JULIET . . By a Louisville Young Lady.
(Her first appearance on any stage.)
The theater was packed from curiosity, and this is what the Louisville Courier said of the performance next morning.
Louisville Courier, November 28th, 1875.
“We can scarcely bring ourselves to speak of the young actress, who came before the footlights last night, with the coolness of a critic and a spectator. An interest in native genius and young endeavor, in courage and brave effort that arrives from so near us—our own city—precludes the possibility of standing outside of sympathy, and peering in with analyzing and judicial glance. But we do not think that any man of judgment who witnessed Miss Anderson’s acting of Juliet, can doubt that she is a great actress. In the latter scenes she interpreted the very spirit and soul of tragedy, and thrilled the whole house into silence by the depth of her passion and her power. She is essentially a tragic genius, and began really to act only after the scene in which her nurse tells Juliet of what she supposes is her lover’s death. The quick gasp, the terrified stricken face, the tottering step, the passionate and heart-rending accents were nature’s own marks of affecting overwhelming grief. Miss Anderson has great power over the lower tones of her rich voice. Her whisper electrifies and penetrates; her hurried words in the passion of the scene, where she drinks the sleeping potion, and afterward in the catastrophe at the end, although very far below conversational pitch, came to the ear with distinctness and with wonderful effect. In the final scene she reached the climax of her acting, which, from the time of Tybalt’s death to the end, was full of tragic power that we have never seen excelled. It will be observed that we have placed the merit of this actress (in our opinion) for the most part in her deeper and more somber powers, and despite the high praise that we more gladly offer as her due, we cannot be blind to her faults in the presentation of last evening. She is, undoubtedly, a great actress, and last night evidenced a magnificent genius, more especially remarkable on account of her extreme youth; but whether she is a great Juliet is, indeed, more doubtful. We can imagine her as personating Lady Macbeth superbly, and hope soon to witness her in the part. As Juliet, her conception is almost perfect, as evinced by her rare and exceptional taste and intuitive understanding of the text. But her enactment of the earlier scenes lacks the exuberance and earnest joyfulness of the pure and glowing Flower of Italy, with all her fanciful conceits and delightful and loving ardor.
“We could not, in Miss Anderson’s rendition of the balcony scene, help feeling in the tones of her voice, an almost stern foreboding of their saddening fates—a foreboding stranger than that which falls as a shadow to all ecstatic youthful hope and joy. Other faults—as evident, undoubtedly, to her and to her advisers, as to us—are for the most part superficial, and will disappear in a little further experience. A first appearance, coupled with so much merit and youth, may well excuse many things.
“A lack of true interpretation we can never excuse. We give mediocrity fair common-place words, generally of commendation unaccompanied by censure. But when we come to deal with a divine inspiration, our words must have their full meaning.
“We do not here want mere commendatory phrases, whose stereotyped faces appear again and again. We want just appreciation, just censure. Thus our criticism is not to be considered unkind. Nay, we not only owe it to the truth and to ourselves in Miss Anderson’s case, to state the existence of faults and crudities in her acting, but we owe it to her, for it is the greatest kindness, and yet we do not speak harshly and are glad to admit that most of her faults—such for instance as frequently casting up the eyes—are not only slight in themselves, but enhanced if not caused by the timidity natural on such an occasion.
“But enough of faults. We know something of the quality of our home actress. We see with but little further training and experience she will stand among the foremost actresses on the stage. We are charmed by her beauty and commanding power, and are justified in predicting great future success.”
In the following February Mary Anderson appeared again at Macaulay’s Theater for a week, when she played, with success, Bianca in “Phasio,” studied by the advice of the manager, who thought she had a vocation for heavy tragedy; also Julia in “The Hunchback,” Evadne, and again Juliet.
The reputation of the rising young actress began to spread now beyond the bounds of her Kentucky home, and on the 6th of March, 1876, she commenced a week’s engagement at the Opera House in St. Louis. Old Ben de Bar, the great Falstaff of his time, was manager of this theater. He had known all the most eminent American actors, and had been manager for many of the stars; and he was quick to discern the brilliant future which awaited the young actress. The St. Louis engagement was not altogether successful, though it was brightened by the praises of General Sherman, with whom was formed then a friendship which remains unbroken till to-day. Indeed, the old veteran can never pass Long Branch in his travels without “stopping off to see Mary.” Ben de Bar had a theater in New Orleans known as the St. Charles. It was the Drury Lane of that city, and situated in an unfashionable quarter of the town. Its benches were reported to be almost deserted and its treasury nearly empty. But an engagement to appear there for a week was accepted joyfully by Mary Anderson. She played Evadne at a parting matinee in St. Louis on the Saturday, traveled to New Orleans all through Sunday, arriving there at two o’clock on the Monday afternoon, rushed down to the theater to rehearse with a new company, and that night appeared to a house of only forty-eight dollars! The students of the Military College formed a large part of the scanty audience, and fired with the beauty and talent of the young actress, they sallied forth between the acts and bought up all the bouquets in the quarter. The final act of “Evadne” was played almost knee-deep in flowers, and that night Mary Anderson was compelled to hire a wagon to carry home to her hotel the floral offerings of her martial admirers. General and Mrs. Tom Thumb occupied the stage box on one of the early nights of the engagement, and the fame of the beautiful young star soon reached the fashionable quarter of New Orleans, and Upper Tendom flocked to the despised St. Charles. On the following Saturday night there was a house packed from floor to ceiling, the takings, meanwhile, having risen from 48 to 500 dollars. An offer of an engagement at the Varietes, the Lyceum of New Orleans, quickly followed, and the daring feat of appearing as Meg Merrilies was attempted on its boards. The press predicted failure, and warned the young aspirant against essaying a part almost identified with Cushman, then but lately deceased, who had been a great favorite with the New Orleans public, and one of whose best impersonations it was. The actors too, with whom Mary Anderson rehearsed, looked forward to anything but a success. Nothing daunted, however, and confident in her own powers, she spent two hours in perfecting a make-up so successful, that even her mother failed to recognize her in the strange, weird disguise; and then, darkening her dressing-room, set herself resolutely to get into the heart of her part. Mary Anderson’s Meg Merrilies was an immense success; Cushman herself never received greater applause, and the scene was quite an ovation. Hearing, on the fall of the curtain, that General Beauregard, one of the heroes of the civil war, intended to make a presentation, she threw off her disguise, and smoothing her hair rushed back to the stage, to receive the Badge of the Washington Artillery, a belt enameled in blue, with crossed cannons in gold with diamond vents, and suspended from the belt a tiger’s head in gold, with diamond eyes and ruby tongue. The corps had been known through the war as the “Tiger Heads,” and were famed for their deeds of daring and bravery. The belt bore the inscription, “To Mary Anderson, from her friends of the Battalion.” She returned thanks in a little speech, which was received with much enthusiasm, and retired almost overcome with pleasure and pride. The youthful actress, who had then not completed her seventeenth year, took by storm the hearts of the impulsive and chivalrous Southerners. On the morning of her departure, she found to her astonishment that the railway company had placed a fine “Pullman” and special engine at her disposal all the way to Louisville. Generals Beauregard and Hood, with many distinguished Southerners, were on the platform to bid her farewell, and she returned home with purse and reputation, both marvelously grown.
After a brief period spent in diligent study, Mary Anderson fulfilled a second engagement in New Orleans, which proved a great financial success. The criticisms of this period all admit her histrionic power, though some describe her efforts as at times raw and crude, faults hardly to be wondered at in a young girl mainly self-taught, and with barely a year’s experience of the business of the stage.
About this time Mary Anderson met with the first serious rebuff in her hitherto so successful career. It happened, too, in California, the State of her birth, where she was to have a somewhat rude experience of the old adage, that “a prophet has no honor in his own country.” John McCullough was then managing with great success the principal theater in San Francisco, and offered her a two weeks’ engagement. But California would have none of her. The public were cold and unsympathetic, the press actually hostile. The critics declared not only that she could not act, but that she was devoid of all capability of improvement. One, more gallant than his fellows, was gracious enough to remark that, in spite of her mean capacity as an artist, she possessed a neck like a column of marble. It was only when she appeared as Meg Merrilies that the Californians thawed a little, and the press relented somewhat. Edwin Booth happened to be in San Francisco at the time, and it was on the stage of California that Mary Anderson first met the distinguished actor who had been her early stage ideal. He told her that for ten years he had never sat through a performance till hers; and the praises of the great tragedian went far to console her for the coldness and want of sympathy in the general public. It was by Booth’s advice, as well as John McCullough’s, that she now began to study such parts as Parthenia, as better suited to her powers than more somber tragedy. Those were the old stock theater days in America, when every theater had a fair standing company, and relied for its success on the judicious selection of stars. This system, though perhaps a somewhat vicious one, made so many engagements possible to Mary Anderson, whose means would not have admitted of the costlier system of traveling with a special company.
The return journey from California was made painfully memorable by a disastrous accident to a railway train which had preceded the party, and they were compelled to stop for the night at a little roadside town in Missouri. The hotels were full of wounded passengers, and scenes of distress were visible on all sides. When they were almost despairing of a night’s lodging, a plain countryman approached them, and offered the hospitality of his pretty white cottage hard by, embosomed in its trees and flowers. The offer was thankfully accepted, and soon after their arrival the wife’s sister, a “school mar’m,” came in, and seemed to warm at once to her beautiful young visitor. She proposed a walk, and the two girls sallied forth into the fields. The stranger turned the subject to Shakespeare and the stage, with which Mary Anderson was fain to confess but a very slight acquaintance, fearing the announcement of her profession would shock the prejudices of these simple country folk, who might shrink from having “a play actress” under their roof. Some months after the party had returned home there came a letter from these kind people saying how, to their delight and astonishment, they had accidentally discovered who had been their guest. It seemed the sister was an enthusiastic Shakespearean student, and all agreed that in entertaining Mary Anderson they had “entertained an angel unawares.”
The California trip may be said to close the first period of Mary Anderson’s dramatic career. With some draw-backs and some rebuffs she had made a great success, but she was known thus far only as a Western girl, who had yet to encounter the judgment of the more critical audiences of the South and East, as years later, with a reputation second to none all over the States as well as in Canada, she essayed, with a success which has been seldom equaled, perhaps never surpassed, the ordeal of facing, at the Lyceum, an audience, perhaps the most fastidious and critical in London.