[162] Duse furnished the only previous instance.
[163] At Little Rock, Arkansas.
[164] At different times, and as the exigencies of engagements permitted, in Montreal, New Orleans, Louisville, the Ursuline Convent in St. Louis, a French school in Cincinnati, and other private schools.
[165] “A person less given to reminiscence than Mrs. Fiske I cannot imagine. Upon revisiting in her professional tours the scenes of her childhood days one would naturally expect a great actress to remark, ‘Here is where I made my first appearance,’ or ‘Here I played the Widow Melnotte when I was only twelve’; but I do not recall that I ever heard Mrs. Fiske make the slightest allusion to persons or places, with one or two exceptions. She was appearing at Robinson’s Opera House, Cincinnati. As she entered the dressing room on the opening night she glanced about, and then at me, as if to determine whether or not it was safe to intrust me with the information. She then remarked that when a child she was brought into that room to see Mary Anderson in reference to playing some child character in one of Miss Anderson’s plays,—Ingomar, as she thought.”—Griffith, Mrs. Fiske.
[166] The parts she played in this childhood period included: Duke of York in Richard III; Willie Lee in Hunted Down; Prince Arthur in King John, and others of Shakespeare’s children; Damon’s son in Damon and Pythias; Little Fritz in Fritz; Paul in The Octoroon; Franko in Guy Mannering; Sybil in The Sheep in Wolf’s Clothing; Mary Morgan in Ten Nights in a Barroom; the child in Across the Continent; the boy in Bosom Friends; Alfred in Divorce; Lucy Fairweather in The Streets of New York; the gamin and Peachblossom in Under the Gaslight; Marjorie in The Rough Diamond; the child in The Little Rebel; Adrienne in Monsieur Alphonse; Georgie in Frou-Frou; Heinrich and Minna in Rip van Winkle; Eva in Uncle Tom’s Cabin; the child in The Chicago Fire; Hilda in Karl and Hilda; Ralph Rackstraw in Pinafore; Clip in A Messenger from Javis Section; the sun god in The Ice Witch; children and fairies in Aladdin, The White Fawn and other spectacular pieces; François in Richelieu; and Louise in The Two Orphans.
[167] “The extraordinary thing about Mrs. Fiske’s early career is that she should have been even permitted to play the range of characters that she did.... Frequently a young woman who is physically well developed easily passes for a much older person, and the eye is satisfied even if the ear be not, but little Minnie was little, and held her audiences then by her genius, as she subsequently has continued to do.”—Griffith.
[168] It is of this period that Mildred Aldrich wrote, in her article on Mrs. Fiske in Famous American Actors of To-day: “It was twilight on a very cold day when I knocked at her room at Hotel Vendome. A clear voice bade me enter and in a moment I had forgotten my cold drive. It was a voice which I can never forget, and which even as I write of it comes to my ear with a strange delicious insistence. As the door closed behind me there rose from the depths of a large chair, and stood between me and the dim light from the window a slender, childish figure, in a close-fitting, dark gown. The fading light, the dark dress, threw into greater relief the pale face with its small features and deep eyes, above and around which, like a halo, was a wealth of curling red hair. I had been told that she was young; but I was not prepared for any such unique personality as hers, and I still remember the sensation of the surprise she was to me as a most delightful experience. This was not the conventional young actress to whom I have been accustomed; this slight, undeveloped figure, in its straight, girlish gown reaching only to the slender ankles. There was a pretty assumption of dignity; there was a constant cropping out in bearing, in speech, in humor and in gestures of delicious, inimitable, unconcealable youth which was most fetching and which had something so infinitely touching in it.
“I have never encountered a face more variable. At one moment I would think her beautiful. The next instant a quick turn of the head would give me a different view of the face and I would say to myself, ‘She is plain’; then she would speak, and that beautiful musical mezzo, so uncommon to American ears, and from which a Boston man once emotionally declared ‘feeling could be positively wrung, so over-saturated was it,’ would touch my heart and all else would be forgotten. Such was Minnie Maddern when I first met her on her eighteenth birthday.”
[169] This was not her first marriage. She had been married when she was about sixteen to LeGrand White, a musician and theatrical manager. They were divorced about two years before she married Mr. Fiske.
“For two years before her marriage [to Mr. Fiske] she had been continually worried with the theatre and her rest was a welcome one. She had many interests beside the stage, and loved to get away to a little cottage, at Larchmont, where she took an active part in all the doings, and where she was a familiar figure driving a little yellow cart madly over the roads, more often bare headed than not, and always with that wonderful red hair flying in the wind.”—Mildred Aldrich.