Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1881-11-26
ACTORS AND AUTHORS.
THE STRUGGLES AND TRIUMpHs OF
FEMININE ARTISTS.
A Number Of People Talked About by Cur
San Francisco Correspondent
this Week-Gossip.
SAN Francisco, Nov. %, 1881

ask for the book which has been drama
tized and put upon the stage. But have
never failed to find dozens ahead of me.
At one time the plot Of Miss Jennings ga
Wonderful Woman" was given us nightly,
and copies of the book were in demand.
Some one starred as Mr.. Micawber and
we'll thumbed as "David Copperfeld had
been it was once more re-read. At any
time when Round the World in so Days
is revived, Jules Verne's chapters of Incl
dent, going by that name, are again drawn
at the libraries. When Edwin Booth, sue
ceeded again by Sheridan, and later, Tom
Keene played Richelieu, Bulwer's poems
were missing from the shelves. Mccall
Tough as Coriolanus, Fechter as Hamlet,
Rignold as Henry v, and above all, Booth
as Hamlet, Iago and Shylock, brought
Shakespeare to the fore, and when Sheridan
gave US
| We went back again to Shakespeare, even
as we had done when Nelson played Juliet,
Cymbeline and Rosalind. Sheridan's
| Louis XII. made "Quentin Durward" so
popular that not copy was to be had, and
when Mrs. Landers and Mrs. Bowers
PLAYED Queen Elizabeth, and Mary, Queen
of Scots, the two queens were resurrected
| from the back shelf, busted and given an
airing. Dr. Lords lectures gave a healthy
revival to history, and there was general
and high carnival among the books when
various charities met together and decided
to make the principal characters of great
authors live to the public by inaugurating
a carnival of authors which should engage
in its active workings vast number OF
people. No one on the outside wished to
be ignorant those on the inside of neces-
sity must not be and the consequence was
that all took pains to be informed. Some
how l have always harbored an idea that
Jewish girls read Auerbach and so forth.
Any Saturday you will find quantity and
| quality of such going to and fro on the
streets with library books pressed between
| their arms and slender waists. But on IN
auiry the Auerbach and SO forth belief is
dispelled. They read "Cape Cod Folks :"
and San Earnest Triher," Mrs. Burnett,
Henry James and William D. Howells,
! Just as the rest of US do. When George
Eliot died, her works received fresh
impetus. Every reader among US went
through her books again. l heard man
say once that life was too short to read the
same book twice, yet when George Eliot
died he re-read " Romala." 1t was blow
indeed to the worlds reverence for George
Eliot when she made her second marriage.
The most of us in our hearts forgave her
for her first defiance of the worlds opinion
| in consideration of her great need for close
intellectual companionship, and the i'm.
possibility of it without that defiance, and
were content to recognize her first union as
a marriage But when she stopped to ac-
knowledge the name of
sPINsTER
After it, for the sake of another marriage,
and this with but ten months of widow
heod, what we had worshiped from afar
as an intellect seemed but weak woman
after all. When it was brought home to
as that Dickens had been really abusive to
his wife, shadow was thrown across his
popularity, but we cannot forget the man
| who created Nell, 10, Little Dorrit, the
Kenwig's family and Boffins Bower. So
the woman who wrote Mill on the Floss,
adam Bede" and "Romala" cannot fail
of our love, and how much she is read is
testified to after inquiry of librarians.
Dickens "Bleak House has experienced
a slight boom since Jennie Lee Mrs. Bur-
nett) came here to play $40" l first saw
her nine or ten years ago and l remember
her in variety of characters all slightly
| hoidenish, and she was such little thing
that every time she laughed l thought she
was the cunningest creature ever had
seen. But she is new and strange now and
"cunning" no longer, for happening upon
"Jo" when Janauschek was here, she dis.
covered a talent for him and taking him
reyerently from Dickens hands, she
MADE HIM LIVE,
Move and have being. Susan Cation
was another diminutive woman who took
our fancy, but who retired into private
| life after short season with us. She was
dignity itself, despite her size, and sweet
singer, having right to be either and both
since she had an ancestry of talent behind
| her. The last time I saw her on the stage
she ran forward to the footlights hastily,
| twisting her handkerchief as she came, into
the semblapce of baby, then sitting on
stool she trotted it on her knee and sang a
| baby song as sweetly as any bird. Shortly
after she retired, and since then, at her
own fireside, she trots her real flesh and
blood babies, and sings to them, am Ger.
tain, sweeter than ever she sang to the
public through babies made of handker-
chiefs. Her husband is Alfred Kelleher,
and you hear and see both sometimes at
the Saturday musicales at Mills Seminary,
across the bay, where Mr.. Kelleher- is
too oyJ xIyta bo mo- Hpvplnna6
any number of sweet voices. From the
Seminary, by the way, is sent every week
a welcome contribution to the Fruit and
Flower Mission here. Rev. 7. K. Noble,
of Plymouth Congregational Church, mar
ried his wife from Mills Seminary, she
having been it's teacher of elocution, per-
haps learning there her tact and gaining
her talent in dealing with young people.
Oracle Plaisted, that mite of singer, was
first brought to notice at Mills Seminary,
and graduated afterward into the Melville
Opera Company. But
THE NUMBER OF VOICES
That have gone from there into home re.
tirement may be numbered by the score.
Prominent among them was the magnif-
cent voice of Miss Lois Singletary, of the
Singietarys of San Jose. Miss Ella Glenn,
daughter of DIR. Glenn, comes next. her
voice being OF light, sweet quality, en-
dowed with great fexibility, the two
young ladies being classmates. Miss
Marian Dunsmuir, of Nanaimo, British
Columbia, with whom 1 had the pleasure
of being seasick during the entire voyage
to that place, possesses fine, rich voice,
which one reorefs tn know ia hanished to
that far off region. Mrs. F. Fl. McCor-
mack has been called the finest amateur
singer in San Francisco. Mrs. Mccormack
is now in Los Angeles with her mother
rejoicing over the little daughter that has
been born to her. Her sister is Mrs. |
Greene, wife of Clay Greene, the play
writer, and both are well-known beauties. |
Nowadays it is the rage to have talent.
Much superauous energy is worked off in
Kensington stitch, but it is extremely Ia
hor;o,s 70 create the talent and develon II |