The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1885-02-09


viewed into New York in a way to give
Of sea sickness than the shortest waves and
ugly head winds had caused them
Manager Daily, man of unusual culture
for an American manager, first introduced
to US French methods through French plays
skillfully adapted to our puritanical preju-
dice and coarseness. 1t was a great success,
and has since spread over and taken posses.
sion Of our theatrical world. He owes his
success mainly to the little western girl,
who, in her poor garnet at Columbus, had
thought out the true artistic road Of the
drama, without having seen, or even heard,
of French methods.
Having won her way to the popular heart,
her ambitious soul must needs try to revolu-
tionizs the stage Shakespeare. Fechter had
made a move in that direction with
Hamlet, and had secured patient hearing
But, then, Fechter was a French actor of
deserved renown, and came to us Endorsed
by an English approval He failed, of
course, but his beloved Hamlet, in broken
English, was not laughed at, nor was he
assailed as if he had been guilty Of some
disgraceful crime.
Our bright and lovable star was insane
enough to make a like attempt. The storm
Of abuse that followed her performance of
Lady Macbeth was pitiless and pelting. The
affair reminded me of the occasion when she
gave me her ideas of how Shakespeare
meant the woman he loved should be rem
dered. We were driving in her basket
phaeton, while the rain poured in
torrents upon huge umbrella, rugged to
the phaeton for the purpose of keeping of
the sun and now serving as protection,
such as it was, against storm.
Macbeth" said my fair friend, with her
pale face peering out, as she drove, from
beneath soaked cap, looking to me like
drenched mermaid gazing from a wet rock
into foggy sea-''Macbeth is one of the
most imaginative characters of all Shake
speare. He pauses in the midst of the most
trying scenes to deliver idealized philosophy
of the highest poetic merit He is a man of
culture and soldier of the truest courage.
To have such man bullied by a beetle
browed woman of huge proportions and
heavy lung power is to me simply
monstrous Such a man is to be moved
through his affections, and Shakespeare
made the wife lovable, and she leads him
down to death through the tenderest ties Of
the heart. The play says this his homely
epithets of love indicate it beyond question.
That she had a force of character superior
to his no wise antagonizes my theory. A
subtle, willy, insinuating creature, with all
her strength hid under seeming meekness
and tenderness How Shakespeare must
have loved this creation of his mind She
is the second great central figure of this
greatest of all tragedies, and yet how gently
he removes her from the brutal tumult of
closing scenes. She goes off at the end of
the banquet to be seen no more, only in that
sleep walk, with it's dying wall of a remorse-
eaten soul To have such a creation repre-
sented as a butcher in petticoats, scolding,
abusing and whooping through, is crime. 4"
This bit of criticism may give you a
knowledge of the fact that Clara Morris,
eminent as she is in her profession, is greater
out of it. The late President Garfield was
won't to say: ''She is the biggest Drained
woman ever knew, or hope to know" Her
conversational powers, Lit up as they are by
wit and the choicest sense of humor, are
simply flashes of genius. sit is a liberal
education to know her." quoted John
Williamsburg, the most accomplished the
atrical critic of the country. 81 never knew
a mind possessed of such stores of assimilated
information" said Henry Watterson, ''held
by such tenacious memory, and yet so
original and suggestive"
Our foremost actress of the English
speaking stage has the French methods in
her blood, being half French by birth. Her
father was Monsieur LIE Mountain, played
divineIy on the fiddle, and when intoxicated,
which was most of the time, treated his
family-wife and two children-with such
cruelty that at last the mother fed with her
two infants. To escape pursuit and recap
ture, she adopted her maiden name, and so
our star comes to be known as Morris.
Her home upon the Hudson, where she
lives during the summer, and of late much
of the winter, owing to i'll health, is a re-
treat fitting a woman of genius. To reach
it one leaves the New York Central at Mt.
st. Clement, where the huge, unsightly con-
vent dwarfs Forests little castle. Passing
the railroad bridges, up between convent
and castle, the road lies through the pic
turesque grounds of the good sisters, to the
Broadway road, where one finds hand
some structure of wood almost hid by the
solemn old pines. The house is not only
aTcl1GecGuIally QaIClSOLles DuG
and at the door the visitor will be met
by Mr. Fred Harriet, husband of the
star, who will accord one a courtly welcome.
The grounds are covered with flowers, the
stables are filed with blooded horses, the
house is adorned with exquisite articles of
art-and one would suppose the place the
home of luxury and ease until the reception
room of the great artist is reached, and the
visitor finds it not only bed chamber, but
a sick room. Through all her life Clara
Morris has never drawn a breath that had
not in it more or less pain. And, at times,
this pain is a fearful agony. Here looked
up to, wistfully, by three quaint little dogs,
and waited on by a loving mother and hus-
band, there reigns silence, broken only by
the ticking of the silvery French clock on
the mantle piece, or the rustling of turned
leaves, for our admiration is an invet.
crate reader. The windows to the west
give distant view of the palisades where
the Hudson sweeps around their northern
termination, and the continual CLINT of
sails and smoke of steamers tell of this
highway of American humanity. The
closed rooms shut out even the sough
Of the pines, no less the noise of busy life,
for all around are palaces, of the rich, and
the air is tremuIous with tie roll of car
vic ri Of An ha