Mrs. Anna Cora Mowatt achieved distinction as an actress, novelist, and dramatist. She was the daughter of S. G. Ogden, a merchant of New York, and was born in Bordeaux, France, in 1819. While at school in America, she attracted the attention of James Mowatt, a New York lawyer, with whom she made a runaway match before she was seventeen years old. Her first dramatic production was Gulzara, or The Persian Slave, which was published in 1841. Her next attempt in this line was the comedy of Fashion, which was produced at the Park Theater, New York, in March, 1845, and drew crowded houses for three successive weeks. It was also acted with similar success at the Walnut Street Theater of Philadelphia. It was afterward brought out in London, at the Olympic Theater, and met with a very flattering reception from the English critics. One of the London journals commented on the play as follows: "Rough and ranting melodramas had formed the staple of what America had hitherto sent us; but last night this reproach was wiped out, and there was represented at the Olympic Theater, with the most deserved success, an original American five-act comedy, . . . which, as regards plot, construction, character, or dialogue, is worthy to take its place by the side of the best English comedies." She made her debut as an actress at the Park Theater, New York, in 1845, and afterward acted with Mr. E. L. Davenport, in England. After her return to America, in 1851, she starred in all the leading cities, and took leave of the stage in 1851, on her marriage to W. F. Ritchie, editor of the Richmond "Enquirer." She died in 1870. Among her writings were Armand, a drama, 1845; two novels, "Evelyn" and "The Fortune Hunter;" "Autobiography of an Actress," 1854; "Mimic Life," 1856; "Twin Roses," 1857; "Fairy Fingers;" "The Clergyman's Wife and Other Sketches;" and "The Mute Singer."¹

from:  The Drama, Painting, Poetry, and Song: Embracing a complete
history of the stage; an exhaustive treatise on pictorial art;
a choice collection of favorite poems, and popular songs of
all nations

by Albert Ellery Berg
New York, Collier, 1884

ANNA CORA MOWATT

Anna Cora, the daughter of Samuel G. Ogden a New York merchant, was born in Bordeaux, France, during her father's residence in that city. Her early years were passed in a fine old chateau in its neighborhood called La Castagne. One of its apartments was fitted up as a theatre, in which the numerous children of the family, of which the future Mrs. Mowatt was the tenth, amused themselves with dramatic entertainments, for which several of them evinced decided talent. The family removed a few years after to New York.

While yet a school girl, Anna, in her fifteenth year, became the wife of Mr. James Mowatt, a lawyer of New York. The story of her first acquaintance with her lover, who soon began to escort her to and from school, gallantly bearing her satchel, and the courtship and run-away match which speedily followed, are very pleasantly told in the lady's autobiography. The only reason for the elopement being the unwillingness of the couple to wait until the lady had passed seventeen summers, they soon received the paternal pardon, and retired to a country residence at Flatbush, Long Island. Here the education of the "child-wife," as she was prettily styled, was continued by the husband, several years the Senior. Some pleasant years were passed in Sunday-school teaching, fortune-telling at fancy fairs, “shooting swallows on the wing," in sportive tramps through the woods, private theatricals, and the composition of an epic poem, Pelayo, or the Cavern of Covadonga, in five cantos which was published by the Harpers, and followed by a satire entitled Reviewers Reviewed directed against the critics who had taken the liberty to cut up the poem. Both appeared as the work of "Isabel."

Mrs. Mowatt’s health failing, she accompanied a newly married sister and brother in a tour to Europe. She wrote a play, Gulzara, or the Persian Slave, during her absence, had appropriate scenes and dresses made in Paris for its representation, and soon after her return produced the piece with great applause at a party at her residence, in honor of her father's birthday.

Meanwhile Mr. Mowatt had taken part in the speculations of the day, and a commercial revulsion occurring, was “utterly ruined”— a weakness in the eyes preventing him from resuming his old profession of the law.

The elder Vandenhoff had just before met with great success in a course of dramatic readings, and the wife, casting about for ways and means of support, determined to bring her dramatic talents into account in this manner. She gained her husband’s consent with some difficulty, and, preferring the verdict of a stranger audience, gave her first reading at Boston, and with decided success. She soon after appeared in New York, where she read to large audiences, but the tacit disapproval of friends and the exertions required brought on a fit of sickness, from which she suffered for the two following years.

She next, her husband having become a publisher, turned her attention to literature, and wrote a number of stories for the magazines with the signature of “Helen Berkley." These were followed by a longer story, The Fortune Hunter and by the five act comedy of Fashion, which was written for the stage, and produced at the Park Theatre, March, 1845. It met with success there and at theatres in other cities, and emboldened its author, forced by the failure of her husband in the publishing business, to contribute to their joint support, to try her fortune as an actress. She made her first appearance on the classic boards of the Park Theatre, June, 1846, as Pauline in the Lady of Lyons, and played a number of nights with such approval that engagements followed in other cities, and she became one of the most successful of “stars." She appeared in her own play of Fashion, and in 1847 wrote and performed a new five act drama, Armand.

In 1847 Mrs. Mowatt visited England with her husband, and made her first bow to an English audience in the month of December, at Manchester. She was successful and remained in England several years.

In February, 1851, Mr. Mowatt died. After a temporary retirement, his widow went through a round of farewell performances, and returned in July to her native land. In August she appeared at Niblo’s Garden, and after a highly successful engagement, made a brilliant farewell tour through the Union prior to her retirement from the stage at New York, in 1854. A few days afterwards she was married to Mr. William F. Ritchie, a gentleman of Richmond, Virginia.

In 1854 Mrs. Mowatt published the Autobiography of an Actress, or Eight Years on the Stage, a record of her private and professional life to that date.²

from: 

Cyclopædia of American Literature
by Duyckinck, Evert A. and Duyckinck, George
New York, C. Scribner,1855

Records of the New York Stage

Mr. Crisp took his benefit on the 13th as Claude Melnotte, when Mrs. Anna Cora Mowatt made her first triumphant appearance on any stage as Pauline — an event faithfully and graphically recorded in her own interesting autobiography. This lady (the daughter of Samuel G. Ogden, of New York, great-granddaughter of Francis Lewis, who signed the Declaration of Independence, and wife of James Mowatt, once well known in the financial circles of the city) had resorted to general literature, dramatic writing, public readings, and finally donned the mantle of Thespis for a livelihood, in all of which employments she was liberally patronized by the very elite of New York society and the widely- scattered public of the Union at large. Her American success might have been attributed to the sympathy deeply felt for a countrywoman so fair and unfortunate; but when in after years a career of equal brilliancy was accorded her in the more fastidious theatrical circles of our fatherland, it could scarcely be doubted as the result of appreciated skill and merit. Delicacy was her most marked characteristic. A subdued earnestness of manner, a soft musical voice, a winning witchery of enunciation, and indeed an almost perfect combination of beauty, grace and refinement fitted her for the very class of characters in which Miss Cushman was incapable of excelling, and in which she commanded the approbation of the British public, aided as she was by the rising talents of Mr. E.L. Davenport, who accompanied her in her tour. Mrs. Mowatt was born at Bordeaux, France, during the temporary residence there of her parents, about A. D. 1820. She married at the age of fifteen, and for a season enjoyed every luxury that wealth could purchase. Her husband's bankruptcy drove her to the stage, and her devoted attachment made her his most faithful and unwearied attendant during a long illness, which terminated in his death at London, in the winter of 1850. Mrs. Mowatt returned to America in the summer of 1851, and commenced another career of professional prosperity, which ended in a complimentary ovation at Niblo's, on the 8d of June, 1854, at the hands of the most eminent citizens of New York. She then made her last appearance on the stage as Pauline. On the 7th of the same month she was married to W. F. Ritchie, Esq., of Richmond, Va., and has since dedicated her brilliant talents solely to the social circle of which she is the admired centre.³

from: RECORDS OF THE NEW YORK STAGE.

Ireland, Joseph Norton
New York, T.H. Morrell, 1866

ANNA CORA MOWATT.

Anna Cora Ogden, a daughter of Mr. Samuel Gouverneur Ogden, now of the city of New York, was born in Bordeaux during a temporary residence of her parents in France. Her father's family has long been distinguished in the social and commercial history of New York, and her mother was descended from Francis Lewis, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Mr. Ogden had lost the principal portion of a large fortune in Miranda's celebrated expedition into South America, and his residence at Bordeaux was occasioned by mercantile affairs which in a few years secured for him a second time rank among the great merchants and capitalists of his native city.

A melancholy interest was thrown around Mr. Ogden's return, by the loss of two sons, who were swept overboard in a storm during the voyage; but the surviving members of the family settled in his old home, and for several years the education of the daughters occupied and rewarded his best attention. In the chateau in which they had lived near Bordeaux, they had passed the holydays and domestic anniversaries in masques and private theatricals, and there Anna Cora Ogden gave, in the abandon with which she enacted childish characters, the first indications of that histrionic genius for which she is now distinguished. At thirteen she read with delight the plays of Voltaire, and the next year she personated the heroine of Alzire on her mother's birthday. She had previously become acquainted with Mr. Mowatt, a young lawyer of good family and flattering prospects, who then became a suitor for her hand, and as her parents, to whom the marriage was not objectionable, demanded its postponement until she should be seventeen years of age, they eloped and were privately married by one of the French clergymen of the city.

Mr. and Mrs. Mowatt resided several years near the city of New York, and in this period she wrote Pelayo, or the Cavern of Covadonga, a poetical romance, in six cantos, which was published anonymously by the Harpers in 1836. Mr. Mowatt's health having declined, they seized the occasion of the marriage of a younger daughter of Mr. Ogden to visit Europe. They resided in Germany and France a year and a half, and in Paris Mrs. Mowatt wrote Gulzare, the Persian Slave, a five act play, which was printed in New York soon after their return, in 1841. The interruption of his business caused by this visit to Europe, and the infirm condition of his health, induced Mr. Mowatt to abandon the profession of the law and to embark in trade, and in the period of commercial disasters which followed, he lost nearly all his property. Mr. Ogden had also suffered new misfortunes, and these reverses led Mrs. Mowatt to the first public display of her abilities. The dramatic readings of Mr. Vandenhoff had been eminently successful in the chief cities of the Union, and, confident of her powers, she determined to follow his example. She had already acquired some reputation in literature, which secured for her a favorable reception on her first appearance, of which the results more than justified her sanguine anticipations. Her readings from the poets were repeated to large and applauding audiences in Boston, Providence, and New York. Mr. Mowatt having become a partner in a publishing house, she turned her attention again to literary composition, and produced in quick succession several volumes, among which were Sketches of Celebrated Persons, and the Fortune Hunter, a Novel. In 1844 she wrote Evelyn, or the Heart Unmasked, a Tale of Fashionable Life, which is the last and in some respects the best of her works of this description. It is spirited and witty, but unequal, and was written too hastily and carelessly to be justly regarded as the measure of her talents.

Her next work was Fashion, a Comedy, which was successfully acted in the theatres of New York and Philadelphia in the spring of 1845; and in the following autumn she made her brilliant first appearance as an actress, at the Park Theatre. She afterwards made two theatrical tours of the principal cities of the United States, and in the spring of 1847 she brought out in New York her third five act play, Armand, or the Child of the People. In November of the same year she sailed with her husband for England, and she has since played in Manchester and London a wide range of characters, in many of which she has won high praises from the most judicious critics.

The poems of Mrs. Mowatt, except Pelayo and her dramatic pieces, are brief and fugitive, and generally wanting in that artistic finish of which she has frequently shown herself to be capable.

All who know her personally, and those who are familiar with her history, will join in the exclamation of Mary Howitt, in a recent notice of her, " How excellent in character, how energetic, unselfish, devoted, is this interesting woman!"⁴

from:  The Female Poets of America

Rufus Griswold, ed.
Philadelphia: Henry C. Baird,1866

THE SOCIETY DRAMA.

[Hutton reports that Mowatt played the role of Gertrude in Fashion only twice. This is incorrect. She did not particularly like the role and avoided playing it when she could, but ended up portraying this character on countless occasions during her nine-year career due to the popularity of the play.]

"Full of most excellent differences, of very soft society, and great showing." — Hamlet, Act v. Sc. 2.

 A FEW extracts from the prologue which Mr. Epes Sargent wrote for Mrs. Mowatt's Fashion in 1845, will give a comparatively correct picture of the feeling which existed between native playwrights and the dramatic critics of this country towards the end of the first half of the present century, and will show how strong was the prejudice then existing against dramatic works of home manufacture. The comedy was purely original; its writer was an American, and a woman; its scenes were laid in the city of New York ; and Fashion was emphatically an American play.

At the rising of the curtain on the opening night Mr. Crisp was discovered reading a newspaper; and he spoke as follows, the italics being Mr. Sargent's own:

“Fashion, a Comedy! I'll go — but stay-

Now I read farther, 'tis a native play!

Bah! home-made calicoes are well enough,

But home-made dramas must be stupid stuff.

Had it the London stamp 'twould do; but then

For plays we lack the manners and the men!

Thus speaks one critic — hear another’s creed:

Fashion! What's here? [Reads.] It never can succeed!

What! from a woman's pen? It takes a man

To write a comedy — no woman can!

But, sir — but, gentlemen— you, sir, who think

No comedy can flow from native ink —

Are we such perfect monsters, or such dull,

That wit no traits for ridicule can cull?

Have we no follies here to be redressed?

No vices gibbeted? No crimes confessed?

Friends, from these scoffers we appeal to you!

Condemn the false, but, oh, applaud the true!

Grant that some wit may grow on native soil,

And Art's fair fabric rise from woman's toil!

While we exhibit but to reprehend

The social vices, 'tis for you to mend!"

The audience was long and loud in its applause of the prologue, but the play was so well written, so well represented, and so deserving of success that Mrs. Mowatt and Mr. Sargent might have spared themselves their appeal to the sympathy of the general public. The critics, as a rule, were well disposed, although Edgar Allan Poe, one of the sternest of them, said that Fashion resembled The School for Scandal, to which some of its admirers had likened it, as the shell resembles the living locust; a stricture which was hardly just. Fashion created an excitement in the theatrical world that had not been known for years before, and has hardly been equaled since. It was said, and with some truth, to have revived the drama in this country, and to have re-awakened a declining taste for dramatic representations of the higher and purer kind. It was almost the first attempt made to exhibit on our stage a correct picture of American society and manners, and although it was a satire on a certain parvenu class, conspicuous then as now in the metropolis, and always likely to exist here, it was a kindly, good-natured satire that did not intend to wound even when it was most pointed. Several familiar New York types were faithfully and cleverly represented: the millionaire merchant, vulgar, self-made, proud of his maker; and his wife, uneducated, pretentious, devoted to dress and display, seeking to marry her daughter to the adventurous foreigner who is not yet obsolete in the "upper circles" of metropolitan society.

There were besides these, in the underplot, a rich old Cattaraugus farmer, his granddaughter (a dependent in the merchant's family), a prying old maid, a black servant, a poet, and a fashionable selfish man of the world. All of these were well drawn and natural. The situations were probable, and had existed and do exist in real life, while the language was bright and pure. The dramatic critic of the Albion then a leading and influential journal, pronounced Fashion to be "the best American comedy in existence, and one that sufficiently indicated Mrs. Mowatt's ability to write a play that would rank among the first of the age." Mrs. Mowatt, however, was the author of but one other successful drama, Armand the Child of the People. It was first played at the Park Theatre on September 27, 1847; while Fashion itself has not been put upon the stage here in many years, and is almost forgotten, although its influence is still felt. Its popularity endured longer, perhaps than that of any of its contemporaries; it was played throughout the United States, and was well received by London and English provincial audiences. The oblivion into which it has fallen now should by no means be ascribed to its want of merit, the fashion of the time having changed.

The comedy was produced at the Park Theatre on the 24th of March, 1845. The Herald of the next day said it had one of the best houses ever seen in New York; boxes, pit, and gallery were crowded; all of the literati of the city were present, with a tolerable sprinkling of the elite — the Herald’s distinction between the elite and literati might have suggested another satirical play — and the comedy was enthusiastically received. Its initial cast was a very strong one and worthy of preservation. William Chippendale played Adam Trueman, the farmer; William H. Crisp, the elder, was Count Jolimaitre, the fraudulent nobleman; John Dyott was Colonel Howard, of the United States Army, in love with Gertrude; Thomas Barry was Tiffany, the wealthy merchant; T. B. De Walden, author of Sam, The Baroness, and other plays, was T. Tennyson Twinkle, a modern poet; John Fisher played Snobson, the confidential clerk, and Mr. Skerrett, Zeke, a colored servant.

None of these gentlemen are known to our stage to-day, but without exception they were as great in the various lines in which they were cast as could then be found in America. In the ladies of its first representations Fashion was equally fortunate, and Mrs. Mowatt herself, in her Autobiography writes that she felt much of the great success of the play to be justly due to the cleverness of the players. Mrs. Barry — the first Mrs. Barry, who died in 1854 — represented the would-be lady of fashion; Miss Kate Horn (Mrs. Buckland), Seraphina Tiffany, her daughter; Miss Clara Ellis, a young Englishwoman, who remained but a few years in this country, was the Gertrude ; Mrs. Dyott was Millinette, the French maid; and Mrs. Edward Knight (Mary Ann Povey) played Prudence, the maiden lady of a certain age. The part of Adam Trueman, the blunt, old-fashioned, warm-hearted farmer, with his unfashionable energy and sturdy common-sense, pointing homely morals and bursting social bubbles — "Seventy-two last August, man! Strong as a hickory, and every whit as sound" — was for many years a favorite with the representatives of "character old men" on our stage. Mr. Blake, the original Adam in Philadelphia, was particularly happy in the role, playing it many times in New York; and E. L. Davenport made a decided hit as Adam at the Olympic in London, in January, 1850, when the comedy was first produced in England. Mr. Davenport on this occasion had the support of his wife, who played Gertrude, and who was then still billed as Miss Fanny Vining.

There is no record of Mrs. Mowatt's appearance in Fashion except on one evening in Philadelphia, when she played Gertrude for the benefit of Mr. Blake, and once in New York — at the Park, May 15, 1846. She felt that the character gave her no great opportunity, and she never attempted it again.

Mrs. Mowatt's career as an actress was very remarkable. She was one of the few persons of adult years who, going upon the stage without the severe training and long apprenticeship so necessary even to indifferent dramatic success, display anything like brilliant dramatic qualities. She was an actress and a "star" born, not made. Her reasons for adopting the profession were as remarkable as the triumphs she won; her success as a playwright encouraging her, she said, to attempt to achieve like favor as a player. Everyone familiar with the history of the theatre since it has had a history knows well how great is the distinction between producer and performer, and how few are the actors who have written clever plays, how few the authors who have become distinguished as actors upon the stage. The popularity of Miss Elizabeth Thompson's battle pictures would not encourage her to attempt to lead armies in the field; gun -makers are proverbially poor marksmen; and Von Bulow would never succeed were he to attempt the construction of a grand-piano.

Mrs. Mowatt, however, had stronger inducements than those given in her Autobiography for the step she took. In looking back upon her life, she felt that all of her tastes, studies, and pursuits from childhood had combined to make her an actress. She had exhibited a passion for theatrical entertainments when she was little more than an infant; she had written plays, such as they were, before she had seen the inside of a theatre, and she had played in an amateur way before she had ever seen a professional performance. Above and beyond all of these things she was a woman of uncommon intelligence and grace, almost a genius. She had, with some success, given public readings. She felt the stage to be her destiny. She determined that her destiny should be fulfilled, and she became a good actress if not absolutely a great one, and seemingly with little effort and few rebuffs. The pleasant account she has given of her own theatrical experiences, and her touching and beautiful defense of those women who make their living on the stage, have encouraged many ladies who have felt themselves gifted with similar talents, and possessed of like ambitions and aspirations, to make the same attempts, and generally to fail.

There have been debutantes enough in New York since the debut of Mrs. Mowatt to fill to overflowing the auditorium of any single city theatre, could they be gathered under one roof to witness the first effort of the next aspirant, whoever she may be. During the season of 1876-77 alone, not less than seven ladies — Mrs. Louise M. Pomeroy, Miss Bessie Darling, Miss Anna Dickinson, Mrs. J. H. Hackett, Miss Minnie Cummings, Miss Marie Wainwright, and Miss Adelaide Lennox — in leading parts made their first bows to metropolitan audiences, without training or experience; and the season was not considered a particularly strong one in debutantes at that. For much of this Mrs. Mowatt, unconsciously and unwittingly, was responsible. Her sudden success turned many heads, while the equally sudden failures, not recorded, but very many in number, have been quite forgotten, and will be still ignored as long as there are new Camilles and new Juliets to achieve greatness at one fell swoop, and as long as there are unwise friends and speculative managers to encourage them. The careers of these candidates for dramatic fame, as they are familiar to the world, are certainly not inspiring to their foolish sisters who would follow them. A few still in the profession are filling, creditably but ingloriously, humble positions; a very small proportion have by the hardest of work become prominent and popular; but the great majority, dispirited and disheartened, have gone back to the private life from which they sprung, without song, without honor, and without tears, except the many tears they have shed themselves.

Mrs. Mowatt was never behind the scenes of a theatre until she was taken to witness a rehearsal of Fashion the day before its first production. Her second passage through a "stage door" was when she had her single rehearsal of The Lady of Lyons in which she made her debut and she became an actress, and a triumphant one, three weeks after her determination to go upon the stage was formed. Her house was crowded, the applause was genuine and discriminating, and one gentleman, wholly un-prejudiced and of great experience, publicly pronounced it "the best first appearance" he ever saw.

The performance took place at the Park Theatre, New York, on the 13th of June, 1845, less than three months after the production of her comedy. The occasion was the benefit of Mr. Crisp, who had given her the little instruction her limited time permitted her to receive, and who played Claude to her Pauline, Mrs. Vernon representing Madame Deschapelles. While she writes candidly in her Autobiography of her hopes, her experiences, and her trials, she modestly says but little of the decided praise from all quarters which she certainly received, the account of her success here given being taken from current journals and from the recollections of old theatre-goers, not from her own story of her theatrical life.

On the 13th of July of the same year (1845) Mrs. Mowatt appeared at Niblo's Garden, playing a very successful engagement of two weeks, supported by Messrs. Crisp, Chippendale, E. L. Davenport, Thomas Placide, Nickinson, John Sefton, and Mrs. Watts, afterwards Mrs. Sefton. Here she assumed her second role that of Juliana in the Honeymoon and more than strengthened the favorable impression she had made as Pauline.

During the first year she was upon the stage she acted more than two hundred nights, and in almost every important city in the United States, playing Lady Teazle, Mrs. Haller in The Stranger, Lucy Ashton in the Bride of Lammermoor, Katherine in the Taming of the Shrew, Julia, Juliet, and all of the then most popular characters in the line of juvenile tragedy and comedy. The amount of labor, physical and mental, she endured during this period must have been enormous; and the intellectual strain alone was enough to have destroyed the strongest mental constitution. In the history of the stage in all countries there is no single instance of a mere novice playing so many important parts so many nights, before so many different audiences, and winning so much and such merited praise, as did this lady during the first twelve months of her career as an actress.

Mrs. Mowatt went to England in the autumn of 1847, where her success was as marked as in her own country, and more, perhaps, to her professional credit. She had to contend with a certain prejudice against her nationality, which still existed in Britain; she was compared with the leading English actresses of long experience in their own familiar roles and she could not depend upon the social popularity and personal good-will which were so strongly in her favor at home. Her English debut was made in Manchester a few weeks after her arrival. Her first appearance in London was at the Princess's Theatre on the 5th of January, 1848; Mr. Davenport, who had played opposite characters to her during her American tours, giving her excellent support during her English engagements. She returned to America in the summer of 1851, greatly improved in her personal appearance and in her art. Her subsequent career here, as long as she remained upon the stage, was marked with uniform success, the reputation she had acquired on the other side of the water establishing even more strongly her claims on this.

Mrs. Mowatt, after nine years of experience as an actress, took her farewell of the stage at Niblo's Garden on the evening of the 3d of June, 1854. As her Autobiography was published during the preceding year her reason for this step is not given, unless it was her marriage to Mr. Ritchie a few days later. The occasion was very interesting. A testimonial signed by many of the leading citizens, and highly eulogistic, was presented to her, and her last appearance created as great an excitement in the dramatic and social world as did her first. The play selected was The Lady of Lyons, the same in which she made her debut. Old play-goers who still remember her consider her one of the most satisfactory Paulines who have been seen in this country, and the part was always a favorite of her own. On the last playbill which contains her name are found as her support the names of Walter G. Keeble, who played Claude; of George H. Andrews, then a favorite "old man," who played Colonel Damas; of T. B. De Walden, who played Glavis; and of Mrs. Mann, who played Madame Deschapelles. Mrs. Mowatt never again appeared here, or elsewhere, in any public capacity.

Anna Cora Ogden was born in Bordeaux, France, during a visit of her parents to that country in 1819. She married James Mowatt, a young lawyer of New York, when she was only fifteen years of age. Her first appearance as a public reader was made in Boston in 1841 — Mr. Mowatt's financial troubles leading her to seek that means of contributing to her own support. During this same year she gave readings in the hall of the old Stuyvesant Institute in New York. In 1845, as has been shown above. She became an actress. Mr. Mowatt died in London in the spring of 1851. On the 7th of June, 1854, she was married (on Staten Island) to William F. Ritchie, of the Richmond Enquirer and she died in the little English village of Henley-on-the-Thames in the month of July, 1870, Mr. Ritchie surviving her some years, and dying in Lower Brandon, Virginia, on the 24th of April, 1877.

Mrs. Mowatt is described, by those who remember her in the first flush of her youth and her success, as “a fascinating actress and accomplished lady ; in person fragile and exquisitely delicate, with a face in whose calm depths the beautiful and pure alone were mirrored, a voice ever soft, gentle, and low, a subdued earnestness of manner, a winning witchery of enunciation, and a grace and refinement in every action"; and it was felt by her admirers that she would have become, had she remained longer in the profession, a consummate artist — one of the greatest this country has ever produced.

After her retirement, and until the breaking out of the civil war, her home in Richmond, Virginia, was the centre of all that was refined and cultured in the Southern capital. She devoted herself to literature and to her social and family cares, writing during this period her Mimic Life; or Before and Behind the Curtain, in which she spoke so many kind and encouraging words of her sisters in the profession, particularly of the ballet girls and the representatives of small and thankless parts, who contribute in their quiet way so much to the public amusement, and who too often, by authors and public, are entirely ignored. Among her more important works, other than those already mentioned here, written in her youth and later life, was Gulzara; or The Persian Slave, a play without heroes, the scenes of which were laid within the walls of a Turkish harem, and which was chiefly remarkable from the fact that the only male character in the dramatis personae was a boy of ten years.

Marion Harland, in her Recollections of a Christian Actress printed a few years ago, has paid the highest tribute to the personal worth of Mrs. Mowatt. What she accomplished during her professional life has, in a manner, been shown here. She was a representative American woman of whom American women have every reason to be proud; and as the writer of the first absolutely American society play, she must be forgiven the harm her brilliant and easy success as an actress has, by its example, since done to the American stage.

Very few of our earlier native dramatists followed the fashion set by Mrs. Mowatt in writing original plays of American social life. "Plays of contemporaneous society," as they were called, were popular and fairly successful here; but they were the charming home comedies of men like Byron or Robertson, thoroughly English in character and tone, or they were taken from the French and the German, with purely foreign incidents and scenes. Some of these were ''localized," and thus became cruel libels upon American men and manners, except upon such Americans as are influenced by the worship of The Mighty Dollar or such as are to be found only in Our Boarding-houses and Under the Gas-light. The New York play-goer of thirty years since looked in vain upon the stage for the domestic stories of American city and country life which he found in the then new novels of Theodore Winthrop, or in the then familiar poems of Dr. Holland. Until Joshua Whitcomb appeared we saw no American Peter Probity in an American Chimney Corner; and until Bronson Howard and David Lloyd and Brander Matthews and Edgar Fawcett began to write American plays we saw no American Haversack in an American Old Guard — not even an American Peter Teazle or an American John Mildmay; while we could not help feeling that Still Waters Run as Deep in this country as they run in the old, and that the School for Scandal in real life has as many graduates and undergraduates in the United States as it has anywhere else.⁵

from:  CURIOSITIES OF THE AMERICAN STAGE.

by Laurence Hutton
New York, Harper & Brothers, 1891

“BEAUTY, GRACE AND REFINEMENT”

The year of this performance saw the emergence of one of the most interesting native actresses America had yet produced. Anna Cora Ogden was born in Bordeaux, France, but was descended from an old American family. At the age of fifteen she married James Mowatt, a wealthy New York lawyer, and for some years she led a pampered, carefree existence. About 1840, however, Mr. Mowatt lost his fortune through speculation, and, because of his failing sight, Mrs. Mowatt courageously undertook the support of herself and her husband.

From childhood she had shown what her friends considered talent in home theatricals, and in her dilemma, stimulated by hearing the elder Vandenhoff in a course of readings, she determined to become a public reader.

In this endeavor she achieved great success at Boston, New York, and elsewhere. Later, under the stress of necessity, she set about becoming an actress. Friends and relatives protested. For a woman of high social station to adopt the dubious profession of the stage was little short of a scandal; “but,” in her own words, “entreaties, threats, supplicating letters could only occasion me much suffering — they could not shake my resolution.” Her stage debut was made, June 13, 1845, at the Park as Pauline in The Lady of Lyons. After her initial appearance Edgar Allan Poe wrote in the Broadway Journal: “We have to speak of her acting only in terms of enthusiastic admiration — let her trust proudly to her own grace of manner — her own sense of art — her own rich and natural eloquence.” Mrs. Mowatt soon rose to the rank of a star and toured the country. In 1847 she visited England, playing first in the provinces and later at London to the great satisfaction of the British audiences. After her husband’s death Mrs. Mowatt returned to America in 1851 and continued her starring tours with undiminished prosperity. Ireland explained her success thus: “Delicacy was her most marked characteristic. A subdued earnestness of manner, a soft musical voice, a winning witchery of enunciation, and indeed an almost perfect combination of beauty, grace and refinement fitted her for the very class of characters in which Miss Cushman was incapable of excelling, and in which she commanded the approbation of the British public.” On June 3, 1854, she took her farewell of the stage at Niblo’s Garden in the character of Pauline and a few days later married William F. Ritchie of Richmond. In the words of one of her contemporaries, she “has since dedicated her brilliant talents solely to the social circle of which she is the admired center.”

Mrs. Mowatt’s dramatic activities were not confined to the acting of others’ plays; she gained much contemporary fame and a modest niche in American literature by writing plays of her own.

Indeed before her stage debut she had written her most noted play, Fashion; or Life in New York, which was produced at the Park, March 24, 1845. Though the work of an American and a woman, it had a continuous run of three weeks before it was withdrawn, still at the height of its popularity, to make way for stars previously engaged. It also had a run at the Walnut Street Theater, Philadelphia, during the New York engagement. Fashion is a descendant of our first important social comedy, The Contrast (see No. 68), and like it is a lively satire on the affectations of those Americans who make themselves ridiculous by stupidly aping foreign manners. Mrs. Tiffany, aspiring to the leadership of the New York “ee-light,” provides herself with a French femme de chambre, a few atrociously pronounced French phrases, a set of furniture with a “jenny-says-quoi” look about it, and the attentions of a spurious French count. The solid principles of republican America are exemplified by the speech and actions of the sterling Colonel Howard and hearty old Adam Trueman from Cattaraugus, New York. Though the plot is trite, the dialogue is lively, and the characters are vivid and not unveracious. Allowing for the necessary exaggeration, it mirrors one phase of contemporary society with considerable accuracy. Fashion had a run of two weeks during Mrs. Mowatt’s London engagement, and by at least one critic it was compared favorably with the plays of Garrick and Sheridan.

That the comedy is well adapted to the theater was proved when it was revived in something of a burlesque spirit by the Provincetown Players in New York during the season of 1923-24. When Mrs. Mowatt wrote her second play, Armand, she incorporated a part well suited to herself, a feature not present in Fashion. This romantic drama was produced at the Park, September 27, 1847. Later it was given at Boston and in 1849 at London — always, it seems, with the approval of the public. But for the modern reader this conventional play, lacking the contemporaneousness of its forerunner, has less interest. Another of Mrs. Mowatt’s writings is her Autobiography of an Actress (1854), an entertaining record that gives valuable information concerning the American theater.⁶

From: The Pageant of America,
a pictorial history of the United States

 by Ralph Henry Gabriel
New Haven, Yale University Press, 1925

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