“When Paris entered with his page, a youth in a night shirt, that youth carried in his countenance the fixed determination of putting out his torch at the right moment or dieing in the attempt. We all saw that.
“Expectancy was worked up to a point of intense interest, so that when at last the word was given, a puff of wind not only extinguished the torch but shook the scenery, and made us thankful the young man did wear pantaloons, as the consequences might have been terrible.
“When Count Paris fell mortally wounded, a tombstone at his side fell over him in the most convenient and charming manner. The house was so convulsed with merriment that when poor Juliet was exposed in the tomb she was greeted with laughter, much to the poor girl’s embarrassment. And this is the sort of entertainment to which we have been treated throughout our entire season. But then the showman is a success and pays his bills.”
The great Eastern cities of America are regarded by an American artist much in the same light as is the metropolis by a provincial artist at home. Their approval is supposed to stamp as genuine the verdict of remoter districts. The success which had attended Mary Anderson in her journeyings West and South was not to desert her when she presented herself before the presumably more critical audiences of the East. She made her Eastern debut at Pittsburg, the Birmingham of America, in the heat of the Presidential election of 1880, and met with a thoroughly enthusiastic reception, to proceed thence to Philadelphia, where she reaped plenty of honor, but very little money. Boston, the Athens of the New World, was reached at length. When Mary Anderson was taken down by the manager to see the vast Boston Theater, whose auditorium seats 4000 people, and which Henry Irving declared to be the finest in the world, she almost fainted with apprehension. She opened here in Evadne, and one journal predicted that she would take Cushman’s place. This part was followed by Juliet, Meg Merrilies, and her other chief impersonations. On one day of her engagement the receipts at a matinee and an evening performance amounted together to the large sum of $7000.
The visit to Boston was made memorable to Mary Anderson by her introduction to Longfellow. About a week after she had opened, a friend of the poet’s came to her with a request that she would pay him a visit at his pretty house in the suburbs of Boston, Longfellow being indisposed at the time, and confined to his quaint old study, overlooking the waters of the sluggish Charles, and the scenery made immortal in his verse. Here was commenced a warm friendship between the beautiful young artist and the aged poet, which continued unbroken to the day of his death. He was seated when she entered, in a richly-carved chair, of which Longfellow told her this charming story. The “spreading chestnut tree,” immortalized in “The Village Blacksmith,” happened to stand in an outlying village near Boston, somewhat inconveniently for the public traffic at some cross roads. It became necessary to cut it down, and remove the forge beneath. But the village fathers did not venture to proceed to an act which they regarded as something like sacrilege, without consulting Longfellow. At their request he paid a visit of farewell to the spot, and sanctioned what was proposed. Not long after, a handsomely carved chair was forwarded to him, made from the wood of the “spreading chestnut tree,” and which bore an inscription commemorative of the circumstances under which it was given. Few of his possessions were dearer to Longfellow than this dumb memento how deeply his poetry had sunk into the national heart of his countrymen. It stood in the chimney corner of his study, and till the day of his death was always his favorite seat.
The verdict of Longfellow upon Mary Anderson is worth that of a legion of newspaper critics, and his judgment of her Juliet deserves to be recorded in letters of gold. The morning after her benefit, he said to her, “I have been thinking of Juliet all night. Last night you were Juliet!”
At the Boston Theater occurred an accident which shows the marvelous courage and power of endurance possessed by the young actress. In the play of “Meg Merrilies,” she had to appear suddenly in one scene at the top of a cliff, some fifteen feet above the stage. To avoid the danger of falling over, it was necessary to use a staff. Mary Anderson had managed to find one of Cushman’s, but the point having become smooth through use, she told one of the people of the theater to put a small nail at the bottom. Instead of this, he affixed a good-sized spike, and one night Mary Anderson, coming out as usual, drove this right through her foot, in her sudden stop on the cliffs brink. Without flinching, or moving a muscle, with Spartan fortitude she played the scene to the end, though almost fainting with pain, till on the fall of the curtain the spiked staff was drawn out, not without force. Longfellow was much concerned at this accident, and on nights she did not play would sit by her side in her box, and wrap the furred overcoat he used to wear carefully round her wounded foot.
From Boston Mary Anderson proceeded to New York to fulfill a two weeks’ engagement at the Fifth Avenue Theater. She opened with a good company in “The Lady of Lyons.” General Sherman had advised her to read no papers, but one morning to her great encouragement, some good friend thrust under her door a very favorable notice in the New York Herald. The engagement proved a great success, and was ultimately extended to six weeks, the actress playing two new parts, Juliet and The Daughter of Roland. She had passed the last ordeal successfully, and might rejoice as she stood on the crest of the hill of Fame that the ambition of her young life was at length realized. Her subsequent theatrical career in the States and Canada need not be recorded here. She had become America’s representative tragedienne; there was none to dispute her claims. Year after year she continued to increase an already brilliant reputation, and to amass one of the largest fortunes it has ever been the happy lot of any artist to secure.