At Home.

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Long Branch, one of America’s most famous watering-places, in midsummer, its softly-wooded hills dotted here and there with picturesque “frame” villas of dazzling white, and below the purple Atlantic sweeping in restlessly on to the New Jersey shore. The sultry day has been one of summer storm, and the waves are tipped still with crests of snowy foam, though now the sun is sinking peacefully to rest amid banks of cloud, aflame with rose and violet and gold.

About a mile back from the shore stands a rambling country house embosomed in a small park a few acres in extent, and immediately surrounding it masses of the magnificent shrub known as Rose of Sharon, in full bloom, in which the walls of snowy white, with their windows gleaming in the sunlight, seem set as in a bed of color. The air is full of perfume. The scent of flower and tree rises gratefully from the rain-laden earth. The birds make the air musical with song; and here and there in the neighboring wood, the pretty brown squirrels spring from branch to branch, and dash down with their gambols the rain drops in a diamond spray. A broad veranda covered with luxuriant honeysuckle and clematis stretches along the eastern front of the house, and the wide bay window, thrown open just now to the summer wind, seems framed in flowers. As we approach nearer, the deep, rich notes of an organ strike upon the ear. Some one, with seeming unconsciousness, is producing a sweet passionate music, which changes momentarily with the player’s passing mood. We pause an instant and look into the

room. Here is a picture which might be called “a dream of fair women.” Seated at the organ in the subdued light is a young woman of a strange, almost startling beauty. Her graceful figure clad in a simple black robe, unrelieved by a single ornament, is slight, and almost girlish, though there is a rounded fullness in its line which betrays that womanhood has been reached. A small classic head carried with easy grace; finely chiseled features; full, deep, gray eyes; and crowning all a wealth of auburn hair, from which peeps, as she turns, a pink, shell-like ear; these complete a picture which seems to belong to another clime and another age, and lives hardly but on the canvas of Titian. We are almost sorry to enter the room and break the spell. Mary Anderson’s manner as she starts up from the organ with a light elastic spring to greet her visitors is singularly gracious and winning. There is a frank fearlessness in the beautiful speaking eyes so full of poetry and soul, a mingled tenderness and decision in the mouth, with an utter absence of that

self-consciousness and coquetry which often mar the charm of even the most beautiful face. This is the artist’s study to which she flies back gladly, now and then, for a few weeks’ rest and relaxation from the exacting life of a strolling player, whose days are spent wandering in pursuit of her profession over the vast continent which stretches from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Here she may be found often busy with her part when the faint rose begins to steal over the tree tops at early dawn; or sometimes when the world is asleep, and the only sounds are the wind, as it sighs mournfully through the neighboring wood, or the far-off murmur of the Atlantic waves as they dash sullenly upon the beach. On a still summer’s night she will wander sometimes, a fair Rosalind, such as Shakespeare would have loved, in the neighboring grove, and wake its silent echoes as she recites the Great Master’s lines; or she will stand upon the flower-clad veranda, under the moonlight, her hair stirred softly by the summer wind, and it

becomes to her the balcony from which Juliet murmurs the story of her love to a ghostly Romeo beneath.

A large English deerhound, who was dozing at her feet when we entered the room, starts up with his mistress, and after a lazy stretch seems to ask to join in the welcome. Mary Anderson explains that he is an old favorite, dear from his resemblance to a hound which figures in some of the portraits of Mary Queen of Scots. He has failed ignominiously in an attempted training for a dramatic career, and can do no more than howl a doleful and distracting accompaniment to his mistress’ voice in singing. We glance round the room, and see that the walls are covered with portraits of eminent actors, living and dead, with here and there bookcases filled with favorite dramatic authors; in a corner a bust of Shakespeare; and on a velvet stand a stage dagger which once belonged to Sarah Siddons. Over the mantelpiece is a huge elk’s head, which fell to the rifle of General Crook, and was presented to Mary Anderson by that renowned American hunter; and here, under a glass case, is a stuffed hawk, a deceased actor and former colleague. Dressed in appropriate costume he used to take

the part of the Hawk in Sheridan Knowles’ comedy of “Love,” in which Mary Anderson played the Countess. The story of this bird’s training is as characteristic of her passion for stage realism as of that indomitable power of will to overcome obstacles, to which much of her success is due. She determined to have a live hawk for the part instead of the conventional stuffed one of the stage, and with some difficulty procured a half-wild bird from a menagerie. Arming herself with strong spectacles and heavy gauntlets, she spent many a weary day in the painful process of “taming the shrew.” After a long struggle, in which she came off sometimes torn and bleeding, the bird was taught to fly from the falconer’s shoulder on to her outstretched finger and stay there while she recited the lines—

“How nature fashioned him for his bold trade!

Gave him his stars of eyes to range abroad.

His wings of glorious spread to mow the air

And breast of might to use them!”

and then, by tickling his feet, he would fly off: and flap his wings appropriately, while she went on—

“I delight

To fly my hawk. The hawk’s a glorious bird;

Obedient—yet a daring, dauntless bird!”

Here, too, are her guitar and zither, on both which instruments Mary Anderson is a proficient.

And now that we have seen all her treasures, we must follow her to the top of the house, from which is obtained a fine view of the Atlantic as it races in mighty waves on to the beach at Long Branch. She declares that in the offing, among the snowy craft which dance at anchor there, can be distinguished her pretty steam yacht, the Galatea.

Night is falling fast, but with that impulsiveness which is so characteristic of her, Mary Anderson insists upon our paying a visit to the stables to see her favorite mare, Maggie Logan. Poor Maggie is now blind with age, but in her palmy days she could carry her mistress, who is a splendid horsewoman, in a flight of five miles across the prairie in sixteen minutes. As we enter the box, Maggie turns her pretty head at sound of the familiar voice, and in response to a gentle hint, her mistress produces a piece of sugar from her pocket. As Mary Anderson strokes the fine thoroughbred head, we think the pair are not very much unlike. Meanwhile, Maggie’s stable companion cranes his beautiful neck over the side of the box, and begs for the caress which is not denied him.

Night has fallen now in earnest, and the beaming colored boy holds his lantern to guide us along the path, while Maggie whinnies after us her adieu. The grasshoppers chirp merrily in the sodden grass, and now and then a startled rabbit darts out of the wood and crosses close to our feet. The light is almost blinding as we enter the cheerful dining-room, where supper is laid on the snowy cloth, and are introduced to the charming family circle of the Long Branch villa. Though it is the home now of an old Southerner, Mary Anderson’s step-father, it is a favorite trysting-place with Grant, the hero of the North, with Sherman, and many another famous man, between whom and the South there raged twenty years ago so deadly and prolonged a feud. While not actually a daughter of the South by birth, Mary Anderson is such by early education and associations, and to these grim old soldiers she seems often the emblem of Peace, as they sit in the pretty drawing-room at Long Branch, and listen, sometimes with tear-dimmed eyes, to the sweet

tones of her voice as she sings for them their favorite songs.

Birth and Education.

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Seldom has a more charming story been written than that of Mary Anderson’s childhood and youth to the time when, a beautiful girl of sixteen, she made her debut in what has ever since remained her favorite role, Juliet—and the only Juliet who has ever played the part at the same age since Fanny Kemble.

There was nothing in her home surroundings to guide in the direction of a dramatic career; indeed her parents seemed to have entertained the not uncommon dread of the temptations and dangers of a stage life for their daughter, and only yielded at last before the earnest passionate purpose to which so much of Mary Anderson’s after success is due. They bent wisely at length before the mysterious power of genius which shone out in the beautiful child long before she was able fully to understand whither the resistless promptings to tread the “mimic stage of life” were leading her. In the end the New World gained an actress of whom it may be well proud, and the Old World has been fain to confess that it has no monopoly of the highest types of histrionic genius.

Mary Anderson was born at Sacramento, on the Pacific slope, on the 28th of July, 1859, but removed with her parents to Kentucky, when but six months old. German and English blood are mingled in her veins, her mother being of German descent, while her father was the grandson of an Englishman. On the outbreak of the civil war he joined the ranks of the Southern armies, and fell fighting under the Confederate flag before Mobile. When but three years old Mary Anderson was left fatherless, and a year or two afterward she and her little brother Joseph found almost more than a father’s love and care in her mother’s second husband, Dr. Hamilton Griffin, an old Southern planter, who had abandoned his plantations at the outbreak of the war, and after a successful career as an army surgeon, established himself in practice at Louisville.

Mary Anderson’s early years were characteristic of her future. She was one of those children whose wild artist nature chafes under the restraints of home and school life. Generous to a fault, the life and soul of her companions, yet to control her taxed to their utmost the parental resources; and it must be admitted she was the torment of her teachers. Her wild exuberant spirits overleaped the bounds of school life, and sometimes made order and discipline difficult of enforcement. She was never known to tell an untruth, but at the same time she would never confess to a fault. Imprisoned often for punishment in a room, she would steadfastly refuse to admit that she had done wrong, and, maternal patience exhausted, the mutinous little culprit had commonly to be released impenitent and unconfessed. Indeed her wildness acquired for her the name of “Little Mustang;” as, later on, her fondness for poring over books beyond her childish years that of “Little Newspaper.” At school, the confession must be made, she was refractory and idle. The prosaic routine of school

life was dull and distasteful to the child, who, at ten years of age, found her highest delight in the plays of Shakespeare. Many of her school hours were spent in a corner, face to the wall, and with a book on her head, to restrain the mischievous habit of making faces at her companions, which used to convulse the school with ill-suppressed laughter. She would sally forth in the morning with her little satchel, fresh and neat as a daisy, to return at night with frock in rents, and all the buttons, if any way ornamental, given away in an impulsive generosity to her schoolmates. It soon became evident that she would learn little or nothing at school; and on a faithful promise to amend her ways if she might only leave and pursue her studies at home, Mary Anderson was permitted, when but thirteen years of age, to terminate her school career. But instead of studying “Magnall’s Questions,” or becoming better acquainted with “The Use of the Globes,” she spent most of her time in devouring the pages of Shakespeare, and committing favorite passages to memory. To her

childish fancy they seemed to open the gates of dreamland, where she could hold converse with a world peopled by heroes, and live a life apart from the prosaic everyday existence which surrounded her in a modern American town. Shakespeare was the teacher who replaced the “school marm,” with her dull and formal lessons. Her quick perceptive mind grasped his great and noble thoughts, which gave a vigor and robustness to her mental growth. Since those days she has assimilated rather than acquired knowledge, and there are now few women of her age whose information is more varied, or whose conversation displays greater mental culture, and higher intellectual development. Strangely enough, it was the male characters of Shakespeare which touched Mary Anderson’s youthful fancy; and she studied with a passionate ardor such 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 cape, and plumed hat—and wearing the traditional hump, the youthful, representative of Richard appeared for the first time before an audience in the Tent Scene, preceded by the Cottage Scene from “The Lady of Lyons.” The back drawing-room was arranged as a stage; her mother acting as prompter, though her help was little needed; and, judged by the enthusiastic applause of friends and neighbors, the performance was a great success. The young actress received it all with even more apparent coolness than if

she had trodden the boards for years, and made her exits with the calm dignity which she had observed to be Edwin Booth’s manner under similar circumstances. Indeed, Booth became to her childish fancy the divinity who could open to her the door of the stage she longed so ardently to reach. She confided to the little colored girl a plan to save their money, and fly to New York to Mr. Booth, and ask him to place her on the stage. Dinah entered heartily into the affair, and at one time they had managed to hoard as much as five dollars for the carrying out of this romantic scheme. Some years afterward when the wish of her heart had been long accomplished, Mary Anderson made Mr. Booth’s acquaintance, and recounting to him her childish fancy asked what he would have done if she had succeeded in presenting herself to him in New York. “Why, my child, I should have taken you down to the depot, bought a couple of tickets for Louisville, and given you in charge of the conductor,” was the rather discouraging answer of the great tragedian.