ANNA CORA MOWATT  RITCHIE.

profiled by

Julia Dean Freeman

for

"Women of the South Distinguished in Literature," 1861

Lives cradled in luxury are rarely heroic. Now and then we find one, favored by nature and fortune, who is large of heart, strong in mental resources, and daring enough to do the work revealed, though the lines fall in rough places, and the end is not clear. Among these exceptions it is pleasant to record the name of Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie.

Striking boldly out, when the call came, into an untried field — braving the opposition of friends, and the perils of a profession then under the ban of church and society — she not only achieved a brilliant career, but so preserved the attributes of the true woman, as to exalt her vocation. Presenting to the world the twofold aspect of actor and author, she distinguished herself in each character, redeemed her fortunes, and provided for the necessities of those dependent upon her. Her name is given worthily to fame.

Samuel Gouverneur Ogden, the father of Mrs. Ritchie, for years a merchant of high standing in New York, was a leading spirit in the expedition under General Miranda, which, though unsuccessful, opened the way to South American independence. The losses consequent upon the failure of this expedition made it necessary for him to remove to France, where he remained ten years. He had married the grand-daughter of Francis Lewis, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. At the birth of his daughter, Anna Cora Ogden, the family were living- at Bordeaux; but a few months after found them domiciled at La Castagne — a fine old country seat, two miles from Bordeaux — a retreat, it would seem, of almost paradisiacal grace and beauty.

The children of this family, at that time eleven in number, appear very early to have given indications of marked histrionic talent; yet neither father nor mother were theatrically inclined nor could they trace the proclivity in either line of ancestry. Private plays were much in favor with the elder sons and daughters, and at the extraordinary age of four years, Anna makes her debut in the somewhat extraordinary character of judge in the trial scene of "Othello." Imagine the baby debutante sitting upon a high bench, in red gown and white wig, making the wise eyes and mouth of an august presence. It was the first faint whisper of destiny.

 
In her eighth year, on the 17th September, the family, consisting of the father and mother, seven daughters and three sons, embarked from Bordeaux, in the ship Brandt, for New York. The voyage proved a most disastrous one. On the 30th they encountered a terrific gale: two of the younger brothers were swept into the sea, and one was lost. The storm continued for forty-eight hours, the vessel barely escaping total wreck. After a few repairs, they put back for Havre, and on the 15th of October, again set sail, in the packet ship Queen Mab, arriving at New York on the 24th November, 1826. But the children carry La Castagne in their hearts, and the brick walls of Gotham oppress them. They cannot speak English, the American children are but dull pantomimists, and then - thoughts go out longingly after the frisking, mercurial playmates they have left behind.

Anna and her sister are now placed in a New York boarding school, where the former makes her second appearance upon a mimic stage, and wins her first laurels. Unable to attend school with regularity, on account of delicate health, she made amends by reading at home whatever came in her way; like Charles Lamb's "Bridget Elia." “Browsing at will upon the fair and wholesome pasturage of good old English reading,” with which her father's library was packed. Even at this age, she had read Shakspeare's plays many times over.

At the age of fourteen, she proposed to her sisters that they should enact a real play in honor of their father's birth-day. Voltaire's "Alzire " is selected, and suitable costumes are provided by the proprietor of the Park Theatre. The fair manager manages the whole thing, as if to the manner born, and achieves her first triumph as an artiste, by merging herself in the Alzire she personates. So, step by step, with no dim foreshadowing of the career of the woman, the child climbs the first rounds in the ladder of its accomplishment.

At this time Anna made the acquaintance of James Mowatt, a young lawyer of wealth and culture. He evidently saw in the bright, handsome, self-asserting school-girl the promise of rare development, and made haste to establish the right to bend the twig as he would have the tree incline. Anna seems to have felt a girlish pride in her man-of-the-world lover, who met her, each day, on her way to school, carried her books and slate, directed her studies, and rewarded application with munificent gifts of books and flowers; but she was entirely unprepared for a serious proposal of marriage. What did she, a child of fourteen summers, know of love — of the responsibilities and sanctities of wifehood? Her own account of this phase of her life is most piquant and significant. But Mr. Mowatt was not to be denied. Persevering importunity prevailed, and before the age of fifteen, Anna was a betrothed bride; her father consenting, upon the very proper conditions, that the union should be deferred two years, and Mr. Mowatt privileged to visit his bride elect as often as any other gentleman.

In the meantime Anna was to enter society; in view of which event, Mr. Mowatt naturally grew nervous, and determined, if possible, to forestall the dreaded ordeal by a secret marriage. For six months Anna was inexorable; then, through her heart of pity the child-woman relented, and the promise was given; within a week she would become his wife. One sister was taken into confidence, and the marriage was performed by the French clergyman of the city. The usual indignation-storm and reconciliation-calm followed in regular order. A few days passed in the old home, and Mr. and Mrs. Mowatt removed to Flatbush, Long Island, where the former had purchased a fine old mansion, once owned by General Giles; a great, rambling castle of a place, shut in by stately trees, with dark vaults and secret chambers, bounteous in ghostly legends and historic interest. Then there were broad acres, made up of gardens and orchards, abounding with fruits — smiling with flowers. They called the place Melrose, and Anna forgot to sigh for La Castagne.

Duly installed mistress and queen of this baronial estate, she gathered about her a whole army of pets ; scoured the country on her Arabian mare ; trundled hoops with her sister May; wrote poetry; gave entertainments, varied with music, dramatic performances, and tableaux vivants, and pursued her studies. Not so bad a beginning, after all, for the gleesome "child-wife." She began to think the "cares of married life" were only a myth, invented to keep precocious children in their proper sphere.

When in her eighteenth year, her health, always delicate, beginning perceptibly to fail, a sea voyage was recommended. Her sister had recently married a German gentleman of wealth and position, and it was arranged that Anna and a favorite aunt should accompany them to Europe. The voyage was made in  three weeks,  with most  benignant  effect  upon  the invalid, and in a fortnight she had visited London and Hamburg, and settled in a temporary home among the relatives of her brother-in-law in Bremen.

That she might become thoroughly initiated into the mysteries of German life and language, Mrs. Mowatt hired a furnished house, and commenced housekeeping on the German system. Determined, indefatigable, she was soon able to read Goethe and Schiller with ease.

While thus occupied, Mr. Mowatt arrived, and was soon after stricken with partial blindness, which confined him for four months to a darkened room. In hope of relief, they then went to Paris, where the case was so successfully treated by an American surgeon, that, in a fortnight, Mr. Mowatt was able to distinguish print. Then came to Mrs. Mowatt the joyous reaction. Emerging from the darkened room, she, too, for the first time, opened "wide eyes of sweet wonder" upon Paris. The whirl, the buoyancy, the delicious abandon of Parisian life, came to her languid body and weary spirit like sunbeams and fresh air to the pale house-plant. General Cass was then the American minister at Paris, and, with his pleasant family, contributed not a little to her enjoyment.

In the meantime, she did not lose sight of her favorite pursuits. Every morning, before breakfast, came the Italian teacher, and, in snatches of time during the day, she not only wrote elaborate articles for American periodicals, but designed and commenced a drama in six acts, to be represented by herself and sisters at a fete given on her return to America and Melrose. This drama she called "Gulzara, or the Persian Slave." The play was afterward brought out successfully before a select audience at Melrose; it was also published in the "New World," and noticed favorably by the press.

With a heart enlarged, and perceptions quickened by her experience abroad, the young wife is once more at home, sporting among her flowers and pets, and realizing the charm of her surroundings with a new sense. She is nineteen now; in the first blush of womanhood, her mind poised and her spirit resolute: more than half conscious of strength in reserve for something unforeseen and strange — and it comes.

Through Mr. Mowatt's infirmity of sight, he became incapable of the business of his profession, and reluctantly abandoned it. Othello's occupation gone, a natural fondness for speculation grew into a mania with him, and, soon after their return to America, his ample fortune was swept suddenly away. In one month Melrose must be sold. They must begin life anew, this disabled husband and young wife — and how?

Very tenderly were these tidings unfolded to Anna, but her dream was broken. Alone, in the bower built for her in the first butterfly phase of her married life, she went down into herself, and sat in solemn conclave with the present, the future, her own good gifts, and new-born thoughts. It was the crisis of her life, and she came out of it full-grown, with a purpose. She was possessed of a full, rich, contralto voice; she would give dramatic readings, like Mr. Vandenhoff, and redeem her home.

Mr. Mowatt's consent gained, the way was open. "With the audacity of conscious ability, she allowed one fortnight for preparation, and then put herself to the work with all her native energy. Silencing objections with wise eloquence, and inspiring those about her with the glow of her own dauntlessness, she made selections from her favorite poets, recited aloud, each day, in the open air, and laid the necessary plans to appear before a public auditory. Boston had been called the American Athens. She would be judged first by the highest standard of intellectual taste, and secure a just, critical judgment. Our sometime pet and hoop-trundler grows apace into the grave philosopher.

Through valuable letters of introduction, Mr. and Mrs. Mowatt were favorably presented to the fastidious Athenians, and, with the additional prestige of high-toned personality, Mrs. Mowatt was soon at home among them. A series of readings was given at the Masonic Temple under the brightest auspices. The fine sensibilities of the woman quivered in the ordeal, but the motive power was stronger and deeper than these, and her debut, before a large and select audience, was, in every sense, a triumph.

Leaving Boston, she gave one night's recitation in Providence, and then announced a course of readings at the Stuyvesant Institute of New York. She had now to come before friends and acquaintances, many of whom were disposed to ostracize her for the heroism which they could not understand, and so did not credit. She missed the magnetic, sympathetic quality of her Boston auditories, but, strong in the right, rose out of the ungenial sphere and achieved her usual success.

But the excitement of an experience so new, as well as the chilling demeanor of some on whose friendship she relied, wrought painfully, at last, upon her sensitive system; after appearing once before the Rutgers' Institute, and giving a short course to the Society Library of New York, she was attacked with fever and hemorrhage of the lungs, and for many months held life by the slightest tenure.

During this illness, she for the first time became acquainted with the phenomenon of mesmeric somnambulism, and declares herself indebted to its agency, on more than one occasion, for her life. The experiences which she has given to the world on this head, together with her own sound, sensible philosophy concerning them, are worthy of careful consideration.

Not regaining sufficient strength to avail herself of one good gift, she turned resolutely to another. Forced by their fallen fortunes to occupy the most lucrative ground, she compiled books, and

 
"Wrote for cyclopedias, magazines,

And weekly papers, holding up her name

To keep it from the mud."

Mr. Mowatt, encouraged by the ready sales of her books on knitting, netting, cookery, and etiquette, then embarked in the publishing business, hoping thus to secure to Mrs. Mowatt the entire profits of her toil, as well as to occupy her in a larger and more congenial field. Under these auspices she prepared abridgments of the lives of Goethe and Madame d'Arblay; but the people preferred etiquette and cookery to biography, and amiably persistent in a good cause, she turned again to the most profitable. About this time, in intervals of leisure, she wrote "Evelyn," a tale of domestic life, in two volumes. The manuscript, at the suggestion of an English friend, was sent to London for publication; but, on hearing from the modest London publisher that he would bring out the book if she would be good enough to raise her dead heroine and carry her through another volume, she transferred it to an American house, more regardful of quality than quantity.

It was at this stage of her life, and not, as some have supposed, in her days of affluent ease, that Mrs. Mowatt took in charge the three orphan children, whom she afterward reared and educated; an act which the recording angel has written the crowning grace of her life.

"Evelyn," successfully launched, was soon followed by "Fashion," a spirited comedy, which was promptly accepted, and brought out with unusual magnificence at the Park Theatre. Mrs. Mowatt "awoke one morning and found herself famous," the success of her play having placed her at once in the public eye, and challenged the especial consideration of litterateurs and managers. From the latter she began now to receive the most advantageous proposals to go upon the stage. As if to leave her no alternative, Mr. Mowatt's publishing house, at this juncture, disastrously failed. Conspiracy of events most marked and unmistakable! With a calm carefulness she reviews her life, and finds that the Divine hand alone could have led her to the brink of this consummation. Assured of this, the right path fully indicated, with the consent of her husband and father, she would walk in it. She had lost none of her womanly sensibilities, but she had learned to ensphere them within a conscientious purpose.

With her usual promptitude, she set apart three weeks for preparation, and then, as Pauline, in the "Lady of Lyons," made her debut at the Park Theatre, and became at once a star. Proposals for engagements now crowded upon her from all parts of the Union. She made the tour of the United States, and in one year achieved a series of two hundred successes. The way was not all smooth and flowery; her feet climbed many a Hill Difficulty, and pressed many a thorn, but she remembered that she had entered the profession with a higher aim than mere amusement, and pushed steadily on.

The experience of the second year was like that of the first; a persistent routine of study and discipline, a tour through the United States, and a succession of engagements and triumphs. At the close of this year, Mr. Mowatt sailed for Europe, to prepare the way for her professional appearance in England, and Mrs. Mowatt withdrew for a brief season to her father's house, of which it is said she was ever the brightest ornament. Here, amid the gay criticisms of a bevy of gifted sisters, who had come from near and far to welcome her, she wrote "Armand," a drama in five acts, pledged, before its commencement, to the manager of the Park Theatre. This play was produced in the autumn of 1847, after the return of Mr. Mowatt, Mr. Davenport and herself personating the principal characters, and proved every way a worthy successor of its honored sister, "Fashion."

On the 1st of November, 1847, Mr. and Mrs. Mowatt, in company with Mr. Davenport, sailed from Boston for Europe; and after tossing for fifteen days in a succession of gales, arrived at Liverpool, quite worn out with illness and anxiety.

Mrs. Mowatt was now to encounter a new trial. Her husband had arranged, by the judicious advice of Mr. Macready, that she should make her debut in some of the English provinces, in order to appear before a London audience fully accredited by English critics. The Theatre Royal, at Manchester, had been selected, and the 7th of December was the day appointed. English and American critics are of different brotherhoods; those of Manchester, in a high degree, astute and hypercritical, merciless sifters of transatlantic pretension. But failure was a word unknown in Mrs. Mowatt's vocabulary; with her faithful and accomplished coadjutor, Mr. Davenport, she met the test fearlessly, and brought down the phlegmatic English house in spite of itself.

After appearing every night for two weeks, she received and accepted a proposal for an engagement at the Princesses' Theatre, of London. The slow fire of Manchester criticism was, after all, only an earnest of the white heat of her London experience. At the first rehearsal, she was received by the "stars" of the company with unqualified disdain, and listened with the best grace she could command, while they dictated the proper situations of the play, until patience, at last growing weary, she proved herself a worthy descendant of her illustrious grandsires, by turning the tables upon her British persecutors, in a most adroit and effective "Declaration of Independence."

Again, despite the frigid atmosphere of her audience, the sneers of "London assurance," the petty maneuverings of London rivals, and the horrors of "stage fright,"' her debut was a triumph, to which the London press lazily awoke and paid tribute.

A six weeks' course at this theatre was followed by one of still greater length at the Olympic, and a succession of engagements at the Marylebone, which left Mrs. Mowatt a fixed "star" in the royal firmament of the latter. Here "Armand" was first given to the dramatic and literary world of London. It was enacted twenty-one nights, winning for the artist-author a double weight of golden opinions, and at the close of the season, the more substantial offering of an exquisite silver vase, lined with gold, surmounted by a statuette of Shakspeare, and inscribed "To Anna Cora Mowatt, for her services to the drama, as authoress and actress, and as a record that worth and genius from every land will ever be honored in England."

An engagement for a second season at the Marylebone and Olympic had been completed with great satisfaction to all parties, when Mr. Mowatt was again stricken with serious illness and threatened with entire loss of sight. Hoping by change of climate to effect a speedy cure, he set sail at once for Trinidad. It was impossible for Mrs. Mowatt to accompany him. Through the fulfillment of her engagements alone could she meet their many responsibilities, not least among them the outfit of the invalid; and with a brave heart she still pressed on in the path marked out.

A third season engagement was entered into at the Olympic. "Fashion" and "Armand" were re-produced and re-stamped with cordial English favor; but with every steamer from Trinidad, tidings of the invalid grew sadder; intelligence of a painful character reached her from America; and when, at last, the lessee and manager of the Olympic, a man high in the esteem of the public, was arrested for embezzlement, the theatre closed and the company dispersed, her cup ran over; she was attacked with brain fever and lay for months in a state of unconsciousness. When she awoke, her head had been shorn of its wealth of tresses ; the winter had passed ; Mr. Mowatt had recovered sufficiently  to  return,  wasted  and  pallid,  to  England ;  the manager had been convicted and sentenced, and, crazed with the shock, had loosed his own life. All seemed, indeed, like a fitful dream.

As soon as Mrs. Mowatt could endure the fatigue of the journey, the two invalids removed to Malvern. Their cottage was only a stone's throw from the famous water-cure establishment of that place, and they passed the summer in the pursuit of health. Mr. Mowatt then, for the first time, revealed the startling fact that the fruits of Mrs. Mowatt's toil had been placed in the hands of the ill-starred manager, and that all was lost. There was no time to linger; she must gird her delicate strength anew, and go forth to provide for their necessities.

The most advantageous offer for an engagement which she had received, and which Mr. Mowatt was bent on her accepting, was from Dublin; urged by him she nerved herself for the trial, and, leaving the now partially restored, and really cheerful invalid in charge of his faithful nurse and physician, with a worthy woman in attendance, she turned her face Dublinward.

A brilliant debut followed, and the usual series of successes filled the engagement. Mrs. Mowatt was then making preparations to return to London, when the news came that Mr. Mowatt was no more. No need, now, to catch the trick of sorrow — to put on grief like a robe — to weep well — to moan effectively; the tragedy is real— and dumb. He had died like one falling asleep, with her pet name, "Lily," upon his lips, and a serene trust in his heart.

On the 9th of July, 1851, Mrs. Mowatt, accompanied by her brother-in-law, embarked for America, arriving at New York on the night of the 22d instant. Two golden weeks were passed in the bosom of her family, and she then appointed a time when she would take leave of the stage; resolving, meanwhile, to perfect herself in her art, and retire in the very zenith of artistic success. In pursuance of this plan, she commenced an engagement at Niblo's, and began to apply herself vigorously to the study of her profession; spending several hours each day in dramatic reading, and testing each night the measure and quality of her advance, by its effect upon her audience. This engagement was followed by a professional tour through the Union, marked by successes which were crowned most fittingly by a complimentary benefit, proffered by the leading men of Boston. To be told by such persons as Geo. S. Hillard, Henry W. Longfellow, E. P. Whipple, Epes Sargent, and others:

"You have not bought these honors with the price of better things ; you have moved with simple dignity along the slippery paths of praise and success. When we have seen you embodying your own conceptions of tenderness and truth, we have felt that the charm of your performance flowed from the fact that your words and your voice were but imperfect expressions of yourself:" — to be told this by such men was no common tribute.

Her star was steadily nearing the desired point, when Mrs. Mowatt fell seriously ill, and was conveyed to her father's house at Ravenswood, L. I., where, during the long months of professional inactivity which followed, she wrote the "Autobiography," to which the world is indebted for its deepest and truest knowledge of her twofold life. "Truth is stranger than fiction." The book has all the charm of a romance, while on every page we feel the strong leaps of a human heart. It is a live lesson of moral courage and persistency sent home with many a sparkling bon mot and shining tear.

In the winter of 1853, Mrs. Mowatt entered upon her fare-well engagements. The clarion call of duty had been answered. In nine years of loyal service, the special objects of her mission had been accomplished.   She had redeemed that sweetest privilege of competence — the power to minister unto the "shorn lambs" within and without her fold. She had retained her womanly graces, and magnified her office; proving to the world that the true woman creates everywhere an inviolable sphere. By close application to her art, and careful discipline of her powers, she had come to sway the hearts of the people at will; and now, in her highest "dignities," it was meet and right that the "green curtain" of private life should fall before her.

Her farewell series were worthy of the career they crowned; the grand finale at Niblo's, New York, on the 2nd of June, 1854, exceeding in enthusiasm and brilliancy all the triumphs of the past.

But while the life of the artiste was thus ending amid pomps and acclamations, the life of the woman was quietly beginning anew. Five days after Mrs. Mowatt's last appearance upon the stage, she eave her fair hand and wealth of laurels — her heart had gone before — into the keeping of William Foushee Ritchie, of Richmond, Va., the editor of the ''Richmond Enquirer;" "a rare compound," as one has said, "of ability and amiability." The same graceful writer says of Mrs. Ritchie and her new surroundings: "She lives, as a poet should, in a cottage orne, a little distance from the city. I could have selected her house from a thousand as easily as I could the fair occupant among a multitude of women. There were flowers before the door, flowers on the lawn, a flowery taste manifest in the disposition of the window drapery; a pleasant, affectionate, riant expression radiating from all around, fitly preluding the holy harmony of a happy home. "Within, the entourage was more exquisite still. Books, pictures, statuettes, and all the every-day, yet elegant appliances of household life, completed the ideal 'poetry of home.' "

In 1855, Mrs. Ritchie gave to the world the volume, "Mimic Life," a series of tales and pictures of the stage, which hold the reader with their breathing verity. This was followed, in 1857, by "Twin Roses," a story also of stage life — a sweet, sad narrative, dipped in the tenderest poetry of the writer's soul. Mrs. Ritchie is yet true to her "mission," and aims to give in her books faithful revelations  of theatrical life, about which  the world, seeing it, at best, through a glass darkly, was getting very dark fancies.

The stirring public life of Mrs. Mowatt does not seem at all to affect the serene, private life of Mrs. Ritchie. Into its ambient atmosphere of love and beauty, there stealeth, apparently, no longing for the old whirl and circumstance of the stage. The centre of a gifted and refined circle, in communication with many of the leading minds of the age — Vice-Regent of the Mount Vernon Association for Virginia, her life is still crowded. The power of concentration is remarkable in Mrs. Ritchie. At present, the purchase and improvement of Mount Vernon is the all-absorbing thought with her, and every energy is pushed to this consummation.

Of her success as a dramatist, it is sufficient to say that "Fashion" and "Armand" have kept the stage persistently, the first for sixteen, the last for fourteen years. Her poetic faculty should be gauged by passages — full of poetic fire and beauty — in "Armand," rather than by her fugitive poems, though many of these do her great credit.

With the exception of her characteristic sketches, contributed weekly to the "New York Ledger," she finds time, just now, for no literary labor, every hour being occupied with home duties, correspondence, and the various claims of Mount Vernon.

[Since this was written, a great sorrow has come upon Mrs. Ritchie, in the death of her father.   On the 5th of April, I860, after an illness of twelve clays, during the agonies of which he beautifully demonstrated the power of a Christian faith, Mr. Ogden passed, in the eighty-first year of his age, to another sphere. Bound to him by a love that was more than filial, for ten days and nights this daughter, the pride and joy of his long life, kept faithful vigil by his bedside, and when he "fell asleep, it was calmly and gently, like a trusting child,” in her arms.]

from: Women of the South Distinguished in Literature

Freeman, Julia Dean, ed.
New York, Derby & Jackson, 1861
Pages 80-95

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