to include her physical equipment. She is no Bernhardt or Terry in
stature. During most of her career she has been slender, and there are
dozens of women on the stage who will never attain a hundredth part
of her compelling personal power, who are nevertheless her superiors
in superficial beauty. The truth seems to be that in her has been
demonstrated again that when the essentials of acting of a high order
are present, actual beauty is a comparatively negligible factor. Nor
can beauty, to a degree, be denied her. Her face is, one might say, of
the Scandinavian type. Her hair always was and still is, beautiful,--a
reddish golden--radiantly golden when dressed to advantage and seen
in the glow of the footlights. Her eyes are, at a guess, gray (though
even her intimate friends disagree as to their precise color); they are
large and, as no one who has watched their part in an impersonation
need be told, expressive. Some have complained that her carriage is
not graceful; but it has something more and better than grace, for it
has significance, fittingness in every walk across the stage, every
pose. With more justice has comment been made upon her enunciation,
which at times has been undeniably too rapid. As for the voice itself,
it is among her chief means to her effects--wide-ranged and sensitive
to the mood. It is at one moment charged with emotion, quivering or
repressed, at another hard as steel, and again simply matter of fact.
The contrasts are of great, and probably nicely calculated, effect.
The high-minded judgment which has enabled Mrs. Fiske to select plays
which never have a false appeal, her freedom from that self-importance
which distorts the meaning of plays for the sake of giving prominence
to the “star,” are indications of her qualities as a woman. She has
broad sympathies, enthusiasms for affairs outside the theatre, and
cherishes no inflated notion as to her importance other than as a
woman of the theatre. In her travels, or visiting other theatres,
it is her habit to be heavily veiled and altogether lacking in the
“theatrical.”[176] She is much more nervous when addressing, _in sua
persona_, a small meeting in the interests of some humane movement
than when facing a theatre full of people. On the other hand she has
an unusually keen sense of humor, and some of her best bits of acting
are said to be in impromptu efforts called forth by some circumstance
arising within the “family” of her company.[177] One of her engaging
traits is her complete freedom from the spirit of rivalry and criticism
that sometimes characterizes actors. By those close to her she is said
never to speak ill of any one. Indeed her acquaintance among other
“stars” is limited; while in the world outside the theatre her friends
are many and often distinguished. It may not be uninteresting that Mrs.
Fiske, unlike many of her profession, likes “playing one-night stands”;
that she does not weary of the endless travel of theatrical life;[178]
that she is continually studying to perfect her impersonations or to
prepare for future work; and that she has a playful dread of being
referred to as “intellectual.” That word, as applied to Mrs. Fiske, has
become hackneyed.
The warmest admirers of Mrs. Fiske will admit her limitations. They
will, indeed, be grateful for them; for her physical and mental
equipment, while they withheld from her certain ranges of drama,
simply forbade the adoption by her of the tissue of unrealities which
constitutes conventional acting. Without either losing for a moment
the sense of conditions imposed by the theatre, or gaining her effects
by means of commonplaceness set baldly on the stage, she has evolved
an extraordinary realism made up of truth to nature combined with a
sense of theatric art so nicely adjusted that even in its most telling
moments it is the art that conceals art. It is, in the last analysis,
a method that is the visible expression of a rich nature. And by the
unalterable fixity of her high aims, the dignity and strength of what
she has tried to do, she has earned the gratitude of all those who look
forward to an influential, high-minded American stage.
In the spring of 1914 Mrs. Fiske revived _Mrs.
Bumpstead-Leigh_, and in it proved herself at the height of
her powers as an adroit _comédienne_. At the beginning of the
season of 1914–15 she acted, in several Middle Western cities,
in a new play by John Luther Long and Frank Stayton. _Lady
Betty Martingale_ was an ambitious production that took her
into an unfamiliar field, and that promised to rival _Becky
Sharp_ as a feast of acting and spectacle. It was a “costume
comedy,” with the London of the eighteenth century as its
setting. The play was unfortunately lacking in substance and
dramatic interest, and was withdrawn after a brief career.
JULIA MARLOWE
None of Julia Marlowe’s forebears was identified with the theatre,
and she was turned toward the stage almost by accident. When once
her fate was determined, her abilities and ambitions were nurtured
with the care and privacy given a prize-winning rose, and she was
offered then to the public almost full blown. She was none of the wild
flowers of the stage--the Ellen Terrys and Minnie Madderns--that grow
into a recognized position so gradually that they seem to have been
there always. In her sudden leap into public notice Julia Marlowe was
something of a parallel to Mary Anderson. Miss Anderson never played
anything but “star” parts; nor did Miss Marlowe when once she had
called for recognition as a grown-up actress. In her early ’teens,
however, years before her début, she had had more than a glimpse of the
stage.
[Illustration: JULIA MARLOWE]
Her real name was Sarah Frances Frost. She was born in the little town
of Caldbeck, in Cumberlandshire, England, and was brought to America
when she was about five. Her family settled in Kansas, but soon removed
to Ohio, living first in Portsmouth, and then, when Fanny (as she was
then called) was about nine, in Cincinnati. There her father, who
appears to have been some sort of skilled mechanic, died while she was
still a child. Her mother was married again to one Hess, the proprietor
of a small hotel, frequented by stage people; but this circumstance
seems not to have been a determining factor in the young girl’s career.
Fanny, with her sister Annie, was sent to the public school.[179] One
day,[180] when Fanny was thirteen, she came running home to her mother,
much excited. She had, she said, a chance “to be an actress and make
some money.” Colonel Robert E. J. Miles, a successful manager of the
early eighties, was organizing one of the numberless juvenile companies
that played Gilbert and Sullivan’s _Pinafore_ throughout the country.
“He wanted Fanny,” said her mother, “because she was pretty, to play
one of the small parts. Well, I did not think much of the stage, and
was strongly opposed to having Fanny undertake anything of the kind,
but she persisted, and finally so annoyed me that I partially gave my
consent. That was the beginning of it.”
During the season of 1880–1881, and the two seasons following, the
young actress was known as Fanny Brough--her mother’s family name. She
was promoted from the chorus of _Pinafore_ to play Sir Joseph Porter,
and she was, besides, Suzanne in _The Chimes of Normandy_ and a page
in _The Little Duke_. The significance of this first engagement lies
chiefly in the fact that the stage management of the company was in
the hands of Ada Dow, a sister-in-law of Colonel Miles. This woman
had been a competent though inconspicuous actress, and she was a good
stage-director. In one of her charges, moreover--Fanny Brough--she had
the discernment to see an actress of exceptional promise. It was to
Miss Dow that Fanny Brough, renamed Julia Marlowe, was later to owe her
early-won position as an actress of genuine attainments.
Her experience in operetta young Fanny Brough followed by playing
six weeks as little Heinrich in one of the several _Rip van Winkle_
companies that sprang into being after Joseph Jefferson’s success in
the play. The Rip in this instance was Robert McWade. Then came Colonel
Miles’ attempt to make a “star” of Josephine Riley, in the season of
1882–1883. In the company were Miss Dow and Fanny Brough, who now, as
Balthazar in _Romeo and Juliet_, had her first Shakespearean part. She
also had the formidable duty, for one of her years, of playing Maria in
_Twelfth Night_.[181]
During these few years the possibilities for greater things lying in
the young actress must have become more and more apparent to Colonel
Miles and Miss Dow. Soon after the venture with Miss Riley, Fanny
Brough disappeared from the stage and was taken to New York by Miss
Dow, and there put through a course of training such as few actresses
ever undergo.
Off the stage the young aspirant was a rather awkward, self-conscious
girl, of a serious turn of mind, imaginative, and like the youthful
Mary Anderson, and many another, an enthusiast in her admiration
for Shakespeare. Years afterward Julia Marlowe said that she could
remember no real childhood. She had gone to no children’s parties,
and had had no girl friends. “The experiences which come to growing
children as part of their girl life came to me only as part of my stage
experience. The first long dress I wore was not as a girl, but on the
stage as Myrene in _Pygmalion and Galatea_.” “At this time,” says one
account, “she was a saucer-eyed, yellow skinned girl, of a melancholic
temperament, high-strung, eager, restless, and unbearable to herself
when unoccupied. Her chief joy was to revel in the woes of tragedy
queens.”
Obviously this was raw material. That the same girl a few years later
stepped before the public in the large Eastern cities and, if not
at once financially successful, almost at once was recognized as a
well-graced, promising actress, says much not only for her native
ability, but also for the quality and thoroughness of the training that
took place in the interim.
Miss Dow[182] took an apartment on Thirty-sixth Street and a house in
Bayonne, New Jersey. In these places--and especially at Bayonne--the
girl’s studies were prosecuted with the greatest faithfulness for
something over three years. There is not the least doubt that Miss
Marlowe, during this period of tutelage, worked hard to deserve her
later success. Five parts[183] were selected from the “classic”
repertoire of the day and were studied assiduously. The pupil learned
the cardinal principle of leaving no dramatic effort to chance,--of
knowing a part so thoroughly well that it can be rendered with a
confidence in all the gestures and tones to be employed. So well indeed
was this groundwork laid that it probably had its lasting effect on the
actress’s art. It has been the commonplace criticism of Miss Marlowe
that she lacks the note of spontaneity, that there is evidence of
premeditation in all she does. “One would not urge,” said the _Evening
Standard_ when she went to London in 1907, “that the outstanding
feature of her art is that it is art concealed.”
“I never needed the spur,” Miss Marlowe has said of her days as Miss
Dow’s pupil. “The aim of my instructors should have been, perhaps, to
keep me from working too hard. Nobody deluded me with the assurance
that I was a genius. Indeed the contrary impression was steadfastly
enforced, and I secretly decided that I might make myself a genius if I
only worked hard enough.”
Besides the minute study of particular rôles, her tasks included music,
dancing, gymnastic exercises, the history and literature of the drama,
and, under the teaching of a singing master, much practice in voice
development. The utmost care was taken in matters of carriage and
“stage deportment.”[184]
Miss Dow’s pupil endured the rigors of this training until the spring
of 1887. Now, it was thought, the young actress was ready to bid for
the public’s notice. It was the fixed idea of both the pupil and her
teacher that she would appear only as a “star” and only in “classic”
plays. It was but natural that managers were slow to place so much
confidence in an untried actress. Months passed, and no manager could
be found to take her at her own valuation. What would have been
considered by many a good actress attractive offers she repeatedly
declined. Finally it was again Colonel Miles who became her patron, as
he had been years before. A company was organized, and the erstwhile
Fanny Brough, bearing now her new name, made a brief tour (April and
May, 1887) in Connecticut, playing Parthenia, Galatea and Pauline.
The opening performance was in New London on April 27. She played
_Ingomar_, and the next day’s local paper said that she was a genius
and would “yet wear a crown of diamonds.” Pleasing as this praise
may have been to Miss Marlowe, the truth is that the brief tour was
insignificant, and that not the slightest ripple was caused in the
great centers by her début in “the provinces.”
The real beginning of Julia Marlowe’s career came the following
October[185] when, still under Colonel Miles’ management, she gave a
single matinée performance of _Ingomar_ at the Bijou Theatre in New
York. “Every one but me,” says Miss Dow, “had lost confidence in her.
Mr. Miles asked me in trembling tones if I realized what it would mean
if she were a failure. Julia had been in such a state of fright for a
few days before the performance that she lost her voice temporarily.
When the curtain rose on her début she talked so low for a time that no
one could hear her. Then I said from the wings, ‘Julia, if you don’t
speak up, I’ll come out on the stage to you.’ She grew angry at this,
and from then on everything went smoothly. At the end of the first
act there was a silence for a long enough time for her to get to her
dressing room. Then the house burst into a storm of applause and she
was called before the curtain again and again.”
The town had paid her compliment of curiosity, the critics were
more enthusiastic than could have been hoped, and the managers made
her various offers, which she consistently refused; all of which
constituted a successful début for an actress new to important parts.
She was virtually beginning her career at the top, in America’s
theatrical capital,--a course involving courage and a high-minded
disregard of the many short cuts to easily won material rewards.
Julia Marlowe’s best publicity agent at this time was Robert G.
Ingersoll. The “great agnostic” had been “managed,” in his lecture
tours, by Colonel Miles’ partner, and was prevailed upon to see Miss
Marlowe act. However great and good a man he was, Colonel Ingersoll
was not especially skilled as a dramatic critic. Still, such was his
influence that his letters of extravagant praise, widely copied in the
press, did more than any other one thing to fix her name in the public
mind.[186]
In December of 1887 she followed the October matinée by a week at
the Star Theatre in New York, playing Juliet and Viola as well as
Parthenia, without doing much either to add to or detract from the
earliest impression. And then, after this week, came another term of
discouraging delay. There came renewed offers of positions in support
of other stars, or in plays not to her liking. But she refused them,
and said she would play as a star, in the “classics,” or not at all.
Evidently the Miles contingent about this time lost some of its
enthusiasm, for it seems that a six weeks’ tour that took her as far
as Cincinnati was financed by a new backer, said to be a Sixth Avenue
restauranteur named Bristol. Success did not yet alight on the Marlowe
banner, however, and Mr. Bristol lost his five thousand dollars.
Financial success, indeed, was slow in coming to Miss Marlowe, a
fact which may seem curious to a public that of late years has been
accustomed to seeing the mere words “Julia Marlowe” and later “Sothern
and Marlowe” sufficient to fill any theatre. The restauranteur--art
supported by oysters!--was followed in his part of “backer” by the
New York photographer Falk, who with a supreme faith in his star saw
twenty-five thousand dollars slip through his fingers before a change
of management and the growing reputation of Miss Marlowe turned the
tide.
It was in the fall of 1888 that the American public began generally to
be aware of the presence on its stage of a new and beautiful actress.
Mr. Fred Stinson was now made Miss Marlowe’s manager. He was more
adroit than his predecessors, and engaged for her support an excellent
company that included Charles Barron, who had been leading man at the
Boston Museum, William Owen, an excellent Shakespearean comedian,
Robert Taber (who later became Miss Marlowe’s husband), and Mary Shaw.
A week was spent in Washington, and then another week in Brooklyn.
C. M. S. McLellan, writing in the New York _Press_ of November 25,
1888, refers to her as “Julia Marlowe, a girl who played a number of
parts in Brooklyn last week.” “She has a tip-tilted nose,” he goes on,
“wide, imploring eyes, a slender shape buoyant with health and youth,
a songful voice, and the accidental movements of an innocent.... She is
now an artiste, in sweet embryo.... It is the apparent pliancy of Julia
Marlowe, both mental and physical, which makes you admire her now. It
also makes you wonder what her fate is to be.”
The first genuine triumph of her career came to Miss Marlowe when she
reached Boston. Her week at the Hollis Street Theatre in December,
1888, was the first completely reassuring experience of her career,
for there, for the first time, did she win the genuinely enthusiastic
response of public and critics. In Philadelphia, too, and in Baltimore,
and Chicago, she found a cordial welcome. Her ambitions were beginning
to be realized, Miss Dow’s labors justified, and Mr. Falk’s coffers
were once more filled.
A correspondent of the Boston _Herald_, writing from Brooklyn in 1888,
gives his impressions of the rising “star”: “Anything more unlike than
this young girl off the stage [he had been ‘an audience of one in
assisting at her Thanksgiving repast, which was hurriedly swallowed
between matinée and evening performances’] and as the character she
represents before the footlights I have seldom seen. It is as though
she were two distinct individuals, bearing absolutely no relation
in manner, face, figure, temperament or intelligence to each other.
Away from the footlights, and divested of the rôle she personates,
Miss Marlowe is a frank, girlish young woman, almost awkward in her
movements, and shy and retiring to excess in manner and speech. There
are times when she seems almost plain and again one is surprised into
thinking her absolutely beautiful.... She is not at all assertive;
on the contrary, she impresses one as a person who would never force
herself into any prominence. This is Miss Marlowe off the stage.
“On the stage? Well, I had a mental shock when I saw her as Parthenia.
It was like a transformation scene, and so complete that I almost
failed to recognize the actress as the same shy, unformed girl I had
been chatting with. Is she a great actress? Decidedly, no. But I would
wager a good deal that the day is not far distant when she will be
hailed as such.”
Successful as she began now to be in other cities, she did not at
once win as much favor in New York. It took her ten years to become
as popular in the metropolis as she was in “the provinces.” Taking a
general view of Miss Marlowe’s career it would seem that her conquest
of New York coincided fairly accurately with her modification of her
early ideals as to playing nothing but the “classic” parts, for,
lying between the period of which we have been speaking and the later
“Sothern and Marlowe” campaign with Shakespeare, there were some years
(roughly from 1897 to 1904) when the “classics” were pretty well
abandoned.[187]
The first change in the hitherto carefully guarded repertory came in
1894, when she was married to her “leading man,” Robert Taber. With
a self-subordination rare enough among newly-fledged “stars” she saw
herself taking, at times, inferior and sometimes quite unsuited parts
in plays produced primarily for the sake of Mr. Taber. The worst
instance was _Henry IV_, in which Mr. Taber was an admirable Hotspur
and Miss Marlowe a Prince Hal who was hopelessly at variance with the
ideal of the part.[188] At this time she was known as “Julia Marlowe
Taber,” but the change involved some sacrifice, for, by 1894, the name
“Julia Marlowe” had a definite value and the public did not respond
enthusiastically to the new order of things. It is a theatrical axiom
that the public does not like to see man and wife acting together.
One manager[189] brought suit because, having contracted for “Julia
Marlowe,” he got “Mr. and Mrs. Robert Taber.” It has been said that
Frederick Stinson, the manager who had labored for years to develop the
prestige that attached to Miss Marlowe’s name, aged visibly when his
work was so rapidly undone.
The artistic coalition that was thought would be the result of the
marriage turned out a comparative failure. Unfortunately a personal
element that proved anything but helpful entered the situation. Mr.
Taber was a skilled actor of a rather hard style--but the printed
criticisms of their productions often brought more praise to Mrs.
Taber than to him,--naturally enough, as she was the better artist.
His resentment at his comparative artistic failure went to such
lengths that he quarreled with his wife, and, after three seasons of
married joint-stardom they went their separate ways: Taber to London
to act with Irving, and his wife, after a meeting in France, and an
ineffectual effort on her part to effect a reconciliation, to America
to resume her career as Julia Marlowe.[190]
A survey of the plays the Tabers gave together from 1894 to 1897
does not show that the public was warranted, from any lack of their
adherence to the Marlowe standard of play, in withholding its former
allegiance. There was, to be sure, the mistake, _Henry IV_. Mrs. Taber
was, moreover, a comparative failure as Mrs. Hardcastle and as Lydia
Languish--for her _forte_ was not eighteenth century comedy--and
_Romola_ afforded scarcely any opportunities for her, while Mr. Taber’s
Tito had a great success. But all of these plays excepting _Henry IV_
were really incidental, and at different times during these three years
Mr. and Mrs. Taber were playing a number of the old Julia Marlowe
successes: _Romeo and Juliet_, _Twelfth Night_, _As You Like It_, _Much
Ado_, _Ingomar_, _Pygmalion and Galatea_, _The Hunchback_, and _The
Lady of Lyons_.
It was not until 1897, when the separation had taken place and Miss
Marlowe had placed herself under the management of C. B. Dillingham,
associated with Charles Frohman, that her period of artistic eclipse,
and of great commercial prosperity, began. At the dictation of her new
management, she abandoned almost altogether the heroines of poetic
drama, and began a seven-year term in the service of the dramatized
novel and the quickly forgotten modern ephemeral play. _The Countess
Valeska_, _Colinette_, _Barbara Frietchie_, _When Knighthood Was in
Flower_, and _The Cavalier_ make rather a sorry showing when compared
with most of the list just given. She was made at last a successful
“star” in New York,[191] but, as John Corbin wrote at the close of this
period of eclipse, she was “mourned by the ‘road’ [i.e., the country
outside New York] as the living tomb of a youth of abundant promise.”