HELEN FAUCIT.*
WE congratulate Sir Theodore Martin on having built up in this biography a permanent monument to Helen Faucit's charm. No one will read through the book without falling under it, though they may never have seen the great actress or known the gracious woman. Exactly wherein her fascina- tion lay it is not easy to define. Genius has not much to do with charm, and goodness has not all to do with it, though perhaps more than it is the fashion to suppose. Charm is the outcome of sympathy, and presupposes a talent for showing it. There are people who enter into the feelings of those they are with as the voice of a singer follows the changing notes of an air, without conscious effort, yet not without strict attention or ultimate fatigue. The power of sympathy in Helen Faucit was no doubt increased by the practice of • Helens .ftsca (Lady Martin). By Sir Theodore Mein, 1C.C.B. London: W. Blackwood and Sons. [10s. dal
throwing herself, at the cost of great intellectual strain and effort, into another character. This seems a not un- natural outcome of the dramatic art. The odd thing is that it is not a commoner one. Se faire outlier jusgu'a son nom is not, however, the aim of most actors,—very few enter com- pletely into their roles. They do not seek with a single mind
to interpret the author whose words they are speaking. Half their efforts are directed to obtain admiration for their own talents and persons. Complete absence of self-consciousness and a, close study of Shakespeare, lasting over many years, were important adjuncts to Helen Faucit's histrionic power.
Probably no actress on the English stage before or since could have written Letters on Shakespeare's Heroines. Browning said of her :— " I will strain my eyes to blindness
Ere lose sight of you and kindness. • Genius' is a common story ! Few guess that the spirit's glory They hail nightly is the sweetest, Fairest, gentlest, and completest Shakespeare's lady ever poet Longed for ; few guess this—I know it."
Matthew Arnold, to quote perhaps a. greater critic, wrote asking her to perform the chief part iu Merope, which be at one time thought of putting on the stage. In a tragedy of this kind, he says, " everything turns upon the nobleness, seriousness, and powers of feeling of the actor," and he adds that should she be unwilling to play the part of the heroine he will abandon his purpose altogether,—which he ultimately did. Enthusiastically as Helen Faucit was admired, she had not an ounce of personal vanity, and we may look right through this long volume in vain for an ill-natured sentence or "a word of green-room gossip. Yet she never makes upon the reader any impression of aloofness or reserve; indeed, her sweet openness is all through the book a great part of her attrac- tion. The account of her first two performances—the one in
Juliet, as a mere child; the second, three years later, in The Hunchback—are given in the first chapters of her biography,
in her own words. Her childish pleasure in Juliet's dress, her gratitude for the kindness shown her by the grown-up actors and actresses, her earnest desire to please her friends, turning at the last moment to devout prayer, are all charm- ingly described. At the end of the last scene she found she had crushed the poison vial, cut her hand, and stained her dress. Excitement and the sight of blood made her faint away. Her first waking thought, she tells us, was for he r damaged white satin, and she was inconsolable until she was assured that the injured part could be renewed. At her second appearance three years later she had ceased to be a child and begun to be an artist. Clothes could be no consolation now, and she was horribly nervous. The young actress was not only unconscious of her beauty, but believed herself to be plain ; and she writes in her diary the day before the " ordeal,"
Whatever they do to me, I shall be sure to look a fright !" When the dreaded evening arrived, Miss Faucit acted, she tells us, to her grandfather, of whom she was exceedingly fond, and who was allowed, in consideration of his deafness, to sit in the orchestra. The sight of his delighted face, and the thought of the " beloved Quaker grandmother, who had never in her life been inside a theatre," and who was waiting at home in an agony of suspense, gave her strength to overcome her fright,—and to succeed. Overjoyed by her triumph, she regrets in her diary the same night, with childish impatience, that her sister cannot know of it till the morning. All through her acting life Miss Faucit was indifferent to money, and never regarded it as any measure of success. Perhaps the fact that till she came of age she was allowed but a minute share of her earn- ings may have contributed to this end. After she had become famous, she tells us she saw one day in the Soho Bazaar a doll labelled "Helen Faucit," whose dress was copied from one she had been wearing in the theatre. Surprised and pleased by thin then unusual little compliment, she wished to buy it, but hesitated, lest her doing so should seem like vanity. Finally she decided not to ask the price, lest her slender funds might not permit such an extravagance, for though at the time her salary was the largest ever given (in those days), she was only allowed by her friends a slight increase of the pocket-money which had- been hers before her clank We imagine that the Quaker grandmother, of whom she speaks as though she had been more to her than her own mother, must have transmitted many of her characteristics to Helen Faucit. Keenly as she
loved the stage, some quality in herself kept her entirely free from the usual defects of a popular actress. Of few women, and how few actresses, could it be said as truly as of Lady Martin :— " Whose heart the holy forma Of young imagination bad kept pure."
Perhaps loyalty led this great actress to defend the theatrical profession as a school of character unduly. The history of the stage hardly justifies her words: " If people find special temptations in a theatrical career, it must be from inherent defects of character." She " revered and honoured her art as well as loving it," she tells us, and by the practice of it she believed that she kept alive within herself " all that in her earliest dreams she had imagined of what was fairest and best and highest in thought and character." Macready took a very different view of the moral effect of his own profession, and Lady Martin finds it hard to forgive the disparaging way in which he speaks of the stage. It is no bad compliment to Lady Martin to say that she was more an idealist than a realist. She admits with pain that Macready's book destroyed many illusions with regard to himself which had pleased her when she was young. Sir Theodore Martin has shown us an actress devoted to her art, a woman devoted to her friends, one of unusual intellectual gifts, religiously minded, and as strict in her ideals as she was indulgent in her judgments. Such a picture was well worth painting.
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