Rachel as the Muse of Greek Tragedy.
Rachel as the Muse of Greek Tragedy.
Less success than had been looked for attended Rachel's invasion of the repertory of Mlle. Mars, an actress so idolized by the Parisians that her sixty years and great portliness of form were not thought hindrances to her personation of the youthful heroines of modern comedy and drama. But Rachel's fittest occupation and her greatest triumphs were found in the classical poetic plays. She, perhaps, intellectualized too much the creations of Hugo, Dumas, andScribe; gave them excess of majesty. Her histrionic style was too exalted an ideal for the conventional characters of the drama of her own time; it was even said of her that she could not speak its prose properly or tolerably. She disliked the hair-powder necessary to Adrienne Lecouvreur and Gabrielle de Belle Isle, although her beauty, for all its severity, did not lose picturesqueness in the costumes of the time of Louis XV. As Gabrielle she was more girlish and gentle, pathetic, and tender, than was her wont, while the signal fervor of her speech addressed to Richelieu, beginning, "Vous mentez, Monsieur le Duc," stirred the audience to the most excited applause.
Rachel was seen upon the stage for the last time at Charleston on December 17, 1856. She played Adrienne Lecouvreur. She had been tempted to America by the prospect of extravagant profits. It had been dinned into her ears that Jenny Lind, by thirty-eight performances in America, had realized seventeen hundred thousand francs. Why might not she, Rachel, receive as much? And then, she was eager to quit Paris. There had been strange worship there of Madame Ristori, even in the rejected part of Medea. But already Rachel's health was in a deplorable state. Her constitution, never very strong, had suffered severely from the cruel fatigues, the incessant exertions, she had undergone. It may be, too, that the deprivations and sufferings of her childhood now made themselves felt as over-due claims that could be no longer denied or deferred. She forced herself to play, in fulfilment of her engagement, but she was languid, weak, emaciated; she coughed incessantly, her strength was gone; she was dying slowly but certainly of phthisis. And she appeared before an audience that applauded her, it is true, but cared nothing for Racine and Corneille, knew little of the French language, and were urgent that she should sing the "Marseillaise" as she had sung it in 1848! It was forgotten, or it was not known in America, that the actress had long since renounced revolutionary sentiments to espouse the cause of the Second Empire. She performed all her more important characters, however, at New York, Philadelphia, and Boston. Nor was the undertaking commercially disappointing, if it did not wholly satisfy expectation. She returned to France possessed of nearly three hundred thousand francs as her share of the profits of her forty-two performances in the United States; but she returned to die. The winter of 1856 she passed at Cairo. She returned to France in the spring of 1857, but her physicians forbade her to remain long in Paris. In September she moved again to the South, finding her last retreat in the villa Sardou, at Cannet, a little village in the environs of Cannes. She lingered to January 3, 1858. The Théâtre Français closed its doors when news arrived of her death, and again on the day of her funeral. The body was embalmed and brought to Paris for interment in the cemetery of Père la Chaise, the obsequies being performed in accordance with the Jewish rites. The most eminent of the authors and actors of France were present, and funeral orations were delivered by MM. Jules Janin, Bataille, and Auguste Maquet. Victor Hugo was in exile; or, as Janin announced, the author of "Angelo" would not have withheld the tribute of his eulogy upon the sad occasion.[Back to Contents]
Edwin Booth.
The great actor who has lately left the world furnished, in his own remarkable character and shining career, a striking exception to the popular tradition that men of genius are the fathers of ordinary sons. The father of Edwin Booth was in his time one of the glories of the English and American stage; but, even in his case the strict rule wavered, for his father, though not a genius, was yet a man of exceptional character; one who marked out a clear path for himself in the world, and walked in it to the end.
How far back the line of the family can be traced, or what was its origin, we do not know; but it has lately been said that the family was of Hebrew extraction, and came into England from Spain, where it had been known by the Spanish name, Cabana. The branch of the family that left Spain to live in England translated the name into the language of their new home, and from "Cabana," a shepherd's cabin, made the English equivalent, Booth.
However it may have been in this case, it was quite in the order of things that this change of name should be made. It has been done everywhere in Europe since very early times, and is doing to-day in this country by new comers from all parts of the old world.
The first of the Booths we read of in England was a silversmith, living in Bloomsbury, London, in the latter half of the last century. He had a son, Richard, who was bred to the law, but who was so imbued with the republican ideas rife at the time that he actually came to America to fight in the cause of Independence! He was taken prisoner, and carried back to England, where, not without some struggles, he again applied himself to the practice of the law, and in time made a fortune. He did not, however, forget America, and we are told that he had, hanging in his house, a portrait of Washington, which he expected all his visitors to salute.
One of the ways in which the republicans of that time showed where their sympathies lay, was in naming their children after the heroes of Greece and Rome; and accordingly we find Richard Booth calling his eldest son, Junius BrutusBooth, after the Roman patriot. This son was born in London, in 1796. His father was a man of scholarly tastes, and gave the boy a classical education, but it was long before he showed a marked inclination for any particular walk in life. He tried his hand at painting, sculpture, and poetry; and for a while studied law with his father. But, when the time came to choose, he gave his voice for the navy, and would have joined the brig Boxer, then fitting out for Nova Scotia. But, as war threatened between England and America, he was induced, by the strong persuasions of his father, not to run the risk of being forced to fight against America. He then decided to go upon the stage, and, in spite of his father's remonstrances, carried out his purpose. After some unimportant essays he at last succeeded in attracting public attention, and before long showed such unmistakable ability in dealing with difficult parts, that the public, till that time undivided in its enthusiasm for Kean, awoke to the fact that a dangerous rival threatened the security of their idol's throne. In the midst of his successes, however, Booth married and left England with his wife for a honeymoon trip to the West Indies. He had intended to return at once to England, but he was persuaded to prolong his journey and to visit New York. After playing a successful engagement there he went to Richmond, where he was no less prosperous. He next visited New Orleans and acquired such facility in speaking French that he played parts in French plays more than acceptably, and distinguished himself by acting Orestes in Racine's "Andromaque," to the delight of the French-speaking population. His accent is said to have been remarkable for its purity. Returning to New York, he acted Othello to Forrest's Iago; but, in the midst of his successes, the death of two of his children produced a temporary insanity, and this was made worse by the news of the death of his favorite son, Henry Byron, in London, of small-pox. This grievous loss was, however, to be made up to him by his son, Edwin, in whom he was to find the counterpart of himself, softened, refined, ennobled, while between father and son was to grow a strong attachment, a bond of mutual affection to last as long as life should endure.
Edwin Thomas Booth was born at Bel Air, Maryland, November 12, 1833. He was named Edwin, after his father's friend, Edwin Forrest, and Thomas, after Thomas Flynn, the actor, whom the elder Booth had known intimately in London. His son dropped the name of Thomas, later in life, and was only known to the public by the name of Edwin Booth. Owing to his father's wandering life Edwin had few advantages of education, but he made the most of his opportunities, and indeed was a student of good letters all his life, turning the light of all he learned from books and experience upon his art. His youth is described as reticent, and marked by a strong individuality, with a deep sympathy for his father, early manifested; his father, a much enduring, suffering man, strongly in need of sympathy, knowing to repay it, too, in kind.
Edwin Booth made his first appearance on the stage in 1849 at the Boston Museum in the youthful part of Tressil, in Colley Cibber's version of Shakespeare's "Richard III." It had been against his father's wishes that he had adopted the stage as a profession; but, as his father had done in a like case before himhe persevered, and soon had the satisfaction of convincing his parent that he had decided wisely. He did not at once come to New York after his success in Boston, but went to Providence and to Philadelphia, acting Cassio in "Othello," and Wilford in the "Iron Chest," a part he soon made his own and in which he made his first appearance in New York, playing at the National Theatre in Chatham Street, in 1850. The next year he played Richard III. for the first time, taking the part unexpectedly to fill the place of his father, who was suddenly ill. In 1852 he went out with his father to San Francisco, where his brother, Junius Brutus Booth, Jr., was the manager of a theatre; and the father and his two sons acted together. At Sacramento, we are told that the incident occurred which led Edwin Booth to think of acting Hamlet, a part which was to become as closely associated with his name as that of Richard III. was with his father. He was dressed for the part of Jaffier in Otway's play, "Venice Preserved," when some one said to him "You look like Hamlet, why not play it?" It was, however, some time before he ventured to assume the part. In October, 1852, the father and son parted, not to meet again. The elder Booth went to New Orleans, and after playing for a week took passage in a steamboat on the Mississippi, and catching a severe cold succumbed after a few days' illness and died. For a while after his father's death Edwin suffered greatly from poverty and from the hardships of his precarious life, unsustained as he now was by the affection and encouragement of a father who, with all his faults, and in all the misfortunes brought on by serious ill-health and some aberrations that were the effect of ill-health had always been an affectionate and true friend. But a talent such as Edwin Booth possessed, united to a high character, and to a dauntless spirit, could not long be hid, and in a short time his name began to be heard of as that of one destined to great ends. In 1854 he went to Australia as a member of Laura Keene's company. He had made a deep impression in California, acting such parts as Richard III., Shylock, Macbeth, and Hamlet, and on returning there from Australia that first impression was greatly strengthened. On leaving San Francisco he received various testimonials showing the high esteem in which his acting was held by the educated part of the community; but throughout Edwin Booth's career, the interest he excited in the vast audiences that followed him was by no means confined to the self-styled "best people." Though he never "played to the gallery," the heart of the gallery was as much with him as the heart of the boxes, and he knew the value of its rapt silence as well as of its stormy voices.
In Boston, in 1857, he played Sir Giles Overreach, in Massinger's "A New Way to Pay Old Debts," and the profound impression he made in it confirmed him in his purpose to devote himself to tragic acting. The story of an actor's life is seldom eventful, and Mr. Booth's history, after his first assured success, is the record of a long line of triumphs without a failure. The most remarkable of these triumphs was at the Winter Garden Theatre in New York, where he acted Hamlet to large and ever-increasing audiences for over one hundred successive nights, that is, from November 21, 1864, to March 24, 1865. On thisoccasion a gold medal was presented to the actor by friends and admirers in New York; the list of subscribers including the names of many well-known citizens. The Winter Garden Theatre was managed by Booth and his brother-in-law, the clever actor, J. S. Clarke, until Booth bought out Clarke and assumed the entire management himself. In 1865 the terrible tragedy occurred which blighted Booth's whole after-life, and for a time drove him from the stage. He did not act again until 1866; in 1867 the theatre was destroyed by fire, and in 1868 the corner-stone of a new building, to be known as Booth's Theatre, was laid, and in a short time New York was in possession, for the first time, of a thoroughly appointed, comfortable, and handsome theatre. This building was made famous by a number of Shakespearian revivals that for beauty, magnificence, and scenic poetry have, we believe, never been equalled. We doubt if "Hamlet," "Julius Cæsar," or "Romeo and Juliet," have ever been presented with more satisfying completeness to the eye and to the imagination than in this theatre by Mr. Booth and his company. Although the theatre was in existence for thirteen years, from 1868 to 1882, when it was finally closed, Mr. Booth's management lasted only about half that time. The speculation was not a fortunate one for the actor; the expenses ate up all the profits, and Mr. Booth was bankrupted by his venture. He paid all his debts, however, and went bravely to work to build up a new fortune. He made a tour of the South, which was one long ovation, and in a season of eight weeks in San Francisco he took in $96,000.
In 1880 he went to England and remained there two years. In 1882 he visited Germany, acting in both countries with great success, and in 1883 he returned home and made a tour of America, repeating everywhere his old triumphs, and winning golden opinions from all classes of his countrymen.
Edwin Booth died in New York, June 7, 1893, at the Players' Club, where he had lived for the last few years of his life. This was a building erected by his own munificence, fitted up with luxurious completeness, and presented to a society of his professional brethren for the use and behoof of his fellow-artists, reserving for himself only the modest apartment where he chose to live, in sympathetic touch with those who still pursued the noble art he had relinquished.
Mr. Booth was twice married. By his first wife, Miss Mary Devlin, who died in 1863, he had one child, a daughter; by the second, Miss McVicker, he had no children. She died in 1881.[Back to Contents]
Signature of the author.
Joseph Jefferson.
Joseph Jefferson, distinguished, among his other brilliant successes as an actor, as the creator for this generation of the character of Rip Van Winkle in the play dramatized from the story in Washington Irving's "Sketch Book," was the third of his name in a family of actors. The first of the three was born at Plymouth, England, in 1774. He was the son of Thomas Jefferson, a comedian of merit, the contemporary and friend of Garrick, and came to this country in 1795, making his first appearance in New York on February 10, 1796, in the part of Squire Richard in "The Provoked Husband." Dunlap says that, young as he was, he was already an artist, and that among the men of the company he held the first place. He lived in this country for thirty-six years, admired as an actor and respected as a man. He died at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in 1832.
Joseph Jefferson, the second, was born in Philadelphia in 1804. He inherited the laughing blue eyes and sunny disposition of his father, but he had not his talent as an actor; he is said to have been best in old men's parts. His taste, however, led him to scene-painting rather than to acting; yet his skill in either direction was not enough to win success, and, in spite of well-meant efforts, he lived and died a poor man: ill luck pursuing him to the end of his days, when he was carried off by yellow fever at Mobile in 1842, just as his unprosperous skies were brightening a little. His son bears affectionate witness to the upright character of the man and to his indomitable cheerfulness in the most adverse circumstances. He spared no pains in bringing up his children in good ways, and he was earnestly seconded by his wife, a heroic figure in her humble sphere, whose tact and courage not seldom saved the family bark when it was drifting in shoal water. Mrs. Jefferson came of French parents, and was a Mrs. Burke, a widow with one child, a son, when she married Mr. Jefferson. Her son tells us that she had been one of the most attractive stars in America, the leading prima donna of the country; but she bore her changed fortune, as the wife of an unsuccessful actor and manager, with no less dignity on the stage of real life, where no applause was to be had but what came from those who loved her as mother, wife, and friend.
This, then, was the family circle in which our Joseph Jefferson passed hisearliest years, the formative period of his life. There were the kind-hearted, easy-going father, the practical, energetic mother, a sister, and the half-brother, Charles Burke, whose after-reputation as an actor lives in the pages of Jefferson's autobiography enshrined in words of warm but judicious appreciation. "Although only a half-brother," says Jefferson, "he seemed like a father to me, and there was a deep and strange affection between us." Nor must mention be forgotten of one other member of the family: Mary, his foster-mother, as Jefferson affectionately calls her, "a faithful, loving, truthful friend, rather than a servant, with no ambition or thought for herself, living only for us, and totally unconscious of her own existence."
Joseph Jefferson, the third of the name, and in whom the talent of his grandfather was to reappear enriched with added graces of his own, was born in Philadelphia in 1829. He tells us that his earliest recollections are connected with a theatre in Washington. This was a rickety, old, frame-building adjoining the house in which his father lived as manager, the door at the end of the hall-way opening directly upon the stage; and as a toddling little chap in a short frock he was allowed full run of the place. Thus "behind the scenes" was his first playground; and here, "in this huge and dusty toy-shop made for children of a larger growth," he got his first experience. He was early accustomed to face an audience; for, being the son of the manager and almost living in the theatre, he was always pressed into the service whenever a small child was wanted, and "often went on the stage in long clothes as a property infant in groups of happy peasantry." His first dim recollection of such a public appearance is as the "child," in Kotzebue's play, "Pizarro," who is carried across the bridge by Rolla. His next appearance was in a new entertainment, called "Living Statues," where he struck attitudes as "Ajax Defying the Lightning," or "The Dying Gladiator." At four years of age he made a hit by accompanying T. D. Rice, the original "Jim Crow," as a miniature copy of that once famous character, and the first money he earned was the sum of $24 thrown upon the stage in silver from pit and gallery, to reward his childish dancing and singing on that occasion.
Thus early wedded to the stage, Jefferson followed the fortunes of his family, and led with them a wandering life for many years, growing, by slow degrees and constant, varied practice, to the perfection of his prime. In 1838 his father led the flock to Chicago, just then grown from an Indian village to a thriving place of two thousand inhabitants, where he was to join his brother in the management of a new theatre, then building. Jefferson's account of the journey is a striking picture, at once amusing and pathetic, of the changes that have been wrought by fifty years. The real privations and hardships of the trip are veiled in the actor's story by his quiet humor and his disposition to see everything in a cheerful light. Always quizzing his own youthful follies, he cannot conceal from us by any mischievous anecdotes his essential goodness of nature, his merry helpfulness, his unselfish devotion to the welfare of the others, or the pluck with which he met the accidents of this itinerant life. From Chicago, where their success was not brilliant, the family went by stage to Springfield, where, by a singularchance, they were rescued from the danger that threatened them in the closing of the theatre by a municipal law trumped up in the interest of religious revivalists, by the adroitness of a young lawyer, who proved to be none other than Abraham Lincoln. In Memphis, when bad business had closed the theatre, young Jefferson's pluck and ready wit saved the family purse from absolute collapse. A city ordinance had been passed, requiring that all carts, drays, and public vehicles should be numbered; and the boy, hearing of this, called at the mayor's office, and, explaining the situation that had obliged his father to exchange acting for sign-painting, applied in his name for the contract for painting the numbers—and obtained it! The new industry furnished father and son with a month's work, and some jobs at sign-painting helped still further to make life easier.
From Memphis the family went to Mobile, where they hoped to rest after their long wanderings, and where it was also hoped the children, Joseph and his sister, might be put to school. But the yellow fever was raging in Mobile, and they had been in the city only a fortnight when Mr. Jefferson was attacked by the disease and died. In Mobile, too, the good Mary died, and Mrs. Jefferson was left alone to care for herself and her children as she could. She had no longer a heart for acting, and she decided to open a boarding-house for actors, while Joseph and his sister earned a small stipend by variety work in the theatre.
More years of hardship followed—the trio of mother and children wandering over the country, south and west: in Mississippi and Mexico, seeing life in all its phases of ill luck and disappointment, with faint gleams of success here and there, but meeting all with a spirit of such cheerful bravery as makes the darkest experience yield a pleasure in the telling. Surely, it might soften the heart of the sourest enemy of the stage to read the spirit in which this family met the long-continued crosses of their professional life.
Joe Jefferson as Bob Acres.
Joe Jefferson as Bob Acres.
Joseph Jefferson tells the story of his career so modestly, that it is hard to discover just when it was that success first began to turn a smiling face upon his efforts. Yet it would seem as if, for himself, the day broke when he created the part of Asa Trenchard in "Our American Cousin." He says that up to 1858, when he acted that part, he had been always more or less a "legitimate" actor, that is, one who has his place with others in a stock company, and never thinks of himself as an individual and single attraction—a star, as it is called. While engaged with this part, it suddenly occurred to him that in acting Asa Trenchard he had, for the first time in his life on the stage, spoken a pathetic speech; up to that time all with him had been pure comedy. Now he had found a part in which he could move his audience to tears as well as smiles. This was to him a delightful discovery, and he looked about for a new part in which he could repeat the experiment. One day in summer, as he lay in the loft of a barn reading in a book he well calls delightful, Pierre Irving's "Life and Letters of Washington Irving," he learned that the great writer had seen him act the part of Goldfinch, in Holcroft's "Road to Ruin," and that he reminded him of his grandfather, Joseph Jefferson, "in look, gesture, size, and make." Naturally pleased to findhimself remembered and written of by such a man, he lay musing on the compliment, when the "Sketch Book" and the story of Rip van Winkle came suddenly into his mind. "There was to me," he writes, "magic in the sound of the name as I repeated it. Why was not this the very character I wanted? An American story by an American author was surely just the thing suited to an American actor."
There had been three or four plays founded on this story, but Jefferson says that none of them were good. His father and his half-brother had acted the part before him, but nothing that he remembered gave him any hope that he could make a good play out of existing material. He therefore went to work to construct a play for himself, and his story of how he did it, told in two pages of his book, and with the most unconscious air in the world, reveals the whole secret of Jefferson's acting: its humor and pathos subtly mingled, its deep humanity, its pure poetry—the assemblage of qualities, in fine, that make it the most perfect as well as the most original product of the American stage.
Yet the play, even in the form he gave it, did not satisfy him, nor did it make the impression in America that he desired. It was not until five years later that Dion Boucicault, in London, remade it for Jefferson; and it was in that city it first saw the light in its new form, September 5, 1865. It was at once successful, and had a run of one hundred and seventy-five nights.
With his Asa Trenchard and his Rip van Winkle will ever be associated in the loving memory of play-goers his Bob Acres in Sheridan's "Rivals," thought by many to be his capital part—a personification where all the foibles of the would-be man-of-the-world: his self-conceit, his brag, his cowardice, are transformed into virtues and captivate our hearts, dissolved in the brimming humor which yet never overflows the just measure, so degenerating into farce.
Between the two productions of Rip van Winkle in New York and in London, Jefferson had had many strange experiences. His wife died in 1861, and he broke up his household in New York, and leaving three of his children at school in that city, he left home with his eldest son and went to California. After acting in San Francisco, he sailed for Australia, where he was warmly received; thence went to the other British colonies in that region, touched on his return at Lima and Callao and Panama, at which place he took a sailing-packet for London, and after his great success in that city returned to America in 1866. In 1867 he married, in Chicago, Miss Sarah Warren, and since that time his life has flowed on in an even stream, happy in all its relations, private and public, crowned with honors, not of a gaudy or brilliant kind, but solid and enduring. His art is henceforth part and parcel of the rich treasure of the American stage.[Back to Contents]
Signature of the author.
Adelina Patti.
A consensus of opinion places this distinguished artiste at the head of all her compeers, for it may be truly said that she is the brightest star which has dazzled the musical firmament during the past half century, and, is still in the very zenith of her noonday splendor.
Regardful of the transcendent beauty of her voice, enhanced as this is by her other natural and attractive attributes, one might almost believe that nightingales have surrounded the cradle presided over by Euterpe, for never has bird sung so sweetly as the gifted subject of my memoir, and while the Fates smiled on the birth of their favorite, destined to become the unrivalled Queen of Song throughout the civilized world, fanciful natures might conceive a poetical vision, and behold Melpomene with her sad, grave eyes breathing into her the spirit of tragedy, and Thalia, with her laughing smile, welcoming a gifted disciple by whose genius her fire was to be rekindled in the far future.
In the year 1861 there arrived in England a young singer who, accompanied by her brother-in-law, took apartments in Norfolk Street, Strand. The young lady, then only seventeen, sought Mr. Frederick Gye, who was the lessee of the Royal Italian Opera, for his permission to sing at his theatre, volunteering to do sofor nothing. The offer was at first absolutely declined, but subsequently the young artiste succeeded, and made her first appearance on May 14, 1861, as Amina in Bellini's opera of "La Sonnambula." Unheralded by any previous notice, she was then totally unknown to the English public. Not a syllable had reached that country of her antecedents or fame. I remember being present on the occasion when this youthful cantatrice tripped lightly on to the centre of the stage. Not a single hand was raised to greet her, nor a sound of welcome extended to encourage the young artiste. The audience of Covent Garden, usually reserved, except to old-established favorites, seemed wrapped in more than their conventional coldness on that particular evening. Ere long, however, indeed before she had finished the opening aria, a change manifested itself in the feelings of all present. Thehabituéslooked round in astonishment, and people near me almost held their breath in amazement. The second act followed, and to surprise quickly succeeded delight, for when in the third act she threw all her vocal and dramatic power into the melodious wailing of "Ah non credea," with its brilliant sequel, "Ah non giunge," the enthusiasm of the audience forgot all restriction, and burst into a spontaneous shout of applause, thepent-up fervor of the assembly exploding in a ringing cheer of acclamation rarely heard within the walls of the Royal Italian Opera House. The heroine of the evening was Adelina Patti, who thenceforward became the idol of the musical world. When I left the theatre that evening, I became conscious that a course of fascination had commenced of a most unwonted nature; one that neither time nor change has modified, but which three decades have served only to enhance and intensify.
At the conclusion of the performance, Mr. Gye went on to the stage full of the excitement which prevailed in the theatre, and he immediately concluded an engagement with Mlle. Patti on the terms which had been previously agreed between them; these being that Mlle. Patti was to receive at the rate of£150 a month for three years, appearing twice each week during the season, or at the rate of about£17 for each performance. Mr. Gye also offered her the sum of£200 if she would consent to sing exclusively at Covent Garden.
Patti repeated her performance of Amina eight times during the season, and subsequently confirmed her success by her assumption of Lucia, Violetta, Zerlina, Martha, and Rosina.
Having met with such unprecedented success throughout the London season, Mlle. Patti was offered an engagement to sing at the Italian Opera in Paris, where unusual curiosity was awakened concerning her. Everyone is aware that the Parisians do not admit an artist to be a celebrity until they have themselves acknowledged it. At Paris, after the first act, the sensation was indescribable, musicians, ministers, poets, and fashionable beauties all concurring in the general chorus of acclamation; while the genial Auber, the composer of so many delightful operas, and one of the greatest authorities, by his experience and judgment, on all musical matters, was so enchanted that he declared she had made him young again, and for several days he could scarcely talk on any other subject but Adelina Patti and opera. The conquest she had achieved with the English public was thus triumphantly ratified by the exacting and critical members of musical society in Paris.
Adèle Juan Maria Patti, according to her own statement, which she related to the Queen Isabella of Spain, was born at Madrid, on February 19, 1843, and is the youngest daughter of two famous Italian singers, Signor Salvatore Patti and Signora Patti-Barili. The signor having placed her two sisters—Amalia, who subsequently married Maurice Strakosch, the well-known impresario, and Carlotta, also a vocalist of remarkable powers—in a boarding-school at Milan, went to New York with his wife and daughter, where they remained until Adelina reached sixteen.
Adelina Patti had barely reached the age of three years when she was heard humming and singing the airs her mother sang.
The child's voice was naturally so flexible that executive difficulties were always easy to her, and, before she had attained her ninth year she could execute a prolonged shake with fluency. Her father not being prosperous at the time, it became a necessity for him to look for support to his little Adelina, who had shownsuch remarkable promise; and, accordingly, she began to take singing lessons—not, as is stated in Grove's "Dictionary of Musicians," from Maurice Strakosch, but from a French lady, subsequently studying with her step-brother, Ettore Barili, who was a famous baritone singer; but nature had been so prodigal of her gifts to the child that she never undertook a serious course of study, but, as she herself says, her real master was "le bon Dieu." At a very early age she would sing and play the part of Norma, and knew the whole of the words and music of Rosina, the heroine of Rossini's immortal "Il Barbiere di Seviglia." She sang at various concerts in different cities, until she reached the age of twelve and a half, when her career was temporarily interrupted, for Maurice Strakosch, observing the ruinous effect the continuous strain upon her delicate voice was working, insisted upon her discontinuing singing altogether, which advice she happily followed. After this interval of two years' silence, and having emerged from the wonder-child to the young artiste, she recommenced her studies under M. Strakosch, and very soon afterward was engaged to sing on a regular stage. Strakosch travelled with her and Gottschalk, the pianist, through the United States, during the tour giving a number of concerts with varying financial results; ultimately returning to New York in 1859, where she appeared at a concert of whichThe New York Heraldof November 28th gives the following notice: "One of the most remarkable events in the operatic history of the metropolis, or even of the world, has taken place during the last week at the Academy of Music. Mlle. Patti sang the mad scene from Lucia in such a superb manner as to stir up the audience to the heartiest demonstrations of delight. The success of this artiste, educated and reared among us, has made everybody talk of her." In the following year, Strakosch considered the time had arrived for her to appear in Europe. He accordingly brought his young protégée to England, with the result I have already attempted to describe.
After singing in London and Paris, Patti was engaged to appear at Berlin, Brussels, Moscow, and St. Petersburg, at which latter city enthusiasm reached its climax, when on one occasion she was called before the curtain no fewer than forty times. One who was with her there during her last visit, writes: "Having been witness of Adelina's many triumphs and of outbursts of enthusiasm bordering upon madness, I did not think that greater demonstrations were possible. I was profoundly mistaken, however, for the St. Petersburg public far surpassed anything I have seen before. On Adelina's nights extraordinary profits were made. Places for the gallery were sold for ten roubles each, while stalls were quickly disposed of for a hundred roubles each. The emperor and empress, with the whole court, took part in the brilliant reception accorded to Patti, and flowers to the amount of six thousand roubles were thrown at her."
That she has been literally worshipped from infancy upward is only a natural consequence of her unsurpassable gifts, and nowhere has this feeling manifested itself to such an extent as in Paris, and by none more so than by the four famous composers, Auber, Meyerbeer, Rossini, and Gounod. Auber, after hearing her sing Norina, in Donizetti's "Don Pasquale," offered her a bouquet of roses fromNormandy, and in answer to her questions about her diamonds, said, "The diamonds you wear are beautiful indeed, but those you place in our ears are a thousand times better." Patti was the pet of the gifted composer of "Guillaume Tell," and no one was ever more welcome at Rossini's beautiful villa at Passy, well known as the centre of a great musical and artistic circle. The genial Italian died in November, 1868, and Patti paid her last tribute of respect to his memory by taking part in the performance of his immortal "Stabat Mater," which was given on the occasion of Rossini's burial service.
Gounod, always enthusiastic in his remarks upon her, said, "that until he heard Patti, all the Marguerites were Northern maidens, but Patti was the only Southern Gretchen, and that from her all future singers could learn what to do and avoid."
Although it is not the custom to bestow titles or honorific distinctions upon artists of the fair sex, yet, in lieu of these, to such an extent have presents been showered upon Adelina Patti, that the jewels which she has been presented with from time to time are said to be of the enormous value of£100,000. In the year 1885, when she appeared in New York as Violetta, the diamonds she wore on that occasion were estimated to be worth£60,000. One of the handsomest lockets in her possession is a present from Her Majesty, Queen Victoria, and a splendid solitaire ring which she is in the habit of wearing was given to her by the Baroness Burdett-Coutts. Of no less than twenty-three valuable bracelets, one of the most costly is that presented by the committee of the Birmingham festival. A magnificent comb, set with twenty-three large diamonds, is the gift of the Empress Eugénie. The emperors of Germany, Austria, and Russia have vied with each other in sending her jewels of the rarest value.
When singing in Italy, King Victor Emmanuel each night visited the opera for the purpose of hearing her; and at Florence, where the enthusiastic Italians applauded to the very echo, Mario, prince of Italian tenors, leaned from his box to crown her with a laurel wreath. A similar honor was bestowed upon her by the Duke of Alba at Madrid, who presented her with a laurel crown. At the opera house in that city numbers of bouquets and poems were to be seen whirling through the air attached to the necks of birds. Queen Isabella of Spain, gave a large amethyst brooch surrounded by forty enormous pearls, and the Jockey Club of Paris presented her with twelve laurel crowns. The citizens of San Francisco, upon the occasion of her last visit, presented her with a five-pointed star formed of thirty large brilliants, and from the Queen of Portugal she received a massive locket containing Her Majesty's portrait, enriched by an enormous oriental pearl encrusted in brilliants; and even at the present time scarcely a day passes without the "Diva" receiving some acknowledgment in recognition of her transcendent powers.
Adelina Patti's first husband was Henri, Marquis de Caux, an equerry to the Empress Eugénie, from whom she was separated and subsequently divorced; and, on June 10, 1886, she married Ernesto Nicolini, the famous tenor singer.
In appearance, Patti is still youthful, and really seems destined to rival thecelebrated French beauty, Ninon de l'Enclos, who was so beautiful at sixty that the grandsons of the men who loved her in her youth adored her with equal ardor. Patti's figure is still slim and rounded, and not a wrinkle as yet is to be seen on her cheeks, or a line about her eyes, which are as clear and bright as ever, and which, when she speaks to you, look you straight in the face with her old winning smile.
During her career Patti has earned upward of half a million sterling, and the enormous sums paid to her at the present time more than double the amounts which Jenny Lind received, and which in that day were regarded as fabulous.
On a natural plateau, surrounded by picturesque vales, and situated in the heart of the very wildest and most romantic part of South Wales, between Brecon and Swansea, and at the base of the Rock of the Night, stands the Castle of Craig-y-nos. This is the nightingale's nest. The princely fortune which Patti has accumulated has enabled her so to beautify and enlarge her home, that it now contains all the luxuries which Science and Art have enabled Fortune's favorites to enjoy; and so crowded is it with curios and valuables that it may best be described as "the home of all Art yields or Nature can decree."
Here, in picturesque seclusion, surrounded by a unique splendor created by her own exertions, lives this gifted and beautiful songstress. She is the "Lady Bountiful" of the entire district, extending many miles around the castle, over which she presides with such hospitable grace. The number of grateful hearts she has won in the Welsh country by her active benevolence is almost as great as is the legion of enthusiastic admirers she has enlisted by the wonderful beauty of her voice and the series of artistic triumphs, which have been absolutely without parallel during the present century.[Back to Contents]
A little girl, as Sarcey relates, once presented herself at the Paris Conservatoire in order to pass the examination for admission. All she knew was the fable of the "Two Pigeons," but she had no sooner recited the lines—
"Deux pigeons s'aimaient d'amour tendre,L'un d'eux, s'ennuyant au logis"—
than Auber stopped her with a gesture. "Enough," he said. "Come here, my child." The little girl, who was pale and thin, but whose eyes gleamed with intelligence, approached him with an air of assurance. "Your name is Sarah?" he said.
"Yes, sir." was the reply.
"You are a Jewess?"
"Yes, sir, by birth; but I have been baptized."
"She has been baptized," said Auber, turning to his colleagues. "It would have been a pity if such a pretty child had not. She said her fable of the 'Two Pigeons' very well. She must be admitted."
Sarah Bernhardt.
Thus Sarah Bernhardt, for it was she, entered the Conservatoire. She was a Jewess of French and Dutch parentage, and was born at Paris in 1844. Her father, after having her baptized, had placed her in a convent; but she had already secretly determined to become an actress. In her course of study at the Conservatoire she so distinguished herself that she received a prize which entitled her to adébutat the Théâtre Français. She selected the part of Iphigénie, in which she appeared on August 11, 1862; and at least one newspaper drew special attention to her performance, describing her as "pretty and elegant," and particularly praising her perfect enunciation. She afterward played other parts at the Théâtre Français, but soon transferred herself from that house to the Gymnase, though not until she had made herself notorious by having, as was alleged, slapped the face of a sister-actress in a fit of temper.
The director of the Gymnase did not take too serious a view of his new actress, who turned up late at rehearsals, and sometimes did not turn up at all. Nor did her acting make any great impression at the Gymnase, where, it is true, she was only permitted to appear on Sundays. At this theatre she lost no time in exhibiting that independence and caprice to which, as much as to her talent, she owes her celebrity. The day after the first representation of a piece by Labiche, "Un Mari qui Lance sa Femme," in which she had undertaken an important part, she stealthily quitted Paris, addressing to the author a letter in which she begged him to forgive her.
After a tour in Spain, Sarah returned to Paris, and appeared at the Odéon. Here she created a certain number of characters, in such plays as "Les Arrêts," "Le Drame de la Rue de la Paix," and "Le Bâtard," but chiefly distinguished herself in "Ruy Blas," and in a translation of "King Lear." Already she had riveted the attention of the public and the press, who saw that a brilliant future lay before her.
At the end of 1872 she appeared at the Comédie Française, and with such distinction that she was retained, first as a pensionnaire, at a salary of six thousand francs, and afterward as asociétaire. Her successes were rapid and dazzling, and whether she appeared in modern comedy, in classic tragedy, or as the creator of characters in entirely new plays, the theatre was always crowded. Her melodious voice and pure enunciation, her singularly varied accents, her pathos, her ardentbursts of passion, were such that her audience, as they hung upon her lips, forgot the caprices and eccentricities by which she was already characterized in private life. It seemed, however, that Sarah's ambition was to gain personal notoriety even more than theatrical fame; and by her performances of one kind or another outside the theatre make herself the talk of society. She affected to paint, to chisel, and to write; sent pictures to the Salon, published eccentric books, and exhibited busts. She would receive her friends palette in hand, and in the dress of a male artist. She had a luxurious coffin made for her, covered with velvet, in which she loved to recline; and she more than once went up in a balloon.
Her caprice, whether in private or public, was altogether unrestrained. In 1880 Émile Augier's admirable comedy, "L'Aventurière," was revived at the Comédie Française, and the author confided the part of Clorinde to Sarah Bernhardt. After the first representation, however, she was so enraged by an uncomplimentary newspaper criticism that she sent in her resignation to M. Émile Perrin, director of the theatre, quitted Paris, and went to England, where she gave a series of representations, and, appearing there for the first time, caused a veritable sensation in London society. Meanwhile, M. Perrin instituted against her, in the name of the Comédie Française, a lawsuit for breach of contract, with damages laid at three hundred thousand francs. It was at this juncture that Sarah accepted the offers of an enterprising manager for a tour in America, where she achieved no less phenomenal successes than in Europe.
A sensational account of this American tour was afterward published by one of her associates, Mlle. Marie Colombier, under the title of "Sarah Bernhardt en Amérique." This was followed by a second volume from the same pen, entitled "Sarah Barnum." The latter book, as its title suggests, was not intended as a compliment; and Sarah Bernhardt brought an action against the writer, by which she was compelled to expunge from her scandalous volume all that was offensive.
The rest of Sarah's career is too recent to be traced in detail. Nor can the life of an actress of our own time be dealt with so freely as that of a Sophie Arnould or an Adrienne Lecouvreur.
From America Sarah returned to Paris, where she revived all her old successes, and where, in 1888, at the Odéon, she produced a one-act comedy from her own pen, entitled "L'Aveu," which met with a somewhat frigid reception. She has appeared in several of Shakespeare's plays with great success, but her most ambitious and perhaps most admirable productions of late years have been her Cleopatra, first produced in Paris in 1890, and her Joan of Arc.
Among her numerous eccentricities, Mlle. Bernhardt once got married; London, by reason of the facilities it affords for this species of recreation, being chosen as the scene of the espousals. The hero of the matrimonial comedy, which was soon followed by a separation, to which, after many adventures on the part of both husband and wife, a reconciliation succeeded, was M. Damala, a Greek gentleman, possessed of considerable histrionic talent, who died in 1880.[Back to Contents]