Herald and news. [volume] (West Randolph, Vt.) 1878-1943, 1892-07-28
THE SOCIETY ACTRESS.
Lessons to Be Drawn from the Downfall
of Mrs. Potter.

of Mrs. Potter.
Foreign dispatches announce that
Mrs. James Brown-Potter, the actress.
has come to professional grief in the
English metropolis. The actor who has
been accompanying her, himself man
of unpleasant notoriety. has cut loose
from her. The theater-goers of London
have declined to go to her entertain
ments, and English society will have
none of her. The same disaster having
overtaken her some time since in this
country, she now declares she will re-
turn to India, where people, if we
may believe Mr.. Rudyard Kipling, are
not so scrupulous or fastidious as they
are in the Occident.
The disaster which has overtaken
Mrs. Potter, says the Chicago Tribune,
will not call for any public sympathy,
either from theater-goers or the gem
eral public. Both have tired of women
on the stage who have no other claim
on patronage than the exhibition of
personal charms. 1t is sign of healthy
reform in the stage morale and theatric-
al business generally that some degree
VI - GU anu llldb DcODlC
are ceasing to be interested in women
who have not spark of ability and
who can make no better appeal for pat
ronage than that they are cookbook
ing and wear stylish gowns and who
have their principal attraction in the
fact that they have created personal
notoriety by domestic scandals or by
conduct which is in direct defiance of
all social conventions Sooner or later
society and the press resent mediocrity
and the public grows tired of and in
different to the performances of such
persons. The maudlin, morbid ele-
ment of theater-goers is a small
one at best, and soon wearies of
the imposition. The larger class
of theater-goers feels itself de-
frauded. Occasionally there is wom-
an like Bernhard, who can keep her
place on the stage in spite of notoriety
and social antipathy, because she pos
sesses unquestioned genius. which COW
ers a multitude of sins, but among the
alleged actresses of the Potter and
Langtry kind there is no such basis of
appeal to an audience. II requires ex-
traordinary genius TO defy society, set
its conventions aside, and compel its
patronage in the face of its prejudices.
The disaster which has overtaken
Mrs. Potter ought to be a lesson to
other silly women who are willing
to leave and break up quiet, respecta-
bic homes even at the cost of scandal
and sensation and to go upon the stage
without talent and Endorsed only by
such meretricious advertising as they
caught out of their personal appear
ance and the notoriety of their pro-
ceedings. In the end they must land
where Mrs Langtry and Mrs. Potter
have landed. They cannot blame the
public when their own conduct exposes
them to this kind of treatment, nor
can they blame managers if they are
beginning to get tired of the long list
Of professional and divorced beauties
without talent. Their day is about
over If India, Siam and the Cape of
Good Hope like this kind of thing,
Mrs. Potter by all means should go
there, and Mrs. Langtry and all the
rest of their kind should join her. If
they could extend their itinerary to
Central Africa and then stay there, il
would be still better for society, the
stage and the interests of dramatic art,
and better for themselves, for on the
Congo and around the Mountains of
the Moon the people are not versed in
art and would condone even such atro-
cious violations of it as these uninter-
esting and wearisome people continu'
ally are perpetratiDg.