The life of a star

Front matter

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Preface

To all those who were kindly patient readers of that first book, " Life on the Stage," greeting — sincere and grateful greeting.

Since then I have at least learned enough of the great profession of letters to be afraid. That first book was calmly offered out of the boundless courage of perfect ignorance — this one is held out to you in a hand unsteadied by a tumultuous and most anxious heart.

Feeling that interest in my personal story must have ended with girlhood's successful struggle for air and light and an equal chance with others, it seemed best, after noting my marriage, about which some of the gentlest critics thought I showed " a curious reserve," to devote most of my space to memories of people, more likely to prove interesting to the world at large.

That these memories are such mere " shreds and patches " is the fault of a star's manner of life. Never does she pass more than two weeks in a city — oftener but one; thus a meeting, a greeting, and a parting about describes her existence. And the consequence, in this instance, is a book that suggests one of those small kaleidoscopes, dear to our childhood,

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PREFACE wherein those short sketches of mine become the bits of coloured glass — green for hope, blue for faith, red for courage, purple for power — and in placing it in your hands, I can only hope that, aided by your good will and imagination, the many coloured bits may slip into patterns and images that are pleasing to the eye without being wholly an optical illusion.

Contents

PAGE

I. An Actress on Guard 3

II. I Am Married 21

II

THERE is no habit more tenacious than the habit of work. Once acquire it, once let it fasten its powerful fangs upon you and you are helpless. You may never " loaf " and invite your soul. You cannot lounge about with your hands in your lap doing nothing all the fair long day. In reality, to the victim of the working habit there are no long days, they are all short days — yes, and they are short at both ends. Like many another I realised my danger when too late.

When I came to New York and the continued run of a play left me some hours of the day without work, I immediately went forth and hunted work to fill them up with, and 'twas thus I came to make the acquaintance of Monsieur Fasquelle of France, who had so much anxiety as to the whereabouts of his brother-in-law's hat and the butcher's candlestick. An excellent grammarian, M. Fasquelle, but a bit eccentric as a conversationalist it always seemed to me. I saw my danger then, but the habit was already too strong, and alas, it is not broken yet. Therefore, it is perhaps not surprising that when I began to star, finding considerable time, in which I used to study plays, unoccupied, I turned my attention to the subject of matrimony. And let me say here, that the actress, even the sentimental one, generally arranges her marriage with brevity, celerity and dispatch. She cannot, for her life, bring herself to look upon her wedding as a matter of world-moving importance, as does the girl in private life, who, judging by her own excitement, pride, display and momentary supremacy, decides that her marriage is nothing short of a social cataclysm.

Late in the '6o's, actors still had their costumes carried to and from the theatre in champagne baskets by the basket boy, and the very first and most important duty of the actor or actress after rehearsal, was to get the basket ready and place it outside the door. Then, only, one might feel free. Well, Cupid had been taking a little flyer behind the scenes, and a young comedian had been stricken with love for a bit of a girl who danced between the first play and the farce. One day he saw the old leader of the orchestra tap her cheek with his bow, and the awful familiarity was too much to be endured silently. He walked home with her, and in the boarding-house hallway he spoke. A minister's name was mentioned — a number — a street — something about an office, a license; nothing seemed very clear except his love and his desire to get married at once : " Oh, Lizzie, will you marry me? Dear little Lizzie, will you? " he implored. And Lizzie, who was about the height of a nine-year-old child, but was full sixteen, very pink and very pleased, looked coyly up, then modestly down and answered: " I'm awful glad you love me, Ted — but — but really you know you'll have to wait a little."

Down went Ted's face. "Wait?" he cried, in a tragic voice. "Wait? Good kingdom, why — what for — how long? "

And Lizzie, with wide reproachful blue eyes, said : " Why, Ted, you know well enough — you'll have to wait till I get my basket ready! "

And when he heard the thump of that article at his sweetheart's door, he issued forth from his room — tied the strings of her bonnet under her chin, and they sallied forth and were married. And it is gratifying to know that that knot was not only simply and swiftly tied, but securely, too — for though they endured many hardships, faced many troubles, lost two wee lambs from the little flock sent them, while the blackest kind of a small goat was spared for them to struggle with, yet the sorrow and shame of divorce came never near them, never, and love lasted while life lasted.

Another actress-bride, here in New York city, being unable to leave town, though the heat was appalling, was married in the parlour, in a " goingaway gown of pale grey," the papers said, and the reverend gentleman who had officiated having departed, straightway the bridal pair also went away upon their wedding journey — away upstairs — up a ladder — through a scuttle — out upon the roof, where a hammock swung between the chimneys. The bride ensconced herself and was sweetly served with ice-cream and angel cake by a very handsome, kneeling groom, who, finding the gravel cruelly hard and sharp, folded the napkin into a pad and placed it beneath his bruised knee. And when the cream and angel cake were gone, their honeymoon rose and found them there with enwreathing arms and waving palm-leaf fans, still at their banquet, but now supping of the nectar of confessed love; each listening eagerly to the other's tale of how and when and where the first spark of love flew into an innocent, unsuspecting heart. Nor was the element of danger quite absent from this wedding journey. For the bride was a large woman, though a darkly handsome one, large was she and heavy, and the scuttle was small, the ladder almost straight and weak to shakiness. There was an earnest discussion along toward dawn as to which one should first descend, and finally the bride declared for the groom's advance: " You see, should I stick fast, dear, you might half starve up here, before our condition was discovered. But if you go first and I, in following, stick fast, you are ready to give the alarm and call upon the fire department for assistance — for scuttles, I think, are in the line of fire work."

So she came last, and though most of the rounds of the ladder came down with her, she was safely back from her wedding journey. Three weeks afterward, at a birthday dinner on Staten Island, I sat opposite this bride. Our hostess had been speaking of favourite places on the Hudson, and suddenly she asked of my vis-a-vis: "Your honeymoon was on the Hudson — so sensible, and did you go up or down? "

Pushing a tiny bone from the fish on her plate, she answered, calmly: " I went up," then, as all the blood in my body seemed to be pumping up into my face, she gave me a reproachful look and added: " Don't you admire the country about Newburgh? " And that woman prides herself upon her truthfulness.

In contrast to these two rather exceptionally abrupt ceremonies, I recall the fact that at the first wedding I had the pleasure of attending in New York the young girl-bride had so worn out her strength in preparations, in shopping, in fittings, in receiving and acknowledging, in planning and arranging and rehearsing, that grave doubts were expressed by the family physician of her ability to pass through the church ceremony and the home reception without collapsing utterly. And the bridesmaids found themselves shouldered about, as they declared, by doctor and nurse ; and when the maid of honour came to entreat for the frantic groom, one word with the bride, one single word, just through the merest crack of the door — that tormented young person burst forth with a " No ! " and a passionate declaration that she " wished she had never seen him; and if he sent her another message she would never look at him again, as long as she lived ! "

There were nerves for you. And oh, the pity of it ! I saw a small bottle of chloral slipped into the travelling bag of that bride.

Yes, the girl in private life and the actress hold widely different views of weddings — weddings mind you, not marriages. An actress loves as warmly, promises as truly, hopes as fairly as does the outsider who makes the ancient vow that is yet ever new, " To love, to honour, to obey! " Only the girl in private life often finds in her wedding her sole opportunity for personal display. It is her day of power and authority; when she plays the leading part; when she is. the head and the front, the beginning and the ending. When — as a slangy little woman remarked to me a week or two ago — she is the bride and the bride is the whole show. Hence her joy in the great spectacular wedding. But the actress is on exhibition every day of her life. She is a mimic bride over and over again ; and to a sensitive woman there is almost an immodesty in a public wedding for an actress.

All of which, when the time came, I elaborately, carefully and I hope lucidly explained to the family of my adoption. The wonder to me is that I ever married at all. In the first place, my love affairs ran a course so far from smoothness, so tangled and so rough, that a map of them would resemble the network of gullies a heavy rain storm cuts in garden paths and driveways. Then again, I got a bad start in matrimonial proposals — those cats not only spoiled the first one, but seemed to some extent to have hoodooed the others. You are sceptical, perhaps, because I, who was not beautiful, speak of lovers and proposals; but you should not be, for the woman who is plain and knows it often sees in her plainness a challenge from fate, and if she amiably and gaily takes it up, is apt to win — well, lovers, among other things. Many women are in love with love before the special lover arrives upon the scene, and while there is flirtation that is silly and flirtation that is cruel there is too that flirtation which means attention without intention, that is quite a charming pastime, and one that is popular alike with homely or handsome women. Only the beauty often says to herself, after a new conquest : " It's this lovely mask he cares for. If my hair became thin; if my skin became sallow, my eyes dull, would he care for me then? Could I hold him? While the woman whose mirror shows her perhaps only clear eyes and generous wholesomeness, knows that keenest triumph. It is / whom he cares for! I — my very self! For here is no rare beauty of feature or colouring to attract his eye!

Well, beautiful women, who are the flowers of the human race, can afford to suffer a mild twinge or two : they have only to look into the nearest pair of eyes to find comforting admiration and be happy again. But oh, what a tragedy is the fading of a great beauty! A splendid creature once lost her nearest and dearest, and she brought herself to say: "The Lord gave — the Lord taketh away — blessed be the name of the Lord!" But when her beauty began to fade, with startling rapidity, she stood before her glass, in the presence of a friend, and forcing a smile, she said : " Ah, well — the Lord gave — the Lord taketh away — b-blessed — oh, I can't — I can't," she shrieked, " I can't bless His name ! Why — oh, why give me beauty, only to rob me of it? It's cruel — cruel ! " One who saw that agony of loss expressing itself in uncontrollable cries and writhings, must have felt that sometimes one pays a penalty for being unusually beautiful. Yet I truly believe that no woman would be deterred even by such a sight from wishing to be fair to see.

Did you ever open your mother's Bible without finding a pressed rose or a pansy or a violet there? To you it looks yellow and dry as dust and meaningless, but she knows what you do not, and it is rich with the colour and sweetness her memory endows it with. Just so a woman has closed between the long past years the love affairs of her girlhood. Mere names, chill, meaningless they may seem to you, but her memory gives to them eye-sparkles, smile-flashes, the swift word, the knightly act; and no matter what change time and the world may have wrought upon those men, they remain ever young, ever admirable !

For my part, when I sort out my own little bunch of beaux I feel now a sort of maternal tenderness for them, and my tormenting spine almost straightens itself with pride as I recall the fact that every manjack of them made his name stand for something worth while, and wrote it high enough to be clearly read by his fellow citizens, before retiring from the great struggle we call life. The demands of my profession received my first consideration; therefore, in the character of sweetheart I was pretty severely criticised now and then, while as a friend I was declared a creature of superlative perfections.

One resentful male creature remarked, as he grabbed his hat: "Love? Love's nothing but a miserable little side-issue in your life — and yet some donkey has written that love is only an incident in a man's life, and is the whole world to woman ! Much he knew about it! "

John Cockerill, after kicking the hassock down stairs, declared that if all girls were as prudent and cautious as I was, every cottage in the city would be for rent, and a wedding would become a ninedays' wonder — while a soldier solemnly vowed that every single time he tried to deploy his tenderest sentiments, his admiration and his love before me, I left the reviewing stand to see if a wig was properly dressed for the night, or pulled a part over to me, to make quite sure of my lines in some infernal stage love scene. But out of the detritus of grumbling loves what splendid friendships came! Frank and true and lasting to the grave!

It's curious, too, the way in which my small love affairs are all tangled up with certain plays. My taking of a husband is so tied up with the production of " Macbeth " that I simply can't think of my wedding without hearing a swirl of the

"Around, around, around, around — About, about, about, about . . .

music of the witches' cave scene. Dear me — dear me! how those two memories do braid themselves together ! First of all, it was the man I was engaged to marry — Mr. John A. Cockerill — who gave to Mr. F. C. Harriott his letter of introduction to me. Then, to our mutual joy and happiness, John and I snapped our bonds and became our peaceable, law-abiding selves again. That becoming known to Mr. Harriott, he concluded that he would now enter the lists — which was right enough, only his courtship would have been much simplified if Lady Macbeth had not come upon the scene at almost the same time — for place aux dames. The lady was the first consideration. What a state of mind I was in to be sure ! I could not accept the traditional, martial-stalking drummajor of a woman, who spoke in sepulchral stomach tones, and splashed about in blood, as though she were quite used to it; who spoke of dashing out the brains of her suckling babe with a fiendish satisfaction in her own nerve. That made her final remorseful breaking-down of brain and heart a contradiction, almost an impossibility.

Discussion of the famous character grew warm, reached the papers, and even the public, in the person of " Constant Reader," " Old Play-goer " and " Veritas," wrestled with the great question anent the masculinity or femininity of Lady Macbeth.

Occasionally my view of her character met with approval, but oftener I got a rap over the knuckles,, by being sharply reminded that my age and inexperience only fitted me to follow, not to lead. That Mrs. Siddons, Miss Cushman, Madame Janauschek, had clung to a traditional Lady Macbeth, and that was the only one the public knew or wanted. I meekly reminded " Veritas " that Mrs. Sarah Siddons, late in life, had herself declared for a distinctly feminine Lady Macbeth, fully confessing the error of her own characterisation, but adding she had not the courage to alter the presentation the public knew so well.

An actress in the West, who was not overburdened with reverence, once remarked in my hearing, that "Lady Macbeth was a fraud; that if the part were given out without a name, any decently fair actress would accept it without a second thought, but tack on the name Lady Macbeth, and the best pair of knees in the profession would begin to tremble. Besides, the part was greater to write about than it was to act," in her opinion.

There was truth in the first part of that assertion; there is a sort of traditional terror that wraps Lady Macbeth about as with a robe. You find all the greatness of the mighty Pritchard, Siddons, Cushman, and the rest looming up between you and the part you are studying; they and their business, their reading of certain lines: Siddons — "We fail?" — Cushman — "Give me the daggers!" go whirling through your brain. You feel smaller and smaller, and worst of all, those great traditions are frightening you away from Shakespeare's Lady Macbeth. You forget you have the same material to build with that they had — Shakespeare's own words. That you have the right to construe those words according to the best effort of your own God-given intelligence; and very often custom is too strong and one more

Lady Macbeth is too monumental, declamatory, goryminded and domineering.

Yet Macbeth loved the fair-faced hypocrite and petted her with endearing terms. She was his "chuck," his "dearest chuck," his "dear love.' , Even to his king, he openly shows his love for her, when he asks the royal permission to himself act as harbinger

"And make joyful the hearing of my wife With your approach . . /*

He makes no pretence of hastening ahead to prepare for the king's reception and bestowal — not one, only " to make joyful the hearing of his wife." Very well then, granted he loved and cossetted her — he was a fine soldier, big and bluff and physically brave, and " in joining contrasts lieth love's delight " — then his contrast would be the slender, slight, possibly small woman. Fair, soft, tender in seeming, this " dearest chuck," whose soft body housed a soul of fire; whose brain seethed with plans to gratify her devouring ambition. Nor was this pet and darling of the rough soldier's love supported in her dread deeds by her own mere normal strength. Crafty and subtle as she was, clever as her reading of Macbeth' s character proves her to have been, she only became terrible as a fate through her absolute reliance upon the supernatural power of the witches. There is something appalling in her ready faith and eager summoning of the spirits of evil to her aid; and right in that invocation I find my proof that Lady Macbeth was naturally womanly, pitiful, capable of repentance for wrong done, and had sufficient belief in God, to at least fear Him. For in that moment of exaltation, when the promise of the crown was tightening every thrilling nerve to a mad determination, her first demand of the " murdering ministers " is that they shall unsex her:

" And fill me from the crown to the toe, top-full Of direst cruelty/*

Further she wants

"... the access and passage to remorse "

stopped up, fearing the softening influence of her little child. She prays the evil spirits:

"... come to my woman s breasts And take my milk for gall. . . ."

And apparently already convinced that she will have to do the awful deed herself, she prays :

" . . . Come thick night, And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell! That my keen knife see not the wound it makes; Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark, To cry, Hold, hold!"

She is graceful, suave and gracious to the King, she flatters and cajoles Macbeth, and when her boldness startles him and he would gain time and " speak further," with assurance that is almost patronage, she bids him :

. . . Only look up clear; Leave all the rest to me."

You see already she is relying utterly upon the supernatural powers of the witches, and it is her faith in them that sustains her through the awful ordeals that follow. And when at last it is borne in upon her that they have played her husband false; that all stained with crime they two are left to face an outraged God, how quickly the delicate woman becomes a physical wreck.

Masculine? Never! Could a masculine woman show such tender pity and patience as Lady Macbeth shows for Macbeth in the banquet scene? Oh, the weariness, yet the wifely, almost maternal, gentleness of that line to the broken man :

" You lack the season of all natures, sleep"

So I was very busy in defending my idea of the feminine Lady Macbeth; in trying to arrange some " business "for my exit after the banquet scene, for alas, I had become a star, and had no one to " direct " for me now. Instead, in an agony of embarrassment and shyness, I had to direct everything myself. How I blessed my old days of service in the ballet just then, for I was so familiar with the time-honoured music of Locke, with every bit of business for the apparitions, soldiers, supers, et al. f that not even the oldest witch chasseing about the cauldron could find a chance to sneer at my ignorance of the old tragedy — modern as I was. It was only the business for my own part that gave me a pause. Then, one day, that fine old actress, Mrs. Farren, who was an honour to her profession all her long life, and who had been Lady Macbeth before I was I at all, said to me very kindly, as she pressed my aching head between her cool hands: "Don't, my dear! Give it up!"

"Don't what, Mrs. Farren?" I asked, leaning my head against her breast for a few restful moments. " Give up what? "

" Your foolish idea of a coaxing, crafty, womanly Lady Macbeth. Forgive my plain speaking, my child, but you work so hard, and I fear you are pouring your strength upon the dry earth. I hate to see such waste. My dear, I starred for years in " Macbeth," and the louder, more violent, more declamatory I was the better the people liked me. They expect to see Macbeth bullied into action, to speak frankly."

11 But," I asked, " what makes her break down, if she is such a white sergeant of a woman ? The public must think that "

" That's where you blunder, my dear, the public does not think. That's one of your new notions. Now, my child, you are sensitive, so why not save yourself unkind criticism. Cut your cloth by the good old-fashioned pattern — you know, it well. Oh, that's your cue — well run along.' 1

Imagine my heaviness of heart after that, for I knew the dear woman spoke with the kindest intention, and I was deeply touched, for at that time she was almost a stranger to me. And if you can believe it, that being also a Friday, Mr. Harriott concluded that that afternoon was a fit and proper occasion for a proposal; and being a man of considerable decision of character, he proposed. And lo! we both made the discovery that in the breast of this meek and humble Clara there dwelt a certain pride, stiff-necked and exacting. For you see, I was an actress — otherwise a nobody, and this gentleman who addressed me was an outsider and a member of an old and a well-known family, and I said: "When your people are acquainted with your intentions,

and "

Of course he interrupted me with the time-honoured remark about " marrying him, not, etc.," but I, having been made quite savage by the " Macbeth " rehearsal, was determined to marry the whole family or not at all. No — not even would I try on a ring, let alone wear one, until the Harriotts on one side and the Havemeyers on the other, knew and approved of the proposed marriage. And he went forth to seek his family, while I sought bay rum, a handkerchief and the playbook of " Macbeth," and the proposal of marriage hung in the air, like Mahomet's coffin — but what could you expect of a proposal made on a Friday?

Ill

I STAND BETWEEN LADY MACBETH AND MATRIMONY

THAT night of the suspended marriage proposal was on my part devoted to a final seance with Lady Macbeth. When good-nights were over; when little dog, Bertie, that she might not tease me for my attention, had received an ancient pair of gloves to guard; when the house was quiet; then indeed, with all my soul, I strove to make the great woman-criminal reveal herself to my awed understanding, if only in some slight degree. I decided, too, upon a definite plan of action, for ready as I ever was to profit by the inspiration of the moment, I should have felt myself reckless and presuming had I not carefully prepared business for each scene. If inspiration came, so much the better, but if it should fail me, there would be the carefully thought out business, which meant security; and security meant dignity, and where would dignity be required if not in the delivery of Shakespeare's stately measures.

Because I had represented fairly well the heroines of modern drama, there were people who believed that I was bound to measure Lady Macbeth by a strictly modern standard; bound to reduce to a colloquial tone and manner the majestic formality of her awe-inspiring language. These unpleasant anticipations added to Mrs. Farren's fears, and my own sick terror of the part, were in a fair way to make my Lady Macbeth a sort of human blanc-mange, colourless and quaking. Then, at the most critical moment, a ray of encouragement came to me from an unexpected quarter. Miss Charlotte Cushman had once done me the great honour of coming in when her own work was over to see the last act of a play I was in. I had little to do, but she was generous in applause, and turning to her escort, she remarked, in her deep voice: "She is young and of the new school, I know, but I believe she is one of " us " after all — do you see how she listens when the others are speaking — how she keeps in the character all the time? That's a woman who began at the bottom of the ladder. I'm not afraid to wager she has been in the very ballet, somewhere, sometime. " And she seemed much gratified when told she had guessed correctly, and on two or three occasions she alluded to me as " the last of the old school."

When the discussions anent the character of Lady Macbeth broke out, she was in Philadelphia, where the matter was brought to her attention, by a young man, generally known for his peculiarly clumsy flatteries. It occurred to him that it would be a nice compliment and grateful to the feelings of the great actress to hear the ideas of a lesser one ridiculed and grossly caricatured, and he closed an exaggerated description of the feminine Lady Macbeth I stood for, with the laughter-choked cry: "And — and red hair — sandy red hair, may it please you ! She expects an audience to patiently submit to a Lady Macbeth with sandy hair! And where the grandeur and the terrifying force you have accustomed us to, is to come from, upon my soul I don't know, for the Morris is no more than five feet in height — ha ! ha ! "