ANNA CORA MOWATT

profiled by

LaSalle Corbelle Pickett

(Mrs. General George E. Pickett)

in

Across My Path; Memories of People I Have Known

THE beautiful Anna Cora Mowatt, whom we knew as a retired actress in Richmond, had not that innate love of the stage which characterizes those who achieve such brilliant careers in the mimic world. Through the influence of a pastor of rigid views upon the subject she had been imbued with the impression that the theater was the center of all evil.

"The first time I ever felt even the slightest willingness to subject myself to contact with so wicked a thing was when Fanny Kemble was playing in a theater near our home. I wanted to see her more than I had ever wanted anything else, but dared not let my wish be known through fear of being laughed at for wanting to see something of which I had always before expressed so strong a disapproval. As I walked one day with my older sister, our father came to us and asked her if she would like to go to see Fanny Kemble. I wished that he would ask me, but he went on talking as if so wild an idea could not occur to him. After a while he turned to me and said, 'I suppose you would not care to go.' I admitted that I should like to see the divine Fanny and so received my first invitation to the theater and yielded to the fascination of that most brilliant creature."

“Did you become an enthusiastic theater patron from that time?”

“No; I thought Fanny Kemble could glorify anything, but my sentiments in regard to the stage in general remained unmodified. When sorrow fell upon me and want came uncomfortably near I gave public readings, but when success brought me a flattering offer to go upon the stage I felt almost offended, though I trust that I declined with a proper feeling of gratitude.”

“But you wrote for the stage,” I said.

“It was the success of my play 'Fashion' that first suggested my going into stage work. I wanted to view things from the sublime standpoint of the omniscient actor who knows so much better what the playwright means than he does himself, and smiles at the hallucination of the feeble-minded author that he knows the meaning of his own words. Three weeks after I had determined to take up the work I appeared in "The Lady of Lyons” with but one rehearsal. When the play was over the audience all rose and showered a wealth of flowers over me."

“Such beautiful things happen to stage ladies, don't they ?”

 “Sometimes; and then again things are not so pleasant. I used to think that the property man was the one infallible memory freak who could not possibly forget anything. This illusion remained with me until one evening when I was playing Juliet that Infallible One forgot the bottle containing the sleeping potion. Some kind of a bottle was necessary and the property man picked up the first at hand and shoved it over. At the words, 'Romeo! This do I drink to thee!' I placed the bottle to my lips and swallowed the draught. When the scene closed the prompter rushed up with the cry, 'Good gracious! You have been drinking from my bottle of ink!' I felt like the dying wit who, having been accidentally given ink instead of medicine, asked for a piece of blotting paper which he might swallow.”

As a child, notwithstanding her aversion to the stage, Anna Cora was the playwright and star of the Mowatt family cast, though she said that her little sister Julia had the greatest talent in the household. Her play of “Gulzara” had no hero, the only male character in it being a boy of ten years, put in to be played by the little Julia. “But I do not want her to go on the stage, said the actress, whose brilliant success had never won her heart away from the home life that she loved and had relinquished when the companion of that life had lost fortune and wealth and was compelled to give the reins of business government into her unaccustomed hands. Well did she accomplish her task, retaining all the while the same loving heart and faithful devotion that had inspired her when at fifteen she had given her life to the chosen one.

from Across My Path;
Memories of People I Have Known. 

by LaSalle Corbell Pickett,
(Mrs. General George E. Pickett.)

(New York: Bretano’s, 1916.)
Pages 68-72

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