character as that of Mary Anderson, or is privileged to muse over the
story of such a career as she has had. In many cases the narrative of
the life of an actress is a narrative of talents perverted, of
opportunity misused, of failure, misfortune, and suffering. For one
story like that of Mrs. Siddons there are many like that of Mrs.
Robinson. For one name like that of Charlotte Cushman or that of Helen
Faucit there are many like that of Lucille Western or that of Matilda
Heron--daughters of sorrow and victims of trouble. The mind lingers,
accordingly, impressed and pleased with a sense of sweet personal worth
as well as of genius and beauty upon the record of a representative
American actress, as noble as she was brilliant, and as lovely in her
domestic life as she was beautiful, fortunate, and renowned in her
public pursuits. The exposition of her nature, as apprehended through
her acting, constitutes the principal part of her biography.
Mary Anderson, a native of California, was born at Sacramento, July 28,
1859. Her father, Charles Joseph Anderson, who died in 1863, aged
twenty-nine, and was buried in Magnolia cemetery, Mobile, Alabama, was
an officer in the service of the Southern Confederacy at the time of his
death, and he is said to have been a handsome and dashing young man. Her
mother, Marie Antoinette Leugers, was a native of Philadelphia. Her
earlier years were passed in Louisville, whither she was taken in 1860,
and she was there taught in a Roman Catholic school and reared in the
Roman Catholic faith under the guidance of a Franciscan priest, Anthony
Miller, her mother's uncle. She left school before she was fourteen
years old and she went upon the stage before she was sixteen. She had
while a child seen various theatrical performances, notably those given
by Edwin Booth, and her mind had been strongly drawn toward the stage
under the influence of those sights. The dramatic characters that she
first studied were male characters--those of Hamlet, Wolsey, Richelieu,
and Richard III.--and to those she added Schiller's Joan of Arc. She
studied those parts privately, and she knew them all and knew them well.
Professor Noble Butler, of Louisville, gave her instruction in English
literature and elocution, and in 1874, at Cincinnati, Charlotte Cushman
said a few encouraging words to her, and told her to persevere in
following the stage, and to "begin at the top." George Vandenhoff gave
her a few lessons before she came out, and then followed her début as
Juliet, leading to her first regular engagement, which began at Barney
Macaulay's Theatre, Louisville, January 20, 1876. From that time onward
for thirteen years she was an actress,--never in a stock company but
always as a star,--and her name became famous in Great Britain as well
as America. She had eight seasons of steadily increasing prosperity on
the American stage before she went abroad to act, and she became a
favourite all over the United States. She filled three seasons at the
Lyceum Theatre, London (from September 1, 1883, to April 5, 1884; from
November 1, 1884, to April 25, 1885; and from September 10, 1887, to
March 24, 1888), and her success there surpassed, in profit, that of any
American actor who had appeared in England. She revived _Romeo and
Juliet_ with much splendour at the London Lyceum on November 1, 1884,
and she restored _A Winter's Tale_ to the stage, bringing forward that
comedy on September 10, 1887, and carrying it through the season. She
made several prosperous tours of the English provincial theatres, and
established herself as a favourite actress in fastidious Edinburgh,
critical Manchester, and impulsive but exacting Dublin. The repertory
with which she gained fame and fortune included Juliet, Hermione,
Perdita, Rosalind, Lady Macbeth, Julia, Bianca, Evadne, Parthenia,
Pauline, The Countess, Galatea, Clarice, Ion, Meg Merrilies, Berthe,
and the Duchess de Torrenueva. She incidentally acted a few other parts,
Desdemona being one of them. Her distinctive achievements were in
Shakespearean drama. She adopted into her repertory two plays by
Tennyson, _The Cup_ and _The Falcon_, but never produced them. This
record signifies the resources of mind, the personal charm, the exalted
spirit, and the patient, wisely directed and strenuous zeal that
sustained her achievements and justified her success.
Aspirants in the field of art are continually coming to the surface. In
poetry, painting, sculpture, music, and in acting--which involves and
utilises those other arts--the line of beginners is endless. Constantly,
as the seasons roll by, these essayists emerge, and as constantly, after
a little time, they disappear. The process is sequent upon an obvious
law of spiritual life,--that all minds which are conscious of the art
impulse must at least make an effort toward expression, but that no mind
can succeed in the effort unless, in addition to the art impulse, it
possesses also the art faculty. For expression is the predominant
necessity of human nature. Out of this proceed forms and influences of
beauty. These react upon mankind, pleasing an instinct for the
beautiful, and developing the faculty of taste. Other and finer forms
and influences of beauty ensue, civilisation is advanced, and thus
finally the way is opened toward that condition of immortal spiritual
happiness which this process of experience prefigures and prophesies.
But the art faculty is of rare occurrence. At long intervals there is a
break in the usual experience of stage failure, and some person hitherto
unknown not only takes the field but keeps it. When Garrick came out, as
the Duke of Gloster, in the autumn of 1741, in London, he had never been
heard of, but within a brief time he was famous. "He at once decided the
public taste," said Macklin; and Pope summed up the victory in the
well-known sentence, "That young man never had an equal, and will never
have a rival." Tennyson's line furnishes the apt and comprehensive
comment--"The many fail, the one succeeds." Mary Anderson in her day
furnished the most conspicuous and striking example, aside from that of
Adelaide Neilson, to which it is possible to refer of this exceptional
experience. And yet, even after years of trial and test, it is doubtful
whether the excellence of that remarkable actress was entirely
comprehended in her own country. The provincial custom of waiting for
foreign authorities to discover our royal minds is one from which many
inhabitants of America have not yet escaped. As an actress, indeed, Mary
Anderson was, probably, more popular than any player on the American
stage excepting Edwin Booth or Joseph Jefferson; but there is a
difference between popularity and just and comprehensive intellectual
recognition. Many actors get the one; few get the other.
Much of the contemporary criticism that is lavished upon actors in this
exigent period--so bountifully supplied with critical observations, so
poorly furnished with creative art--touches only upon the surface.
Acting is measured with a tape and the chief demand seems to be for
form. This is right, and indeed is imperative, whenever it is certain
that the actor at his best is one who never can rise above the
high-water mark of correct mechanism. There are cases that need a deeper
method of inquiry and a more searching glance. A wise critic, when this
emergency comes, is something more than an expert who gives an opinion
upon a professional exploit. The special piece of work may contain
technical flaws, and yet there may be within it a soul worth all the
"icily regular and splendidly null" achievements that ever were possible
to proficient mediocrity. That soul is visible only to the observer who
can look through the art into the interior spirit of the artist, and
thus can estimate a piece of acting according to its inspirational drift
and the enthralling and ennobling personality out of which it springs.
The acting of Mary Anderson, from the first moment of her career, was of
the kind that needs that deep insight and broad judgment,--aiming to
recognise and rightly estimate its worth. Yet few performers of the day
were so liberally favoured with the monitions of dullness and the
ponderous patronage of self-complacent folly.
Conventional judgment as to Mary Anderson's acting expressed itself in
one statement--"she is cold." There could not be a greater error. That
quality in Mary Anderson's acting--a reflex from her spiritual
nature--which produced upon the conventional mind the effect of coldness
was in fact distinction, the attribute of being exceptional. The
judgment that she was cold was a resentful judgment, and was given in a
spirit of detraction. It proceeded from an order of mind that can never
be content with the existence of anything above its own level. "He
hath," said Iago, speaking of Cassio, "a daily beauty in his life that
makes me ugly." Those detractors did not understand themselves as well
as the wily Italian understood himself, and they did not state their
attitude with such precision; in fact, they did not state it at all, for
it was unconscious with them and involuntary. They saw a being unlike
themselves, they vaguely apprehended the presence of a superior nature,
and that they resented. The favourite popular notion is that all men are
born free and equal; which is false. Free and equal they all are,
undoubtedly, in the eye of the law. But every man is born subject to
heredity and circumstance, and whoever will investigate his life will
perceive that he never has been able to stray beyond the compelling and
constraining force of his character--which is his fate. All men,
moreover, are unequal. To one human being is given genius; to another,
beauty; to another, strength; to another, exceptional judgment; to
another, exceptional memory; to another, grace and charm; to still
another, physical ugliness and spiritual obliquity, moral taint, and
every sort of disabling weakness. To the majority of persons Nature
imparts mediocrity, and it is from mediocrity that the derogatory denial
emanates as to the superior men and women of our race. A woman of the
average kind is not difficult to comprehend. There is nothing
distinctive about her. She is fond of admiration; rather readily
censorious of other women; charitable toward male rakes; and partial to
fine attire. The poet Wordsworth's formula, "Praise, blame, love,
kisses, tears, and smiles," comprises all that is essential for her
existence, and that bard has himself precisely described her, in a
grandfatherly and excruciating couplet, as
"A creature not too bright and good
For human nature's daily food."
Women of that sort are not called "cold." The standard is ordinary and
it is understood. But when a woman appears in art whose life is not
ruled by the love of admiration, whose nature is devoid of vanity, who
looks with indifference upon adulation, whose head is not turned by
renown, whose composure is not disturbed by flattery, whose simplicity
is not marred by wealth, who does not go into theatrical hysterics and
offer that condition of artificial delirium as the mood of genius in
acting, who above all makes it apparent in her personality and her
achievements that the soul can be sufficient to itself and can exist
without taking on a burden of the fever or dulness of other lives, there
is a flutter of vague discontent among the mystified and bothered rank
and file, and we are apprised that she is "cold." That is what happened
in the case of Mary Anderson.
What are the faculties and attributes essential to great success in
acting? A sumptuous and supple figure that can realise the ideals of
statuary; a mobile countenance that can strongly and unerringly express
the feelings of the heart and the workings of the mind; eyes that can
awe with the majesty or startle with the terror or thrill with the
tenderness of their soul-subduing gaze; a voice, deep, clear, resonant,
flexible, that can range over the wide compass of emotion and carry its
meaning in varying music to every ear and every heart; intellect to
shape the purposes and control the means of mimetic art; deep knowledge
of human nature; delicate intuitions; the skill to listen as well as
the art to speak; imagination to grasp the ideal of a character in all
its conditions of experience; the instinct of the sculptor to give it
form, of the painter to give it colour, and of the poet to give it
movement; and, back of all, the temperament of genius--the genialised
nervous system--to impart to the whole artistic structure the thrill of
spiritual vitality. Mary Anderson's acting revealed those faculties and
attributes, and those observers who realised the poetic spirit, the
moral majesty, and the isolation of mind that she continually suggested
felt that she was an extraordinary woman. Such moments in her acting as
that of Galatea's mute supplication at the last of earthly life, that of
Juliet's desolation after the final midnight parting with the last human
creature whom she may ever behold, and that of Hermione's despair when
she covers her face and falls as if stricken dead, were the eloquent
denotements of power, and in those and such as those--with which her art
abounded--was the fulfilment of every hope that her acting inspired and
the vindication of every encomium that it received.
Early in her professional career, when considering her acting, the
present essayist quoted as applicable to her those lovely lines by
Wordsworth:--
"The stars of midnight shall be dear
To her, and she shall lean her ear
In many a secret place
Where rivulets dance their wayward round,
And beauty born of murmuring sound
Shall pass into her face."
In the direction of development thus indicated she steadily advanced.
Her affiliations were with grandeur, purity, and loveliness. An inherent
and passionate tendency toward classic stateliness increased in her more
and more. Characters of the statuesque order attracted her
imagination--Ion, Galatea, Hermione--but she did not leave them
soulless. In the interpretation of passion and the presentation of its
results she revealed the striking truth that her perceptions could
discern those consequences that are recorded in the soul and in
comparison with which the dramatic entanglements of visible life are
puny and evanescent. Though living in the rapid stream of the social
world she dwelt aloof from it. She thought deeply, and in mental
direction she took the pathway of intellectual power. It is not
surprising that the true worth of such a nature was not accurately
apprehended. Minds that are self-poised, stately, irresponsive to human
weakness, unconventional and self-liberated from allegiance to the
commonplace are not fully and instantly discernible, and may well
perplex the smiling glance of frivolity; but they are permanent forces
in the education of the human race. Mary Anderson retired from the
stage, under the pressure of extreme fatigue, in the beginning of 1889
and entered upon a matrimonial life on June 17, 1890. It is believed
that her retirement is permanent. The historical interest attaching to
her dramatic career justifies the preservation of this commemorative
essay.
There is so much beauty in the comedy of _A Winter's Tale_--so much
thought, character, humour, philosophy, sweetly serene feeling and
loveliness of poetic language--that the public ought to feel obliged to
any one who successfully restores it to the stage, from which it usually
is banished. The piece was written in the maturity of Shakespeare's
marvellous powers, and indeed some of the Shakespearean scholars believe
it to be the last work that fell from his hand. Human life, as depicted
in _A Winter's Tale_, shows itself like what it always seems to be in
the eyes of patient, tolerant, magnanimous experience--the eyes "that
have kept watch o'er man's mortality"--for it is a scene of inexplicable
contrasts and vicissitudes, seemingly the chaos of caprice and chance,
yet always, in fact, beneficently overruled and guided to good ends.
Human beings are shown in it as full of weakness; often as the puppets
of laws that they do not understand and of universal propensities and
impulses into which they never pause to inquire; almost always as
objects of benignant pity. The woful tangle of human existence is here
viewed with half-cheerful, half-sad tolerance, yet with the hope and
belief that all will come right at last. The mood of the comedy is
pensive but radically sweet. The poet is like the forest in Emerson's
subtle vision of the inherent exultation of nature:--
"Sober, on a fund of joy,
The woods at heart are glad."
Mary Anderson doubled the characters of Hermione and Perdita. This had
not been conspicuously done until it was done by her, and her
innovation, in that respect, was met with grave disapproval. The moment
the subject is examined, however, objection to that method of procedure
is dispelled. Hermione, as a dramatic person, disappears in the middle
of the third act of Shakespeare's comedy and comes no more until the end
of the piece, when she emerges as a statue. Her character has been
entirely expressed and her part in the action of the drama has been
substantially fulfilled before she disappears. There is no intermediate
passion to be wrought to a climax, nor is there any intermediate mood,
dramatically speaking, to be sustained. The dramatic environment, the
dramatic necessities, are vastly unlike, for example, those of Lady
Macbeth--one of the hardest of all parts to play well, because exhibited
intermittently, at long intervals, yet steadily constrained by the
necessity of cumulative excitement. The representative of Lady Macbeth
must be identified with that character, whether on the stage or off,
from the beginning of it to the end. Hermione, on the contrary, is at
rest from the moment when she faints upon receiving information of the
death of her boy. A lapse of sixteen years is assumed, and then,
standing forth as a statue, she personifies majestic virtue and
victorious fortitude. When she descends from the pedestal she silently
embraces Leontes, speaks a few pious, maternal and tranquil lines (there
are precisely seven of them in the original, but Mary Anderson added
two, from "All's Well"), and embraces Perdita, whom she has not seen
since the girl's earliest infancy. This is their only meeting, and
little is sacrificed by the use of a substitute for the daughter in that
scene. Perdita's brief apostrophe to the statue has to be cut, but it is
not missed in the representation. The resemblance between mother and
daughter heightens the effect of illusion, in its impress equally upon
fancy and vision; and a more thorough elucidation is given than could be
provided in any other way of the spirit of the comedy. It was a
judicious and felicitous choice that the actress made when she selected
those two characters, and the fact that her impersonation of them
carried a practically disused Shakespearean comedy through a season of
one hundred and fifty nights at the Lyceum Theatre in London furnishes
an indorsement alike of her wisdom and her ability. She played in a
stage version of the piece, in five acts, containing thirteen scenes,
arranged by herself.
While Mary Anderson was acting those two parts in London the sum of
critical opinion seemed to be that her performance of Perdita was better
than her performance of Hermione; but beneath that judgment there was,
apparently, the impression that Hermione is a character fraught with
superlatively great passions, powers, and qualities, such as are only to
be apprehended by gigantic sagacity and conveyed by herculean talents
and skill. Those vast attributes were not specified, but there was a
mysterious intimation of their existence--as of something vague,
formidable, and mostly elusive. But in truth Hermione, although a
stronger part than Perdita, is neither complex, dubious, nor
inaccessible; and Mary Anderson, although more fascinating in Perdita,
could and did rise, in Hermione, to a noble height of tragic power--an
excellence not possible for her, nor for anybody, in the more juvenile
and slender character.
Hermione has usually been represented as an elderly woman and by such an
actress as is technically called "heavy." She ought to be represented as
about thirty years of age at the beginning of the piece, and forty-six
at the end of it. Leontes is not more than thirty-four at the opening,
and he would be fifty at the close. He speaks, in his first scene, of
his boyhood as only twenty-three years gone, when his dagger was worn
"muzzled, lest it should bite its master"--at which time he may have
been ten years old; certainly not more, probably less. His words, toward
the end of act third, "so sure as this beard's gray," refer to the beard
of Antigonus, not to his own. He is a young man when the play begins,
and Polixenes is about the same age, and Hermione is a young woman.
Antigonus and Paulina are middle-aged persons in the earlier scenes and
Paulina is an elderly woman in the statue scene--almost an old woman,
though not too old to be given in marriage to old Camillo, the
ever-faithful friend. In Mary Anderson's presentation of _A Winter's
Tale_ those details received thoughtful consideration and correct
treatment.
In Hermione is seen a type of the celestial nature in woman--infinite
love, infinite charity, infinite patience. Such a nature is rare; but it
is possible, it exists, and Shakespeare, who depicted everything, did
not omit to portray that. To comprehend Hermione the observer must
separate her, absolutely and finally, from association with the
passions. Mrs. Jameson acutely and justly describes her character as
exhibiting "dignity without pride, love without passion, and tenderness
without weakness." That is exactly true. Hermione was not easily won,
and the best thing known about Leontes is that at last she came to love
him and that her love for him survived his cruel and wicked treatment,
chastened him, reinstated him, and ultimately blessed him. Hermione
suffers the utmost affliction that a good woman can suffer. Her boy
dies, heart-broken, at the news of his mother's alleged disgrace. Her
infant daughter is torn from her breast and cast forth to perish. Her
husband becomes her enemy and persecutor. Her chastity is assailed and
vilified. She is subjected to the bitter indignity of a public trial. It
is no wonder that at last her brain reels and she falls as if stricken
dead. The apparent anomaly is her survival for sixteen years, in lonely
seclusion, and her emergence, after that, as anything but a forlorn
shadow of her former self. The poet Shelley has recorded the truth that
all great emotions either kill themselves or kill those who feel them.
It is here, however, that the exceptional temperament of Hermione
supplies an explanatory and needed qualification. Her emotions are never
of a passionate kind. Her mind predominates. Her life is in the
affections and therefore it is one of thought. She sees clearly the
facts of her experience and condition, and she knows exactly how those
facts look in the eyes of others. She is one of those persons who
possess a keen and just prescience of events, who can look far into the
future and discern those resultant consequences of the present which,
under the operation of inexorable moral law, must inevitably ensue.
Self-poised in the right and free from the disturbing force of impulse
and desire, she can await the justice of time, she can live, and she can
live in the tranquil patience of resignation. True majesty of the person
is dependent on repose of the soul, and there can be no repose of the
soul without moral rectitude and a far-reaching, comprehensive, wise
vision of events. Mary Anderson embodied Hermione in accordance with
that ideal. By the expression of her face and the tones of her voice, in
a single speech, the actress placed beyond question her grasp of the
character:--
"Good my lords,
I am not prone to weeping, as our sex
Commonly are--the want of which vain dew
Perchance shall dry your pities--but I have
That honourable grief lodged here, which burns
Worse than tears drown."