I read "Molly Carew." Round eyes opened wider in astonishment as I proceeded. There was not a smile; not the faintest glimmer of mirth. Dead silence was broken by a polite "Is that all? Thank you, mamma," as they escaped. Oh, genius, gift of the gods! Who can measure it? Who, not born to it, can hope to win it! Who can attain even a faraway imitation of it! How it can clothe and glorify the simplest ideas! How it transfigured Charlotte Cushman—haggard and gray from keen physical suffering, knowing well that her hour was at hand! What noble restraint in her selections, ignoring pain and sorrow, denying herself the tribute of sympathy, bidding us good night with a smile on her lips and words demanding an answering smile on ours! To remember Charlotte Cushman is to recall Madame Helena Modjeska—totally different, certainly not inferior. I met her in society in New York. Her beautiful face, her tender, sensitive mouth, and the "far-away look of her eyes, as though she were thinking of the wrongs of Poland," are never to be forgotten. And the splendor of her genius! I saw her as Ophelia to Edwin Booth's Hamlet. "You are as good as a Greek chorus, my lord,"—she in a Savonarola chair, he on a fauteuil at her feet. I saw her also as Queen Catherine. I think she impressed all who knew her as a most sad woman. But is not melancholy the prerogative of genius? I, for one, never knew a man or woman of genius, real genius, who was merry. Madame Modjeska made melancholy beautiful.
She was once the guest of a lady who had gathered together a number of choice spirits in her honor. One of them, forgotten of her good angel, asked, "How do you like our country, madame!"
"Oh," spreading out her hands to signify empty space, and speaking in a weary tone, "Oh! It is all—all one great level."
"Ah, but," said her hostess, "patience! I shall introduce you by and by to a little hill."
An introduction followed, and at the close of the evening Madame Modjeska, pressing the hand of her hostess at parting, said with feeling:—
"Ah, madame! She was one great mountain!"
Helena Modjeska.
Before the war which cut me off from every pleasure demanding leisure and a little money, I heard the elder Booth in "Hamlet"—and I must confess he was rather a wheezy Hamlet in his old age. In Brooklyn the circumstances of my life forbade my indulging my passion for music and the enjoyment of a good play, but we had tickets for gallery seats to see Edwin Booth when Madame Modjeska played with him. Afterward we saw him in "The Fool's Revenge," and I remember being quite carried away and oblivious of everything except his splendid acting, until the calm voice of my son recalled me, "Don't you think, mamma, you had better sit down?" I spent a summer at Narragansett in the same hotel with Mr. Booth when he was resting his weary brain. He had a hooded chair placed in a corner of a veranda overlooking the sea, and there alone and in silence he spent most of his time. His devoted daughter ministered to him and carefully protected him from intrusion. At certain conditions of the tide the sands of the Narragansett beach emit a weird, faint, singing sound as the waves recede from them,—moaning, as it were, because they are left behind. These sounds could not be heard by every ear. Some eager listeners never could hear them. I used to wonder if Edwin Booth did, and wish I could ask him what they said to him. I might even tell him what they said to me! But his "Edwina" watched him jealously, and we respected his evident prostration of mind and spirit. His place at table was near mine. A moonlight smile would steal over his face when his two grandchildren, rosy little tots, came to him at dessert for a bit of sweet from the hand whose slightest gesture had once been able to move a multitude. The next time he was brought vividly before us we were in a great assembly of his friends, listening to Mr. Parke Godwin,—his friend and ours,—as he told of the sun whose rise, whose splendid noon, and whose setting we were ever to remember.