HELENA MODJESKA
The acting of Madame Modjeska is still remembered vividly by American and English theatregoers, yet its beginnings lie as far away in time as the sixties and as distant in place as Poland. She was born on October 12, 1840, in Cracow, the old Polish capital, now the second city of Galitzia, or Austrian Poland. Twenty-five years before, by the agreement of Russia, Prussia, and Austria, it had been proclaimed a free city. In the year when Modjeska was six, however, Austria, greedy then as now, broke her pledge and annexed the city. The Poles were always a passionately patriotic people, and did not submit calmly. Discontent grew to open revolt, but the hopes of the Cracovians were crushed by the bombardment of the city by the Austrians in 1848.
HELENA MODJESKA
Thus the little Helcia[43] was born in tragic times, and as a little girl saw scenes of terror and bloodshed. Her mother’s house was struck by the cannon shot, and she saw men and children killed before her very door. The horrors of those days were vividly impressed upon her memory and were perhaps not without their effect upon the nature of the future actress.
Her father, Michael Opid, born in the Carpathian mountains, and a teacher in the high school in Cracow, was a simple-hearted, lovable man, something of a scholar and a great lover of music. He was extremely fond of children. His own girls and boys and those of his neighbors would gather about him in the evening, listening to the folk lore of the mountaineers, Polish legends, and tales from the Iliad. When Helcia, years later, herself studied Homer, those winter evenings and their stories were vividly recalled. But Michael Opid’s chief delight was music. He played several instruments, the flute especially well. His melodies appealed almost too strongly to the sensitive little Helcia, who during plaintive passages in the music would burst into wails and cries. Singers and musicians were frequent visitors at the Opid house, and in its atmosphere there was thus an artistic element, which undoubtedly had some influence in determining the career of Helcia. Her father died when she was seven, of consumption, induced by exposure while seeking his drowned brother’s body. When he knew he was dangerously ill, he returned to his native mountains to die.
It had been the second marriage of Madame Opid. She had been Madame Benda, and having altogether ten children to care for, she could give by no means exclusive attention to any one of them, even had she known that that one was to be a great actress. The children were well cared for so far as their bodily wants were concerned, but their personalities were left to themselves to develop. For Helcia this was not altogether unfortunate, for her imagination, stirred by history-making events and by the songs and poems of which she was so fond, had free rein. She did not care much for the society of other children, and was not popular with them. She was a little dreamer, almost painfully bashful, living much in a world of her imagination, and fond of going to church. She would steal away alone to the Dominican chapel, where she would lie face down on the floor, in the manner of the peasant women, arms outstretched, kissing the floor and praying for a miracle or a glimpse of an angel or a saint.
Her first schooling was in the house of a friend of her mother’s, a woman with two well-educated daughters who taught the little Helcia, by the time she was seven, to read with ease. She fed her imagination with all the books she could find at hand. In school she liked her Polish history, her French and her grammar.
When Helcia was seven, she was taken to the theatre for the first time. The play was The Daughter of the Regiment, and was followed by a ballet The Siren of Dniestr, in which little Josephine Hofmann (to be Josef Hofmann’s aunt) dressed as a butterfly, hovered about in the air. Helcia was entranced; to her it was all a dream of joy come true.[44] She went to bed that night with a high fever, and for weeks afterward she practiced the butterfly dance, watching her shadow on the wall, much to the amusement of her small brothers. But theatricals became the family pastime. Helcia’s three older brothers were enthusiastic. They rigged up a stage at home, with the help of some other boys formed a little company, and every month gave performances for admiring friends. They excluded the girls, and played all the women’s parts themselves. The home theatre was probably of great influence in the lives of its members, for two of the boys, besides Helcia and her sister, subsequently went on the stage.