X. JULIA MARLOWE. 1867-19 Though my prose and my rhyme Have been sometimes severe, There was never a time When she ceased to be dear; And though far she may range There will never be change In my fealty to her. She made Love and Hope blend, To enrapture and bless; She was comrade and friend; She can never be less. There is fire in the embers, The altar is Truth. And the old heart remembers The glory of Youth. I WROTE those lines several years ago, in a mood not less sincere for being playful, to be given with a handful of flowers to Julia Marlowe at a domestic festival where we were to meet after a long absence from one another, and to which she did not come. I found them lately in one of my old note-books when I was searching for some facts about her life, and it struck me that they epitomize the essential spirit and substantial achievement of her career: "She made Love and Hope blend." The actress of whom that can truthfully be declared might willingly rest content without any other tribute to the excellence and beauty of her art. Since, however, Julia Marlowe's long, successful, beneficent, and important career is closing, and at the zenith of her powers and her 'fame she seeks the peace of domestic seclusion, her career and professional achievement naturally suggest themselves for commemoration. Sarah Frances Frost, that being the true name of the actress, was born in Caldbeck, a village which nestles in the shadow of Scafell, in Cumberland, England. She is purely Eng CHANCE AND CHANGE 449 lish, her ancestors having been born and reared in that shire, the largest part of the beautiful, romantic, storied Lake District of our mother country. About 1872 her parents came to America, bringing her with them, and, after a trial of farming life in Kansas, established their home in Cincinnati. There, or in that neighborhood, she attended school, and received the best education her parents could provide. No member of her family had ever been connected with the Theatre, and no relative or teacher could have surmised that acting would become her vocation. THE ACCIDENT OF FORTUNE. It has been noticed that the current of a lifetime is often determined by chance. The history of modern times might, perhaps, have been radically changed if Oliver Cromwell had not been prevented from emigrating from England, as once he purposed to do, or if Clive had been sent to command the British forces in America, as was proposed when the colonies took up arms against the crown. More than two hundred years ago a dramatist, sitting in the bar of a London tavern, overheard a girl in the next room reading aloud from a playbook, and he was so much pleased by the sound of her voice and the fluency and sprightliness of her delivery that he sought acquaintance with her, obtained her confidence, and opened for her the way to a successful dramatic career. That girl, a dramatic genius thus accidentally discovered, was Anne Oldfield, who adorned the English Stage for twenty-five years, whose ashes rest in the cloister of Westminster Abbey, and whose name is one of historic renown. The introduction of Julia Marlowe to the stage was equally an accident. A theatrical manager in Cincinnati, having planned to produce a popular comic opera with a chorus composed of pupils from the public schools, selected her, then a girl about twelve, perceived her theatrical aptitude, and provided the opportunity for its development. That manager was Robert E. J. Miles, and under his direction she made her first appearance on the stage and passed her juvenile novitiate. |