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.
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.