No one is expected to have whole-hearted love for one’s competitors, but at times Mr. Fuchs oversteps the limits of bon ton by the pleasure he takes in pointing to the mote in his neighbour’s eye!
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ACTORS AND ACTRESSES
Eleonora Duse, by Jeanne Bordeux.
Eleonora Duse, by Edouard Schneider.
The Truth at Last, by Charles Hawtrey.
A Player Under Three Reigns, by Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson.
Footlights and Spotlights, by Otis Skinner.
Twenty Years on Broadway, by George Cohan.
Letters of an Unsuccessful Actor.
Weber and Fields, by Felix Isman.
Arthur Symonds once spoke of Eleonora Duse as “a chalice for the wine of imagination.” She was just that, from the time of her birth in a railway carriage near Venice, to the day when she lay, dressed in white, in the mortuary chapel in Pittsburgh, and that she will remain for those who knew her, and for those who will know her through tradition and fame. None of those who heard her recite can forget her—none of those who did not should cease to regret it. Her personality was art come to life, and her life was devoted to her art, to love and to the theatre.
It has been said that no one ever knew Eleonora Duse. She, who unfolded her soul on the stage, remained a mystery to her friends; nevertheless, since her death, several biographies have been published, each giving personal recollections, “intimate views” and character studies of the greatest actress Italy ever produced. Of these biographies, two stand out more conspicuously than the others: Jeanne Bordeux’s for its irrelevancy; Edouard Schneider’s for its revelatory qualities.
The former is an objective and impersonal life of Duse. The author speaks of herself only at rare intervals, and with a detachment which shows how engrossed she was in her subject. She focussed all her lights on the “grand artist” as she likes to call her. All the rest is incidental and serves only as background and contrast. The whole life of Duse is held within its covers, and yet it is not a life; it is an after image of some one who must have been great, but who is not obviously so under the pen of the author. The most touching part of the book is the end. We see Duse, a pathetic and lonely figure, fighting with all the strength of her exhausted body to return to Asolo where she had left all she loved. As she realised that the hope of seeing her beloved “Patria” again was becoming more remote, she mustered unsuspecting energy. All in vain. She was to die in America.
Jeanne Bordeux tells us in her preface that no one really knew Eleonora Duse—and we can see no justification for her amendation “no one in the world ever succeeded in knowing her as I did.... Each of her friends, intimates and actors, saw her in a different light; I saw her in all those lights merged in one, as from birth she unfalteringly followed her destiny, magnificently, humbly following the mission for which she was sent into the world.” We should have preferred Jeanne Bordeux to tell us in what way she knew Duse—in what capacity she approached her—what special privilege of intimacy or confidence she enjoyed with the person who had few intimates, and those well known.
ELEONORA DUSE
Duse was one of the most subtle and difficult persons to understand that ever lived in the public eye. Jeanne Bordeux gives no proof, either by quoting Duse’s words, or by contributing a particularly enlightening biography, that she either knew or understood her heroine. Duse combined successfully a public life with a secretly guarded private life; no one ventured to trespass on what she considered her own garden; no one dared ask questions; few drew conclusions from what they imagined to be the truth. Jeanne Bordeux did none of these things, and for that she should be thanked. But why colour her statements of what may have been facts with the hue of gossip, the nuances of scandal? Hero-worship should not be carried too far, but there seems little necessity for reviving old affairs which may never have existed, especially when they serve only to whet the curiosity of gossip-lovers. It does not serve the memory of Eleonora Duse to discuss at length her relationship with d’Annunzio. The only high spot in the book, however, is connected with that, but might have been deleted of the unsavoury revelations which precede it, and the portrait of the artist left for our observation would not have suffered by the omission. It is said that long after her separation from d’Annunzio, Duse had an interview with him; at the end of the conversation, d’Annunzio said, taking her hand in his, and kissing it: “Not even you can imagine how I loved you!” And the Duse, serious, with that charming graciousness all her own, replied, “And to-day, not even you can imagine how much I have forgotten—you!” Apocryphal perhaps, but worth recording.