Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2007 with funding from Microsoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/actorsyesterdaOOwinsuoft YESTERDAYS WITH ACTORS. m YESTERDAYS WITH ACTORS BY CATHERINE MARY REIGNOLDS-WINSLOW BOSTON CUPPLES AND COMPANY 1887 Copyright, 1SSC, by Catherine Mary Rrignoi.ds-Winslow. All Rights Reserved. The Hyde Park Press. YESTERDAYS WITH ACTORS BY CA THERINE 1 MAR ' REIGNOLDS- WINSL O W BOSTON CUPPLES AND HURD 94 Boylston Street 1887 Copyright, 1SS6, by Catherine Mary Reignolds-Winslow. All Rights Reserved. The Hyde Park Press. To Helen Morton, M.D., Physician, Faithful Friend, Tnie Woman Good ;t to whose Skill, Constancy, and Courage, I owe Health, Hope, and Inspiration ; these Memories are affectionately inscribed. W&UtAJMf^XLMJWGE&F"' iPIlP C O.N TENTS. PAGE Introduction vii i. Charlotte Cushman 17 2. Edwin Forrest 29 3. _/#/?« Brougham 45 4. Laura Keene — Agnes Robertson ... 62 5. i£. ^4. Sothern 79 6. Ben. De Bar — Matilda Heron —J. H. Hackett — Mrs. John Wood —James E. Murdoch — Mrs. Lander . 100 7. Boston Museum 122 8. Boston Museum, continued 143 9. Travel in America 162 10. Canada and England 184 PHOTO-GRA VURES. PAGE William Warren frontispiece Mrs. Winslow title-page Charlotte Cushman 17 Edwin Forrest 29 John Brougham 45 Laura Keene 62 E. A. Sothern 79 Matilda Heron 108 • VIGNETTES. William E. Burton 62 Agnes Robertson 64 J. A. Smith 84 Mr. Buckstone 90 J. H. Hackett 114 Mrs. John Wood 115 James E. Murdoch 116 E. F. Keach 123 R. M. Field 133 Mr. Barrow 135 Mrs. Barrow - 135 Kate Bateman 136 John Wilkes Booth 140 Mrs. Vincent 143 Oriana Marshall 155 Josephine Orton 155 Annie Clarke . 156 Mme. Anna Bishop 187 GRATEFUL ACKNOWLEDGMENT IS MADE „.% To Mr. Frank Hill Smith for his tasteful design for the cover of " Yesterdays with Actors," „.% To Mr. F. P. Vinton, for the kind permission to copy his portrait of Mr. Warren. MN the memories of theatre-goers, a gen- l| eration is said to count no more than ten ^ years, and we are reckoned old folks by the public after a comparatively short ser- vice. But I was startled to find in a recent book of dramatic biography a statement that my father was killed at Waterloo ; whereas it was my grandfather who died there, when my father was eight weeks old. This seemed to crowd me rather cruelly into an historic period, and the incident has been the spur to jot down a few trifling recollec- tions that may be of some slight interest to those who share them ; before their subjects are forgotten, and the writer has become "the idle singer of an empty day." My earliest remembrance was keeping the anniversary of this same grandfather's death ; certainly a meaningless attempt at sentiment on my part, but a mournful observance on my father's, with which my mother early taught me to sympathize. Major Reignolds came from Germany to England in the suite of the Duke of York, and, Vlll and, acting as aide-de-camp to Sir William Ponsonby, fell in the battle of Waterloo. The portrait of my grandfather, standing by the horse that was killed under him on the field, was a discipline in my early days — partly, no doubt, on account of the reverential manner with which I was used to see it treated. But the slightly knitted brow, large, deep-set gray eyes, and sensitive truthful mouth, were in themselves a reproach to me more than once, and well do I remember hesitating to make a selfish complaint of my sister in the room where that stern pleader silently looked down upon me. I never knew a military man who was not more or less of a fatalist, and I have often thought of the morning when the note of war sounded, and the young husband and father answered the roll call for what he might have felt to be his last battle. It must have been, indeed, " an unaccustomed spirit " that could lift him " above the ground with cheerful thoughts " at such a moment. My grandmother, too, had a premonition of woe, and, while looking upon the faces of her four little children, she remembered the hap- piness of the last few years, only to tremble for the future. Her grief at the prospect of parting from her husband was so uncontrolla- ble, IX ble, it was at last decided that she, with her infant and nurse, and some dear friends, should travel to Brussels, and there await the news from Waterloo. Suspense is torture to us all, and what the hours were to that poor wife in the little inn at Brussels, who can say ? The tender hearts about her made the most elaborate plans for getting news after the fight began, and, early in the day, almost before they had dared to hope — it came. The first messenger was the last ; he brought all the news they waited for. There was no more to tell — her hero was dead. Bearing orders across the field, he had been one of the first to fall! Who, among the kind friends telling the sad tidings, offering tears and love and sym- pathy, could have been prepared for the dry- eyed sorrow they encountered, silent and rigid, a long and piteous sigh the only sign of life from the bereaved one ? Long before Lord Tennyson wrote the words of " Home they brought her warrior dead" was the poem lived over, for, when the days went by, still "she neither wept nor moved." The old nurse put the fatherless baby into her arms, but with no such happy result as the poet describes. There came no tears tears "like summer tempests," no struggle for her helpless little children. She moved mechanically, never spoke unless questioned, and silently drooped and faded. The pulse grew more feeble, the breath less and less, until they whispered she was dead, dead of a broken heart ! Six weeks after the battle of Waterloo she was lying in the same grave with her lover-husband at East Cowes, in the Isle of Wight, and my father, with his sisters and brother, were orphans. Under able guardianship these children were reared. My aunts had a certain native dignity, and, leading the ordinary lives of English gentlewomen, they were preserved from rough contact with the world. My uncle, Colonel Reiguolds, must have known his share. But he was so entirely the soldier that, in despite of sorrows and af- flictions that well-nigh crushed the man, he rose up at the call of duty, and won honor and forgetfulness in the East. My father had not his brother's strength, and passed from the timid studious lad to the reserved and sensitive man, who, while he read and wrote several languages, spoke only what he must. Although receiving his education at Woolwich, his commission offered no all-absorbing interest for the younger XI younger son, and, at the same time that he did not want courage to face the fire of the enemy, he grew coward at the cold greeting of a friend, so that, when worldly misfortunes fell upon him, he could make no more headway under the cruel load of life than the mother before him. As it became necessary for my mother to take up the task of maintaining her children, she very naturally profited by the only means in her power, an unusually lovely voice ; and the pursuit which she then adopted, may, in- deed, have been shaped by hereditary in- fluence. Her family were not only possessed of rare musical and artistic gifts, but traits of character less conventional than those of my German ancestry. When I was in England, my uncle, John Absolon, the artist, pointed out in the record of the "Issue Roll" of Edward III., the name of the first John Absolon, who figures there as " King's Minstrel " with a pension of "twopence a day," along with Geoffrey Chaucer, " King's valet, pension two-pence- half-penny." My own debut was at the age of four, and brought about in the following accidental way. On the occasion of a drawing-room concert, a carriage was sent for my mother, also Xll also conveying the tenor singer of the night. Not liking a long drive with a stranger, she hastily concluded to take her little daughter as chaperone. During the evening I was handed from lap to lap, and petted by all, as a child is in a circle of grown people, when at last some one asked if I would sing. I promptly responded, " Yes, I know one song." Upon the ladies submitting the request to my mother, it was at first denied — neverthe- less she was at last urged to help me with a leading chord, and standing on the top of the piano, I twittered out, in pretty fair time and tune, " My mother dear." " There was a place in childhood that I remember well, And there a voice of sweetest tone, bright fairy tales did tell, And kindest words and fond embrace were given with joy to me, When I was in that happy place upon my mother's knee." This I addressed, very properly, to the audience gathered about me, but in the refrain of " My mother dear, my mother dear, My gentle mother dear," I turned from the little group, and, looking at my idol, sang to her alone, and, stretching across Xlll across the key-board, ended with my arms around her neck. By great exertion I was kept for some few years at an excellent school near London, until my mother was led to come to America.