The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1899-04-27
GHOSTS OF THE PLAYHOUSE
SOME STAGE MEMORIES-"SW EET
FANNY KEMBLE.O
Charlotte Cushman's Reading of
Henry VIII.-Fechter AS nm Actor and
as Armand DuvaI.


as Armand DuvaI.
Not long ago I looked into the cold
inched face of dead actress who, only
fifteen years before, had made picture.
of her personality on thousands of re
tinas and was really the cynosure Of
wondering eyes. A few lilies were
strewn on the fragile form, and they
seemed to be repeating Shakespeare
consolation in their own arcane way
she sleeps WELL" The thought that
came to me at the time in spite of my.
self was that dead actress is more
pathetic than any other dead person
The sense Of futilty and extinction
seems to grow out of the contrast that
death presents to her life. Fifteen years
Is, after all, only small segment of
time, but measured by the procession
now many phantoms may be crowded
into it! A few days later spoke to a
group of ladies and gentlemen of Sara
JeWett; and they did not know to whom
1 referred. And that only drew my at
tention freshly to the fact that popular
lty is very much of a phantasmagoria
and that we estimate certain kinds of
worth by the sensation it reduces and
forget it when it is no longer an exter-
nal stimulus.
When l was mere lad, there was in
the world an acknowledgment that
Sweet Fannie Kemble' had just pass
ed through it. This buskined nymph
had left her footprints on the suscepti-
bilities of our fathers. 1 turned over
the leaves of the old New York Mir
ror in my fathers library, and felt
something of the thrill that she had
produced. N P. Willis had garlanded
her with poesy. The steel engravings of
the time idealized her face and her
ringlets. There was something of a no.
BILE madness in the rhetoric that gall
loped in her train, and it was not hard
for me to repeople Theatre Alley with
the ladies and gentlmen Of society who
In order to avoid the mob, We're taken
round to the stage entrance that they
might get into the theatre.
That Fanny Kemble was as angelic
as New York, by the record, believed
her to be, or that she possessed the
genius which her immediate presence
and prestige made common talk, is now
one of those Understandable facts that
are buried in the dark backward and
abysm Of time" But it is certain that
all the chivalry, the gallantry, and en-
thusiasm of our fathers went out to her
spontaneously, and 1, who came a lit
tie later, smelt the asphodes that had
been flung before In my tender fancy
sweet Fanny Kemble grew to be lost
ideal. I must have constructed for her
unconsciously an ivory throne in my
imagination. She became the criterion
by which measured other belauded
women. For a long time afterwards,
when 1 heard anybody praising Anna
Cora Mowatt, or Julia dean; or Char
lotte Cushman, I corrected that rash
erson by reminding him that, there
was sweet Fanny Kennble, you know"
as if she had fixed the limit of human
achievement.
Fanny Kemble came to this country
in 1882. 1 did not see her till she came
back here in the sixties to read for us
at Steinway hall. Fancy my surprise
at coming suddenly upon little old
lady dressed in black and wearing the
indisputable air of grande dame.
There is no evolution in ones youthful
ideals. They may be broken, but they
cannot be made to develop and the
best we can do is to trade them off for
newer ideals. The sweet Fanny KEN
Bile that was my private possession
rather resented the coming back of this
old lady.
She had matured into a woman of
very decided opinions, slightly queru-
1ous, I thought, but sharply intelligent,
and with a somewhat acrid but we'll
bred dignity. She had seen too much |
of the better and higher aspects of life !
not to be worth listening to when she |
talked about the theatre, and once on |
that subject, the purely theatrical skunk
out of sight and the dramatic, with the
loyalty of an old retainer, swept cour-
teously to her side She came literally
out of the past to me, and 1 treated her
with a venera ton that / think of now
with a smile. But one cannot go
through this youthful experience of the
feeding it with stale en-
thusiasms without feeling at the same
time that there is a growing interroga-
ton in his reasoning faculties. He tries
to separate the myths from the facts
How often had I endeavored to realize
the glory Of the Kemble school, SO va
que and spectral now to the best stu
dent. Was John Philip Kemble as
great as his contemporaries thought
him to be? How would his greatness
apear if adjusted to our later stand
ards? How far away the reality Is from
the nimbus that remains.
Then it was that had to learn that
4 great deal OF the written glory of the
actor belongs wholly to his time, and
that the evidence of it, even when
transmitted correctly loses all the
simmer of reality. The dramatic aura ]
belongs to the conditions that surround [
t. In one Of my conversations with ,
Mrs. Butler I told her how the accounts s
If her first visit to America had af- /
ected my youthful ardor. Though s
much of her talk at that time has es- {
,aped my memory, clearly recall one I
emark of hers. THE best part of the
tage's record" she said, +" is made up 6
If it's ghost stories" II
There was about that speech an inef- /
able and mature sadness, almost like /
reproach. / have often since detect t
d in other aged actresses the same film '
# melancholy hanging like curtain r
,etween the tone and the sense Of their v
words. Ghost stories. What a sum- c
nary Lnai is of ones SusCepIlDillIleS ! :,