IT

T is somewhat strange that the quotation from Joanna Baillie's "Jane de Montfort," with which Campbell sketched a portrait of Mrs. Siddons, should answer almost equally well for a description of the great Italian's stage appearance.

"Lady. How looks her countenance?

Page. So queenly, so commanding, and so noble, I shrunk at first in awe; but when she smiled, Methought I could have compassed sea and land To do her bidding.

As he too had been awed.

"Lady. The foolish stripling!

She has bewitched thee.

Is she large in stature?
"Page. So stately and so graceful in her form,
I thought at first her stature was gigantic ;
But on a near approach I found in truth
She scarcely does surpass the middle size."

Ristori the woman, however, is as unlike Ristori the artist, as her real character differs from that of Elisabetta or Medea. If we may credit the assertions of biography and tradition, Mrs. Siddons was always, though unintentionally, more or less of a tragedy queen. She "stabbed the potatoes," astounded shopkeepers by the majesty with which she inquired whether material for clothing would wash, and frightened her dressing-maid by the sepulchral intensity of her exclamations. The awe which Ristori frequently excites is confined entirely to the theatre. Away from it she is the most human, and humane, - the most simple, the most unaffected, the most sympathetic of women. So strongly is the line drawn between reality and fiction, that in Ristori's presence it requires a mental effort to recall her histrionic greatness, though you have a sense of her power, and you feel persuaded that whatever such a woman earnestly willed would be accomplished.

The large friendliness in Ristori's nature creates a fellow-feeling, making you wondrous kind toward your own personality, and razing those barriers

with which genius often surrounds itself. To excite love as well as admiration is not always in the power of greatness. There is frequently an intolerance of manner, an assertion of superiority, a species of intellectual scorn for the dead level of humanity, that preclude the possibility of sympathy. Yet there is no surer test of grandeur of character than a readiness to acknowledge and respect the individuality of all God's creatures. This is the crowning grace that brings Ristori so near to the hearts of her friends. Her social ease makes you wonder how she can ever be transformed into the classic statue of Mirra. Rachel was so complete a Pagan princess"Elle pose toujours," said her best friends that she never succeeded in being herself. Both she and Siddons were first artists, and then women. Ristori is first a woman, and then an artist. Which is more satisfactory to the world admits of argument, but for ourselves we believe it better to step from nature to art than from art to nature. In acting, the common should precede the uncommon; one must be a creature of every day, and walk upon the earth, in order to be a complete master of the heart. It is not enough that an actor know how to wear a toga. To live in his own age, and love and laugh with his contemporaries, is as necessary as to suffer, hate, and murder after the fashion of the past.

It is not often that Nature does her work equally. She gives us beauty without wit, and then again wit without beauty. She fashions a distorted mouth, and demands that a fine eye make amends for all short-comings. She places a beautiful head on a diminutive, unattractive body, as in the case of Junius Brutus Booth. She gave the erratic Edmund Kean a bad voice, and breathed a Greek fire into the fragile form of Rachel. Garrick

was too short, and Salvini, though handsome, is too stout. But Nature favored the Kembles, and was again in her best mood when she created Adelaide Ristori. She gave her height to command, and added a bearing that would befit the ideal queen. Cast in the large mould of the Venus of Milo, Ristori's figure is finely proportioned, while the modelling of her throat is a study for a Michel Angelo. Her hand has no claim to beauty, but makes up in expression what it lacks in symmetry. Her head is not the Greek classic, but rather belongs to the type of the Madonna, for whom she has so often been the model. Her face is oval, her features regular, her nose perfectly Roman, her teeth beautiful, and her mouth and chin very fine. Her ear is small and shell-like, and her hair dark brown. Her eyes are that most enviable of all colors, dark gray, - enviable for the reason that it may be everything by turns and nothing long, black, or even blue, according to the passion of the moment. We never saw an eye that was capable of such varied emotion, and in fact, for mobility of feature Ristori stands alone. It is said of Talma, that he had only to pass his hand over his face to alternate "from grave to gay, from lively to severe." Ristori needs the interposition of no such veil to undergo the most wonderful facial transformation. Her walk also is most admirable. It is no stilted strut, no conventional stride, it is the tread of majesty.

Although Ristori's poses are often very beautiful, they are more frequently striking than purely statuesque, and occasionally there is just enough angularity of movement prevent her being accorded perfect grace. Nor, in spite of fine physical attributes, do we now claim for her the great beauty she once possessed. A few years ago, Ristori's appearance was alone sufficient to excite the greatest enthusiasm. Passion, not time, has wrought a change. No one can possess her temperament without intensity of feeling, and emotion leaves its ineffaceable mark. A

woman who from childhood has fought the world single-handed, and has lived half her life in depicting the terrible sufferings of a Marie Stuart, a Juliet, a Mirra, and a Francesca da Rimini, is doomed to pay the penalty of genius, — and heart, for Ristori not only depicts, but becomes, each character. With her nothing is a cool calculation. Her quick impulses constitute her greatness. Surrounded by such cares and vexations as would thoroughly absorb almost any other human being, we have seen her, at a suggestion, forget the present, live for the moment, and, with the greatest animation in the subject of her narration, at its conclusion as quickly return to the disagreeable realities confronting her, and then rush on the stage to astonish people by her acting. It is this impulse, too, which renders her recitations so fine. In a drawing-room, where the liveliest imagination cannot conjure up the shadow of an illusion, in the lecture-room before an audience ignorant of her language and of most stolid aspect, Ristori sees nothing but her art, and by her own enthusiasm creates life under the ribs of death. Sensitive to moral atmospheres, she yet depends entirely upon her character for inspiration. Being outside of herself, applause is not a necessity. This is the secret of her success in countries where Italian is no more intelligible than Greek. Moreover, with all her sense of humor, her nature is thoroughly earnest. She takes life seriously. We never saw a person who put more conscience into work, whether of much or of little import. "Everything that is worth doing at all is worth doing well," is the first article of her creed, and is illustrated as forcibly in the packing of a trunk as in the deathscene of Elizabeth.

Though the brilliant bloom of her girlhood has yielded to the more interesting beauty of expression, first youth seems to have left Ristori's face only to linger the more lovingly in her voice. That "excellent thing in woman" is, in Ristori, an organ so wonderfully melodious that the ear delights

in its music even when no sense is conveyed to the mind. There is not a note in the register of human passion, but is richly rounded, and bursts forth grandly at the will of the artist. Italian from Ristori's mouth is the ideal of harmony, and Dante is twice Dante when he finds in her an interpreter. Listening as she tells the story of Francesca da Rimini, we see Francesca's self, and hear her heart-broken wail as Ristori sighs forth,

"Nessun maggior dolore

Che ricordarsi del tempo felice
Nella miseria."

In according to Ristori the highest order of dramatic genius, we merely allow what has long since been decided beyond appeal by the critical tribunals of France, Italy, Germany, England, and Spain. For the New World, therefore, to cry, Brava ! is to make no discovery: we crown a long-acknowledged queen. America may make fortune, but cannot make fame, for an artist; and it will be many a year ere cultivated Europe listens respectfully to our verdict in art. Those will be "time-bettering days" when our intellectual equals our moral conscience, and public opinion is founded upon principle. To-day, our criticism is, for the most part, either actuated by sentiment or prejudice; and, in the absence of real appreciation, we have made Ristori's advent in America the signal for a dramatic feud, the public arraying itself, according to feeling, under one of two standards, – the name of Rachel being opposed to that of her Italian rival. Is this criticism? Is this love of the drama? "We are, in truth, great children," wrote Jules Janin some years ago. "When we have amused ourselves for some time with a pretty plaything, if another one is given to us we immediately forget the first. It is fortunate if we do not break it by striking on it with the new one. We had a beautiful tragic toy, Mademoiselle Rachel. The Italians show us another, Ristori. Crac! Here we are about to smash Rachel with Ristori, as if the dramatic art were not vast enough to afford two places of

honor to two women of different kinds of talent, yet equal in their sublimity."

It is miserable warfare. He who most truly appreciated the greatness of Rachel will be the first to proclaim that of Ristori, and he who compares the one with the other is simply attempting to make black white. There can be no parallel between things that are in themselves unlike. Rachel and Ristori fill different niches in the great dramatic Pantheon, and receive different offerings. We do not cavil because Phidias was a sculptor, and Apelles a painter, and demand that the one should have been the other. Rachel was a Phidias ; Ristori's genius is rather that of an Apelles. It seems to us that in what she made the study of her life Rachel as nearly approached perfection as humanity may. Now, however, that death has thrown its romance and illusion around la grande tragédienne, it is insisted by her worshippers that their idol could do no wrong. Yet Rachel living was open to criticism; Rachel dead is no less vulnerable. Madame Waldor, a French writer, said of her, years ago, "That little girl has received of Heaven a great gift, but with it she has neither heart nor brains." That she had little heart was fully proved by her extraordinary career; that she was endowed with a great gift is undeniable. Devoid of heart, an actress is devoid of human sympathy, without which genius is confined to narrow limits. It may be unequalled within those boundaries; beyond them it falls to the level of mediccrity. In Horace, Phèdre, Cinna, Andromaque, Tancrète, Iphigénie en Aulide, Mithridate, and Bajazet, Rachel reigned supreme. All these characters were within the compass of her gift, and woe be to the actress who now attempts these rôles.

Educated in the best and only school of dramatic art, with Sanson always at her side, it was impossible for Rachel to acquire mannerisms or faults of style. From the first, she assumed those characters for which she was intended by nature; and although, in memory of Phèdre, we are tempted to declare that

Rachel could alone interpret Racine, yet it would be absurd to maintain that the actress properly interpreted all the works of her master. Such of Racine's heroines as are ruled by the softer emotions, or by principle, had no breath of life breathed into them by Rachel. A Jewess, she nevertheless failed in Esther, a womanly woman not being dreamt of in her philosophy; nor was she more successful in Bérénice, where duty is the key-note of character. Corneille also at times exceeded Rachel's powers, the religious element in Polyeucte defying her, and the Chimene of his Cid being an acknowledged misconception. In the romantic drama Rachel was not at ease, although she is still remembered as Marie Stuart, Adrienne Lecouvreur, and Tisbe, the Actress of Padua. Apart from her exquisite dressing, Rachel, measured by herself, was a disappointment in the last-named play. Her Marie Stuart was not comparable with Ristori's. She hated superbly in the third act, but she hated as a fiend, not as the Queen of Scots, and was too good a Pagan to be a true Catholic in the final scene. "Chez l'une il y a de la hauteur, chez l'autre, l'élévation," is the verdict of an able French writer. Adrienne Lecouvreur was written for Rachel, but, according to her biographer, "it was certainly more as a pretty woman than as a finished artiste that she won admiration in her rendering of Adrienne's character." Of the other seven or eight characters created by Rachel, Madame de Girardin's Lady Tartuffe was the only one that succeeded in running the gauntlet of Parisian criticism.

Madame Waldor's charge of want of brains seems hardly credible, yet Rachel's ignorance of matters in which it was her business to be well informed furnishes food for much wonderment, and no little doubt. Prominent was her painful obliquity in judging of dramatic literature, pure whim being the only apparent motive which led her to accept or reject plays. Neither were her costumes always in character, her

first dress in Marie Stuart being regal in brilliancy, notwithstanding that the Queen of Scots is imprisoned and intentionally deprived by Elizabeth of every article of luxury, even to a looking-glass! So unenlightened was Rachel on the subject of her heroine, that, after her début in Le Brun's fearful version of Schiller's drama, a good friend thought fit to present the counterfeit Stuart with a history of Scotland; yet the extraordinary dressing continued unto the end, for Rachel was vain. Naturally content with the beauty of her Greek head, it was some time before she could be persuaded to wear a wig in Adrienne Lecouvreur; and her only objection to Madame de Girardin's very objectionable play of Cleopatra was that the author should have given her lover the plebeian name of Antony! Again, in attempting comedy Rachel showed an extraordinary mental hallucination, if not weakness. We are told that she was never so happy as when arrayed for Molière's soubrettes, in which she made a complete fiasco. At the Odéon, in 1844, "she sorely tried the patience of the spectators " by her rendering of Dorinne in Tartuffe; but, not persuaded of her inability to excel Mademoiselle Mars, she once more attempted Molière, undertaking the rôle of Célimène in Le Misanthrope before a London audience. Even England refused to nod approval.

But Rachel's limitations do not render her the less a genius in her own sphere; on the contrary, concentration of force brings with it increase of power, nor is it probably an exaggeration to state that the world will never look upon her like again. There is always a supply for every demand, but in the economy of nature there is no waste of matter or spirit; and though the stage requires great actresses, it does not ask for Rachels, for the very good reason that the classical drama is dead. Once France believed in it; once France demanded that there should be no other school, and made grimaces before the mirror which Shakespeare held up to nature. Those "superannuated preju

dices" died with Talma. In spite of beauty and smoothness of language, the classical drama of France is a base imitation, a degenerate echo of former ages, antiquity in court clothes, Greece without her soul. France at last realizes that the masters of her idiom, whose spirit is utterly opposed to her awakened genius, are not masters of a national drama. After the death of Mademoiselle Duchesnoir, a famous Phèdre, Racine and Corneille became the bêtes noires of theatre-loving Parisians, who, at the rising of the star, Rachel, spent their enthusiasm upon manner, not matter. The actress was an incarnation this they could understand and appreciate. Rachel galvanized a corpse, and seems to have been born into the world that the setting sun of the classical drama might be glorious and brilliant. We think, therefore, that there will be no more Rachels; we feel that, if the romantic drama is to live, there must be other Ristoris.

There is no common ground upon which Rachel and Ristori can meet. Their conceptions of Phèdre may be compared, but not their genius. Ristori makes a tour de force of what with Rachel was bone of her bone and flesh of her flesh. She is noble in it; her reading is beautiful, as it ever is; and some of her points, particularly in the fourth act, are fine; but we do not feel a character. Ristori's large humanity speaks through it all, and we heartily wish that Phèdre had never been translated. Rachel was fifteen years in mastering the idea of this wretched daughter of the monster Pasiphae. How useless, then, to look for an equal work of art from a foreigner, with whom the part is a comparatively recent assumption ! Independently of predestined genius, Rachel's figure eminently fitted her for the rendering of Greek tragedy. Drapery hung upon her as it hangs upon no other human being, her very physical defects making her the more exquisitely statuesque. Rachel's effects depended greatly upon her poses, - her poses depended upon her drapery, the management of which had been 32

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NO. 114.

one of her profoundest studies. She knew the secrets of every crease in her mantle. Every movement was the result of thoughtful premeditation. A distinguished painter once said to us : "I never studied my art more carefully than I studied Rachel. I watched her before and behind the curtain, and so narrowly, that, while one action was going on, I could see her fingers quietly, and to all appearances unconsciously, making the folds by which she shortly after produced a beautiful effect in what the public considered a spontaneous pose." This is plastic art, and Rachel was mistress of it. Of course, Ristori has little or none of it in Phèdre. Impulse is death to it, and no amount of pictorial genius will produce results for which years of practice, as well as of thought, are required. Rachel, too, looked the

"Objet infortuné des vengeances célestes." Her head was classic; that small, deepset brown eye burned with a silent intensity. You saw before you the victim of the wrath of Venus, exhausted, burnt out by the fire of a horrible passion;

"C'est Vénus toute entière à sa proie attachée."

Rachel fully realized Phèdre's daring confession to Hippolyte,

From

J'ai langui, j'ai séché dans les feux, dans les larmes.” She was a Pagan, controlled by influences outside of herself. There was nothing of to-day about her. first to last, she put three thousand years between the auditorium and the stage. She was a fate: she glided, she did not walk. She held attention by magnetism, not by gesticulation. You saw wonderful art, and were awe-struck. This is the only feeling Phèdre can excite when consummately done. It must be as Rachel did it, or it must not be at all. Yet we have heard a great foreign critic one whom it is audacious to dispute-deny that Rachel's interpretation was complete as a whole. "Nothing in this world could be greater than her fourth act; but in the first act she gave too much the effect of a dying person to go through with all the succeed