American actress of the day. For a long time she was thought of merely
as a prominent member of an excellent organization. Gradually, however,
by sheer merit, her preëminence became evident. With confidence she
undertook all kinds of rôles, and, in the midst of her work, there
would occasionally flash forth an impersonation that would seem, what
it often was, acting of unique quality.
Rehan was essentially a queen of comedy. Though she attempted from time
to time impersonations of a grave and even of a tragic nature, and by
virtue of sincerity and womanliness gave them much appeal, she never
would have gained her preëminent position by such means. Her range
was as wide, however, as the true meaning of the word “comedy,” and
extended from the graceful performance of the mirthful or sentimental
foolery of Daly’s adaptations, through the satire of _The Critic_ to
the farcical comedy of _The Shrew_, the tenderly romantic comedy of _As
You Like It_ and _Twelfth Night_, and the sophisticated “high comedy”
of _Much Ado_.[142]
It is difficult for one who has seen her in the part to think of
Shakespeare’s Katherine, in _The Taming of the Shrew_, without at
once thinking of Ada Rehan. The pride, the majesty, the complete
identification with the varying moods of the character, and the
humanity she gave to what can easily be made merely a stage figure,
were quite irresistible. Perhaps she succeeded so well in this part
because it was in many ways a reflection of her own personality.[143]
Her Rosalind, by all accounts, was probably the best, possibly
excepting Adelaide Neilson’s, that the American stage has seen; her
Viola “manifested a poetic actress of the first order.” Add to these
her Beatrice, her Mrs. Ford, her Helena, her Portia, not to speak of
the half dozen heroines of Shakespeare she played before she joined
Daly’s company, and you have a well rounded accomplishment as a
Shakespearean actress, which, if she had done nothing else, would have
won her fame.
And she did much else. One of Mr. Daly’s noteworthy departures from
the ordinary theatrical routine was his revival of various specimens
of old English comedy: _The Country Wife_ (in Garrick’s version
called _The Country Girl_), _The Inconstant_, _She Would and She
Would Not_, _The Recruiting Officer_ were all Restoration comedies,
modified by Mr. Daly to suit modern taste; and _The Critic_ was his
one-act rearrangement of Sheridan’s famous three-act satire of that
name. These pieces all involved difficult tasks for a modern actress,
for their language is of another time, their feelings of a different
civilization. The plays are never professionally revived nowadays; and
Mr. Daly’s ventures with them succeeded mainly through the conspicuous
ability of Miss Rehan to give her characters, whatever their dress or
speech, naturalness and vitality.
There was some surprise when Mr. Daly produced Coppée’s _The Prayer_,
for the usually buoyant Rehan had now to portray a thoroughly serious
character. Yet, says Mr. Winter:[144] “No one acquainted with her
nature was surprised at the elemental passion, the pathos, and the
almost tragic power with which she expressed a devoted woman’s
experience of affliction, misery, fierce resentment, self-conquest,
self-abnegation, forgiveness and fortitude. She did not then, nor at
any time, show herself to be a tragic actress, but she evinced great
force and deep feeling.”
It further strengthens one’s impression of Miss Rehan’s really
triumphant versatility to read the records of her Lady Teazle, which
subtly suggested the country girl within the fine lady; of her Letitia
Hardy with “its intrinsic loftiness of woman’s spirit”; of her Jenny
O’Jones, an irresistibly comic figure done in the spirit of frank
farce; or of any of her half hundred impersonations in modern comedy,
on which she lavished the spirit, the beauty, the technical proficiency
that were always in evidence, whether or not the material she worked
with was wholly deserving of her gifts. She was always ambitious,
always a patient hard worker, and she never slighted her tasks.
In 1884, when Miss Rehan and the reorganized Daly company had been
working together for five years, they made their first visit to London,
where they played a six weeks’ summer season at Toole’s Theatre. London
did not take kindly either to Mr. Daly’s pieces from the German,
which then formed their repertoire, or to Miss Rehan herself, whose
style of acting was a surprise to conservative eyes. William Archer
wrote in _The World_: “The style of Miss Ada Rehan is too crude and
bouncing to be entirely satisfactory to an English audience. She makes
Flos a painfully ill-bred young person,--surely not a fair type of
the American girl; and her way of emphasizing her remarks by making
eyes over the footlights is certainly not good comedy.”[145] Clement
Scott, on the other hand, praised her. No great impression was made,
on the whole, but two years later, (1886) when Mr. Daly again took his
company to London, Miss Rehan really made a name for herself, although
the plays were as yet what seem to us now paltry pieces for such an
actress: _A Night off_, and _Nancy and Company_. At this time Mr. Daly
offered his company in the English provincial cities and even ventured
to present them in Hamburg, Berlin and Paris, where they met some
success.
Mr. Daly continued his biennial visit to London. In 1888, after the
failure there of _The Railroad of Love_,[146] he offered London its
first glimpse of Rehan’s Katherine the Shrew. The immediate result
was a grand chorus of critical praise, and a remarkable exhibition of
public interest. If on her first entrance “she ‘took the stage’ in a
manner that astonished even the oldest playgoer,” and if, as one paper
said, “Katherines had been seen before, but never such a Katherine as
this,” it is true that the actress herself also “took the stage” in
popular fancy. Rehan at home was something of a recluse, but now in
London she allowed “society” to pay her its tribute in its own way.
She was fêted, and dined, and given a public reception. Different this
from her habits in New York, where reading, and walks with her dogs,
made up the sum of her leisurely activity. During the 1888 tour Miss
Rehan played Katherine at Stratford-on-Avon (where her portrait in that
rôle was hung in the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre), and in Paris, where
Victorien Sardou assisted in her “great triumph.”
After another two years, in June, 1890, the company again appeared
in London, and this time, in the estimation of the critics,
her Rosalind--“a Rosalind who is a very woman, and never an
actress!”--surpassed even her Katherine.
From now on the trips to London became more frequent and it soon became
part of Mr. Daly’s programme to complete each season with a few months
in the English capital. He built there his own theatre, and it was Ada
Rehan who laid its corner-stone.[147] She visited Tennyson, who read to
her his play _The Foresters_, which Daly later produced with Miss Rehan
as Marian Lea.
In June, 1893, the new Daly’s Theatre was completed, and the company
deserted America for more than a year to go to London to establish the
success of the new house. It was dedicated by Miss Rehan’s performance
of the Shrew on June 27. _The Foresters_, _The School for Scandal_ and
_The Country Girl_ followed, and then in January, 1894, she acted for
London her Viola, which was new to her repertoire. Again a triumph,
for _Twelfth Night_ ran for one hundred and eleven performances. And
again Miss Rehan consented, as still she had never done in Now York, to
indulge in the life of society.
It was when she returned this time--after spending the summer of 1894
wandering about the Continent--that Miss Rehan became, for the first
time, a “star” in her own right. Miss Rehan’s loyalty to the Daly
company--or at least her steadfastness in refusing to be weaned away
from it--was rather remarkable. When the opportunity was offered her to
appear as a “star” and not merely as a member, drawing a fixed salary,
of Mr. Daly’s company, she at first refused. Finally she consented to
a brief tour, to supplement her usual work with Mr. Daly. Again, while
she was abroad she had received an offer from Possart to appear with
him at his theatre in Munich, another from Blumenthal, a third from
Sarah Bernhardt, and still another from a syndicate in London to manage
and head a company there. In New York, one of Mr. Daly’s rival managers
offered her “backing” as a “star” to the extent of $50,000. Miss Rehan
refused all these offers, and remained content as leading woman of the
Daly stock company. Even now the independent tour was limited to ten
weeks; then she returned to New York and her usual duties.[148]
In 1897 Mr. Daly sent Miss Rehan and his company on another English
tour. Beginning (on August 26) with a performance of _As You Like It_,
at Stratford-on-Avon, on the sward of the Shakespeare Memorial (of
which Miss Rehan was made one of the life governors) they proceeded to
the larger provincial cities, as far as Glasgow and Edinburgh, playing
_The Taming of the Shrew_, _As You Like It_, _Twelfth Night_, _The
School for Scandal_, and _The Last Word_. The results of the tour were
all Mr. Daly could have hoped. Miss Rehan, as Katherine, in particular,
swept all before her.
It was during this English visit that George Bernard Shaw, then
dramatic critic of the _Saturday Review_, wrote that he never saw
Miss Rehan act without burning to present Mr. Augustin Daly with a
delightful villa in St. Helena. He thought Mr. Daly was wasting Miss
Rehan’s rare talent, just as that other rare talent, Miss Terry’s,
was wasted by her enmeshment at the Lyceum. “Mr. Daly was in his prime
an advanced man relatively to his own time and place,” wrote Mr. Shaw.
“His Irish-American Yanko-German comedies, as played by Ada Rehan
and Mrs. Gilbert, John Drew, Otis Skinner and the late James Lewis,
turned a page in theatrical history here, and secured him a position
in London that was never questioned until it became apparent that
he was throwing away Miss Rehan’s genius. When, after the complete
discovery of her gifts by the London public, Mr. Daly could find no
better employment for her than in a revival of _Dollars and Cents_, his
annihilation and Miss Rehan’s rescue became the critic’s first duty.”
Mr. Shaw’s predilection for the psychological, realistic modern play
led to his irritation with Miss Rehan’s labors, as with Miss Terry’s,
and even to some doubt as to whether she was a creative artist or a
mere virtuosa. “In Shakespeare she was and is irresistible.... But how
about Magda?” Yet, with unwonted complaisance, Mr. Shaw also says, “I
have never complained; the drama with all its heroines levelled up to a
universal Ada Rehan has seemed no such dreary prospect to me; and her
voice compared to Sarah Bernhardt’s _voix d’or_, has been as all the
sounds of the woodland to the clinking of twenty-franc pieces.” And
again, “Her treatment of Shakespearean verse is delightful after the
mechanical intoning of Sarah Bernhardt. She gives us beauty of tone,
grace of measure, delicacy of articulation: in short, all the technical
qualities of verse music, along with the rich feeling and fine
intelligence without which those technical qualities would soon become
monotonous. When she is at her best, the music melts in the caress of
the emotion it expresses, and thus completes the conditions necessary
for obtaining Shakespeare’s effects in Shakespeare’s way.”
The memorable part of Ada Rehan’s career was now about to close. Before
Mr. Daly’s death in 1899 she added to her long list of impersonations
Roxane in _Cyrano de Bergerac_, Portia in _The Merchant of Venice_,
and Lady Garnet in _The Great Ruby_, but none of these brought her
any added fame. Augustin Daly died, in Paris, in June, 1899, and the
great chapter in Rehan’s life ended. Subsequently she was the star of
companies organized for her by new managers, and in 1900 she appeared
in a new play, _Sweet Nell of Old Drury_, in which she impersonated one
of her famous predecessors, Nell Gwynn.
In the spring of 1901 Miss Rehan suddenly ended her tour in this play,
and sailed to Europe, there to repair her broken health by living for
awhile at her bungalow on the coast of the Irish Sea. She had been more
or less ailing all the season, and the loss of her mother in January,
1901, added to her troubles. In 1903–04 she acted with Otis Skinner
as a “co-star” in plays from her old repertoire, _The Taming of the
Shrew_ and _The Merchant of Venice_ among them. One more season she
played, 1904–05, this time with Charles Richman as her chief support,
and then, on May 2, 1905, she appeared on the stage for the last time,
when she took part in the farewell to Modjeska at the Metropolitan
Opera House, New York. Rehan herself has never had such a testimonial,
though she deserved one as richly as the great Polish actress.
Unostentatiously she entered her profession, so she pursued it, and so
she left it, slipping out of public life so quietly that many playgoers
were half consciously expecting her reappearance years after she had
quit the stage for good. But she can have, as long as she lives, the
reward of as genuine a success as can come to any actress. And it is
also not beneath notice that she accumulated a fortune. Like Lotta
Crabtree, Ada Rehan took good care of her money. In 1891, when she had
been in Mr. Daly’s company twelve years, she was “worth something like
$300,000.” “She owns,” says a contemporary account, “a $30,000 house in
New York, possesses mortgages on adjoining property, and holds almost
enough stock in a New Jersey railroad to entitle her to the position of
director. She is not extravagant in anything except her love for dogs.”
Of dogs, and other animal pets, she was fond. She had a monkey, which
Mr. Winter, with a noticeable lack of enthusiasm, described as “an
interesting creature of its kind”; and she had, wherever she traveled,
a dog or two. “I have seen her wandering with her dog,” says Mr.
Winter “on the broad, solitary waste of the breezy beach that stretches
away, for many a sunlit mile, in front of her sequestered cottage on
the Cumberland shore of the Irish Sea. She was never so contented,
never so radiant, never so much herself, as in that beautiful
retreat.... There, encompassed by associations of natural beauty and
of historic and poetic renown, and surrounded by her books, pictures,
relics, music, and her pets, she was happy.”
Ada Rehan still lives, but, her work done, she remains out of the
public eye. She never appears in the public print. She is not yet
an old woman, and has many years to enjoy the memories of as true a
triumph as an actress can have. For by her exceptional, regally endowed
equipment and her devotion to her art, she upheld the gospel of the
actress,--poetry, beauty, life.
MARY ANDERSON
Though a stage career was inevitable for her, Mary Anderson did not
come of theatrical people. Her father, who died when she was four,
was of English birth and Oxford education, and as he was a personally
charming man of artistic tastes and devoted to books and the drama, it
was undoubtedly from him that she derived much of her temperamental
equipment for her work. Her mother, Marie Antoinette Leugers, was a
Philadelphian of German parentage, one of a large family rigorously
trained in the Catholic faith. Pious books, and not plays, formed
the mental food of that household, and the children were forbidden
to enter the theatre. The young Marie had been but little outside
this austere circle when she met and loved the also youthful Charles
H. Anderson, who then lived in New York. Opposition to the match was
natural, as young Anderson was not only not a Catholic but was looked
on by Marie’s parents as one of the worldly. He seems to have been a
thoroughly estimable young man, however, who was merely not of their
stamp. When the young couple were forbidden to see each other, it did
not take long for a secret correspondence to lead to an elopement.
Anderson was apparently of some means. He and his young wife, then
but eighteen, spent a leisurely year in New York and Philadelphia,
and in 1859 went by sea to California. In Sacramento, at the Eagle
Hotel, on July 28, 1859, was born their daughter. She was given almost
her mother’s name--Mary Antoinette Anderson. The young mother, it
will be remembered, was of a German family. It is perhaps not too
fanciful to think that the beauty of Mary Anderson, which was later the
treasured boon of two countries, was in part noticeably Teutonic and
traceable to her mother. But this beauty did not manifest itself at
once. The babe was red and ugly, in the manner of babes, and the still
childlike mother was a week or so in reconciling herself to her child’s
unpromising aspect. Then, however, also as usual, it was clear to her
that there never was such another baby.
[Illustration: MARY ANDERSON]
The mother’s family had never forgiven her for her marriage. When,
therefore, her husband was called to England, she took her year-old
Mary, and in 1860 moved to Louisville, Kentucky, where her uncle was
the pastor of a suburban German Catholic congregation. This Pater
Anton was a remarkable man. Born and educated in Germany, he lived
in Rome ten years, and then in Texas. Learned and eloquent, striking
in appearance, kind and simple, he was a great favorite with old and
young. He was soon to be a necessary guardian of the little Anderson
family, for Charles Anderson, who had returned from England and was
an officer in the Confederate army, died in 1863, still under thirty.
Mary was not yet four, and her little brother Joseph had been born
but a few months. It became the plan of the good Pater Anton to train
little Joseph as his medical assistant, and Mary he thought some day
might be his housekeeper, his helper with the poor, his assistant with
the choir, and his organist. How different this from the career she was
actually to have![149]
When Mary was eight her mother was married again, to Dr. Hamilton
Griffin, who had been a surgeon-major in the Confederate army. He was
to become, during Mary’s later career, her wise guide and her business
manager.
At the time of this marriage Mary was sent for the first time to
school. She was taken to the Convent of the Ursulines, near Louisville.
She was not at all a diligent student. She developed early a liking
for music, which with a little German was about all she could bring
herself to study. It is clear that, with a likable nature and a good
disposition, she was still somewhat of a problem for the good nuns who
were her teachers. At first she was utterly homesick,[150] but after
a term or so she began to like the convent. Then her serious sickness
with a fever kept her at home, but after a year’s rest she began school
again, this time at the Presentation Academy, a day school. In reading
she stood at the head of her class, but she was indifferent to her
other studies and was continually punished for not knowing her lessons.
Mary Anderson, on whom thousands were later to gaze as she stood, as
Galatea, on the statue’s pedestal, long before had practice when she
stood in the corner with a book balanced on her head, or sat on the
dunce-stool; this second punishment she positively liked for she could
“see the girls better, and the seat was so much more comfortable than
the hard benches.”
The little Mary Anderson of that day was a high-spirited girl,[151]
keenly intelligent in spite of indolence in school, who better than
study liked acting childish plays with her baby sister and brothers.
One night, when she was twelve, she heard for the first time the name
of Shakespeare and heard _Hamlet_ read. It marked the beginning of an
epoch in her life. For days she could think of nothing but _Hamlet_ and
the wonderful book which had “suddenly become like a casket filled with
jewels.” A few nights later she entered her surprised family circle
wrapped in a cloak and reciting a garbled version of one of Hamlet’s
speeches. From then on Shakespeare was her constant companion and
inspiration. About the same time she saw her first play--_Richard III_.
Impressed and delighted with this and other plays, she gradually became
a less forgetful and mischievous and a much more thoughtful little
girl. She and her brother would go to the Saturday matinées, arriving
hours before the performance for the pleasure of merely being in the
land of enchantment as long as possible.
When Mary was fourteen Edwin Booth came to Louisville. Here was a
turning point in her life. After seeing him in _Richelieu_--the first
great acting she had seen--she spent a sleepless night, her brain
teeming with her impressions of his art and with disturbing thoughts
as to her own destiny. She then and there decided on a stage career,
and resolved to study and to train herself. She kept her object a
secret, but made a bargain with her mother whereby she promised to
study diligently if allowed to do so at home, for school had become
unendurable. The mother accepted, for Mary could at least do no worse
than she had at the Academy. Now began a course of self-instruction
in Mary’s little room at the top of the house. Not only did she make
better progress than ever in the ordinary branches, but she carefully
trained her own voice, worked hard to overcome a natural awkwardness
by fencing and other exercises, and, above all in her own mind, she
memorized parts--Richard III, Richelieu, Pauline in _The Lady of
Lyons_, and the Joan of Arc of Schiller. One evening she astonished
her mother and Dr. Griffin with a scene from _The Lady of Lyons_.
Especially, was her stepfather impressed with the power which Mary
had suddenly revealed. At his solicitation an actor from the local
theatre called to hear her read. This Henry Wouds was in turn enough
impressed to speak of the young Miss Anderson to Charlotte Cushman, in
whose company he soon afterward acted. He sent word that Miss Cushman
would like to see the young aspirant and hear her read. So Mrs. Griffin
reluctantly allowed herself to be persuaded to take her daughter to
Cincinnati, where Miss Cushman was playing. The hearing took place in
the great actress’s hotel. Richelieu and Joan of Arc were the parts
selected. When the trial was over, Miss Cushman, somewhat to the
mother’s dismay, not only took Mary’s career as an actress for granted,
but thought it possible for her to begin, not as usual at the bottom
but, with a little more training, in parts of importance. She counseled
a course of lessons from George Vandenhoff, a veteran New York teacher
of stage technique.
At this point Mrs. Griffin’s thorough interest and sympathy were won.
She and Mary went to New York, and the short term of ten lessons of
an hour each was undergone, not with entire comfort for Mary, for her
teacher found it constantly necessary to repress her enthusiasm and
crude excess of vigor. The lessons were beneficial, however (they were
the only formal training in stage work Mary Anderson ever had), and she
returned to Louisville and her attic stage with unabated ambition. With
no one but her mother to guide her, Mary bent laboriously to her task,
renouncing all else. A year of this, and she began to be discouraged,
for there seemed to be no prospects of actual appearance. Then John
McCullough came to Louisville. As one of the most distinguished
actors of that day, his opinion and approval of Mary was sought by
the thoroughly enthusiastic Dr. Griffin. McCullough came reluctantly
to the Griffin home, openly skeptical as to the beginner’s claim to
attention, and determined to stay but a quarter of an hour. He stayed
for several hours, acted with Mary scenes from all the plays she knew,
called frequently thereafter to act Shakespeare with her, and ended by
introducing and recommending her to Barney Macauley, manager of the
Louisville Theatre, as an actress of great promise.