Mary Anderson | Page 4

parts as Hamlet, Romeo, and Richard III. With the wonderful intuition of an art-nature, she seems to have felt that the cultivation of the voice was a first essential to success. She ransacked her father's library for works on elocution, and discovering on one occasion "Rush on the Voice," proceeded, for many weeks before it became known to her parents, to commence under its guidance the task of building up a somewhat weak and ineffective organ into a voice capable of expressing with ease the whole gamut of feeling from the fiercest passion to the tenderest sentiment, and which can fill with a whisper the largest theater.
The passion for a theatrical career seems to have been born in the child. At ten she would recite passages from Shakespeare, and arrange her room to represent appropriately the stage scene. Her first visit to the theater was when she was about twelve, one winter's evening, to see a fairy piece called "Puck." The house was only a short distance from her home at Louisville, and she and her little brother presented themselves at the entrance door hours before the time announced for the performance. The door-keeper happened to observe the children, and thinking they would freeze standing outside in the wintry wind, good naturedly opened the door and admitted Mary Anderson to Paradise--or what seemed like it to her--the empty benches of the dress circle, the dim half-light, the mysterious horizon of dull green curtain, beyond which lay Fairyland. Here for two or three hours she sat entranced, till the peanut boy made his appearance to herald the approach of the glories of the evening. From that date the die of Mary Anderson's destiny was cast. The theater became her world. She looked with admiring interest on a super, or even a bill-sticker, as they passed the windows of her father's house; and an actor seen in the streets in the flesh filled her with the same reverent awe and admiration as though the gods had descended from their serene heights to mingle in the dust with common mortals. We are not sure that she still retains this among the other illusions of her youth!
The person who seems to have fixed Mary Anderson's theatrical destiny was one Henry Woude. He had been an actor of some distinction on the American stage, which he had, however, abandoned for the pulpit. Mr. Woude happened to be one of her father's patients, and the conversation turning one day upon Mary's passion for a theatrical career, the older actor expressed a wish to hear her read. He was enthusiastic in praise of the power and promise displayed by the self-trained girl, and declared to the astonished father that in his youthful daughter he possessed a second Rachel. Mr. Woude advised an immediate training for a dramatic career; but the parental repugnance to the stage was not yet overcome, and Mary remained a while longer to pursue, as best she might, her dramatic studies in her own home, and with no other teachers than the artistic instinct which had already guided her so far on the path to eventual triumph and success.
When in her fourteenth year, Mary Anderson saw for the first time a really great actor. Edwin Booth came on a starring tour to Louisville, and she witnessed his Richard III., one of the actor's most powerful impersonations. That night was a new revelation to her in dramatic art, and she returned home to lie awake for hours, sleepless from excitement, and pondering whether it were possible that she could ever wield the same magic power. She commenced at once the serious study of "Richard III." The manner of Booth was carefully copied, and that great artist would doubtless have been as much amused as flattered to note the servility with which his rendering of the part was adhered to. A preliminary rehearsal took place in the kitchen before a little colored girl, some years Mary Anderson's senior, who had that devoted attachment to her young mistress often found in the colored races to the whites. Dinah was so much terrified by the fierce declamation that she almost went into hysterics, and rushing up-stairs begged the mother to come down and see what was the matter with "Miss Mami," as she was affectionately called at home. Consent was at length obtained to a little drawing-room entertainment at home of "Richard III.," with Miss Mary Anderson for the first and last time in the title role. For some months the young debutante had carefully saved her pocket money for the purchase of an appropriate costume, and, resisting, as best she might, the attractions of the sweetmeat shop, managed to accumulate five dollars. With her mother's help a little costume was got up--a purple satin tunic, green silk