“I am hard at work, studying. That was my secret plan, at the very
beginning of our venture. Country life was simply to restore my
health and strength, which it did so effectively that people give me
twenty-four or twenty-six years of age, not more.... Next autumn I want
to ask the president[60] which he prefers, either six thousand roubles
for breaking my contract, or my return in two years with fame.”
She could not have returned to Warsaw, indeed, had she wished to do
so, for she was now poor. She even sold some of her family silver to
maintain herself and her son in San Francisco while Mr. Chlapowski[61]
was winding up the affairs of the farm. With a young Polish-American
woman as tutor, she labored incessantly with English, and to such
good effect that in about six months, having gotten Adrienne and
Juliet letter-perfect, she applied for an engagement at the California
Theatre. John McCullough was the star and manager, but he was absent.
His representative, Barton Hill, knew nothing of Madame Modjeska and
told her there was no opportunity to engage her as a star. Her friend
the tutor persisted, and obtained an appointment for a hearing, but
when Modjeska presented herself at the theatre he found himself unable
to keep the engagement. She was deeply discouraged. A star of the
first magnitude at home, here she had to beg for a hearing, and then
be refused. When she again applied at the theatre and Mr. Hill sent
word that he was too busy to see her, she was genuinely humiliated.
Some Polish friends interceded, however, and a rehearsal was arranged.
Mr. Hill at last heard her, in an act of _Adrienne Lecouvreur_. He was
unprepared for what he was to experience, for so far as he knew she
was merely another “society woman” with a craze for the stage. She was
stung to her best efforts, and at the end of the scene Mr. Hill was a
changed man.[62] Modjeska was to have a week, more if possible. She
had to go through another trial when Mr. McCullough returned, but the
result was a fortnight’s engagement. On the first night, playing in a
strange tongue, she was quite free from nervousness, and knowing the
part well did it full justice. She sent a dispatch of a single word,
“Victory,” to her husband; the newspapers pronounced her appearance
“the most confirmed dramatic triumph that ever occurred in the city”;
Sienkiewicz, then in San Francisco, sent a glowing letter to his Warsaw
paper, and Modjeska’s American career was launched.[63]
The next morning at eight o’clock an enterprising theatrical manager
called to propose her appearance in the eastern cities. In December,
1877, after less than a year’s study of English she appeared as a star
in New York. The story of her career in Poland had been one of long
continued striving, of years of mingled hard work and disappointment,
and of final brilliant success. In America, by what has become in stage
annals a classical example of will and courage, she attained equally
brilliant success in a few weeks, in a foreign land and in a recently
acquired tongue.
It was not long before Modjeska was firmly established as an
international artist--a title that has been applied with justification
to actresses only very rarely. From this time, in the early
eighties, until the close of the century she led the life of such an
artist--known to the theatregoers of two continents as no other of her
time save only Bernhardt. Her American tours brought her before the
public throughout the country, her name was equally familiar in the
various cities of the British Isles, while during her frequent visits
to Poland she acted in her own tongue among those to whom she had
become one of the country’s glories.[64]
In seeking the reasons for Modjeska’s brilliant success and in
estimating her as an actress, one at once recognizes that she was
first of all a woman of great charm, dignity and intelligence. She was
a _grande dame_, a woman who was also a “lady,” in the best sense of
that miscellaneous word. Her friendships in her native Poland included
literally almost every one who was distinguished or gave promise of
being so. Though born among the people, by unaffected personal worth
she found herself at once at home among the aristocracy into which she
married, an aristocracy of genuine breeding and simplicity. As we
shall see, her record of friendships in England and America was of the
kind that is achieved only by a choice spirit.
Provided she remains herself simple and well-poised, a woman of this
sort, when placed on the stage, has an obvious advantage in parts such
as Modjeska’s over the woman who with equal technical ability has not
had the same experience of the world. Without in the least forfeiting
acting ability or a capacity for identifying herself with a character,
Modjeska was plainly a gracious and noble-spirited woman. This quality
came over the footlights to her audience and was one of the secrets
of her appeal. “To mention her name, as the years drift away, will be
to recall a presence of stately dignity, of tender poetic beauty, of
exquisite refinement, and of perfect grace.... Her ministration as an
actress has taught again the old and precious lesson that poetry is not
a dream.”[65]
Modjeska’s art was fine tempered, subtle, delicate. She was not
physically robust, her voice was not the great tragic voice of a
Rachel, nor had it the thrilling tones of a Mary Anderson. And
there was always between her and her English speaking audiences
the intangible film of difference of speech, for obviously her
pronunciation could never be perfect. Yet by a genuinely dramatic
insight that was indisputably hers, a spontaneous naturalness of word
and gesture, and her great power of quiet intensity, she achieved a
forcefulness far beyond that possible to mere physical and vocal effort.
An example of her individual quality is afforded by her impersonation
of the heroine of _Camille_. In the hands of other actresses the play
had seemed “a piece that befogs moral perceptions and perplexes all
sentiments of right and duty.” Yet Modjeska’s Marguérite Gauthier
redeemed the play and made its heroine a real and tragic woman. “As we
think upon it,” said William Winter, “there rises in fancy a lithe,
willowy figure, just touched with a kind of strange richness--and
whose every movement is perfect grace. The face is pallid with sorrow;
the large, dark, liquid eyes are full of mournful light; the voice
pierces to the heart in its tones of supplication, and vibrates with
a nameless thrill of despairing agony. This figure obeys in every
motion the feeling that possesses it. The tumult of self-reproach, the
bitterness of doubt, the ecstasy of contented and confiding love, the
mingled torment and sublimity of enforced self-sacrifice, the devotion
to virtuous purpose, and the conflict betwixt earthly hope and heavenly
resignation are all expressed by it with the elements of absolute
sincerity and in a form responsive to the nicest touch of the guiding
thought which controls every particle of the work. It is impossible to
recognize with too much acceptance the splendid mechanism with which
the _artiste_ acts. It is a network of movement, attitudes, gestures,
pauses, glances, and quiet, indescribable, subtle suggestions which,
altogether, is faultless in delicacy and superb in completeness.” This
comes from one who watched Modjeska’s career with the kindly interest
of a friend, but it states with fairness, if with enthusiasm, the
distinctive qualities of Modjeska’s acting.
Great, however, as were Modjeska’s achievements as a tragic actress,
it was in Shakespearean comedy, that, in the opinion of many, she
succeeded most individually. Hers was essentially the imaginative
style of acting, and to Rosalind, Viola, Beatrice and Portia she gave
character and individuality as well as charm and grace. “To get out of
myself,” she said of her work, “to forget all about Helena Modjeska,
to throw my whole soul into the assumed character, to lead its life,
to be moved by its emotions, thrilled by its passions, to suffer or
rejoice,--in one word, to identify myself with it and reincarnate
another soul and body, this became my ideal, the goal of all my
aspirations, and at the same time the enchantment and attraction of my
work.” Thus her Rosalind and her Viola were not mere graceful, spirited
women. There was, besides, an idealization that lifted them into
the realm of poetry and a sense of impersonation that was a fitting
response to the imagination with which the characters were conceived.
With Modjeska’s first American tour began the formation of that circle
of friendships outside the theatre that would alone mark her as an
extraordinary woman. The names must suffice: Longfellow, Richard Watson
Gilder, Grant, Sherman, Henry Watterson, Eugene Field; and in Europe:
Tennyson, Lowell, Alma-Tadema, Burne-Jones, Watts, Justin McCarthy,
George Brandes, Hans von Bülow. With Longfellow, perhaps, was her most
cherished friendship. During her first visit to Boston he called on her
at her hotel and she and her son went to his house in Cambridge. “I
said I would gladly study some passages from his poems and recite them
to him, and I mentioned _Hiawatha_, but he stopped me with the words:
‘You do not want to waste your time in memorizing those things, and
don’t you speak of _Hiawatha_, or I will call you Mudjikiewis, which,
by the way, sounds somewhat like your name.’”[66]
It was Longfellow who urged Modjeska to act in London--the very summit
of her ambition. When in 1880 she had repeated there her American
success he wrote to her: “Now I can add my congratulations on your
triumphal entry into London. How pleasant it is to be able to say, ‘I
told you so!’ And did I not tell you so? Am I not worthy to be counted
among the Minor Prophets? I cannot tell you how greatly rejoiced I
am at this new success--this new wreath of laurel.” For London was
immediately won. Public, critics, society and fellow actors united to
make her welcome.
Poland, a small and unhappy country, has done more than its share in
furnishing the world with artists. With some of the most famous of
them Modjeska’s name is curiously linked. Paderewski, during her visit
to Poland in 1884, used to come to visit her. He was then a young man
of twenty-one whom it was impossible to keep away from the piano. She
encouraged him, overcame his doubts as to his fitness for a public
career, and that summer they appeared in the same program in Cracow.
They were friends during the rest of her life, and it was Paderewski
who in 1905 inspired the great farewell testimonial to Modjeska in New
York. “The first encouraging words I heard as a pianist,” he wrote,
“came from her lips; the first successful concert I had in my life was
due to her assistance.” It was she, too, who years before, in a Polish
mountain summer resort, first brought Jan and Eduard de Reszke before
an audience. They were both then under twenty.
In 1893 Madame Modjeska was one of four actresses[67] who addressed the
Women’s Congress at the Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition. Besides
her appearance before the Congress as an actress, she was asked to
speak on another occasion as a representative of Poland. The women
who were expected from Poland evidently feared the Czar’s displeasure
in case they spoke frankly concerning their country, and failed to
appear in Chicago. But Modjeska spoke her mind freely concerning the
grievances of the Poles. She was widely quoted in the papers, and
news of her speech reached St. Petersburg. Playing two years later in
Poland, she was about to act in Warsaw when word came from the Russian
government forbidding her appearance. Plans were made for an engagement
in St. Petersburg itself, but at the last moment, when large sums had
already been spent in preparation, she was told that her appearance in
the capital was forbidden. Shortly afterwards Modjeska and her husband
were ordered to leave Warsaw, and an imperial decree was issued to
the effect that they were never thereafter to enter any part of the
Russian territory. Efforts were often made to obtain permission to go
to Warsaw, but to the end of her life Modjeska was excluded from the
Czar’s dominions.[68]
In April, 1905, Madame Modjeska, then living in practical retirement
in California, received a letter signed by a number of authors, fellow
actors and artists in New York which acknowledged in affectionate terms
their debt and gratitude for her career, and offered her a public
testimonial in New York. This was the idea of Paderewski, who had
visited her in California but a short time before and like many others
was disturbed by the lack of public acclaim with which she was modestly
sinking into retirement.[69] The great pianist, much to his distress,
was prevented by an accident from being present, but the best known
actors appearing in New York at the time lent their services. Modjeska
herself played scenes from _Macbeth_ and _Mary Stuart_. Edmund Clarence
Stedman presented to Madame Modjeska a memorial scroll bearing
signatures of her many friends, actors, actresses, and her “attached
votaries in other walks of life--all made associates,” Mr. Stedman
said in addressing her, “by their delight in your genius and career. A
quarter-century ago you came to us from a land invested with traditions
of valor, beauty, and romance, from the brave and soulful country that
flashed its sword in our behalf and that in our own times enthralls
us with music,[70] and through you with impassioned tenderness and
artistic power. The felicities of art are limitless, and, as in
creations of our master playwright you found the most alluring range
for your own powers, so your fresh impersonations woke in us the sense
of ‘something rich and strange.’”
Modjeska, with tears in her eyes and her voice breaking with emotion,
briefly expressed her gratitude.
“Long may your enviable years flow on,” Mr. Stedman had said. But it
was only four years later that she died,[71] in California, where she
had always maintained her home, in a beautiful country place she called
Arden, not far from the scene of that ill-starred venture which after
all had its justification in giving to America a great actress. She was
buried in Cracow, the city of her birth.
“Hail to thee upon thy return to thy last resting place,” said Michael
Tarasiewicz at her funeral, “welcome thou, who might say of thyself as
did Countess Idalia: ‘I am here as a passing angel. I have let thee
see the lightning and disappeared upon the firmament of the sky.’...
For thy art, for thy constant work, for that thou hast never become
renegade to thy ideal, and that, in perfecting thy soul, thou hast been
perfecting the soul of humanity, be blessed.”
ELLEN TERRY
There was, in Sir Walter Scott’s day, an actor named Daniel Terry,
who was a part proprietor of the Adelphi Theatre in London. He was
furnished funds for that venture by Sir Walter, and according to
Lockhart enjoyed a large share of Scott’s regard and confidence. An
effort has sometimes been made to identify this Terry with the family
that in the latter half of the nineteenth century furnished England
with some of her most accomplished stage artists. But the connection
was one of name only, for Benjamin Terry, the father of Ellen, was the
son of an Irish builder, and eloped with the daughter of a Scottish
minister.
[Illustration: ELLEN TERRY]
Benjamin Terry and his wife, the parents of Ellen, were both actors,
not reckoned among the brilliant stars of their day, but respectably
talented, well-trained actors of the old school, better known in the
provinces than in the metropolis. Benjamin Terry was “a handsome,
fine-looking brown-haired man,” and his wife “a tall, graceful
creature, with an abundance of fair hair, and with big blue eyes set
in a charming face.” On the outlying “circuits,” in Edinburgh, and
later in the London company of Charles Kean, they were reasonably
successful in their profession; but their distinction--and a sufficient
one surely--is their remarkable family of sons and daughters. “Think
of it,” wrote Clement Scott; “Kate, with her lovely figure and comely
features; Ellen, with her quite indescribable charm; Marion, with a
something in her deeper, more tender, and more feminine than either
of them; Florence, who became lovelier as a woman than as a girl; and
the brothers Fred and Charles, both splendid specimens of the athletic
Englishman.”[72]
It was while Benjamin Terry and his wife were playing in Coventry
that, on February 27, 1848, their second daughter, Ellen Alicia, was
born. Coventry is proud of the fact, and there has been a rather brisk
dispute as to which house was the birthplace.[73]
From her earliest childhood, Ellen Terry knew the theatre and its
people. She was not one of those who, like Mary Anderson or Modjeska,
are forced to cherish ambitions in secret, for naturally and inevitably
the theatre absorbed her. She and her sister Kate, four years her
elder, were in their early girlhood as firmly established as popular
favorites as actresses of that age can be.
Ellen Terry’s fame has exceeded that of any other of Benjamin Terry’s
large family, but when she began her stage career she was naturally
known as Kate Terry’s little sister. Before Ellen made her first
appearance, at the age of eight, Kate had achieved marked success, for
a child, in Charles Kean’s company, and until she was twenty-three,
when she married and retired from the stage, she was recognized as one
of England’s leading actresses. The third of the Terry sisters, Marion,
and the youngest, Florence, had less distinguished but creditable
careers. There has not been a better instance of the hereditary beauty
and talent that occasionally concentrate in theatrical families.
Benjamin Terry and his wife became members of the company which about
the middle of the century the younger Kean gathered at the Princess’s
Theatre. Whatever the disappointments of Charles Kean’s career, he
was earnestly devoted to his art, he greatly developed the scenic
equipment of the stage of his day, and he made the Princess’s Theatre
an excellent school of acting.
Benjamin Terry not only acted parts at the Princess’s, but assisted
with the productions and stage management. Naturally enough, when
Kean’s series of Shakespearean revivals required the appearance of
children, the young Terry sisters were chosen. They had received what
training their parents could give them. “It must be remembered,” Ellen
Terry long afterward wrote, “that my sister and I had the advantage of
exceedingly clever and conscientious parents, who spared no pains to
bring out and perfect any talents that we possessed. My father was a
very charming elocutionist, and my mother read Shakespeare beautifully,
and they both were very fond of us and saw our faults with eyes of
love, though they were unsparing in their corrections. And, indeed,
they had need of all their patience; for my own part, I know I was a
most troublesome, wayward pupil.” Her father was constantly calling
for impromptu rehearsals of her lines--at the table, in the street or
’bus--whenever opportunity came. She remembers vividly going into a
drug store, where her father stood her on a chair to say her part for
the proprietor.
Trained for the stage from her earliest childhood, and destined
unquestioningly for the career of an actress, her first appearance came
and went so much as a matter of course that there has remained some
uncertainty as to the date and part. Miss Terry herself declares for
April 28, 1856, and Mamillius, in _The Winter’s Tale_. Much painstaking
research has been applied to the question, confirming her strong
impression. Yet Dutton Cook said he remembered seeing Kate and Ellen
Terry as the two princes in _Richard III_, and wrote: “My recollection
of Ellen Terry dates from her impersonation of the little Duke of York.
She was a child of six, or thereabout, slim and dainty of form, with
profuse flaxen curls, and delicately featured face, curiously bright
and arch of expression; and she won, as I remember, her first applause
when, in clear resonant tones, she delivered the lines:
‘Uncle, my brother mocks both you and me;
Because that I am little, like an ape,
He thinks that you should bear me on your shoulders’
Richard’s representative [Charles Kean] meanwhile scowling wickedly
and tugging at his gloves desperately, pursuant to paternal example
and stage tradition. A year or two later and the baby actress was
representing now Mamillius and now Puck.”
Mr. Cook’s recollection is not borne out by the play bills, however,
and it may safely be said that Ellen Terry’s first appearance was as
Mamillius when she was eight years old.[74]
Miss Terry has given us her own impressions of her first night as
Mamillius. “How my young heart swelled with pride--I can recall the
sensation now--when I was told what I had to do. There is something in
a woman’s nature which always makes her recollect how she was dressed
at any especially eventful moment of her life, and I can see myself,
as though it were yesterday, in my little red and white coat--very
short--_very_ pink silk stockings, and a row of tight sausage curls--my
mother was always very careful that they should be in perfect order and
regularity--clustered round my head. A small go-cart, which it was my
duty to drag about the stage, was also a keen source of pride, and a
great trouble to me. My first dramatic failure dates from that go-cart.
I was told to run about with it on the stage, and while carrying out
my instructions with more vigor than discretion, tripped over the
handle, and down I came on my back. A titter ran through the house,
and I felt that my career as an actress was ruined forever. Bitter and
copious were the tears I shed--but I am not sure that the incident has
materially altered the course of my life.”[75] The _Times_ concluded
its review of the production with the words: “And last--aye, and
least too--Miss Ellen Terry plays the boy Mamillius with a vivacious
precocity that proves her a worthy relative of her sister Miss Kate.”
She had soon played not only Mamillius, but also Puck in _A Midsummer
Night’s Dream_, Prince Arthur in _King John_, Fleance in _Macbeth_ and
other childish parts in plays less well remembered. “In those days,”
says Miss Terry, “I was cast for many a ‘dumb’ part. I walked on in
_The Merchant of Venice_ carrying a basket of doves; in _Richard II_
I climbed up a pole in the street scene; in _Henry VIII_ I was ‘top
angel’ in the vision, and I remember that the heat of the gas at that
dizzy height made me sick at the dress rehearsal! I was a little boy
‘cheering’ in several other productions.... In _The Merchant of Venice_
I was firmly convinced that the basket of doves which I carried on
my shoulder was the principal attraction of the scene in which it
appeared. The other little boys and girls in the company regarded those
doves with eyes of bitter envy. One little chorus boy, especially,
though he professed a personal devotion of the tenderest kind for me,
could never quite get over those doves.”
It is not to be thought that the young Terry sisters were merely
attractive and clever children. They were applauded, wrote Dutton Cook,
“not simply because of their cleverness and prettiness, their graces
of aspect, the careful training they evidenced, and the pains they
took, but because of the leaven of genius discernible in all their
performances--they were born actresses.... Here were little players who
could not merely repeat accurately the words they had learnt by rote,
but could impart sentiment to their speeches, could identify themselves
with the characters they played, could personate and portray.”