Part 18
Of these plays of the interregnum it is curiously true that those least entitled to serious consideration as drama, _Barbara Frietchie_ and _When Knighthood Was in Flower_, were the most successful in advancing Miss Marlowe to the heights of popularity. _Colinette_--which was adapted from a French play--and _The Countess Valeska_--from the German--were both justified as skillfully written romantic dramas, of much strength and charm, if not of permanent value. _Barbara Frietchie_ and _When Knighthood Was in Flower_, however, were highly artificial, thin, pseudo-historical dramas, one dealing with the heroine of Whittier’s poem--the play was by the prolific Clyde Fitch--and the other a fictional episode in the life of Mary Tudor, the sister of Henry VIII. Miss Marlowe’s sincerest admirers deeply regretted the time and energy she spent, year after year, on these and like plays; but they often asserted that her acting transformed and beautified the material with which she worked. As Colinette, according to Mr. Winter, she “gave a performance of singular flexibility and of exceptionally artistic grace, such as not only pleases while passing but leaves in the memory an ideal of noble and lovable womanhood,”--strong and partial words, but indicative of the glamour Miss Marlowe has thrown over inferior plays. “Her utterance of Barbara’s appeal to her father for her wounded lover’s life,” says Mr. Winter of her acting in Mr. Fitch’s play, “was spoken with exquisite beauty, and her expression of the frenzy of grief, on finding him dead, reached as great a height as is possible to spoken pathos.”
As for _When Knighthood Was in Flower_, an English critic later said: “There is a certain lilt and go, a touch of nature among the fool’s fabric of the melodrama, which set her far above our steady practitioners in the same act of sinking. And, above all, a sense of parody pierced through words and actions, commenting wittily on the nonsense of romance which so many were so willing to take seriously. She was a live thing; defiantly and gayly conscious of every absurdity with which she indulged the babyish tastes of one more public.”
All this playing in popular pieces of the day involved a certain amount of additional training for the work that was to come,--the third and last period of Marlowe’s work,--the ten years during which she and Edward Sothern were “joint stars.” She brought to her new work a variously experienced, thoroughly disciplined art.
It sent something like a thrill through that large part of the public interested in the theatre, when it was announced, in the summer of 1904, that Julia Marlowe and E. H. Sothern were to act together in Shakespeare. It was felt that the actress was again coming into her own.[192]
Some of her parts with Mr. Sothern were but revivifications of heroines of her early career: Juliet, Viola, Beatrice, Rosalind; others she attempted for the first time during one or another of these years from 1904 to 1914: Ophelia, Katherine the Shrew, Lady Macbeth, and, at the inauguration of the ill-fated New Theatre in New York, Cleopatra in _Antony and Cleopatra_.
The American public, whatever its expectations in 1904, has since come to take a rather complacent view of its privilege in seeing Miss Marlowe and Mr. Sothern act Shakespeare together. They have been financially extremely successful. Several other attempts during this period to popularize Shakespeare in America (and some of them were “produced” and acted in a manner to make them fit rivals) have struggled through brief and only moderately well supported existences; while Sothern and Marlowe have gone on for the best part of ten years, drawing crowded houses. Yet many an old time playgoer, who has followed Julia Marlowe’s career since its beginnings, will tell you that nothing she has done since has quite equaled, in the combined appeal of its fresh youth, its varied beauty, and its unforced poetic moods, the acting of the Julia Marlowe of early days.
The summer of 1906 Miss Marlowe spent--as she has many others--in Europe. One of the places she visited was the birthplace of Jeanne d’Arc, for she was contemplating the production of Percy MacKaye’s play concerning the Maid. When she returned to America, she and Mr. Sothern dissolved their association with the Frohman side of the theatrical house, and went over to the Shuberts. There followed the production of a group of plays new to her experience, _John the Baptist_, by Sudermann, in which she played Salome, _The Sunken Bell_, by Hauptmann, a piece retained from Mr. Sothern’s earlier repertoire, and _Jeanne d’Arc_.
It was with the last two plays, and with _Romeo and Juliet_, _Hamlet_, _As You Like It_, _When Knighthood Was in Flower_, and _Twelfth Night_, that Miss Marlowe ventured for the first time to appear in London, in the spring of 1907. The success of the Sothern and Marlowe engagement at the Waldorf Theatre hung at first in the balance, for the first play presented was _The Sunken Bell_, which failed to appeal to London. As for Miss Marlowe as Rautendelein, she was dismissed by Mr. Walkley in _The Times_ as showing the grace and elfishness and charm of the character; “but she was not,” he continued, “exactly a frisky fairy.”
The tide turned with Miss Marlowe’s Viola, and, somewhat to the surprise of his followers at home, with Mr. Sothern’s Hamlet, which was hailed as a distinguished achievement.
One English writer, Arthur Symons, quite lost his head in admiration of the American visitors. “We have not in our whole island,” he wrote, “two actors capable of giving so serious, so intelligent, so carefully finished, so vital an interpretation of Shakespeare, or indeed of rendering any form of poetic drama on the stage.” Beerbohm Tree gave them a supper at His Majesty’s; Mr. Asquith was there, a prince or two, and, more to the point, a representative group of England’s stage workers. “There is danger,” said _The Evening Standard_ when she played Viola, “of our all becoming Marlowe worshipers if she goes on like this.”[193]
Though the London critics appraised Mr. Sothern’s Hamlet higher than American reviewers ever did, and though the newspaper comment on each play was favorable, except on _The Sunken Bell_ and _When Knighthood Was in Flower_, the London public did not attend in great numbers.
Still, the English tour may be said to mark the apex of the career of both artists. When they returned home each was for a time again an independent “star.” When the ambitiously planned New Theatre, in New York, opened its doors for what was fondly hoped would be the dawn of a new era in the American theatre, Miss Marlowe and Mr. Sothern were the leading members of a cast assembled to perform _Antony and Cleopatra_. The production pleased neither public nor critics, and it cannot be said that Miss Marlowe will be remembered chiefly for her Cleopatra. Since then “Sothern and Marlowe” have again carried Shakespeare up and down the country.
Why is it that the public, loyal as it has been to them, has taken their untiring campaign in fostering the Shakespeare tradition so much as a matter of course? Perhaps it is because nearly everyone speaking English now takes Shakespeare himself as a matter of course, to be accepted, like starlight and the blessings of a free government, with unenthusiastic complacence, and because Miss Marlowe herself is so utterly Shakespearean. For everything she has done has had a Shakespearean tinge. “She was so infinitely more charming [as Mary Tudor] than the play justified her in being,” someone once wrote. “She looked exactly as she would have looked had the play been Shakespeare’s.”
“Those of us who saw her as the Queen Fiametta remember well how incongruously like Hermione she looked and was. When Miss Marlowe played Colombe in _Colombe’s Birthday_ she seemed to forget that she wasn’t playing Rosalind. And even in Mr. Esmond’s distinctly modern drama, _Fools of Nature_, Miss Marlowe to more than one spectator suggested the England of Shakespeare’s day oftener than the England of to-day.”[194] As for Shakespeare’s plays themselves: Her Viola, both of the early days and of the later period, was so lovely an embodiment of the poet’s ideal that he himself would have been satisfied with it; her Juliet, her Beatrice, her Rosalind, all in more or less degree, were filled with the peculiarly Shakespearean spirit, the radiant sweetness and vitality of his women.
There is abroad among the theatregoers of America a peculiar, almost personal affection for Miss Marlowe, which is not inconsistent with the complacent feeling of which we have spoken. There is about Marlowe none of the overpowering sense of riding the whirlwind that has accompanied Bernhardt in her royal progresses about the planet; she has none of the picturesque ebullience of a Terry, nor even the specialized appeal of Maude Adams. She has been a happy “combination of the poetically ideal and the humanly real” that wins, for a beautiful and skillful actress, a position in the popular heart, even if it does not take her, because of more or less extraneous characteristics, into the front rank of “personages.”
Miss Marlowe, in her quoted utterances, has occasionally thrown light on her attitude toward her own work and toward her profession:
“I wish they wouldn’t confound me so much with the parts I play and imagine I must be playing my own emotions because I give the part I am playing an air of reality.”
“It isn’t the rewards that one works for;[195] we work because we have to, because we can’t stop. Except for a shallow or vain nature there is nothing in the rewards of this profession commensurate with its pains; but in the very labor of it there’s joy, if you’re born to know it, that nothing else can approximate for you.”
Those who have known Miss Marlowe in her own person say that the simplicity and the good taste observable in her work as an actress find a counterpart in her life off the stage. The home she maintained for years at Highmount in the Catskills was a quiet retreat where she enjoyed the outdoors, her books, and the society of a group of friends, most of whom were not personages known to the theatergoing public. Her liking for books, which is said to be keen, induced her not only to carry about on her travels hundreds of volumes, but at one time to take up seriously the study of the mysteries of bookbinding. One summer she spent in Germany, taking lessons in that craft, and in her library are a number of volumes, illuminated and bound by her own hands. She sings a little, plays the piano well, and has a well-grounded musical knowledge. Unlike many another successful actress--Mary Anderson, for instance--she retained her early strong love for her profession.
“The rarest quality of Miss Marlowe’s art,” says Elizabeth McCracken, one of Miss Marlowe’s closest friends, with what is probably true insight, “is its lovely youthfulness. Her mirth is utterly young; at its gayest, it is tinged by a certain wistful gravity. Her woe is young, too; at its saddest, no drop of bitterness stains it. Children instinctively accept her as a kindred spirit, someone not so different from themselves as most grown-ups.”
Add to this engaging youthfulness--another name, perhaps, for her sense of poetry--her dark and buoyant beauty, her rich voice that lent its own music to Shakespeare’s, and you have Julia Marlowe, not a genius, certainly, but one of America’s gracious women, who has brought beauty in many forms to the American stage in a period when, but for her, it had been sadly lacking.
MAUDE ADAMS
To say that she is the most valuable piece of theatrical property in the country is a brutally commercial way to speak of an artist; but that is the familiar and true, if one-sided, estimate of Maude Adams. From a small career, notable in its way, as a child actress, through a girlhood that had its struggles and trials, to an early share of success and then to an amazing degree of affectionate popularity, a popularity far exceeding that of greater artists, has been her record. The mere announcement of her name, without respect to the play she is acting, is enough to fill any theatre in the United States. Her popularity is such that it amounts almost to an unreasoning worship. One can safely say that, among the women, at least, of America there is an unorganized Maude Adams cult. And whatever the lack of proportion between this adulation and the intrinsic artistic worth of her achievements, it cannot be said that Miss Adams’ popularity has been unfairly won. She has let her acting--whatever its limitations--and her variously expressed ambitions speak for themselves, without Bernhardtian advertising. The public knows her not at all except as it sees her across the footlights. She is one of the dignified women of the theatre.
[Illustration: MAUDE ADAMS]
Her mother, Annie Adams, an actress well known to the passing generation of playgoers, was descended collaterally from the Presidential Adamses of Massachusetts. James Kiskadden, the father of Maude Adams, “a man of handsome masculinity,” at the time of his daughter’s birth had come out of the Middle West to practice in Salt Lake City his business of banking.[196] Annie Adams has been better known as the mother of Maude Adams than as an actress in her own right; nevertheless she has had a long career as a capable actress. When Maude was born in Salt Lake City, on November 11, 1872, her mother was a member of the local stock company.
The public had not long to wait for its first glimpse of Maude Adams. When she was nine months old she was taken one night to the theatre where her mother was playing. According to the custom of the day, the evening’s entertainment ended with a short farce, this time _The Lost Child_. In this piece a baby is carried on and off the stage several times, to be finally carried in on a platter and set down before its distracted father. The baby used on this occasion was only a month or so old, and, as might have been expected, it began to howl lustily in the midst of its travels about the stage. Just at this moment Mrs. Adams, who was not playing in the second piece, was about to leave the theatre, when the stage manager caught sight of little Maude. Miss Adams’ début took place instantly, for she was placed on the platter and rushed onto the stage in place of the howling child. As the latter was some eight months the younger, the audience was treated to the unusual spectacle of seeing a child take on twenty pounds in a few minutes.
After a while the family moved to San Francisco. From time to time the little Maude appeared on the stage, although for the most part she lived the life of the ordinary child. Her glimpses of the life of the stage were probably more than enough, however, to “bend the twig.” Once her mother was supporting J. K. Emmett in _Fritz in Ireland_. Mr. Emmet had seen Maude and wished to have her play a child’s rôle in this piece. Her father at first demurred, as Maude was only five. The child was eager to take the part, however, and was finally allowed to do so.
After another interval of dolls and books, she played, when about six, the child in _A Celebrated Case_. She learned her small part so well that she had ample leisure to memorize most of the rest of the play. One man in the company, it is said, was often in her debt for swift and accurate prompting.
The rest of her childhood was divided between school--the Presbyterian School for Girls in Salt Lake City--and occasional appearances on the stage. Her mother insisted on the schooling, and Maude was bright enough at her studies. But one cannot wonder that the life of the stage had already enthralled the little girl. At any rate she left her books on occasion, to play such parts as Eva in _Uncle Tom’s Cabin_, Paul in _The Octoroon_, and Oliver Twist.
“Little Maudie Adams” came to be the first choice for children’s parts in the best companies playing along the Pacific coast. One who saw much of her in those days, and who took pains to give her much undoubtedly valuable instruction, was David Belasco. “I was the stage manager of the Baldwin[197] then,” said Mr. Belasco. “James A. Herne and I were playing there together, and in our plays there was usually a child’s part. Annie Adams I had known for some years as one of the best character actresses of the West, but my first remembrance of Maude Adams is of a spindle-legged little girl, unusually thin and tall for her age, with a funny little pigtail and one of the quaintest little faces you ever saw. I don’t think even her mother considered Maudie pretty in those days. But even in her babyhood there was a magnetism about the child,--some traces of that wonderfully sweet and charming personality which was to prove such a tremendous advantage to her in the later years.... She could act and grasp the meaning of a part long before she was able to read. When we were beginning rehearsals of a new play I would take Maudie on my knee and bit by bit would explain to her the meaning of the part she had to play. I can see her now, with her little spindle legs almost touching the floor, her tiny face, none too clean, perhaps, peering up into mine, and those wise eyes of hers drinking in every word. I soon learned to know that it was no use to confine myself to a description of her own work: until I had told the whole story of the play to Maudie, and treated her almost as seriously as if she were our leading ‘star,’ she would pay no attention. She was serious-minded in her own childish way even in those days, and once she realized that you were treating her seriously there was nothing that child would not try to do.”[198]
One of “Little Maudie’s” successes at this time was in _Chums_, which Mr. Belasco had adapted from an old English play _The Mariner’s Compass_. Mr. Herne, who played in it at the time, later made and acted in another version, _The Hearts of Oak_. The character Crystal (for whom Mr. Heme undoubtedly named his daughter) occurs in both versions. “From the time Maude Adams created the rôle,” says Mr. Belasco, “it became one of the most vital parts of the play. _Chums_, in short, scored an immense success, and ‘Little Maudie’ for time being was the heroine of the town.”
Mrs. Adams had seen to it that Maude received more of the ordinary schooling than sometimes falls to the lot of a child actress. When she was thirteen, however, her schooling was called complete. The girl had had her taste of success and during her term at school had dreamed of returning to the stage. She told her mother: “It’s no use my studying any more, mother.... I want to go on the stage again, so that I may be with you.” But when the attempt was made it proved to be not the easiest thing in the world. As a child actress of less than ten, she had found parts awaiting her. As a young girl in her middle teens, parts were much harder to find. She traveled about with her mother, getting an occasional small part, such as one of the old women in _Harbor Lights_, or the Princess in _Monte Christo_. In the meantime, she studied hard, absorbing her mother’s instructions and learning many rôles.
When Miss Adams was just under sixteen she and her mother crossed the country--in the caste of the melodrama, _The Paymaster_,--to try their fortunes in the Middle West and finally in New York. Although it is on record that she won “a great deal of praise for her simplicity and beauty,” one can see, in the account of her nightly “plunge into a tank of real water,”[199] a far cry to her later distinction as the interpreter of the subtleties of Barrie.
According to thrice-repeated tales, which her mother has recently taken occasion to deny, it was only after a discouraging period of waiting and of fruitless visits to managers, that Miss Adams got her first opportunity, when _The Paymaster_ had run its course. A more tangible tradition is to the effect that while awaiting something better Miss Adams worked for a while as a ballet girl.[200] According to Mrs. Adams, Maude had not long been in New York when Daniel Frohman offered her a position in the company supporting E. H. Sothern. Virginia Harned took up the cause of the young actress, and introduced her to Mr. Sothern. “I must have been a strangely unattractive and unclassified creature at the time,” says Miss Adams, “too young for mature parts and too old for child impersonations. Miss Harned, who had played child parts with me, had succeeded in interesting Mr. Sothern in me and one great day I was invited to dine with them in a public restaurant. I am sure that I disgusted Mr. Sothern with my unconquerable bashfulness and awkwardness. Painfully diffident, I scarcely uttered a word during the whole of that dinner. Nonetheless I was soon afterward engaged to play in the Sothern company.”[201]
The engagement with Sothern was brief, however, like all that had gone before. Not until she was given the part of Dot Bradbury in Hoyt’s farce _A Midnight Bell_ (in March 1889) did circumstances combine to give her a good part, a long engagement, and some public notice. Until now she was quite unknown to the public at large. But she played this part through the spring and all during the following season. Discerning playgoers, and a critic here and there, began to speak of her as one of the promising youngsters of the stage, and what was more important, she attracted the attention of Charles Frohman, who in the fall of 1890 was organizing a stock company for the Twenty-third Street Theatre. Mr. Frohman gave Miss Adams a place in this company, and from that day until his death--twenty-four years--she remained under his management.
Her first part with Mr. Frohman was a small one--Evangeline Bender in _All the Comforts of Home_. She gave it some distinction, however, and in her next part, in _Men and Women_, she was watched with interest. That Mr. Frohman’s choice of this new actress was unfortunate, was the opinion of many. She was small, thin, pale--quite the opposite of the accepted type of stage beauty; but she acted well enough, apparently, for soon she was playing Nell, the crippled girl in _The Lost Paradise_. The part called for one passage of heightened emotion,--“a fierce little bit of melodrama” that served to attract new notice to Miss Adams. “In an audience of seasoned first-nighters and blasé fashionables there were moist eyes and a surreptitious blowing of noses when Maude Adams gave rein to that tender pathos which is all her own,” says one witness. “This wan, hopeless figure peering wistfully from its shabby raincoat out upon a life she could neither know nor understand was a triumph of natural emotion simulated with superb restraint.” Mr. Frohman showed his new company not only to New York, but sent it on long tours throughout the country.