[107] “A curious circumstance attended her baptism at Vigevano. In accordance with the custom of the country the child was carried to the church in a shrine gilded and ornamented with jewels. A detachment of Austrian soldiery marched past the baptismal procession, and mistaking the shrine for the relics of some saint, halted and saluted. When he returned to his wife the father said to her: ‘Forgive me, dear, that I am unable to bring me a present for giving me a daughter, but I can give you a happy omen. Our daughter will be something great some day; already they have shown her military honors.’”
[108] In after years, when she had won fame and name, she used to carry about a little antique coffer in which as a babe she used to lie while her mother was upon the stage.
[109] According to Jean Dornis (Le Théâtre Italien Contemporaine) her father said that she contracted a disease known as Salmara—or “The Spleen of Venice.” The victim of this ailment is “enveloped, as in a fantastic mist, with the sadness of the past, the bitterness of the present, and the uncertainty of the future.”
[110] Years after the time of which we are speaking, the two met at the home of Dumas, at Marly. When she found herself in the room with the man she had long venerated, she was speechless with emotion, and, the accounts say, burst into tears. When she finally acted in Paris, in 1897, Dumas was dead. She acted there on the occasion of the great testimonial to his memory. See page [188].
[111] In the last edition of his plays Dumas appends a footnote to La Princesse de Bagdad: “There is in the last scene a stage direction that is not found in other editions. After having said to her husband: ‘I am innocent, I swear it to you, I swear it to you,’ Leonetta, seeing him incredulous, places her hand on the head of her son and says a third time, ‘I swear it to you!’ This gesture, so noble and convincing, was not used in Paris. Neither Mlle. Croizette nor I thought of it; none the less, it was irrefutable and irresistible. Inflection alone, however powerful, was not enough.” As a matter of fact, until Duse introduced this bit of “business” no one had ever been able to make the scene convincing, and as the success of the whole play hangs on this scene, La Princesse de Bagdad had always been a comparative failure. Dumas goes on to pay tribute to Duse for introducing his work into Italy, and in conclusion says: “It is to be regretted for our art that this extraordinary actress is not French.”
[112] 1885.
[113] Though her first night audience was described as “large and brilliant,” Duse’s audiences during her first American tour were generally not large in numbers. They were, however, drawn from a discriminating part of the public, the part that regards the drama as an art and goes to the theatre only when its own high standards are likely to be met. During the 1896 tour she attracted the same discerning public, but also, this time, that other public which runs to fads. “La Duse” became something of a fad, but happily at no sacrifice of the quality of her acting.
[114] The Critic, for January 28, 1893. The story has often been told of Mme. Bartet, the distinguished actress of the Comèdie Française, and Duse’s swoon in La Dame aux Camélias. So powerful and so natural was Duse at the point where Marguérite swoons, that Bartet, perhaps sensible of Duse’s own bodily weakness, cried out: “Great Heavens! She has really fainted.”
[115] There is much in Mrs. Fiske’s acting to remind one of Duse, different as the two are in many ways. There is in each, in the first place, the same service to an art of an exceptional intellect, the same high minded devotion to ideals. Each has been a mistress of the subtleties, both of conceptions of characters and of means to set those conceptions forth. Each depends on the significant repression of emotion, rather than on expansive exposition of emotion. Each is, in spite of a fundamental seriousness, expert in comedy. Coming to details, each depends largely on rapidity of utterance, with occasional arbitrary pauses. Of the former—in a possible excess—Mrs. Fiske has been sufficiently charged; the latter Duse has been sometimes accused of carrying to undue lengths. Finally each has her wholesome distaste for eccentricities and meritricious publicity. Mrs. Fiske is Duse translated into American.
[116] The Critic, February 11, 1893.