To the outside world the player's life seems always bright—a rose-carpeted path with sunshine forever straying about the feet and breath of the sweetest gardens always in their atmosphere. To the players themselves, notwithstanding the hard work, it has the same beauty and fascinations that other professions have for those who have entered them. Lotta receiving the wild plaudits of her newsboy admirers—for all over the country the street Arabs express their willingness to "do ennythin' in de world fur Lottie"—accepting the baskets of flowers they send her with the pennies they have pooled, and doing her utmost to respond to a score of encores in response to their appeals is as charming a little picture of perfect happiness and contentment as we could find anywhere. Judic, the great opera bouffe singer, peddling cherries, at the great charity fair in Paris, from two panniers borne by a jackass, crying, "Buy my cherries, monsieur. I don't sell them dear. Five francs, the little basket," is a noble example of the generosity that distinguishes the profession of which she is a member. A popular American actress selling photographs for a little cripple she met in the street, and who had been rebuffed at several, is another example of the leaning towards charity and the kind-heartedness of a class of people against whom many bigots raise their hands and to whom they turn their backs, saying, as the Rev. Mr. Sabini said, that he didn't want to have anything to do with actors. The reader has probably heard the story, but I will repeat it here: George Holland, the actor, died in his eightieth year, on December 20, 1870. He was a player of exceeding merit in his day, and his demise was widely and deeply regretted. Friends gathered around his casket in the awful moment when they were to part with him forever. The rites of the church were wanted for him, of course, and an actor friend went to Rev. Sabini and asked him to officiate. He declined, saying: "I want to have nothing to do with an actor. There is a little place around the corner were they do these things." And sure enough there was, and the actors took their dead friend into "the little place around the corner," and Dr. Houghton said the last prayer over the dead player. That "place" is now known among actors and by the public too as "the little church around the corner." It is the Church of the Transfiguration, and is on Twenty-ninth Street near Madison Avenue.
It is only occasionally that scandal is given by the theatrical profession, but these few and far-between occasions are sufficient to keep alive the bad opinion that certain people have of actors and actresses. It is true the class is weak at many points, as are other classes, but as I have urged before, they maintain a higher standard of morality and adorn their circle better than any other people whose paths are strewn as plentifully with temptations. At the beginning of the eighteenth century the stage was in very bad condition because society was in a worse condition, and if there is frailty in the ranks of actresses of to-day, and weaknesses among actors, it is because their surroundings compel them to be what they are, and even under this compulsion they can hold their heads as high as their neighbors and look them in the face without feeling that they are any worse than the rest of the world, even if they are so bad. It is my purpose to say something about the dark side of theatrical life that the reader may see just what there is in the talk indulged by the scandal-mongers of the anti-theatrical class, and that it may be known that their indiscretions and their sins are no more heinous than the sins and transgressions of other people, and that in very few instances are they the outcome of the actor or actress's professional surroundings.
The estrangement of Edwin Booth and his wife or the divorce of Edwin Forrest from his wife did not cause the world to think any the less of these gentlemen as actors, and the events did not bring any opprobrium upon the profession. Sarah Bernhardt's open avowal that her children were fatherless and they were only "accidents" was a frank confession of an early indiscretion that almost everybody was ready to forgive. She was not received by society in this country, but society knelt before her at the shrine of Thespis, as they did at the feet of Mme. Patti, who flaunted Nicolini in the face of the public, as the successor of the Marquis de Caux in all the rights of a husband although there never had been any marriage ceremony to make the tenor the legal companion of the beautiful diva. For the sake of their art the sins of these two gifted women were partially forgotten, and while society could not open its doors to Mlle. Bernhardt or Mme. Patti, it went readily to the open doors through which the presence of the actress and of the songstress was to be reached.
A New York correspondent says: "Having mentioned two French actresses, let me drop into the true story of Bernhardt and Colombier's quarrel, and the book about America which has been put forth in Colombier's name. When Bernhardt came over here, she was accompanied by Jehan Soudan, a Parisian writer. He was very small, closely buttoned up to the neck, very bushy haired, and very much like a particularly mild and girlish divinity student. For all that, he was the accredited temporary lover of Bernhardt. His other errand was to write an account of her tour, to be published as from her own pen. While in this city he was an object of considerable ridicule, and his name was maltreated from Jehan Soudan into Sudden Johnny. But Colombier, the fair and fat actress of Bernhardt's company, did not regard him as comic. Quite on the contrary, she fell in love with him, and he fell in love with her. However, this new reciprocity of hearts was kept hidden until near the end of the journey. Then it came out through Sudden Johnny carelessly kissing Colombier too loud in a thin-partitioned dressing-room. The smack was heard by Bernhardt. I don't imagine that she cared much for Johnny, or would have missed him from the ranks of her favored admirers; but it made her just as mad as she could be to lose him to Colombier. Now, Colombier's beauty was marred by a deflection of her nose to one side. That's not much, for the chances are ten to one that the sides of your own face don't exactly agree. Try a glass critically, and see. Well, when Colombier emerged from her room with Johnny, to go on the stage, Sarah regarded her quizzically, and then said something in French equivalent to:—
"'Ah, my dear, I fear you kiss too much on one side of your mouth. It has really and truly bent your nose awry. Do let the other side have some of Jehan's attention.'
"No more was said. But that Johnny and Colombier plotted a deep revenge is evident, for the book appears in Paris with the name of Colombier instead of Bernhardt as author, and among its numerous ridiculous lies about Americans are some spiteful little flings at Sarah. Thus Sudden Johnny gets even."
Mme. Patti, too, had a young man with her—Michael Mortier, brother of the editor of the Paris Figaro—who was to write a book for her, but in St. Louis he spoke too freely to a newspaper reporter about Mme. Patti's relations to Nicolini, and Mortier's life was thereafter made so miserable that he was glad soon to make a bee line for Paris, where it is to be hoped he is at present.
A London correspondent tells us how a favorite actress of that place faced three husbands, and as it is in order to continue turning the crank of the scandal machine while foreign talent is the material to be ground, I will give the paragraph. He says: "The true glory of the Lyceum Theatre is that English Bernhardt, Miss Ellen Terry. This blue-eyed, blonde-locked, Saxon siren is not a radiant beauty as was the ill-fated Adelaide Neilson, but she is something better—she is a charmeuse, as the French call any one possessing that peculiar feminine—which she exercises so powerfully—magnetism. She is the most gifted, and withal the most naturally graceful, woman that I have ever seen. The little movements and artistic attitudes of Sarah Bernhardt would seem forced and artificial beside that unborn charm and harmony of gesture, unstudied and perfect as the ripple of tall grasses or the swaying of the branches of a weeping willow beneath a summer breeze. She is pure womanly, every inch of her. She cannot be awkward even when she tries; and I saw her try the other night in 'The Belle's Stratagem;' but instead of transforming Letitia Handy into a country hoyden in accordance with the text, she only succeeded in assuming a pretty espieglerie that, had I been Doricourt, would have driven me to catch her straightway in my arms and kiss her, declaring that she was charming anyhow. Off the stage I am told that she is quite as fascinating as when before the foot-lights. She has proved the extent of her power of enchantment by successfully winning and wedding three husbands, all of whom are still living, divorce and not death having released her from two of them. In fact, it is reported that while walking in the Grosvenor Gallery recently, with her present spouse, Mr. Kelly, she came face to face with her two former husbands, who were promenading there together, and that the only embarrassed personage of the quartette was Mr. Kelly; and they do say that the law will soon be called into requisition to break the bonds that unite her to her present spouse, and that she will then become the wife of a prominent English actor. Truly this wonderful and interesting lady ought to inscribe on her wedding-ring the motto said to have been adopted by the old Countess of Desmond on the occasion of her fourth marriage:—
If I survive
I'll have five.
Jealousy is at the bottom of nearly every scandal connected with the stage, or with people who have been on the stage. The story of Lizzie McCall's crime is a peculiarly sad one. She had been a favorite burlesque actress, and was playing young heroines with Boucicault in 1880 when she met and married George Barry Wall, a young man of twenty-five years, she being twenty-three. She promised him to leave the stage forever, and in order that she might not be placed in the way of temptation Wall made his home in New Utrecht, Long Island, removing thence to New York. Jealousy early made its appearance in their home, and their married life was not happy or peaceful. They lived together for eighteen months, however, until one fine morning after a violent quarrel she snatched up a pistol and shot her husband through the throat.