rate and independent. As to the sisters, Agnes and Fanny Heron, Ireland ascertained that they, eventually, devoted themselves exclusively to music, received instruction from Signor Natale Perelli, and as Señorita Agnese Natali and Señorita Francesca Natali became favorites on the Lyric Stage, in Mexico and South America. On August 23, 1852, Matilda appeared at the Bowery Theatre, New York, under Hamblin's management, and in the course of her engagement there acted Lady Macbeth, Juliet, Mrs. Haller, Ophelia, Parthenia, and Pauline, about as singular and contrasted a conglomerate of characters as one actress ever attempted in a single engagement. In 1853 she visited California, appearing, December 26, at the American Theatre, San Francisco, as Bianca, with John Lewis Baker as Fazio. Her success there was immediate, her popularity great. On June 10, 1854, in San Francisco, she was married to Henry Herbert Byrne, between whom and herself a permanent separation ensued, three months later. "The cause of the separation," so wrote Henry Edwards,

THE FIRST CAMILLE

65

in 1887,-"is shrouded, even now, in the deepest mystery; . . . but, whatever it might have been, the two lives affected by it felt its force, and carried it with them to their graves." Byrne died in 1872.

In 1855 Matilda Heron was in Paris, where she saw the performance by Mme. Doche of Marguerite Gauthier, in "La Dame aux Camélias," and was deeply affected by it, so deeply that she was moved to translate and adapt the play for her own immediate use in America. Her version of it, entitled "Camille," was presented by her in October, 1855, and from that time onward, for many years, she made Camille the principal feature of her repertory. first representation of the part in New York occurred on January 22, 1857, at Wallack's Theatre; Edward A. Sothern played the lover, Armand Duval. She was not the original representative of Camille in America; the part had previously been acted here (1853) by Jean Davenport, afterward Mrs. Lander; but Matilda made it her own, and she long remained preeminent in it, and eventually was the means

Her

of raising a considerable crop of juvenile Camilles, who coughed and snivelled and expired, "to melt the waxen hearts of men," throughout all the theatres of America. On December 24, 1857, she was married to Robert Stoepel,-remembered as a fine musician,with whom she seems to have lived unhappily, and from whom she separated in 1869.

Soon after Longfellow's poem of "Hiawatha" was published (1855) Stoepel composed music illustratively expressive of its spirit, and Matilda gave public readings of the poem with that accompaniment, beginning in Boston and continuing in other cities. That entertainment she gave in London, in 1860-'61, and also she acted there, as Florence Upperton, in one of her own plays (she was the author or adapter of several dramas), called "New Year's Eve," -later presented by her, in New York, under the name of "The Belle of the Season." leaving London, in 1861, she made a short tour in France and Germany, returning to America in 1862. She was in California in 1865, and was again the recipient of unstinted admira

On

A NOTABLE BENEFIT

67

tion and honor there. Then and thereafter Camille was her chief professional magnet. Her repertory was not very large. Among the parts that she acted, besides those already mentioned, are Julia, in "The Hunchback"; Juliana, in "The Honeymoon"; the Countess, in "Love"; Mariana, in "The Wife"; Leonore, in "The World's Own," a play written for her by Mrs. Julia Ward Howe; Medea, Gamea, Lesbia, Sybil, Mathilde, and Aurora Floyd. Toward the end of her life, under the accumulated burdens of misfortune and domestic trouble, she became wretchedly poor. A performance for her benefit occurred at Niblo's Garden, January 17, 1872, in which Edwin Booth, Mark Smith, Laura Keene, Fanny Janauschek, and others participated, and which yielded $4,390 for the beneficiary. A touching address was delivered by the actress, in which she said: "I am but a poor, humble woman, and it may be a consolation to you to know and feel, when you go home to-night, that you have raised a woman out of the depth of misery and despair; that you have provided sustenance for the moment and given

her hopes for the future. New life has come to me through your kindness, and far beyond all else I am thankful to you that your presence here enables me to look with calmness on the bitter past." The relief proved only temporary. "The close of her life," said Edwards, "was of the saddest character. . . . Poor in the bitterest acceptation of the term, prematurely old, and with the once sparkling intellect dimmed and gone astray, she presented a spectacle. ... that the coldest heart could but regard with pity." She died, May 7, 1877, and was buried in Greenwood.

Matilda Heron, as an actress, was at her best in the part of Camille. Other parts she acted; that one she lived. When first I saw her, in that character, in Boston, in 1857, she could, and did, so deeply affect the feelings and so entirely beguile the sympathies as to confuse, if not destroy, perception of the difference between right and wrong. That the courtesan and the virtuous woman are alike pure-that chastity is immaterial—is the chief meaning conveyed by the sophistry of the play, in which