The Birmingham age-herald., 1920-12-04
M E N w O M FEN
 A ND T HIN c s

it is proud-Mary Anderson, our own gifted southern actress. and Mary Gar den, the world-famous prima donna who is soon to make her appearance here. l Mary Garden is also ours in spite of the fact that she was born in Aber- deen. Scotland, as she left there when she was orly years old, and has been away long enough to become a good American; and she is one, all right, as she amply proved during the great war. l My what a combination-Scottish born, Yankee bred and Paris broke. Do you wonder that she has the canniness of old Scotland in her bones, the resourceful- ness of a daughter of this great republic in her veins, and the daring of the ParIsienne in her heart. She is perfect 1 feminine trinity
 | Now. she has not written a book all about herself as has Geraldine Farrar, or if so, I have failed to connect with it. l am sorry, for I wanted to search it's pages for something to build this story on. As it does not exist in fact, I sup pose I will have to do as many another stances, just construct it out of my inner consciousness. This seems to have been the method of one James Huneker, who has got rec ognition as dramatic critic and literary man on account of his ability to write great stuff around actresses, operatic stars, musicians and other celebrities. 1 do not mean that he composes without some sound basis for his comments, yet I know of no one who can take a slender personal fact and weave around 1t as many outside things as he does.
 1 sea rched his story about Mary Gar den for some biographical data, but was only slightly rewarded He might well answer that he was not attempting to write biography, but was simply indulg' ing in an appreciation of her and the parts she has essayed. There is. no kick or his erudition when it comes to mar shalling all the singers past and present
  almost buries her beneath the mass of his encyclopedical knowledge.
 For example, was eager to find some true or Apocryphal story of Mary's child hood in order to match the distinctive bla white checked stockings which Geraldine wore when she gave notice tC her family that she wanted to be let alone. Those stockings were something put his hands on and know that beneath his touch there was solid flesh, some thing to stroke or pat. N But here is the way Huneker leads up to enc of Mary's foibles in the oays Of her childhood: That little girl down Bos- ton way, who had mastered William James and Boris Sidis before she was in her teens, behaved badly one afternoon. Possibly it was the sultry weather, or growing pains, in the psychic sphere. of , course, or perhaps it may have been due to the reflexes from prolonged at- | tention to the Freudian psycho-analysis I and the significance of Twilight Sleep:' but whatever the cause, that precocious child flew off her serene handle and lit- orally 'sassed' the entire household ! You might well suppose that Huneker, having gotten the above out of his system. that he would have been willing to quit, but you do not know James. He went ~I,e afterward described it as a uric acid storm, and order reigning once more in Bach Bay, she was severely interrogated I by her male parent to the why's and wherefores of her singular deviation from , accustomed glacial intellectual objectivity. Her answer was in the proper key: My multiple personalities failed to co-ordi- nate. Hence the distressing lack of cen tripetal functioning.' Of course, this is a take-off on Boston culture"
 
 i Let's stick to the text: ''She was im- mediately forgiven. Multiple personali- ties are to blame for much in this vale of tears; that is, if you are unlucky or lucky enough to be possessed of the seven devils of psychology" I came up for breath at this point, and was rewarded by finding: Mary Garden was, no doubt, naughty little girl in her time. That she climbed trees. fought boys twice her size, stuck out her tongue at pious folk, scandalized her parents. and tore from the heads of nice girls handfuls of hair, I am sure" Having endowed her with the demon of multiple personalities, I am willing to believe in the recorded cata- logue of her childish crimes.
 l
 l I was just on the point of laying aside "Bedouins,' the book in which I was cleaning the above. when at the bottom of the page my eyes lit On the following, l in speaking of signs and omens on the part of her mother Her mother before her birth had dreamed wonderful dreams; dreamed and prayer that she might be. come singer. But even her maternal l intuition gould not have foreseen such a swan triumphantly swimming through the troubled waters of life. A swan, did say? A condor, an eagle. a peacock, a nightingale, panther, a society dame | gallery >of moving pictures, siren, an Iindonitable fighter, human woman with l a heart as big as house, a lover oi sport, an electric personality, and a canny Scotch lassie who can force from ar operatic manager walls of aguish because of bar cJoSo harpanino over a contract