance, coupled with so much merit and youth, may well excuse many
+things.
+
+"A lack of true interpretation we can never excuse. We give mediocrity
+fair common-place words, generally of commendation unaccompanied by
+censure. But when we come to deal with a divine inspiration, our words
+must have their full meaning.
+
+"We do not here want mere commendatory phrases, whose stereotyped faces
+appear again and again. We want just appreciation, just censure. Thus our
+criticism is not to be considered unkind. Nay, we not only owe it to the
+truth and to ourselves in Miss Anderson's case, to state the existence of
+faults and crudities in her acting, but we owe it to her, for it is the
+greatest kindness, and yet we do not speak harshly and are glad to admit
+that most of her faults--such for instance as frequently casting up the
+eyes--are not only slight in themselves, but enhanced if not caused by the
+timidity natural on such an occasion.
+
+"But enough of faults. We know something of the quality of our home
+actress. We see with but little further training and experience she will
+stand among the foremost actresses on the stage. We are charmed by her
+beauty and commanding power, and are justified in predicting great future
+success."
+
+In the following February Mary Anderson appeared again at Macaulay's
+Theater for a week, when she played, with success, Bianca in "Phasio,"
+studied by the advice of the manager, who thought she had a vocation for
+heavy tragedy; also Julia in "The Hunchback," Evadne, and again Juliet.
+
+The reputation of the rising young actress began to spread now beyond the
+bounds of her Kentucky home, and on the 6th of March, 1876, she commenced
+a week's engagement at the Opera House in St. Louis. Old Ben de Bar, the
+great Falstaff of his time, was manager of this theater. He had known all
+the most eminent American actors, and had been manager for many of the
+stars; and he was quick to discern the brilliant future which awaited the
+young actress. The St. Louis engagement was not altogether successful,
+though it was brightened by the praises of General Sherman, with whom was
+formed then a friendship which remains unbroken till to-day. Indeed, the
+old veteran can never pass Long Branch in his travels without "stopping
+off to see Mary." Ben de Bar had a theater in New Orleans known as the St.
+Charles. It was the Drury Lane of that city, and situated in an
+unfashionable quarter of the town. Its benches were reported to be almost
+deserted and its treasury nearly empty. But an engagement to appear there
+for a week was accepted joyfully by Mary Anderson. She played Evadne at a
+parting _matinee_ in St. Louis on the Saturday, traveled to New Orleans
+all through Sunday, arriving there at two o'clock on the Monday afternoon,
+rushed down to the theater to rehearse with a new company, and that night
+appeared to a house of only forty-eight dollars! The students of the
+Military College formed a large part of the scanty audience, and fired
+with the beauty and talent of the young actress, they sallied forth
+between the acts and bought up all the bouquets in the quarter. The final
+act of "Evadne" was played almost knee-deep in flowers, and that night
+Mary Anderson was compelled to hire a wagon to carry home to her hotel the
+floral offerings of her martial admirers. General and Mrs. Tom Thumb
+occupied the stage box on one of the early nights of the engagement, and
+the fame of the beautiful young star soon reached the fashionable quarter
+of New Orleans, and Upper Tendom flocked to the despised St. Charles. On
+the following Saturday night there was a house packed from floor to
+ceiling, the takings, meanwhile, having risen from 48 to 500 dollars. An
+offer of an engagement at the Varietes, the Lyceum of New Orleans, quickly
+followed, and the daring feat of appearing as Meg Merrilies was attempted
+on its boards. The press predicted failure, and warned the young aspirant
+against essaying a part almost identified with Cushman, then but lately
+deceased, who had been a great favorite with the New Orleans public, and
+one of whose best impersonations it was. The actors too, with whom Mary
+Anderson rehearsed, looked forward to anything but a success. Nothing
+daunted, however, and confident in her own powers, she spent two hours in
+perfecting a make-up so successful, that even her mother failed to
+recognize her in the strange, weird disguise; and then, darkening her
+dressing-room, set herself resolutely to get into the heart of her part.
+Mary Anderson's Meg Merrilies was an immense success; Cushman herself
+never received greater applause, and the scene was quite an ovation.
+Hearing, on the fall of the curtain, that General Beauregard, one of the
+heroes of the civil war, intended to make a presentation, she threw off
+her disguise, and smoothing her hair rushed back to the stage, to receive
+the Badge of the Washington Artillery, a belt enameled in blue, with
+crossed cannons in gold with diamond vents, and suspended from the belt a
+tiger's head in gold, with diamond eyes and ruby tongue. The corps had
+been known through the war as the "Tiger Heads," and were famed for their
+deeds of daring and bravery. The belt bore the inscription, "To Mary
+Anderson, from her friends of the Battalion." She returned thanks in a
+little speech, which was received with much enthusiasm, and retired almost
+overcome with pleasure and pride. The youthful actress, who had then not
+completed her seventeenth year, took by storm the hearts of the impulsive
+and chivalrous Southerners. On the morning of her departure, she found to
+her astonishment that the railway company had placed a fine "Pullman" and
+special engine at her disposal all the way to Louisville. Generals
+Beauregard and Hood, with many distinguished Southerners, were on the
+platform to bid her farewell, and she returned home with purse and
+reputation, both marvelously grown.
+
+After a brief period spent in diligent study, Mary Anderson fulfilled a
+second engagement in New Orleans, which proved a great financial success.
+The criticisms of this period all admit her histrionic power, though some
+describe her efforts as at times raw and crude, faults hardly to be
+wondered at in a young girl mainly self-taught, and with barely a year's
+experience of the business of the stage.
+
+About this time Mary Anderson met with the first serious rebuff in her
+hitherto so successful career. It happened, too, in California, the State
+of her birth, where she was to have a somewhat rude experience of the old
+adage, that "a prophet has no honor in his own country." John McCullough
+was then managing with great success the principal theater in San
+Francisco, and offered her a two weeks' engagement. But California would
+have none of her. The public were cold and unsympathetic, the press
+actually hostile. The critics declared not only that she could not act,
+but that she was devoid of all capability of improvement. One, more
+gallant than his fellows, was gracious enough to remark that, in spite of
+her mean capacity as an artist, she possessed a neck like a column of
+marble. It was only when she appeared as Meg Merrilies that the
+Californians thawed a little, and the press relented somewhat. Edwin Booth
+happened to be in San Francisco at the time, and it was on the stage of
+California that Mary Anderson first met the distinguished actor who had
+been her early stage ideal. He told her that for ten years he had never
+sat through a performance till hers; and the praises of the great
+tragedian went far to console her for the coldness and want of sympathy in
+the general public. It was by Booth's advice, as well as John
+McCullough's, that she now began to study such parts as Parthenia, as
+better suited to her powers than more somber tragedy. Those were the old
+stock theater days in America, when every theater had a fair standing
+company, and relied for its success on the judicious selection of stars.
+This system, though perhaps a somewhat vicious one, made so many
+engagements possible to Mary Anderson, whose means would not have admitted
+of the costlier system of traveling with a special company.
+
+The return journey from California was made painfully memorable by a
+disastrous accident to a railway train which had preceded the party, and
+they were compelled to stop for the night at a little roadside town in
+Missouri. The hotels were full of wounded passengers, and scenes of
+distress were visible on all sides. When they were almost despairing of a
+night's lodging, a plain countryman approached them, and offered the
+hospitality of his pretty white cottage hard by, embosomed in its trees
+and flowers. The offer was thankfully accepted, and soon after their
+arrival the wife's sister, a "school mar'm," came in, and seemed to warm
+at once to her beautiful young visitor. She proposed a walk, and the two
+girls sallied forth into the fields. The stranger turned the subject to
+Shakespeare and the stage, with which Mary Anderson was fain to confess
+but a very slight acquaintance, fearing the announcement of her profession
+would shock the prejudices of these simple country folk, who might shrink
+from having "a play actress" under their roof. Some months after the party
+had returned home there came a letter from these kind people saying how,
+to their delight and astonishment, they had accidentally discovered who
+had been their guest. It seemed the sister was an enthusiastic
+Shakespearean student, and all agreed that in entertaining Mary Anderson
+they had "entertained an angel unawares."
+
+The California trip may be said to close the first period of Mary
+Anderson's dramatic career. With some draw-backs and some rebuffs she had
+made a great success, but she was known thus far only as a Western girl,
+who had yet to encounter the judgment of the more critical audiences of
+the South and East, as years later, with a reputation second to none all
+over the States as well as in Canada, she essayed, with a success which
+has been seldom equaled, perhaps never surpassed, the ordeal of facing, at
+the Lyceum, an audience, perhaps the most fastidious and critical in
+London.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE CAREER OF AN AMERICAN STAR.
+
+
+Mary Anderson returned home from California disheartened and dispirited.
+To her it had proved anything but a Golden State. Her visit there was the
+first serious rebuff in her brief dramatic career whose opening months had
+been so full of promise, and even of triumph. She was barely seventeen,
+and a spirit less brave, or less confident in its own powers, might easily
+have succumbed beneath the storm of adverse criticism. Happily for
+herself, and happily too for the stage on both sides of the Atlantic, the
+young _debutante_ took the lesson wisely to heart. She saw that the
+heights of dramatic fame could not be taken by storm; that her past
+successes, if brilliant, regard being had to her youth and want of
+training, were far from secure. She was like some fair flower which had
+sprung up warmed by the genial sunshine, likely enough to wither and die
+before the first keen blast. Her youth, her beauty, her undoubted dramatic
+genius, were points strongly in her favor; but these could ill
+counterbalance, at first at any rate, the want of systematic training, the
+almost total absence of any experience of the representation by others of
+the parts which she sought to make her own. She had seen Charlotte
+Cushman; indeed, in "Meg Merrilies," but of the true rendering of a part
+so difficult and complex as Shakespeare's Juliet, she knew absolutely
+nothing but what she had been taught by the promptings of her own artistic
+instinct. She was herself the only Juliet, as she was the only Bianca, and
+the only Evadne, she had ever seen upon any stage. In those days she had,
+perhaps, never heard the remark of Mademoiselle Mars, who was the most
+charming of Juliets at sixty. "Si j'avais ma jeunesse, je n'aurais pas mon
+talent."
+
+Coming back then to her Kentucky home from the ill-starred Californian
+trip, Mary Anderson seems to have determined to essay again the lowest
+steps of the ladder of fame. She took a summer engagement with a company,
+which was little else than a band of strolling players. The _repertoire_
+was of the usual ambitious character, and Mary was able to assume once
+more her favorite _role_ of Juliet. The company was deficient in a Romeo,
+and the part was consequently undertaken by a lady--a _role_ by the way in
+which Cushman achieved one of her greatest triumphs. In spite, however, of
+the young star, the little band played to sadly empty houses, and the
+treasury was so depleted that, in the generosity of her heart, Mary
+Anderson proposed to organize a benefit _matinee_, and play Juliet. She
+went down to the theater at the appointed hour and dressed for her part.
+After some delay a man strayed into the pit, then a couple of boys peeped
+over the rails of the gallery, and, at last, a lady entered the
+dress-circle. The disheartened manager was compelled at length to appear
+before the curtain and announce that, in consequence of the want of public
+support, the performance could not take place. That day Mary Anderson
+walked home to her hotel through the quiet streets of the little Kentucky
+town--which shall be nameless--with a sort of miserable feeling at her
+heart, that the world had no soul for the great creations of Shakespeare's
+master-mind, which had so entranced her youthful fancy. It all seemed like
+a descent into some chill valley of darkness, after the sweet incense of
+praise, the perfume of flowers, and the crowded theaters which had been
+her earlier experiences. But the dark storm cloud was soon to pass over,
+and henceforth almost unbroken sunshine was to attend Mary Anderson's
+career. For her there was to be no heart-breaking period of mean
+obscurity, no years of dull unrequited toil. She burst as a star upon the
+theatrical world, and a star she has remained to this day, because,
+through all her successes, she never for a moment lost sight of the fact
+that she could only maintain her ground by patient study, and steady
+persistent hard work. Failures she had unquestionably. Her rendering of a
+part was often rough, often unfinished. Not uncommonly she was surpassed
+in knowledge of stage business by the most obscure member of the companies
+with whom she played; but the public recognized instinctively the true
+light of genius which shone clear and bright through all defects and all
+shortcomings. It was a rare experience, whether on the stage, or in other
+paths of art, but not an unknown one. Fanny Kemble, who made her _debut_
+at Covent Garden at the same age as Mary Anderson, took the town by storm
+at once, and seemed to burst upon the stage as a finished actress. David
+Garrick was the greatest actor in England after he had been on the boards
+less than three months. Shelley was little more than sixteen when he wrote
+"Queen Mab;" and Beckford's "Vathek" was the production of a youth of
+barely twenty.
+
+In the year 1876, Mary Anderson received an offer from a distinguished
+theatrical manager, John T. Ford, of Washington and Baltimore, to join his
+company as a star, but at an ordinary salary. Three hundred dollars a
+week, even in those early days, was small pay for the rising young
+actress, who was already without a rival in her own line on the American
+stage; but the extended tour through the States which the engagement
+offered, the security of a good company, and of able management, led to an
+immediate acceptance. On this as on every other occasion, through her
+theatrical career, Mary Anderson was accompanied by her father and mother,
+who have ever watched over her welfare with the tenderest solicitude. All
+the arrangements for the trip were _en prince_. Indeed we have small idea
+in our little sea-girt isle, of the luxury and even splendor with which
+American stars travel over the vast distances between one city and another
+on the immense Western continent. The City of Worcester, a new Pullman
+car, subsequently used by Sarah Bernhardt, and afterward by Edwin Booth,
+was chartered for the party, consisting of Mary Anderson, her father,
+mother, and brother, and the young actress' maid and secretary. A cook and
+three colored porters constituted the _personnel_ of the establishment.
+There was a completely equipped kitchen, a dining-room with commodious
+family table; a tiny drawing-room with its piano, portraits of favorite
+artists, and some choicely-filled bookshelves, as well as capital sleeping
+quarters. It was literally a splendid home upon wheels. Where the hotels
+happened to be inferior at any particular town, the party occupied it
+through the period of the engagement. Visitors were received, friendly
+parties arranged, and little of the inconvenience and discomfort of travel
+experienced. It was thus that Mary Anderson made her first great
+theatrical tour through the States. In spite of now and then a cold, or
+even hostile press, her progress was very like a triumph. In many places
+she created an absolute _furore_, hundreds being turned away at the
+theater doors. Indeed, it was no uncommon occurrence for an ordinary seat
+whose advertised price was seventy-five cents to sell at as high a premium
+as twenty-five dollars. The management reaped a rich harvest, and Mary
+Anderson played on this Southern trip to more money than any previous
+actor, excepting only Edwin Forrest. There was still one drop of bitter in
+this cup of sweetness and success. The company, jealous of the prominence
+given to one whom they regarded as a mere untried girl, proceeded to add
+what they could to her difficulties by "boycotting" her. There were two
+exceptions among the gentlemen actors; and we are pleased to be able to
+record that one of these was an Englishman. The ladies were unanimous in
+proclaiming a war to the knife!
+
+Needless to say the impassioned youth of the New World now and then
+pursued the wandering star in her travels at immense expenditure of time
+and money, as well as of floral decorations. This is young America's way
+of showing his admiration for a favorite actress. He is silent and
+unobtrusive. He makes his presence known by the midnight serenade beneath
+her windows; by the bouquets which fall at her feet on every
+representation, and are sent to the room of her hotel at the same hour
+each day; by his constant attendance on the departure platform at the
+railway station. We are not sure that this silent worship which so often
+persistently followed her path was displeasing to Mary Anderson. It
+touched, if not her heart, yet that poetic vein which runs through her
+nature, and reminded her sometimes of the vain pursuit with which
+Evangeline followed her wandering lover.
+
+Manager Ford had taken Mary Anderson through the South with great profit
+to himself. In this she had had no direct pecuniary interest beyond her
+modest salary. She had, of course, greatly enriched her reputation if not
+her purse. She had become at home in her parts, and even added to her
+_repertoire_, the manager's daughter, with whom she played Juliet and Lady
+Macbeth alternately, having translated for her "La Fille de Roland," in
+which she has since appeared with great success. She was then but
+seventeen and a half, and had never possessed a diamond, when on returning
+home from church one Sunday morning, she found a little jewel case
+containing a magnificent diamond cross, an acknowledgment from the manager
+of her services to his company. The gift was the more appreciated from the
+fact that it was a very exceptional specimen of managerial generosity in
+America!
+
+The criticisms of the press during the early years of Mary Anderson's
+theatrical career are full of interest, viewed in the light of her after
+and firmly established success. They show that the American people were
+not slow to recognize the genius of the young girl, who was destined
+hereafter to spread a luster on the stage of two continents. At the same
+time they are full either of a ridiculous praise which is blind to the
+presence of the least fault, and would have turned the head of a young
+girl not endowed with the sturdy common sense possessed by Mary Anderson;
+or they are marked by a vindictive animosity which defeats its very
+object, and practically attracts public notice in favor of an actress it
+is obviously meant to crush. These newspaper criticisms are further
+amusing as showing the family likeness which exists between the _genus_
+"dramatic critic" on both sides of the Atlantic. Each seems to believe
+that he carries the fate of the actor in his inkhorn. Each seems blind to
+the fact that _Vox populi vox Dei_; that favorable criticism never yet
+made an artist, who had not within him the power to win the popular favor;
+still more, that adverse criticism can never extinguish the heaven-sent
+spark of true artistic fire.
+
+The verdict of Louisville on its home-grown actress has been given in a
+preceding chapter. The estimate, however, of strangers is of far more
+value than that of friends or acquaintance. The judgment of St. Louis,
+where Mary Anderson played her earliest engagements away from home is, on
+the whole, the most interesting dramatic criticism of her early
+performances on record. St. Louis is a city of considerable culture, and
+stands in much the same relation to the South as does its modern rival
+Chicago to the North-West. Its newspapers are some of the ablest on the
+continent, and its audiences perhaps as critical as any in America if we
+except perhaps such places as Boston or New York.
+
+The _St. Louis Globe Democrat_ says:--
+
+"A diamond in the rough, but yet a diamond, was the mental verdict of the
+jury who sat in the Opera House last night to see Miss Mary Anderson on
+her first appearance here in the character of Juliet. It was in reality
+her _debut_ upon the stage. She played, a short time since, for one week
+in her native city, Louisville, but this is her first effort upon a stage
+away from the associations which surround an appearance among friends, and
+which must, to a great extent, influence the general judgment of the
+_debutante's_ merit.... We believe her to be the most promising young
+actress who has stepped upon the boards for many a day, and before whom
+there is, undoubtedly, a brilliant and successful career."
+
+The _St. Louis Republican_ has the following very interesting notice:--
+
+"A fresh and beautiful young girl of Juliet's age embodied and presented
+Juliet. Beauty often mirrors its type in this beautiful character, but
+very rarely does Juliet's youth meet its youthful counterpart on the
+stage.... A great Juliet is not the question here, but the possibility of
+a Juliet near the age at which the dramatist presented his heroine. Mary
+Anderson is untampered by any stage traditions, and she rendered
+Shakespeare's youngest heroine as she felt her pulsing in his lines....
+She leads a return to the source of poetic inspiration, and exemplifies
+what true artistic instincts and feeling can do on the stage, without
+either the traditions and experience of acting. She colors her own
+conceptions and figure of Juliet, and by her work vindicates the master,
+and proves that Juliet can be presented by a girl of her own age.... The
+fourth act exhibited great tragic power, and no want was felt in the
+celebrated chamber scene, which is the test passage of this _role_.... It
+stamped the performance as a success, and the actress as a phenomenon....
+The thought must have gone round the house among those who knew the
+facts--Can this be only the seventh performance on the stage of this young
+girl?"
+
+Here is another notice a few months later on in Mary Anderson's dramatic
+career from the _Baltimore Gazette_:--
+
+"Miss Anderson's Juliet has the charm which belongs to youth, beauty, and
+natural genius. Her fair face, her flexible youth--for she is still in her
+teens--and her great natural dramatic genius, make her personation of that
+sweet creation of Shakespeare successful, in spite of her immaturity as an
+artist. We have so often seen aged Juliets; stiff, stagey Juliets; fat,
+roomy Juliets; and ill-featured Juliets, that the sight of a young,
+lady-like girl with natural dramatic genius, a bright face, an unworn
+voice, is truly refreshing. In the scene where the nurse brings her the
+bad news of Tybalt's death and Romeo's banishment, she acted charmingly.
+In gesture, attitude, and facial expression she gave evidence of emotion
+so true and strong, as showed she was capable of losing her own identity
+in the _role_."
+
+As an amusing specimen of vindictive criticism, we subjoin a notice in the
+_Washington Capitol_, under date May 28, 1876. This lengthy notice
+contains strong internal evidence of a deadly feud existing between
+Manager Ford and the editor of the _Capitol_, and the stab is given
+through the fair bosom of Mary Anderson, whose immense success in
+Senatorial Washington, this atrabilious knight of the plume devotes two
+columns of his valuable space to explaining away.
+
+
+Washington City _Daily Capitol_, 28th May, 1876.
+
+"Miss Anderson comes to us on a perfect whirlwind of newspaper puffs. We
+use the words advisedly, for in none of them can be found a paragraph of
+criticism. If Siddons or Cushman had been materialized and restored to the
+stage in all their pristine excellence, the excitement in Cincinnati,
+Louisville, St. Louis and New Orleans, could not have been more intense.
+The very firemen of one of those cities seem to have been aroused and lost
+their hearts, if not their heads; and not only serenaded the object of
+their adoration, but got up a decoration for her to wear of the most
+costly and gorgeous sort. Under this state of facts we waited with unusual
+impatience for sixteen sticks to give the cue that was to fetch on the
+Juliet. It came at last, and Juliet stalked in. Had Lady Macbeth responded
+to the summons we could not have been more amazed. Miss Anderson is heroic
+in size and manner. The lovely heiress to the house of the Capulets, on
+the turn of sixteen, swept in upon the stage as if she were mistress of
+the house, situation, and of fate, and bent on bringing the enemy to
+terms. Her face is sweet, at times positively beautiful, but incapable of
+expression. Her voice, while clear, is hard, metallic, at intervals nasal,
+and all the while stagey. She has been trained in the old Kemble tragic
+pump-handle style of elocution, that runs talk on stilts. Her manner is
+crude and awkward. In the balcony scene she only needed a pair of gold
+rimmed glasses to have made her an excellent schoolmistress, chiding a
+naughty young man for intruding upon the sacred premises of Madame
+Fevialli's select academy for young ladies. In the love scenes that
+followed she was cold enough to be broken to pieces for a refrigerator.
+But who could have warmed up to such a Romeo? That unpleasant youth pained
+us with his quite unnecessary gyrations and spasmodic noise. We soon
+discovered that Miss Anderson had been coached for Juliet without
+possessing on her part the most distant conception of the character--or
+capacity to render it, had she the information. She was not doing Juliet
+from end to end. She was as far from Juliet as the North Pole is from the
+Equator. She was doing something else. We could not make out clearly what
+that character was; but it was something quite different and a good way
+off. Sometimes we thought it was Lady Macbeth, sometimes Meg Merrilies,
+sometimes Lucretia Borgia, but never for a moment Juliet. We speak thus
+plainly of Miss Anderson because her injudicious and enthusiastic friends
+are injuring, if they are not ruining her. Her fine physique, her dash,
+her beautiful face, her clear ringing voice, have carried crowds off their
+heads--well, they are off at both ends; for on last Thursday night the
+amount of applauding was based on shoe leather. The lovely Anderson was
+called out at the end of each act. As to that, the active Romeo had his
+call. We never saw before precisely such a house. The north-west was out
+in full force. Kentucky came to the front like a little man. General
+Sherman, sitting at our elbow, wore out his gloves, blistered his hands,
+and then borrowed a cotton umbrella from his neighbor. Miss Anderson, with
+all her natural advantages, added to her love of the art, her indomitable
+will as shown in her square prominent jaw, has a career before her, but it
+is not down the path indicated by these enthusiastic friends. 'The steeps
+where Fame's proud temple shines afar' are difficult of access, and genius
+waters them with more tears than sturdy, steady, persevering talent.
+
+"Charlotte Cushman told us once that the heaviest article she had to carry
+up was her heart. The divine actress who now leads the English-spoken
+stage began her professional career as a ballet dancer, and has grown her
+laurels from her tears. We suspected Miss Anderson's success. It was too
+triumphant, too easy. After years of weary labor, of heart-breaking
+disappointments, of dreary obscurity, genius sometimes blazes out for a
+brief period to dazzle humanity; and quite as often never blazes, but
+disappears without a triumph.
+
+"To such life is not a battle, but a campaign with ten defeats, yea,
+twenty defeats to one victory.
+
+"Miss Anderson will think us harsh and unkind in this. She will live, we
+hope, to consider us her best friend.
+
+"There is one fact upon which she can comfort herself: she could not get
+two hours and a half of our time and a column in the _Capitol_ were she
+without merit. There is value in her; but to fetch it out she must go
+back, begin lower, and give years to training, education, and hard work.
+She can labor ten years for the sake of living five. As for her support,
+it was of the sort afforded by John T., the showman, and very funny. Mrs.
+Germon, God bless her! was properly funny. She is the best old woman on
+end in the world.
+
+"Romeo (Mr. Morton) we have spoken of. Lingham is supposed to have done
+Mercutio. Well, he did do him. That is, he went through the motions. He
+seemed to be saying something anent the great case of Capulet _vs._
+Montague, but so indistinct that there was a general sense of relief when
+he staggered off to die. Deaths generally had this effect Thursday night,
+and the house not only applauded the exits, but made itself exceedingly
+merry.
+
+"When Paris went down and a tombstone fell over him, his plaintive cry of
+'Oh, I am killed!' was received with shouts of laughter.
+
+"It was the most laughable we ever witnessed. In the first scene one of
+those marble statues, so peculiar to John T.'s mismanagement, that
+resemble granite in a bad state of small-pox, fell over.
+
+"The house was amazed to see it resolve itself into a board, and laughed
+tumultuously to note how it righted itself up in a mysterious manner, and
+stood in an easy reclining posture till the curtain fell.
+
+"The scene that exhibited the balcony affair was a sweet thing. Evidently
+the noble house of the Capulets was in reduced circumstances. The building
+from which Juliet issued was a frame structure so frail in material that
+we feared a collapse.
+
+"If the carpenter who erected that structure for the Capulets charged more
+than ten dollars currency he swindled the noble old duffer infamously. The
+front elevation came under that order of architecture known out West as
+Conestoga. It was all of fifteen feet in height, and depended for
+ornamentation on a brilliant horse cover thrown over the corner of the
+balcony, and a slop bucket that Juliet was evidently about to empty on the
+head of Romeo when that youth made his presence known. The house shook so
+under Juliet's substantial tread, that an old lady near us wished to be
+taken out, declaring that 'that young female would get her neck broken
+next thing.'
+
+"In the last scene where the page (Miss Lulu Dickson) was ordered to
+extinguish the torch, the poor girl made frantic efforts, but failing,
+walked off with the thing blazing.
+
+"When Paris entered with his page, a youth in a night shirt, that youth
+carried in his countenance the fixed determination of putting out his
+torch at the right moment or dieing in the attempt. We all saw that.
+
+"Expectancy was worked up to a point of intense interest, so that when at
+last the word was given, a puff of wind not only extinguished the torch
+but shook the scenery, and made us thankful the young man did wear
+pantaloons, as the consequences might have been terrible.
+
+"When Count Paris fell mortally wounded, a tombstone at his side fell over
+him in the most convenient and charming manner. The house was so convulsed
+with merriment that when poor Juliet was exposed in the tomb she was
+greeted with laughter, much to the poor girl's embarrassment. And this is
+the sort of entertainment to which we have been treated throughout our
+entire season. But then the showman is a success and pays his bills."
+
+The great Eastern cities of America are regarded by an American artist
+much in the same light as is the metropolis by a provincial artist at
+home. Their approval is supposed to stamp as genuine the verdict of
+remoter districts. The success which had attended Mary Anderson in her
+journeyings West and South was not to desert her when she presented
+herself before the presumably more critical audiences of the East. She
+made her Eastern _debut_ at Pittsburg, the Birmingham of America, in the
+heat of the Presidential election of 1880, and met with a thoroughly
+enthusiastic reception, to proceed thence to Philadelphia, where she
+reaped plenty of honor, but very little money. Boston, the Athens of the
+New World, was reached at length. When Mary Anderson was taken down by the
+manager to see the vast Boston Theater, whose auditorium seats 4000
+people, and which Henry Irving declared to be the finest in the world, she
+almost fainted with apprehension. She opened here in Evadne, and one
+journal predicted that she would take Cushman's place. This part was
+followed by Juliet, Meg Merrilies, and her other chief impersonations. On
+one day of her engagement the receipts at a matinee and an evening
+performance amounted together to the large sum of $7000.
+
+The visit to Boston was made memorable to Mary Anderson by her
+introduction to Longfellow. About a week after she had opened, a friend of
+the poet's came to her with a request that she would pay him a visit at
+his pretty house in the suburbs of Boston, Longfellow being indisposed at
+the time, and confined to his quaint old study, overlooking the waters of
+the sluggish Charles, and the scenery made immortal in his verse. Here was
+commenced a warm friendship between the beautiful young artist and the
+aged poet, which continued unbroken to the day of his death. He was seated
+when she entered, in a richly-carved chair, of which Longfellow told her
+this charming story. The "spreading chestnut tree," immortalized in "The
+Village Blacksmith," happened to stand in an outlying village near Boston,
+somewhat inconveniently for the public traffic at some cross roads. It
+became necessary to cut it down, and remove the forge beneath. But the
+village fathers did not venture to proceed to an act which they regarded
+as something like sacrilege, without consulting Longfellow. At their
+request he paid a visit of farewell to the spot, and sanctioned what was
+proposed. Not long after, a handsomely carved chair was forwarded to him,
+made from the wood of the "spreading chestnut tree," and which bore an
+inscription commemorative of the circumstances under which it was given.
+Few of his possessions were dearer to Longfellow than this dumb memento
+how deeply his poetry had sunk into the national heart of his countrymen.
+It stood in the chimney corner of his study, and till the day of his death
+was always his favorite seat.
+
+The verdict of Longfellow upon Mary Anderson is worth that of a legion of
+newspaper critics, and his judgment of her Juliet deserves to be recorded
+in letters of gold. The morning after her benefit, he said to her, "I have
+been thinking of Juliet all night. _Last night you were Juliet!_"
+
+At the Boston Theater occurred an accident which shows the marvelous
+courage and power of endurance possessed by the young actress. In the play
+of "Meg Merrilies," she had to appear suddenly in one scene at the top of
+a cliff, some fifteen feet above the stage. To avoid the danger of falling
+over, it was necessary to use a staff. Mary Anderson had managed to find
+one of Cushman's, but the point having become smooth through use, she told
+one of the people of the theater to put a small nail at the bottom.
+Instead of this, he affixed a good-sized spike, and one night Mary
+Anderson, coming out as usual, drove this right through her foot, in her
+sudden stop on the cliffs brink. Without flinching, or moving a muscle,
+with Spartan fortitude she played the scene to the end, though almost
+fainting with pain, till on the fall of the curtain the spiked staff was
+drawn out, not without force. Longfellow was much concerned at this
+accident, and on nights she did not play would sit by her side in her box,
+and wrap the furred overcoat he used to wear carefully round her wounded
+foot.
+
+From Boston Mary Anderson proceeded to New York to fulfill a two weeks'
+engagement at the Fifth Avenue Theater. She opened with a good company in
+"The Lady of Lyons." General Sherman had advised her to read no papers,
+but one morning to her great encouragement, some good friend thrust under
+her door a very favorable notice in the New York _Herald_. The engagement
+proved a great success, and was ultimately extended to six weeks, the
+actress playing two new parts, Juliet and The Daughter of Roland. She had
+passed the last ordeal successfully, and might rejoice as she stood on the
+crest of the hill of Fame that the ambition of her young life was at
+length realized. Her subsequent theatrical career in the States and Canada
+need not be recorded here. She had become America's representative
+_tragedienne_; there was none to dispute her claims. Year after year she
+continued to increase an already brilliant reputation, and to amass one of
+the largest fortunes it has ever been the happy lot of any artist to
+secure.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+FIRST VISIT TO EUROPE.
+
+
+In the summer of 1879, was paid Mary Anderson's first visit to Europe. It
+had long been eagerly anticipated. In the lands of the Old World was the
+cradle of the Art she loved so well, and it was with feelings almost of
+awe that she entered their portals. She had few if any introductions, and
+spent a month in London wandering curiously through the conventional
+scenes usually visited by a stranger. Westminster Abbey was among her
+favorite haunts; its ancient aisles, its storied windows, its thousand
+memories of a past which antedated by so many centuries the civilization
+of her native land, appealed deeply to the ardent imagination of the
+impassioned girl. Here was a world of which she had read and dreamed, but
+whose over-mastering, living influence was now for the first time felt. It
+seemed like the first glimpse of verdant forest, of enameled meadow, of
+crystal stream, of pure sky to one who had been blind. It was another
+atmosphere, another life. Brief as was her visit, it gave an impulse to
+those germs which lie deep in every poetic soul. She saw there was an
+illimitable world of Art, whose threshold as yet she had hardly
+trodden--and she went home full of the inspiration caught at the ancient
+fountains of Poetry and Art. From that time an intellectual change seems
+to have passed over her. Her studies took new channels, and her
+impersonations were mellowed and glorified from her personal contact with
+the associations of a great past.
+
+A visit to Stratford-on-Avon was one of the most delightful events of the
+trip. It seemed to Mary Anderson the emblem of peace and contentment and
+quiet; and though as a stranger she did not then enjoy so many of the
+privileges which were willingly accorded her during the present visit to
+this country, she still looks back to the day when she knelt by the grave
+of Shakespeare as one of the most eventful and inspiring of her life.
+
+Much of the time of Mary Anderson's European visit was spent in Paris.
+Through the kindness of General Sherman she obtained introductions to
+Ristori and other distinguished artists, and, to her delight, secured also
+the _entree_ behind the scenes of the Theatre Francais. Its magnificent
+green-room, the walls lined with portraits of departed celebrities of that
+famous theater, amazed her by its splendor; and to her it was a strange
+and curious sight to see the actors in "Hernani" come in and play cards in
+their gorgeous stage costumes at intervals in the performance. On one of
+these occasions she naively asked Sarah Bernhardt why her portrait did not
+appear on the walls? The great artist replied that she hoped Mary Anderson
+did not wish her dead, as only under such circumstances could an
+appearance there be permitted to her. "Behind the scenes" of the Theatre
+Francais was a source of never-wearying interest, and Mary Anderson
+thought the effects of light attained there far surpassed anything she had
+witnessed on the English or American stage.
+
+The verdict of Ristori, before whom she recited, was highly favorable, and
+the great _tragedienne_ predicted a brilliant career for the young
+actress, and declared she would be a great success with an English company
+in Paris, while the "divine Sarah" affirmed that she had never seen
+greater originality. On the return journey from Paris a brief stay was
+made at the quaint city of Rouen. Joan of Arc's stake, and the house
+where, tradition has it, she resided, were sacred spots to Mary Anderson;
+and the ancient towers, the curious old streets, overlooking the fertile
+valley through which the Seine wanders like a silver thread, are memories
+which have since remained to her ever green. During her first visit to
+England Mary Anderson never dreamt of the possibility that she herself
+might appear on the English stage. Indeed the effect of her first European
+tour was depressing and disheartening. She saw only how much there was for
+her to see, how much to learn in the world of Art. A feeling of
+home-sickness came over her, and she longed to be back at her seaside home
+where she could watch the wild restless Atlantic as it swept in upon the
+New Jersey shore, and listen to the sad music of the weary waves. This was
+the instinct of a true artist nature, which had depths capable of being
+stirred by the touch of what is great and noble.
+
+In the following year, however, there came an offer from the manager of
+Drury Lane to appear upon its boards. Mary Anderson received it with a
+pleased surprise. It told that her name had spread beyond her native land,
+and that thus early had been earned a reputation which commended her as
+worthy to appear on the stage of a great and famous London theater. But
+her reply was a refusal. She thought herself hardly finished enough to
+face such a test of her powers; and the natural ambition of a successful
+actress to extend the area of her triumph seemed to have found no place in
+her heart.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+SECOND VISIT TO EUROPE.--EXPERIENCES ON THE ENGLISH STAGE.
+
+
+The interval of five years which elapsed between Mary Anderson's first and
+second visits to Europe was busily occupied by starring tours in the
+States and Canada. Mr. Henry Abbey's first proposal, in 1883, for an
+engagement at the Lyceum was met with the same negative which had been
+given to that of Mr. Augustus Harris. But, happening some time afterward
+to meet her step-father, Dr. Griffin, in Baltimore, Mr. Abbey again urged
+his offer, to which a somewhat reluctant consent was at length given. The
+most ambitious moment of her artist-life seemed to have arrived at last.
+If she attained success, the crown was set on all the previous triumphs of
+her art; if failure were the issue, she would return to America
+discredited, if not disgraced, as an actress. The very crisis of her
+stage-life had come now in earnest. It found her despondent, almost
+despairing; at the last moment she was ready to draw back. She had then
+none of the many friends who afterward welcomed her with heartfelt
+sincerity whenever the curtain rose on her performance. She saw Irving in
+"Louis XI." and "Shylock." The brilliant powers of the great actor filled
+her at once with admiration and with dread, when she remembered how soon
+she too must face the same audiences. She sought to distract herself by
+making a round of the London theaters, but the most amusing of farces
+could hardly draw from her a passing smile, or lift for a moment the
+weight of apprehension which pressed on her heart. The very play in which
+she was destined first to present herself before a London audience was
+condemned beforehand. To make a _debut_ as Parthenia was to court certain
+failure. The very actors who rehearsed with her were Job's comforters. She
+saw in their faces a dreary vista of empty houses, of hostile critics, of
+general disaster. She almost broke down under the trial, and the sight of
+her first play-bill which told that the die was irrevocably cast for good
+or evil made her heart sink with fear. On going down to the theater upon
+the opening night she found, with mingled pleasure and surprise, that on
+both sides of the Atlantic fellow artists were regarding her with kindly
+sympathizing hearts. Her dressing-room was filled with beautiful floral
+offerings from many distinguished actors in England and America, while
+telegrams from Booth, McCullough, Lawrence Barrett, Irving, Ellen Terry,
+Christine Nilsson, and Lillie Langtry, bade her be of good courage, and
+wished her success. The overture smote like a dirge on her ear, and when
+the callboy came to announce that the moment of her entrance was at hand,
+it reminded her of nothing so much as the feeling of mourners when the
+sable mute appears at the door, as a signal to form the procession to the
+tomb. But in a moment the ordeal was safely passed, and passed forever so
+far as an English audience is concerned. Seldom has any actress received
+so warm and enthusiastic a reception. Mary Anderson confesses now that
+never till that moment did she experience anything so generous and so
+sympathetic, and offered to one who was then but "a stranger in a strange
+land." Mary Anderson's Parthenia was a brilliant success. Her glorious
+youth, her strange beauty, her admirable impersonation of a part of
+exceptional difficulty, won their way to all hearts. A certain amount of
+nervousness and timidity was inevitable to a first performance. The sudden
+revulsion of feeling, from deep despondency to complete triumphant
+success, made it difficult, at times, for the actress to master her
+feelings sufficiently to make her words audible through the house. One
+candid youth in the gallery endeavored to encourage her with a kindly
+"Speak up, Mary." The words recalled her in an instant to herself, and for
+the rest of the evening she had regained her wonted self-possession.
+
+From that time till Mary Anderson's first Lyceum season closed, the world
+of London flocked to see her. The house was packed nightly from floor to
+ceiling, and she is said to have played to more money than the
+distinguished lessee of the theater himself. Among the visitors with whom
+Mary Anderson was a special favorite were the prince and princess. They
+witnessed each of her performances more than once, and both did her the
+honor to make her personal acquaintance, and compliment her on her
+success. So many absurd stories have been circulated as to Mary Anderson's
+alleged unwillingness to meet the Prince of Wales, that the true story may
+as well be told once for all here. On one of the early performances of
+"Ingomar," the prince and princess occupied the royal box, and the prince
+caused it to be intimated to Mary Anderson that he should be glad to be
+introduced to her after the third act. The little republican naively
+responded that she never saw any one till after the close of the
+performance. H.R.H. promptly rejoined that he always left the theater
+immediately the curtain fell. Meanwhile the manager represented to her the
+ungraciousness of not complying with a request which half the actresses in
+London would have sacrificed their diamonds to receive. And so at the
+close of the third act Mary Anderson presented herself, leaning on her
+father's arm, in the anteroom of the royal box. Only the prince was there,
+and "He said to me," relates Mary Anderson, "more charming things than
+were ever said to me, in a few minutes, in all my life. I was delighted
+with his kindness, and with his simple pleasant manner, which put me at my
+ease in a moment; but I was rather surprised that the princess did not see
+me as well." The piece over, and there came a second message, that the
+princess also wished to be introduced. With her winning smile she took
+Mary Anderson's hand in hers, and thanking her for the pleasure she had
+afforded by her charming impersonation, graciously presented Mary with her
+own bouquet.
+
+The true version of another story, this time as to the Princess of Wales
+and Mary Anderson, may as well now be given. One evening Count Gleichen
+happened to be dining _tete-a-tete_ with the prince and princess at
+Marlborough House. When they adjourned to the drawing-room, the princess
+showed the count some photographs of a young lady, remarking upon her
+singular beauty, and suggesting what a charming subject she would make for
+his chisel. The count was fain to confess that he did not even know who
+the lady was, and had to be informed that she was the new American
+actress, beautiful Mary Anderson. He expressed the pleasure it would give
+him to have so charming a model in his studio, and asked the princess
+whether he was at liberty to tell Mary Anderson that the suggestion came
+from her, to which the princess replied that he certainly might do so.
+Three replicas of the bust will be executed, of which Count Gleichen
+intends to present one to her royal highness, another to Mary Anderson's
+mother, while the third will be placed in the Grosvenor Gallery. This is
+really all the foundation for the story of a royal command to Count
+Gleichen to execute a bust of Mary Anderson for the Princess of Wales.
+
+Among those who were constant visitors at the Lyceum was Lord Lytton, or
+as Mary Anderson loves to call him, "Owen Meredith." Her representation of
+his father's heroine in "The Lady of Lyons" naturally interested him
+greatly, and it is possible he may himself write for her a special play.
+Between them there soon sprung up one of those warm friendships often seen
+between two artist natures, and Lord Lytton paid Mary Anderson the
+compliment of lending her an unpublished manuscript play of his father's
+to read. Tennyson, too, sought the acquaintance of one who in his verse
+would make a charming picture. He was invited to meet her at dinner at a
+London house, and was her cavalier on the occasion. The author of "The
+Princess" did not in truth succeed in supplanting in her regard the bard
+of her native land, Longfellow; but he so won on Mary's heart that she
+afterward presented him with the gift--somewhat unpoetic, it must be
+admitted--of a bottle of priceless Kentucky whisky, of a fabulous age!
+
+If Mary Anderson was a favorite with the public before the curtain, she
+was no less popular with her fellow artists on the stage. Jealousy and
+ill-will not seldom reign among the surroundings of a star. It is a trial
+to human nature to be but a lesser light revolving round some brilliant
+luminary--but the setting to adorn the jewel. But Mary Anderson won the
+hearts of every one on the boards, from actors to scene-shifters. And at
+Christmas, in which she is a great believer, every one, high or low,
+connected with the Lyceum, was presented with some kind and thoughtful
+mark of her remembrance. And when the season closed, she was presented in
+turn, on the stage, with a beautiful diamond suit, the gift of the fellow
+artists who had shared for so long her triumphs and her toils.
+
+Mary Anderson's success in London was fully indorsed by the verdict of the
+great provincial towns. Everywhere she was received with enthusiasm, and
+hundreds were nightly turned from the doors of the theaters where she
+appeared. In Edinburgh she played to a house of £450, a larger sum than
+was ever taken at the doors of the Lyceum. The receipts of the week in
+Manchester were larger than those of any preceding week in the theatrical
+history of the great Northern town. Taken as a whole, her success has been
+without a parallel on the English stage. If she has not altogether escaped
+hostile criticism in the press, she has won the sympathies of the public
+in a way which no artist of other than English birth has succeeded in
+doing before her. They have come and gone, dazzled us for a time, but have
+left behind them no endearing remembrance. Mary Anderson has found her way
+to our hearts. It seems almost impossible that she can ever leave us to
+resume again the old life of a wandering star across the great American
+continent. It may be rash to venture a prophecy as to what the future may
+bring forth; but thus much we may say with truth, that, whenever Mary
+Anderson departs finally from our shores, the name of England will remain
+graven on her heart.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+IMPRESSIONS OF ENGLAND.
+
+
+Almost every traveler from either side of the Atlantic, with the faintest
+pretensions to distinction, bursts forth on his return to his native
+shores in a volume of "Impressions." Archæologists and philosophers,
+novelists and divines, apostles of sweetness and light, and star actors,
+are accustomed thus to favor the public with volumes which the public
+could very often be well content to spare. It is but natural that we
+should wish to know what Mary Anderson thinks of the "fast-anchored isle"
+and the folk who dwell therein. I wish, indeed, that these "Impressions"
+could have been given in her own words. The work would have been much
+better done, and far more interesting; but failing this, I must endeavor,
+following a recent illustrious example, to give them at second hand.
+During the earlier months of her stay among us, she lived somewhat the
+life of a recluse. Shut up in a pretty villa under the shadow of the
+Hampstead Hills, she saw little society but that of a few fellow artists,
+who found their way to her on Sunday afternoons. Indeed, she almost shrank
+from the idea of entering general society. The English world she wished to
+know was a world of the past, peopled by the creations of genius; not the
+modern world, which crowds London drawing-rooms. She saw the English
+people from the stage, and they were to her little more than audiences
+which vanished from her life when the curtain descended. From her earliest
+years she had been, in common with many of her countrymen, a passionate
+admirer of the great English novelist, Dickens. Much of her leisure was
+spent in pilgrimages to the spots round London which he has made immortal.
+Now and then, with her brother for a protector, she would go to lunch at
+an ancient hostelry in the Borough, where one of the scenes of Dickens'
+stories is laid, but which has degenerated now almost to the rank of a
+public-house. Here she would try to people the place in fancy with the
+characters of the novel. "To listen to the talk of the people at such
+places," she once said to me, "was better than any play I ever saw."
+
+Stratford-on-Avon too, was, of course, revisited, and many days were spent
+in lingering lovingly over the memorials of her favorite Shakespeare. She
+soon became well known to the guardians of the spot, and many privileges
+were granted to her not accorded on her first visit, four years before,
+when she was regarded but as a unit in the crowd of passing visitors who
+throng to the shrine of the great master of English dramatic art. On one
+occasion when she was in the church of Stratford-on-Avon, the ancient
+clerk asked her if she would mind being locked in while he went home to
+his tea. Nothing loath she consented, and remained shut up in the still
+solemnity of the place. Kneeling down by the grave of Shakespeare, she
+took out a pocket "Romeo and Juliet" and recited Juliet's death scene
+close to the spot where the great master, who created her, lay in his long
+sleep. But presently the wind rose to a storm, the branches of the
+surrounding trees dashed against the windows, darkness spread through the
+ghostly aisles, and terror-stricken, Mary fled to the door, glad enough to
+be released by the returning janitor.
+
+Rural England with its moss-grown farmhouses, its gray steeples, its white
+cottages clustering under their shadow, its tiny fields, its green
+hedgerows, garrisoned by the mighty elms, charmed Mary Anderson beyond
+expression, contrasting so strongly with the vast prairies, the primeval
+forests, the mighty rivers of her own giant land. These were the
+boundaries of her horizon in the earlier months of her stay among us; she
+knew little but the England of the past, and the England as the stranger
+sees it, who passes on his travels through its smiling landscapes. But a
+change of residence to Kensington brought Mary Anderson more within reach
+of those whom she had so charmed upon the stage, and who longed to have
+the opportunity of knowing her personally. By degrees her drawing-rooms
+became the scene of an informal Sunday afternoon reception. Artists and
+novelists, poets and sculptors, statesmen and divines, journalists and
+people of fashion crowded to see her, and came away wondering at the skill
+and power with which this young girl, evidently fresh to society, could
+hold her own, and converse fluently and intelligently on almost any
+subject. If the verdict of London society was that Mary Anderson was as
+clever in the drawing-room as she was attractive on the stage, she, in her
+turn, was charmed to speak face to face with many whose names and whose
+works had long been familiar to her. It was a new world of art and
+intellect and genius to which she was suddenly introduced, and which
+seemed to her all the more brilliant after the somewhat prosaic uniformity
+of society in her own republican land. To say that she admires and loves
+England with all her heart may be safely asserted. To say that it has
+almost succeeded in stealing away her heart from the land of her birth,
+she would hardly like to hear said. But we think her mind is somewhat that
+of Captain Macheath, in the "Beggars' Opera"--
+
+  "How happy could I be with either,
+  Were t'other dear charmer away."
+
+One superiority, at least, she confesses England to have over America. The
+dreadful "interviewer" who has haunted her steps for the last eight years
+of her life with a dogged pertinacity which would take no denial, was here
+nowhere to be seen. He exists we know, but she failed to recognize the
+same _genus_ in the quite harmless-looking gentleman, who, occasionally on
+the stage after a performance, or in her drawing-room, engaged her in
+conversation, when leading questions were skillfully disguised; and, then,
+much to her astonishment, afterward produced a picture of her in print
+with materials she was quite unconscious of having furnished. She failed,
+she admits now, to see the conventional "note-book," so symbolical of the
+calling at home, and thus her fears and suspicions were disarmed.
+
+One instance of Mary Anderson's kind and womanly sympathy to some of the
+poorest of London's waifs and strays should not be unrecorded here. It was
+represented to her at Christmas time that funds were needed for a dinner
+to a number of poor boys in Seven Dials. She willingly found them, and a
+good old-fashioned English dinner was given, at her expense, in the Board
+School Room to some three hundred hungry little fellows, who crowded
+through the snow of the wintry New Year's Day to its hospitable roof.
+Though she is not of our faith, Mary Anderson was true to the precepts of
+that Christian Charity which, at such seasons, knows no distinction of
+creed; and of all the kind acts which she has done quietly and
+unostentatiously since she came among us, this is one which commends her
+perhaps most of all to our affection and regard.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+THE VERDICT OF THE CRITICS.
+
+"_Quot homines, tot sententiæ._"
+
+
+It may, perhaps, be interesting to record here some of the criticisms
+which have appeared in several of the leading London and provincial
+journals on Mary Anderson's performances, and especially on her _debut_ at
+the Lyceum. Such notices are forgotten almost as soon as read, and except
+for some biographical purpose like the present, lie buried in the files of
+a newspaper office. It is usual to intersperse them with the text; but for
+the purpose of more convenient reference they have been included in a
+separate chapter.
+
+
+_Standard_, 3d September, 1883.
+
+"The opening of the Lyceum on Saturday evening, was signalized by the
+assembly of a crowded and fashionable audience to witness the first
+appearance in this country of Miss Mary Anderson as Parthenia in Maria
+Lovell's four-act play of 'Ingomar.' Though young in years, Miss Anderson
+is evidently a practiced actress. She knows the business of the stage
+perfectly, is learned in the art of making points, and, what is more,
+knows how to bide her opportunity. The wise discretion which imposes
+restraint upon the performer was somewhat too rigidly observed in the
+earlier scenes on Saturday night, the consequence being that in one of the
+most impressive passages of the not very inspired dialogue, the little
+distance between the sublime and the ridiculous was bridged by a voice
+from the gallery, which, adopting a tone, ejaculated 'A little louder,
+Mary.' A less experienced artist might well have been taken aback by this
+sudden infraction of dramatic proprieties. Miss Anderson, however, did not
+loose her nerve, but simply took the hint in good part and acted upon it.
+There is very little reason to dwell at any length upon the piece. Miss
+Anderson will, doubtless, take a speedy opportunity of appearing in some
+other work in which her capacity as an actress can be better gauged than
+in Maria Lovell's bit of tawdry sentiment. A real power of delineating
+passion was exhibited in the scene where Parthenia repulses the advances
+of her too venturesome admirer, and in this direction, to our minds, the
+best efforts of the lady tend. All we can do at present is to chronicle
+Miss Anderson's complete success, the recalls being so numerous as to defy
+particularization."
+
+
+_The Times_, 3d September, 1883.
+
+"Miss Mary Anderson, although but three or four and twenty, has for
+several years past occupied a leading position in the United States, and
+ranks as the highest of the American 'stars,' whose effulgence Mr. Abbey
+relies upon to attract the public at the Lyceum in Mr. Irving's absence.
+Recommendations of this high order were more than sufficient to insure
+Miss Anderson a cordial reception. They were such as to dispose a
+sympathetic audience to make the most ample allowance for nervousness on
+the part of the _debutante_, and to distrust all impressions they might
+have of an unfavorable kind, or at least to grant the possession of a more
+complete knowledge of the lady's attainments to those who had trumpeted
+her praise so loudly. That such should have been the mood of the house,
+was a circumstance not without its influence on the events of the evening.
+It was manifestly owing in some measure to the critical spirit being
+subordinated for the time being to the hospitable, that Miss Anderson was
+able to obtain all the outward and visible signs of a dramatic triumph in
+a _role_ which intrinsically had little to commend it.... Usually it is
+the rude manliness, the uncouth virtues, the awkward and childlike
+submissiveness of that tamed Bull of Bashan [Ingomar] that absorbs the
+attention of a theatrical audience. On Saturday evening the center of
+interest was, of course, transferred to Parthenia. To the interpretation
+of this character Miss Anderson brings natural gifts of rare excellence,
+gifts of face and form and action, which suffice almost themselves to play
+the part; and the warmth of the applause which greeted her as she first
+tripped upon the stage expressed the admiration no less than the welcome
+of the house. Her severely simple robes of virgin white, worn with classic
+grace, revealed a figure as lissome and perfect of contour as a draped
+Venus of Thorwaldsen, her face seen under her mass of dark brown hair,
+negligently bound with a ribbon, was too _mignonne_, perhaps, to be
+classic, but looked pretty and girlish. A performance so graced could not
+fail to be pleasing. And yet it was impossible not to feel, as the play
+progressed, that to the fine embodiment of the romantic heroine, art was
+in some degree wanting. The beautiful Parthenia, like a soulless statue,
+pleased the eye, but left the heart untouched. It became evident that
+faults of training or, perhaps, of temperament, were to be set off against
+the actress' unquestionable merits. The elegant artificiality of the
+American school, a tendency to pose and be self-conscious, to smirk even,
+if the word may be permitted, especially when advancing to the footlights
+to receive a full measure of applause, were fatal to such sentiment as
+even so stilted a play could be made to yield. It was but too evident that
+Parthenia was at all times more concerned with the fall of her drapery
+than with the effect of her speeches, and that gesture, action,
+intonation--everything which constitutes a living individuality were in
+her case not so much the outcome of the feeling proper to the character,
+as the manifestation of diligent painstaking art which had not yet learnt
+to conceal itself. The gleam of the smallest spark of genius would have
+been a welcome relief to the monotony of talent.... It must not be
+forgotten, however, that a highly artificial play like 'Ingomar' is by no
+means a favorable medium for the display of an actress' powers, though it
+may fairly indicate their nature. Before a definite rank can be assigned
+to her among English actresses, Miss Anderson must be seen in some of her
+other characters."
+
+
+_Daily News_, 3d September, 1883.
+
+"It will be recollected that Mr. Irving, in his farewell speech at the
+Lyceum Theater, on the 28th of July, made a point of bespeaking a kindly
+welcome for Miss Mary Anderson on her appearance at his theater during his
+absence, as the actress he alluded to was a lady whose beauty and talent
+had made her the favorite of America, from Maine to California. It would
+not perhaps be unfair to attribute to this cordial introduction something
+of the special interest which was evidently aroused by Miss Anderson's
+_debut_ here on Saturday night. English playgoers recognize but vaguely
+the distinguishing characteristics of actors and actresses, whose fame has
+been won wholly by their performances on the other side of the Atlantic.
+It was therefore just as well that before Miss Anderson arrived some
+definite claim as to her pretensions should be authoritatively put
+forward. These would, it must be confessed, have been liable to
+misconception if they had been judged solely by her first performance on
+the London stage. 'Ingomar' is not a play, and Parthenia is certainly not
+a character, calculated to call forth the higher powers of an ambitious
+actress. As a matter of fact, Miss Anderson, who began her histrion career
+at an early age, and is even now of extremely youthful appearance, has had
+plenty of experience and success in _roles_ of much more difficulty, and
+much wider possibilities. Her modest enterprise on Saturday night was
+quite as successful as could have been anticipated. There is not enough
+human reality about Parthenia to allow her representative to interest very
+deeply the sympathy of her hearers. There is not enough poetry in the
+drama to enable the actress to mar our imagination by calling her own into
+play. What Miss Anderson could achieve was this: she was able in the first
+place to prove, by the aid of the Massilian maiden's becoming, yet
+exacting attire, that her personal advantages have been by no means
+overrated. Her features regular yet full of expression, her figure slight
+but not spare, the pose of her small and graceful head, all these,
+together with a girlish prettiness of manner, and a singularly refined
+bearing, are quite enough to account for at least one of the phases of
+Miss Anderson's popularity. Her voice is not wanting in melody of a
+certain kind, though its tones lack variety. Her accent is slight, and
+seldom unpleasant. Of her elocution it is scarcely fair to judge until she
+has caught more accurately the pitch required for the theater. For the
+accomplishment of any great things Miss Anderson had not on Saturday night
+any opportunity, nor did her treatment of such mild pathos and passion as
+the character permitted impress us with the idea that her command of deep
+feeling is as yet matured. So far as it goes, however, her method is
+extremely winning, and her further efforts, especially in the direction of
+comedy and romantic drama, will be watched with interest, and may be
+anticipated with pleasure."
+
+
+_Morning Post_, 3rd September, 1883.
+
+"LYCEUM THEATER.
+
+"This theater was reopened under the management of Mr. Henry Abbey on
+Saturday evening, when was revived Mrs. Lovell's play called 'Ingomar,' a
+picturesque but somewhat ponderous work of German origin, first produced
+some thirty years ago at Drury Lane with Mr. James Anderson and Miss
+Vandenhoff as the principal personages. The interest centers not so much
+in the barbarian Ingomar as in his enchantress, Parthenia, of whom Miss
+Mary Anderson, an American artist of fine renown, proves a comely and
+efficient representative. In summing up the qualifications of an actress
+the Transatlantic critics never fail to take into account her personal
+charms--a fascinating factor. Borne on the wings of an enthusiastic press,
+the fame of Miss Anderson's loveliness had reached our shores long before
+her own arrival. The Britishers were prepared to see a very handsome lady,
+and they have not been disappointed. Miss Anderson's beauty is of Grecian
+type, with a head of classic contour, finely chiseled features, and a tall
+statuesque figure, whose Hellenic expression a graceful costume of antique
+design sets off to the best advantage. You fancy that you have seen her
+before, and so perhaps you have upon the canvas of Angelica Kauffman. For
+the rest, Miss Anderson is very clever and highly accomplished. Her
+talents are brilliant and abundant, and they have been carefully
+cultivated to every perfection of art save one--the concealment of it. She
+has grace, but it is studied, not negligent grace; her action is always
+picturesque and obviously premeditated; everything she says and does is
+impressive, but it speaks a foregone conclusion. Her acting is polished
+and in correct taste. What it wants is freshness, spontaneity, _abandon_.
+Among English artists of a bygone age her style might probably find a
+parallel in the stately elegance and artificial grandeur of the Kembles.
+It has nothing in common with the electric _verve_ and romantic ardor of
+Edmund Kean. Of the _feu sacre_ which irradiated Rachel and gives to
+Bernhardt splendor ineffable, Miss Anderson has not a spark. She is not
+inspired. Hers is a pure, bright, steady light; but it lacks mystic
+effulgence. It is not empyreal. It is not 'the light that never was on sea
+or land--the consecration and the poet's dream.' It is not genius. It is
+talent. In a word, Miss Anderson is beautiful, winsome, gifted, and
+accomplished. To say this is to say much, and it fills to the brim the
+measure of legitimate praise. She is an eminently good, but not a great
+artist."
+
+
+_Daily Telegraph_, 3rd September, 1883.
+
+"There was a natural desire to see, nay, rather let us say to welcome Miss
+Mary Anderson, who made her _debut_ as Parthenia in 'Ingomar' on Saturday
+evening last. The fame of this actress had already preceded her. An
+enthusiastic climber up the rugged mountain paths of the art she had
+elected to serve ... an earnest volunteer in the almost forlorn cause of
+the poetical drama: a believer in the past, not merely because it is past,
+but because in it was embodied much of the beautiful and the hopeful that
+has been lost to us, Miss Mary Anderson was assured an honest greeting at
+a theater of cherished memories.... It has been said that the friends of
+Miss Anderson were very ill-advised to allow her to appear as Parthenia in
+the now almost-forgotten play of 'Ingomar.' We venture to differ entirely
+with this opinion. That the American actress interested, moved, and at
+times delighted her audience in a play supposed to be unfashionable and
+out of date, is, in truth, the best feather that can be placed in her
+cap.... There must clearly be something in an actress who cannot only hold
+her own as Parthenia, but in addition dissipate the dullness of
+'Ingomar.'... And now comes the question, how far Miss Mary Anderson
+succeeded in a task that requires both artistic instinct and personal
+charm to carry it to a successful issue. The lady has been called
+classical, Greek, and so on, but is, in truth, a very modern reproduction
+of a classical type--a Venus by Mr. Gibson, rather than a Venus by Milo; a
+classic draped figure of a Wedgwood plaque more than an echo from the
+Parthenon.... The actress has evidently been well taught, and is both an
+apt and clever pupil; she speaks clearly, enunciates well, occasionally
+conceals the art she has so closely studied, and is at times both tender
+and graceful.... Her one great fault is insincerity, or, in other words,
+inability thoroughly to grasp the sympathies of the thoughtful part of her
+audience. She is destitute of the supreme gift of sensibility that Talma
+considers essential, and Diderot maintains is detrimental to the highest
+acting. Diderot may be right, and Talma may be wrong, but we are convinced
+that the art Miss Anderson has practiced is, on the whole, barren and
+unpersuasive. She does not appear to feel the words she speaks, or to be
+deeply moved by the situations in which she is placed. She is forever
+acting--thinking of her attitudes, posing very prettily, but still posing
+for all that.... She weeps, but there are no tears in her eyes; she
+murmurs her love verses with charming cadence, but there is no throb of
+heart in them.... These things, however, did not seem to affect her
+audience. They cheered her as if their hearts were really touched....
+These, however, are but early impressions, and we shall be anxious to see
+her in still another delineation."
+
+
+_Standard_, 10th December, 1883.
+
+"LYCEUM THEATER.
+
+"Miss Mary Anderson has won such favor from audiences at the Lyceum, that
+anything she did would attract interest and curiosity. Galatea, in Mr.
+W.S. Gilbert's mythological comedy, 'Pygmalion and Galatea,' has,
+moreover, been spoken of as one of the actress' chief successes, and a
+crowded house on Saturday evening was the result of the announcement of
+its revival. An ideal Galatea could scarcely be realized, for there should
+be in the triumph of the sculptor's art, endowed by the gods with life, a
+supernatural grace and beauty. The singular picturesqueness of Miss
+Anderson's poses and gestures, the consequences of careful study of the
+best sculpture, has been noted in all that she has done, and this quality
+fits her peculiarly for the part of the vivified statue. In this respect
+it is little to say that Galatea has never before been represented with so
+near an approach to perfection."
+
+
+_Daily News_, 10th December, 1883.
+
+"The part of Galatea, in which Miss Anderson made her first appearance in
+England at the Lyceum Theater on Saturday evening, enables this delightful
+actress to exhibit in her fullest charms the exquisite grace of form and
+the simple elegance of gesture and movement by virtue of which she stands
+wholly without a rival on the stage. Whether in the alcove, where she is
+first discovered motionless upon the pedestal, or when miraculously endued
+with life, she moves, a beautiful yet discordant element in the Athenian
+sculptor's household. The statuesque outline and the perfect harmony
+between the figure of the actress and her surroundings, were striking
+enough to draw more than once from the crowded theater, otherwise hushed
+and attentive, an audible expression of pleasure. Rarely, indeed, can an
+attempt to satisfy by actual bodily presentment the ideal of a poetical
+legend have approached so nearly to absolute perfection."
+
+
+_The Morning Post_, 10th December, 1883.
+
+"'Pygmalion and Galatea,' a play in which Miss Mary Anderson is said to
+have scored her most generally accepted success in her own country, has
+now taken at the Lyceum the place of 'The Lady of Lyons,' a drama
+certainly not well fitted to the young actress' capabilities. Mr.
+Gilbert's well-known fairy comedy is in many respects exactly suited to
+the display of Miss Anderson's special merits. Its heroine is a statue,
+and a very beautiful simulation of chiseled marble was sure to be achieved
+by a lady of Miss Anderson's personal advantages, and of her approved
+skill in artistic posing. Moreover, the sub-acid spirit of the piece
+rarely allows its sentiment to go very deep, and it is in the
+expression--perhaps, we should write the experience--of really earnest
+emotion, that Miss Anderson's chief deficiency lies. Galatea is moreover
+by no means the strongest acting part in the comedy, affording few of the
+opportunities for the exhibition of passion, which fall to the lot of the
+heart-broken and indignant wife, Cynisca. Although in 1871, on the
+original production of the play, Mrs. Kendall made much of Galatea's
+womanly pathos, there is plenty of room for an effective rendering of the
+character, which deliberately hides the woman in the statue. Such a
+rendering is, as might have been expected, Miss Anderson's. Even in her
+ingenious scenes of comedy with Leucippe and with Chrysos, there is no
+more dramatic vivacity than might be looked for in a temporarily animated
+block of stone. Her love for the sculptor who has given her vitality is
+perfectly cold in its purity. There is no spontaneity in the accents in
+which it is told, no amorous impulse to which it gives rise. This new
+Galatea, however, is fair to look upon--so fair in her statuesque
+attitudes and her shapely presence, that the infatuation of the man who
+created her is readily understood. By the classic beauty of her features
+and the perfect molding of her figure she is enabled to give all possible
+credibility to the legend of her miraculous birth. Moreover, the
+refinement of her bearing and manner allows no jarring note to be struck,
+and although, when Galatea sadly returns to marble not a tear is shed by
+the spectator, it is felt that a plausible and consistent interpretation
+of the character has been given."
+
+
+_The Times_, 10th December, 1883.
+
+"Mr. Gilbert's play 'Pygmalion and Galatea,' is a perversion of Ovid's
+fable of the Sculptor of Cyprus, the main interest of which upon the stage
+is derived from its cynical contrast between the innocence of the
+beautiful nymph of stone whom Pygmalion's love endows with life, and the
+conventional prudishness of society. Obviously the purpose of such a
+travesty may be fulfilled without any call upon the deeper emotions--upon
+the stress of passion, which springs from that 'knowledge of good and
+evil' transmitted by Eve to all her daughters. It is sufficient that the
+living and breathing Galatea of the play should seem to embody the classic
+marble, that she should move about the stage with statuesque grace and
+that she should artlessly discuss the relations of the sexes in the
+language of double intent. Miss Anderson's degree of talent, as shown in
+the impersonations she has already given us, and her command of classical
+pose, have already suggested this character as one for which she was
+eminently fitted. It was therefore no surprise to those who have been
+least disposed to admit this lady's claim to greatness as an actress that
+her Galatea on Saturday night should have been an ideally beautiful and
+tolerably complete embodiment of the part. If the heart was not touched,
+as, indeed, in such a play it scarcely ought to be, the eye was enabled to
+repose upon the finest _tableau vivant_ that the stage has ever seen. Upon
+the curtains of the alcove being withdrawn, where the statue still
+inanimate rests upon its pedestal, the admiration of the house was
+unbounded. Not only was the pose of the figure under the lime-light
+artistic in the highest sense, but the tresses and the drapery were most
+skillfully arranged to look like the work of the chisel. It is significant
+of the measure of Miss Anderson's art, that in her animated moments
+subsequently she should not have excelled the plastic grace of this first
+picture. At the same time, to her credit it must be said, that she never
+fell much below it. Her movements on the stage, her management of her
+drapery, her attitudes were full of classic beauty. Actresses there have
+been who have given us much more than this statuesque posing, who have
+transformed Galatea into a woman of flesh and blood, animated by true
+womanly love for Pygmalion as the first man on whom her eyes alight.
+Sentiment of this kind, whether intended by the author or not, would
+scarcely harmonize with the satirical spirit of the play, and the innocent
+prattle which Miss Anderson gives us in place of it meets sufficiently
+well the requirements of the case dramatically, leaving the spectator free
+to derive pleasure from his sense of the beautiful, here so strikingly
+appealed to, from the occasionally audacious turns of the dialogue in
+relation to social questions, from the disconcerted airs of Pygmalion at
+the contemplation of his own handiwork, and from the real womanly jealousy
+of Cynisca."
+
+
+_The Graphic_, 14th December, 1883.
+
+"Never, perhaps, have the playgoing public been so much at variance with
+the critics as in the case of the young American actress now performing at
+the Lyceum Theater. There is no denying the fact that Miss Anderson is, to
+use a popular expression, 'the rage;' but it is equally certain that she
+owes this position in very slight degree to the published accounts of her
+acting. From the first she has been received, with few exceptions, only in
+a coldly critical spirit; and yet her reputation has gone on gathering in
+strength till now, the Lyceum is crowded nightly with fashionable folk
+whose carriages block the way; and those who would secure places to
+witness her performances are met at the box offices with the information
+that all the seats have been taken long in advance. How are we to account
+for the fact that this young lady who came but the other day among us a
+stranger, even her name being scarcely known, and who still refrains from
+those 'bold advertisements,' which in the case of so many other managers
+and performers usurp the functions of the trumpet of fame, has made her
+way in a few short months only to the very highest place in the estimation
+of our play going public? We can see no possible explanation save the
+simple one that her acting affords pleasure in a high degree; for those
+who insinuate that her beauty alone is the attraction may easily be
+answered by reference to numerous actresses of unquestionable personal
+attractions who have failed to arouse anything approaching to the same
+degree of interest. As regards the unfavorable critics, we are inclined to
+think that they have been unable to shake off the associations of the
+essentially artificial characters--Parthenia and Pauline--in which Miss
+Anderson has unfortunately chosen to appear. Further complaints of
+artificiality and coldness have, it is true, been put forth _a propos_ of
+her first appearance on Saturday evening in Mr. Gilbert's beautiful
+mythological comedy of 'Pygmalion and Galatea;' but protests are beginning
+to appear in some quarters, and we are much mistaken if this graceful and
+accomplished actress is not destined yet to win the favor of her censors.
+The statuesque beauty of her appearance and the classic grace of all her
+movements and attitudes, as the Greek statue suddenly endowed with life,
+have received general recognition; but not less remarkable were the
+simplicity, the tenderness, and, on due occasion, the passionate impulse
+of her acting, though the impersonation is no doubt in the chastened
+classical vein. It is difficult to imagine how a realization of Mr.
+Gilbert's conception could be made more perfect."
+
+
+_The World_, 12th December, 1883.
+
+"The revival of 'Pygmalion and Galatea' at the Lyceum on Saturday last,
+with Miss Mary Anderson in the part of the animated statue, excited
+considerable interest and drew together a large and enthusiastic audience.
+Without attempting any comparison between Mrs. Kendal and the young
+American actress, it may at once be stated, that the latter gave an
+interesting and original rendering of Galatea. As the velvet curtain drawn
+aside disclosed the snowy statue on its pedestal, in a pose of classic
+beauty, it seemed hard to believe that such sculptural forms, the delicate
+features, the fine arms, the graceful figure, could be of any other
+material than marble. The gradual awakening to life, the joy and wonder of
+the bright young creature, to whom existence is still a mystery, were
+charmingly indicated; and when Miss Anderson stepped forward slowly in her
+soft clinging draperies, with her pretty brown hair lightly powdered, she
+satisfied the most fastidiously critical sense of beauty. Galatea, as Miss
+Anderson understands her, is statuesque; but Galatea is also a woman,
+perfect in the purity of ideal womanhood. The chief characteristics of her
+nature are innate modesty and refinement, which, though, perhaps, not
+strictly fashionable attributes, are appropriate enough in a daughter of
+the gods. When she loves, it is without any airs and graces. She has not
+an atom of self-consciousness; she cannot premeditate; she loves because
+she _must_, rather than because she will, because it is the condition of
+her life. Some of the naive remarks she has to utter, might in clumsy lips
+seem coarse. Miss Anderson delivered them with consummate grace and
+innocence, but her fine smile, her bright sparkling eye, proved
+sufficiently, that the innocence was not stupidity. The first long speech
+at the conclusion of which she kneels to Pygmalion was beautifully
+rendered, and elicited a burst of applause, which was repeated at
+intervals throughout the evening. Her poses were always graceful,
+sometimes strikingly beautiful.
+
+"Miss Anderson has the true sense of rhythm and the clearest enunciation;
+she has a deep and musical voice, which in moments of pathos thrills with
+a sweet and tender inflection. She has seized, in this instance, upon the
+touching rather than the harmonious side of Galatea, the pure and innocent
+girl who is not fit to live upon this world. She is only not human because
+she is superior to human folly; she cannot understand sin because it is so
+sweet; she asks to be taught a fault; but the womanly love and devotion,
+and unselfishness, are all there, writ in clear and uncompromising
+characters. The first and last acts were decidedly the best; in the latter
+especially Miss Anderson touched a true pathetic chord, and fairly
+elicited the pity and sympathy of the audience. With a gentle wonder and
+true dignity she meets the gradual dropping away of her illusion, the
+crumbling of her unreasoning faith, the cruel stings when her spiritual
+nature is misunderstood, and her actions misinterpreted. She is jarred by
+the rough contact of commonplace facts, and ruffled and wounded by the
+strange and cynical indifference to her sufferings of the man she loves.
+At last when she can bear no more, yet uncomplaining to the last, like a
+flower broken on its stem, shrinking and sensitive, she totters out with
+one loud cry of woe, the expression of her agony. Miss Anderson is a poet,
+she brings everything to the level of her own refined and artistic
+sensibility, and the result is that while she presents us with a picture
+of ideal womanhood, she must appeal of necessity rather to our
+imaginations than to our senses, and may by some persons be considered
+cold. Once or twice she dropped her voice so as to became almost
+inaudible, and occasionally forced her low tones more than was quite
+agreeable; but whether in speech, in gesture, or in delicate suggestive
+byplay, her performance is essentially finished. One or two little actions
+may be noted, such as the instinctive recoil of alarmed modesty when
+Pygmalion blames her for saying 'things that others would reprove,' or her
+expression of troubled wonder to find that it is 'possible to say one
+thing and mean another.'"
+
+
+_Daily Telegraph_, 10th December, 1883.
+
+"'PYGMALION AND GALATEA.'
+
+"It is the fashion to judge of Miss Anderson outside her capacity and
+competency as an actress. Ungraciously enough she is regarded and reviewed
+as the thing of beauty that is a joy forever, and her infatuated admirers
+view her first as a picture, last as an artist. If, then, public taste was
+agitated by the Parthenia who lolled in her mother's lap and twisted
+flower garlands at the feet of her noble savage Ingomar; if society
+fluttered with excitement at the sight of the faultless Pauline gazing
+into the fire on the eve of her ill-fated marriage, how much more
+jubilation there will be now that Miss Mary Anderson, a lovely woman in
+studied drapery, stands posed at once as a statue, and as a subject for
+the photographic pictures which will flood the town. Unquestionably Miss
+Anderson never looked so well as a statue, both lifeless and animated,
+never comported herself with such grace, never gave such a perfect
+embodiment of purity and innocence. In marble she was a statue motionless;
+in life she was a statue half warmed. There are those who believe, or who
+try to persuade themselves, that this is all Galatea has to do--to appear
+behind a curtain as a '_pose plastique_,' to make an excellent '_tableau
+vivant_,' and to wear Greek drapery, as if she had stepped down from a
+niche in the Acropolis. All this Miss Mary Anderson does to perfection.
+She is a living, breathing statue. A more beautiful object in its innocent
+severity the stage has seldom seen. But is this all that Galatea has to
+do? Those who have studied Mr. Gilbert's poem will scarcely say so.
+Galatea descended from her pedestal has to become human, and has to
+reconcile her audience to the contradictory position of a woman, who,
+presumably innocent of the world and its ways, is unconsciously cynical
+and exquisitely pathetic. We grant that it is a most difficult part to
+play. Only an artist can give effect to the comedy, or touch the true
+chord of sentiment that underlies the idea of Galatea. But to make Galatea
+consistently inhuman, persistently frigid, and monotonously spiritual, is,
+if not absolutely incorrect, at least glaringly ineffective. If Galatea
+does not become a breathing, living woman when she descends from her
+pedestal, a woman capable of love, a woman with a foreshadowing of
+passion, a woman of tears and tenderness, then the play goes for
+nothing.... Miss Anderson reads Galatea in a severe fashion. She is a
+Galatea perfectly formed, whose heart has not yet been adjusted. She
+shrinks from humanity. She wants to be classical and severe, and her last
+cry to Pygmalion, instead of being the utterance of a tortured soul, is
+'monotonous and hollow as a ghost's.' It is with no desire to be
+discourteous that we venture any comparison between the Galatea of Miss
+Anderson and of Mrs. Kendal. The comparison should only be made on the
+point of reading. Yet surely there can be no doubt that Mrs. Kendal's idea
+of Galatea, while appealing to the heart, is more dramatically effective.
+It illumines the poem."
+
+
+_The Times_, 28th January, 1884.
+
+"LYCEUM THEATER.
+
+"Those who have suspected that Miss Mary Anderson was well advised in
+clinging to the artificial class of character hitherto associated with her
+engagement at the Lyceum--characters, that is to say, making little call
+upon the emotional faculties of their exponent--will not be disposed to
+modify their opinion from her 'creation' of the new part of distinctly
+higher scope in Mr. Gilbert's one act drama, 'Comedy and Tragedy,'
+produced for the first time on Saturday night. Though passing in a single
+scene, this piece furnishes a more crucial test of Miss Anderson's powers
+than any of her previous assumptions in this country. Unfortunately it
+also assigns limits to those powers which few actresses of the second or
+even third rank need despair of attaining. Such a piece as this, it will
+be seen, makes the highest demands upon an actress. Tenderly affectionate,
+and true with her husband, when she arranges with him the plan upon which
+so much depends: heartless and _insouciante_ in manner while she receives
+her guests; affectedly gay and vivacious while her husband's fate is
+trembling in the balance; deeply tragic in her anguish when her fortitude
+has broken down; and finally overcome with joy as her husband is restored
+to her arms; she has to pass and repass, without a pause, from one extreme
+of her art to the other. There is probably no actress but Sarah Bernhardt
+who could render all the various phases of this character as they should
+be rendered. There is only one phase of it that comes fairly within Miss
+Anderson's grasp. Of vivacity there is not a spark in her nature; a
+heavy-footed impassiveness weighs upon all her efforts to be sprightly.
+The refinement, the subtlety, the animation, the _ton_, of an actress of
+the Comedie Francaise she does not so much as suggest. Womanly sympathy,
+tenderness, and trust, those qualities which constitute a far deeper and
+more abiding charm than statuesque beauty, are equally absent from an
+impersonation which in its earlier phases is almost distressingly labored.
+While the actress is entertaining her guests with improvised comedy,
+moreover, no undercurrent of emotion, no suggestion of suppressed anxiety
+is perceptible. It is not till this double _role_, which demands a degree
+of _finesse_ evidently beyond Miss Anderson's range, is exchanged for the
+unaffected expression of mental torture that the actress rises to the
+occasion, and here it is pleasing to record, she displayed on Saturday
+night an earnestness and an intensity which won her an ungrudging round of
+applause. Miss Anderson's conception of the character is excellent, it is
+her powers of execution that are defective; and we do not omit from these
+the quality of her voice, which at times sinks into a hard and
+unsympathetic key."
+
+
+_Morning Post_, 28th January, 1884.
+
+"A change effected in the programme at the Lyceum Theater on Saturday
+night makes Mr. Gilbert responsible for the whole entertainment of the
+evening. His fairy comedy of 'Pygmalion and Galatea,' is now supplemented
+by a new dramatic study in which, under the ambitious title 'Comedy and
+Tragedy,' he has been at special pains to provide Miss Mary Anderson with
+an effective _role_. This popular young actress has every reason to
+congratulate herself upon the opportunity for distinction thus placed in
+her way, for Mr. Gilbert has accomplished his task in a thoroughly
+workmanlike manner. In the course of a single act he has demanded from the
+exponent of his principal character the most varied histrionic
+capabilities, for he has asked her to be by turns the consummate actress
+and the unsophisticated woman, the gracious hostess and the vindictive
+enemy, the humorous reciter and the tragedy queen. Nor has he done this
+merely by inventing plausible excuses for a succession of conscious
+assumptions, such as those of the entertainer who appears first in one
+guise and then in another, that he may exhibit his deft versatility. There
+is a genuine dramatic motive for the display by the heroine of 'Comedy and
+Tragedy' of quickly changing emotions and accomplishments. She acts
+because circumstances really call upon her to act, and not because the
+showman pulls the strings of his puppet as the whim of the moment may
+suggest. The question is, how far Miss Anderson is able to realize for us
+the mental agony and the characteristic self-command of such a woman as
+Clarice in such a state as hers. The answer, as given on Saturday by a
+demonstrative audience, was wholly favorable; as it suggests itself to a
+calmer judgment the kindly verdict must be qualified by reservations many
+and serious. We may admit at once that Miss Anderson deserves all praise
+for her exhibition of earnest force, and for the nervous spirit with which
+she attacks her work. It is a pleasant surprise to see her depending upon
+something beyond her skill in the art of the _tableau vivant_. The ring of
+her deep voice may not always be melodious, but at any rate it is true,
+and the burst of passionate entreaty carries with it the genuine
+conviction of distress. What is missing is the distinction of bearing that
+should mark a leading member of the famous _troupe_ of players, grace of
+movement as distinguished from grace of power, lightening of touch in
+Clarice's comedy, and refinement of expression in her tragedy. At present
+the impersonation is rough and almost clumsy whilst, at times, the
+vigorous elocution almost descends to the level of ranting. Many of these
+faults may, however, have been due to Miss Anderson's evident nervousness,
+and to the whirlwind of excitement in which she hurried through her task;
+and we shall be quite prepared to find her performance improve greatly
+under less trying conditions."
+
+
+_The Scotsman_, 28th April, 1884.
+
+"Last night the young American actress, who has, during the past few
+months, acquired such great popularity in London, made her first
+appearance before an Edinburgh audience in the same character she chose
+for her Metropolitan _debut_--that of Parthenia in 'Ingomar.' The piece
+itself is essentially old-fashioned. It is one of that category of
+'sentimental dramas' which were in vogue thirty or forty years ago, but
+are not sufficiently complex in their intrigue, or subtle in their
+analysis of emotion, to suit the somewhat cloyed palates of the present
+generation of playgoers. Yet, through two or three among the long list of
+plays of this type, there runs like a vein of gold amid the dross, a noble
+and true idea that preserves them from the common fate, and one of these
+few pieces is 'Ingomar.' Its blank verse may be stilted, its action often
+forced and unreal; but the pictures it presents of a daughter's devotion,
+a maiden's purity, a brave man's love and supreme self-sacrifice, are
+drawn with a breadth and a simplicity of outline that make them at once
+appreciable, and they are pictures upon which few people can help looking
+with pleasure and sympathy. We do not say that Miss Anderson could not
+possibly have chosen a better character in which to introduce herself to
+an Edinburgh audience; but certainly it would be difficult to conceive a
+more charming interpretation of Parthenia than she gave last night. To
+personal attractions of the highest order she adds a rich and musical
+voice, capable of a wide range of accent and inflection, a command of
+gesture which is abundantly varied, but always graceful and--what is,
+perhaps, of more moment to the artist than all else--an unmistakable
+capacity for grasping the essential significance of a character, and
+identifying herself thoroughly with it. Her delineation is not only
+exquisitely picturesque; it leaves behind the impression of a thoughtful
+conception wrought out with consistency, and developed with real dramatic
+power. The lighter phases of Parthenia's nature were, as they should be,
+kept generally prominent, but when the demand came for stronger and tenser
+emotions the actress was always able to respond to it--as for instance in
+Parthenia's defiance of Ingomar, when his love finds its first uncouth
+utterance, in her bitter anguish when she thinks he has left her forever,
+and in her final avowal of love and devotion. These are the crucial points
+in the rendering of the part; and they were so played last night by Miss
+Anderson as to prove that she is equal to much more exacting _roles_. She
+was excellently supported by Mr. Barnes as Ingomar, and fairly well by the
+representatives of the numerous minor personages who contribute to the
+development of the story, without having individual interest of their own.
+Miss Anderson won an enthusiastic reception at the hands of a large and
+discriminating audience, being called before the curtain at the close of
+each act."
+
+
+_Glasgow Evening Star_, 6th May, 1884.
+
+"MISS ANDERSON AT THE ROYALTY.
+
+"No modern actress has created such a _furore_ in this country as Miss
+Anderson. Coming to us from America with the reputation of being the
+foremost exponent of histrionic art in that country, it was but natural
+that her advent should be regarded with very critical eyes by many who
+thought that America claimed too much for their charming actress. Thus
+predisposed to find as many faults as possible in one who boldly
+challenged their verdict on her own merits alone, it is not surprising
+that Metropolitan critics were almost unanimous in their opinion that Miss
+Anderson, although a clever actress and a very beautiful woman, was not by
+any means a great artist. They did not hesitate to say, moreover, that
+much of her success as an actress was due to her physical grace and
+beauty. We have no hesitation in stating a directly contrary opinion."
+
+
+_Glasgow Herald_, 6th May, 1884.
+
+"MISS ANDERSON AT THE ROYALTY THEATER.
+
+"Since 'Pygmalion and Galatea' was produced at the Haymarket Theater,
+fully a dozen years ago, when the part of Galatea was created by Mrs.
+Kendal, quite a number of actresses have essayed the character. Most of
+them have succeeded in presenting a carefully thought-out and
+intelligently-executed picture; few have been able to realize in their
+intensity, and give adequate embodiment to, the dreamy utterances of the
+animated statue. It is a character which only consummate skill can
+appropriately represent. The play is indeed a cunningly-devised fable; but
+Galatea is the one central figure on which it hangs. Its humor and its
+satire are so exquisitely keen that they must needs be delicately wielded.
+That a statue should be vivified and endowed with speech and reason is a
+bold conception, and it requires no ordinary artist to depict the emotion
+of such a mythical being. For this duty Miss Anderson last night proved
+herself more than capable. Her interpretation of the part is essentially
+her own; it differs in some respects from previous representations of the
+character, and to none of them is it inferior. In her conception of the
+part, the importance of statuesque posing has been studied to the minutest
+detail, and in this respect art could not well be linked with greater
+natural advantages than are possessed by Miss Anderson. When, in the
+opening scene, the curtains of the recess in the sculptor's studio were
+thrown back from the statue, a perfect wealth of art was displayed in its
+pose; it seemed indeed to be a realization of the author's conception of a
+figure which all but breathes, yet still is only cold, dull stone. From
+beginning to end, Miss Anderson's Galatea is a captivating study in the
+highest sphere of histrionic art. There is no part of it that can be
+singled out as better than another. It is a compact whole such as only few
+actresses may hope to equal."
+
+
+_Dublin Evening Mail_, 22d March, 1884.
+
+"MARY ANDERSON AT THE GAIETY.
+
+"Notwithstanding all that photography has done for the last few weeks to
+familiarize Dublin with Miss Anderson's counterfeit presentment, the
+original took the Gaiety audience last night by surprise. Her beauty
+outran expectation. It was, moreover, generally different from what the
+camera had suggested. It required an effort to recall in the brilliant,
+mobile, speaking countenance before us the classic regularity and harmony
+of the features which we had admired on cardboard. Brilliancy is the
+single word that best sums up the characteristics of Miss Anderson's face,
+figure and movements on the stage. But it is a brilliancy that is
+altogether natural and spontaneous--a natural gift, not acquisition; and
+it is a brilliancy which, while it is all alive with intelligence and
+sympathy, is instinct to the core with a virginal sweetness and purity. In
+'Ingomar' the heroine comes very early and abruptly on the scene before
+the audience is interested in her arrival, or has, indeed, got rid of the
+garish realities of the street. But Miss Anderson's appearance spoke for
+itself without any aid from the playwright. The house, after a moment's
+hesitation, broke out into sudden and quickly-growing applause, which was
+evidently a tribute not to the artist, but to the woman. She understood
+this herself, and evidently enjoyed her triumph with a frank and girlish
+pleasure. She had conquered her audience before opening her lips. She is
+of rather tall stature, a figure slight but perfectly modeled, her
+well-shaped head dressed Greek fashion with the simple knot behind, her
+arms, which the Greek costume displayed to the shoulder, long, white, and
+of a roundness seldom attained so early in life, her walk and all her
+attitudes consummately graceful and expressive. A more general form of
+disparagement is that which pretends to account for all Miss Anderson's
+popularity by her beauty. It is her beauty, these people say, not her
+acting, that draws the crowd. We suspect the fact to be that Miss
+Anderson's uncommon beauty is rather a hindrance than a help to the
+perception of her real dramatic merits. People do not easily believe that
+one and the same person can be distinguished in the highest degree by
+different and independent excellences. They find it easier to make one of
+the excellences do duty for both. Miss Anderson, it may be admitted, is
+not a Sarah Bernhardt. At the same time we must observe that at
+twenty-three the incomparable Sarah was not the consummate artist that she
+is now, and has been for many years. We are not at all inclined to rank
+Miss Anderson as an actress at a lower level than the very high one of
+Miss Helen Faucit, of whose Antigone she reminded us in several passages
+last night. Miss Faucit was more statuesque in her poses, more classical,
+and, perhaps, touched occasionally a more profoundly pathetic chord. But
+the balance is redeemed by other qualities of Miss Anderson's acting,
+quite apart from all consideration of personal beauty.
+
+"'Ingomar,' it must be said, is a mere melodrama, and as such does not
+afford the highest test of an actor's capacity. The wonder is that Miss
+Anderson makes so much of it. In her hands it was really a stirring and
+very effective play."
+
+
+_Dublin Daily Express_, 28th March, 1884.
+
+"MISS ANDERSON AS GALATEA.
+
+"Nothing that the sculptor's art could create could be more beautiful than
+the still figure of Galatea, in classic _pose_, with gracefully flowing
+robes, looking down from her pedestal on the hands that have given her
+form, and it is not too much to say that nothing could be added to render
+more perfect the illusion. The whole _pose_--her aspect, the _contour_ of
+her head, the exquisite turn of the stately throat, the faultless symmetry
+of shoulder and arms--everything is in keeping with the realization of the
+most perfect, most beautiful, and most illusive figure that has ever been
+witnessed on the stage. Miss Anderson indeed is liberally endowed with
+physical charms, so fascinating that we can understand an audience finding
+it not a little difficult to refrain from giving the rein to enthusiasm in
+the presence of this fairest of Galateas. From these remarks, however, it
+is not intended to be inferred that the young American is merely a
+graceful creature with a 'pretty face.' Miss Anderson is unquestionably a
+fine actress, and the high position which she now deservedly occupies
+amongst her sister artists, we are inclined to think, has been gained
+perhaps less through her personal attractions than by the sterling
+characteristics of her art. Each of her scenes bears the stamp of
+intelligence of an uncommon order, and perhaps not the least remarkable
+feature in her portraiture of Galatea is that her effects, one and all,
+are produced without a suspicion of straining. Those who were present in
+the crowded theater last night, and saw the actress in the _role_--said to
+be her finest--had, we are sure, no room to qualify the high reputation
+which preceded the impersonation."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+MARY ANDERSON AS AN ACTRESS.
+
+
+The author approaches this, his concluding chapter, with some degree of
+diffidence. Though he has in the foregoing pages essayed something like a
+portrait of a very distinguished artist, he is not by profession a
+dramatic critic. He does not belong to that noble band at whose nod the
+actor is usually supposed to tremble. He is not a "first-nighter," who, by
+the light of the midnight oil, dips his mighty pen in the ink which is to
+seal on to-morrow's broad-sheet, as he proudly imagines, the professional
+fate of the artists who are submitted for his censure or his praise. Not
+that he is by any means an implicit believer in the verdict of the
+professional critic. An actor who succeeds, should often fail according to
+the recognized canons of dramatic criticism, and the reverse. That the
+beautiful harmony of nature and the eternal fitness of things dramatic are
+not always preserved, is due to that _profanum vulgus_ which sometimes
+reverses the decisions of those dramatic divinities who sit enthroned,
+like the twelve Cæsars, in the sacred temple of criticism, as the inspired
+representatives of the press.
+
+Those who have been at the trouble to read the various and conflicting
+notices of the chief London journals upon Mary Anderson's
+performances--for those of the great provincial towns she visited present
+a singular unanimity in her favor--must have found it difficult, if not
+impossible, to decide either on her merits as an artist, or on the true
+place to be assigned to her in the temple of the drama. The veriest
+misogynist among critics was compelled, in spite of himself, to confess to
+the charm of her strange beauty. Hers, as all agreed, was the loveliest
+face and the most graceful figure which had appeared on the London boards
+within the memory of a generation. According to some she was an
+accomplished actress, but she lacked that divine spark which stamps the
+true artist. Others attributed her success to nothing but her personal
+grace and beauty; while one critic, bolder than his fellows, even went so
+far as to declare that whether she wore the attire of a Grecian maid, of a
+fine French lady of a century ago, or of the fabled Galatea, only pretty
+Miss Anderson, of Louisville, Kentucky, peeped out through every disguise.
+Several causes, perhaps, combined to this uncertain sound which went forth
+from the trumpet of the dramatic critic. Mary Anderson was an American
+artist, who came here, it is true, with a great American reputation; but
+so had come others before her, some of whom had wholly failed to stand the
+fierce test of the London footlights. Then to "damn her with faint
+praise," would not only be a safe course at the outset, but the steps to a
+becoming _locus peniteniæ_ would be easy and gradual if the vane should,
+in spite of the critics, veer round to the point of popular favor. One of
+the most distinguished of English journalists lately observed in the House
+of Commons that certain writers in back parlors were in the habit of
+palming off their effusions as the voice of the great English public, till
+that voice made itself heard. When the voice of the English theater-going
+public upon Mary Anderson came to make itself heard in the crowded and
+enthusiastic audiences of the Lyceum, in the friendship of all that was
+most cultivated and best worth knowing in London society, it failed
+altogether to echo the trumpet, we will not say of the back parlor critics
+only, but of some critics distinguished in their profession, who can
+little have anticipated how quickly the popular verdict would modify, if
+not reverse their own.
+
+It may be interesting to quote here some observations very much to the
+point, on the dramatic criticism of the day, in an admirable paper read
+recently by Mrs. Kendal before the Social Science Congress. It will hardly
+be denied that there are few artists competent to speak with more
+authority on matters theatrical, or better able to form a judgment on the
+true inwardness of that Press criticism to which herself and her fellow
+artists are so constantly subject:
+
+"Existing critics generally rush into extremes, and either over-praise or
+too cruelly condemn. The public, as a matter of course, turn to the
+newspapers for information, but how can any judgment be formed when either
+indiscriminate praise or unqualified abuse is given to almost every new
+piece and to the actors who interpret it? Criticism, if it is to be worth
+anything, should surely be criticism, but nowadays the writing of a
+picturesque article, replete with eulogy, or the reverse, seems to be the
+aim of the theatrical reviewer. Of course, the influence of the Press upon
+the stage is very powerful, but it will cease to be so if playgoers find
+that their mentors, the critics, are not trustworthy guides. The public
+must, after all, decide the fate of a new play. If it be bad, the
+Englishman of to-day will not declare it is good because the newspapers
+have told him so. He will be disappointed, he will be bored, he will tell
+his friends so, and the bad piece will fail to draw audiences. If, on the
+other hand, the play is a good one, which has been condemned by the Press,
+it will quicken the pulse and stir the heart of an audience in spite of
+adverse criticism. The report that it contains the true ring will go
+about, and success must follow. In a word, though the Press can do very
+much to further the interests of the stage, it is powerless to kill good
+work, and cannot galvanize that which is invertebrate into life."
+
+To determine Mary Anderson's true stage place, and to make a fair and
+impartial criticism of her performances is rendered further difficult by
+the fact, that the English stage offers in the last generation scarcely
+one with whom she can be compared, if we except perhaps Helen Faucit.
+Between herself and that great artist, middle-aged play-goers seem to find
+a certain resemblance; but to the present generation of playgoers Mary
+Anderson is an absolutely new revelation on the London boards. Recalling
+the roll of artists who have essayed similar parts for the last five and
+twenty years, we can name not one who has given as she did what we may
+best describe as a new stage sensation. Never was the pride of a free
+maiden of ancient Greece more nobly expressed than in Parthenia: never
+were the gradual steps from fear and abhorrence to love more finely
+portrayed than in the stages of her rising passion for the savage
+chieftain, whose captive hostage she was. Her Pauline was the old
+patrician beauty of France living on the stage, a true woman in spite of
+the selfish veneer of pride and caste with which the traditions of the
+ancient _noblesse_ had covered her; while Galatea found in her certainly
+the most poetic and beautiful representation of that fanciful character,
+ever seen on any stage. This was the verdict of the public who thronged
+the Lyceum to its utmost capacity, during the months of the past winter.
+This was the verdict, too, of the largest provincial towns of the kingdom.
+The critics, some of them, were willing to concede to Mary Anderson the
+possession of every grace which can adorn a woman, and of every
+qualification which can make an artist attractive, with a solitary but
+fatal reservation--_she was devoid of genius_. But what, indeed, is genius
+after all? It is the magic power to touch unerringly a sympathetic chord
+in the human breast. The novelist, whose characters seem to be living; the
+painter, the figures on whose canvas appear to breathe; the actor who,
+while he treads the stage, is forgotten in the character he assumes; all
+these possess it. This was the verdict of the public upon Mary Anderson,
+and we are fain to believe that--_pace_ the critics--it was the true one.
+Her Clarice was perhaps the least successful of her impersonations; and
+given as an afterpiece, it taxed unfairly the endurance of an actress, who
+had already been some hours upon the stage. But as a striking illustration
+of the reality of her performance, we may mention, that, in the scene
+where she is supposed by her guests to be acting, her fellow actors, who
+should have applauded the tragic outburst which the public divine to be
+real, were so disconcerted by the vehemence and seeming reality of her
+grief and despair, that on the first representation of "Comedy and
+Tragedy" they actually forgot their parts, and had to be called to task by
+the author for failing properly to support the star. "No man," it is said,
+"is a hero to his _valet de chambre_," and few indeed are the artists who
+can make their fellow artists on the stage forget that the mimic passion
+which convulses them is but consummate art after all.
+
+Mary Anderson's present Lyceum season will exhibit her in characters which
+will give opportunity for displaying powers of a widely different order to
+those called forth in the last. A new Juliet and a new Lady Macbeth will
+show the capacity she possesses for the true exhibition of the tenderest
+as well as the stormiest passions which can agitate the human breast; and
+she may perhaps appear in Cushman's famous _role_ of Meg Merrilies. In all
+these she invites comparison with great impersonators of these parts who
+are familiar to the stage. We will not anticipate the verdict of the
+public, but of this much we are assured that rarely can Shakespeare's
+favorite heroine have been represented by so much youth, and grace, and
+beauty, and genuine artistic ability combined. Juliet was her first part,
+and has always been, regarded by Mary Anderson with the affection due to a
+first love. But it may not be generally known that she imagines her
+_forte_ to lie rather in the exhibition of the stormier passions, and that
+she succeeds better in parts like Lady Macbeth or Meg Merrilies. I
+remember her once saying to me, as she raised her beautiful figure to its
+full height, and stretched her hand to the ceiling, "I am always at my
+best when I am uttering maledictions." Thus far, Mary Anderson has shown
+herself to us in characters which must give a very incomplete estimate of
+her powers. None indeed of the parts she assumed were adapted to bring out
+the highest qualities of an artist. That she has succeeded in inspiring
+the freshness and glow of life into plays, some of which, at least, were
+supposed to be consigned almost to the limbo of disused stage properties,
+stamps her as possessing genuine histrionic power. She has earned
+distinguished fame all over the Western continent. London as well as the
+great cities of the kingdom have hailed her as a Queen of the Stage. Such
+an experience as hers is rare indeed, almost solitary, in its annals. A
+self-trained girl, born quite out of the circle or influence of stage
+associations, she burst, when but sixteen, as a star on the theatrical
+horizon; and if her grace, her youth, her beauty, have helped her in the
+upward flight, they have helped alone, and could not have atoned for the
+want of that divine spark, which is the birthright of the artist who makes
+a mark upon his generation and his time. When the more recent history of
+the English-speaking stage shall once again be written, we do not doubt
+that Mary Anderson will take her fitting place, side by side with the many
+great artists who have so adorned it in the last half century; with
+Charlotte Cushman, Helen Faucit, and Fanny Stirling, who represent its
+earlier glories; with Mrs. Kendal, Mrs. Bancroft, and Ellen Terry, whose
+names are interwoven with the triumphs of later years.
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14758 ***