She was never a guest at our table at home, but only when we met in France. Her art was the embodiment of abiding charm in Ma Cousine, in La Vierge Folle, in Madame Sans-Gêne, and many another play. Paris loved her and she loved Paris. How they must miss each other!
She was proud of her Montmartre origin, where she passed a poor and hard-working youth, painting fans and teaching. She told the company assembled to celebrate her nomination to the Légion d'Honneur, that it was at Montmartre she learnt her art and at Montmartre, in contact with lovers of the theatre, that she perfected it.
I remember the days in London when her carriage was drawn by a pair of Spanish mules and people would struggle for a glimpse of her fascinating, though not beautiful, face. The last time I saw Réjane was at the Queen's Hall, during the War, when she recited Émile Cammaerts's poem, Carillon, to the music written for it by the composer, Edward Elgar, who conducted it himself. All concerned seemed to be inspired and gave you out of themselves some minutes of ecstasy; just as Karsavina and Nijinsky did in The Spectre of The Rose at Covent Garden, before the War. These are things which are yours while memory lasts.
Modjeska
A dear friend and guest was the brilliant Helena Modjeska. Like the distinguished actor, Fechter, she never quite mastered the difficulties of the English tongue, but again, as in the Frenchman, her foreign accent became a fascination. She ran the great Sarah very close in La Dame aux Camélias. Her performance was the more spiritual: she seemed to have sacrificed purity only through passion and was ever fighting for Divine forgiveness. You almost had doubts if she could have so sinned, but none as to her salvation. My wife could give a most dramatic imitation of their different treatments of the tragic end, when with difficulty the feeble, outstretched hands reached a table-mirror and they looked upon their dying faces. It was hard to decide if the heart-rending, pitiful wail with which the one murmured, "How changed I am!" was surpassed by the terrifying awe which slowly spread over the emaciated face of the other. Both were supreme moments in their beautiful art.
I recall an incident at a dinner given by Madame Modjeska and her husband, when the subject of an unhappy break-up of what seemed a happy marriage through an unfortunate lapse on the husband's part became the topic. The lady by my side said passionately: "That is an indiscretion, an outrage, a sin, call it what you will, I could never forgive—whoever the woman might be." She paused for a moment and added: "With one exception—Ellen Terry. Any man ought to be forgiven."
Let me say a word about an Irish girl born at Limerick but taken to America in her childhood; the delightful, alluring Ada Rehan. She and Irving were our guests, both for the last time, together, I remember, and when they sat side by side. No words of mine could compete with those I copy, written by one who had followed Ada Rehan's art in every phase:
"The secret of her allurement was elusive. Among its elements were absolute sincerity, the manifest capability of imparting great happiness, triumphant personal beauty, touched and softened by a wistful and sympathetic sadness, and that controlling and compelling instinct, essentially feminine, which endows with vital import every experience of love, and creates a perfect illusion in scenes of fancied bliss or woe."
Gifted women