New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1911-05-14

study and self-discipline for the almost
tragic omissions Of her childhood. The
greed of the old Jewish pedler was in
her veins, and, worse than that. she had
in her blood q coarse bohemianism which
never left her. The classic drama was
not only her opportunity but her safe
guard. Sir Theodore Martin has we'll re-
marked that 'if. instead Of Corneille and
Racine, Rachel had been called upon to
illustrate Shakespeare with all the va
riety of infection and subtlety Of devel-
opment which his heroines demand In the
performer, she must we believe. have
utterly failed" But reflections on her
failures, actual or hypothetical. are. after
all, little irrelevant. In the roles suited
to her, in which she made her fame, her
work had Incompatible fire and beauty.
That. to use the words Of the poet. is all
we know and all We need to know.
It was enough for all those who had
any discernment among her contem-
poraries. and 1t Is significant that despite
the general knowledge Of her baser traits
her friends included many of the best
minds Of her time. The very fdubouug
that was ultimately obliged to draw In Its
skirts from fear Of her communicating
touch had to admit that 1t had learned
something from her diction. had to con-
fess itself fascinated And when she
died, not only a victim to consumption
but worn out by work and dissipation. II
was with the pity due to wrecked genius
that she was followed to the grave.
Deiazet, that other great actress, whom
she had robbed Of lover. expressed the
common thought when she flung violets
upon her rivals coffin and exclaimed,
"Pauvre femme! All, la pauvre femme!"
She did some evil, in the short course
Of her fevered career. but she is a ma
jestic and sorrowful apparation In the
history Of the stage, and II has been upon
poignant and even solemn note that
most OF her commentators have preferred
to linger They do not ignore what was
sordid and dark in her life, but remeb-
bering how Ill equipped she was TO face
the world, the agonies Of the disease
which ravaged her, and the wolfish habit
of that Paris into which she was flung
while still a mere girl, they look In sad
COMPASSION upon her lawlessness and
find poetic justice in her epitaph as 1t Is
written in Matthew Arnold's three SON.
nets:
In Paris all look'd hot and like to fade.
Sere in the garden Of the Tuileries.
Sere with September. droop'd tho chestnut
Twas dawn; brougham rolrd through tho
streets and made
Halt at the white and silent colonnsde
OF the French Theatre. Worn with disease,
Rachel. with eyes no gazing can appease,
Safe in the brougham and those blank
walls surveyed
She follows the gay world, whose swarms
To Switzerland, to Baden, to the Rhine:
why stops she by this empty playhouse
drear?
All. where the spisjt its highest life hath
All spots. matchd with that spot. are less
And Rachers Switzerland. her Rhine. is
here
Unto a lonely villa, In a dell
Above the fragrant warm Provencal shore.
The DYING Rachel in q chair they bore
Up the steep pine-plumed paths OF the
Estrelle,
And laid her in a stately room. where fell
The shadow of a marble Muse OF yore.
Tho rose-crown'd queen Of legendary lore
PoIymnia full on her deathbed.-'Twas
well!
Tho fret and misery OF our northern towns
In this her lifes last day, our poor. our
Our jangle Of false wits. our climates
frowns,
Do for this radiant Greek-sould artist
cease:
Sole object Of her dying eyes remain
The beauty and the glorious art OF Greece.
III.
Sprung from the blood OF Israers scat
ter'd race,
At q mean inn in German Aarau born,
To forms from antique Greece and Rome
Trick'd out with a Partisan speech and
face,
Imparting life renewd. old classic grace:
Then. soothing with thy Christian strain
forlorLs