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Mimic Life
Or, Before and Behind the Curtain. A Series of Narratives,
by Anna Cora Ritchie
(Formerly Mrs. Mowatt)
Publisher: Ticknor
and Fields (Boston)
Publication
Date: January,1856
Brief Synopsis:
Mimic Life is
composed of three novellas – Stella, The Prompter’s Daughter, and The Unknown Tragedian. The synopsis of
each is as follows:
(From Marius Blesi’s 1938 Dissertation “The Life
and Letters of Anna Cora Mowatt”)
Stella: Stella Rosenvelt’s father had died
suddenly, and a sheriff’s sale forced Stella and her mother out of their
“stately mansion in one of the most fashionable localities in Boston.” Stella’s brother, Ernest, was an actor. When Stella decided to go on the stage and
made known her decision to her serving maid, Mattie, the latter was horrified:
“O Miss Stella! I shall think you demented!”
Stella’s mother, who was living in a boarding house, could not believe
that her daughter would want to sully herself by going on the stage. Stella next consulted Mr. Oakland,
“her former tutor and ever-dear friend.” …Mr. Oakland advised her to study
Shakespeare’s heroines, and she began to study them immediately, prefatory to
going on the stage. Both her brother and
Mr. Oakland failed to dissuade her from her choice. On a day when Stella thought she was ready,
she and Mattie called on the manager of one of Boston’s best theatres. Mr. Grimshaw, the manager, gave her no
encouragement and succeeded only in frightening her. On returning home, however, she read in the
paper of the death of Miss Lydia Talbot, a “stock star” of a popular Boston
theatre. Immediately Stella and Mattie
hastened to the playhouse, and finally Stella persuaded Mr. Belton, the
manager, to give her a trial. She had
only ten days to study until she made her debut in Virginia, opposite Mr.
Tennent, the well-known star. Stella’s first rehearsal, the day
before her debut, was frankly discouraging, even though Mrs. Fairfax – whose
face “was one of the most benign that goodness and intellect ever illumined” –
insisted that Stella be not down-hearted at the jibes of the company. The second rehearsal, on the
morning of the debut, went off better.
For the first time, Tennent acted with her, and his contemptuous remarks
and haughty demeanor did not help soothe Stella’s jangled nerves. She instinctively felt the look of distrust
that some of her fellow-actors gave her. Finally her hour of triumph or
failure arrived. Mr. Oakland wished her luck, and cautioned her to “be natural;
do not aim at too much; don’t try to act, but to feel; don’t declaim, but talk.” All the hubbub of
back-stage activity served only to bring about an attack of stage-fright for
Stella that only Mrs. Fairfax could break. The curtain went up. Stella was determined to conquer. She did.
And the crowd applauded its approval of her. But even Stella was not deluded by this one
night of praise. Stella immediately rehearsed for
other parts; Pauline, Desdemona, and Evadne. One day, the company listened to a
Mr. Edwin Percy read to them (in the green-room) his poetical drama, Love’s Triumphs. All but Stella scoffed
at the play; she, oftentimes, “lifted her handkerchief to hide a starting
tear.” The play, in spite of the actors’
protests, was put into rehearsal, and Mrs. Pottle was given the part of the
queen – to the despair of Mr. Percy! Percy and Stella fall hopelessly in
love with each other, he with her because she was a struggling and pure young
actress, and she with him because he was a struggling and pure young
playwright. But Love’s Triumphs proved a failure, and Percy, in despair, was
comforted by Stella. A few nights later,
Stella attempted the role of Beatrice, and failed miserably. The cheery words of solace that Mrs. Fairfax
gave her were futile. Even Edwin Percy’s
encouragement proved of little help. Then some evenings afterward,
during a performance of Romeo and Juliet,
the drunken father of the little basket carrier, Perdita, was killed by the
fall of the curtain weight. The incident so unnerved Stella
that she had difficulty finishing the evening’s performance. Her next appearance on stage was in Hamlet,
and while enacting the role of Ophelia, went completely mad under the nervous
strain. Taken home by Edwin Percy, poor
Stella was pronounced by the physician to have “brain fever, produced by
injudicious mental stimulus.” Her
relatives and theatre friends gathered around her as she lay dying.1 The Prompter’s
Daughter: The second story, “The Prompter’s
Daughter” opens in the property-room of a London Theatre. Sue and Robin
Trueheart are the proud parents of an infant daughter, Tina. Robin is a
hunchback, and he has as his duty the thankless work of being prompter of the
theatre. The tale is a rather sad narrative
of the way children grow up in the theatre.
Little Tina, from her days of infancy, is pressed into service, first as
Dot’s baby in Dickens’ Cricket on the
Hearth, then as Cora’s child in Pizarro,
and finally as the Count’s child in The
Stranger. At the age of six, Tina
made a great hit with the audiences as the young Duke of York in Richard III. Other roles proved successful: Prince Arthur
in King John, Albert in William Tell,
and Ariel in The Tempest. It was in the last-named play that
Tina was horribly injured. While she was
floating through the air, by means of wires, the pulleys jammed, and left the
child “suspended immediately over one of the side-lights used to illumine the
back portion of the stage.” Had it not
been for the quick thinking of her father, Robin, who got a ladder and rescued
her by severing the wires with an ax, Tina would have burned to death. As it was, the little girl’s burns were
severe. For one year she was unable to
act. However, when she returned to the
theatre – as a special favor to the manager – to enact the role of the Fairy
Queen in a Christmas play, her strength was not equal to the occasion, and soon
afterward she died. The shock proved too
great for Susan, and quickly “Mother and child were re-united!”2 The Unknown Tragedian: Elma Ruthven was a pretty girl of twenty years who disliked the acting profession of her parents, Arthur and Mary Ruthven. When the story begins, Mrs. Ruthven is quite ill, but is determined to make her farewell appearance before the
London state in the character she made
famous; Mrs. Malaprop. Against the
advice of her physician, the grand old lady of the theatre went through her
performance, but died from exhaustion several days later. Before she died she expressed a wish to her
daughter that she marry Gerald Mortimer, “the great tragedian.” He was very much in love with Elma, but she
had given her heart to Leonard Edmonton. The story, for nearly one hundred
pages, purports to be a psychological study of two people caught in the web of
circumstance: Elma, dutifully striving to carry out her parents’ wish that she
marry Gerald whom she does not love; and Gerald, loving her, but knowing that
she will never love him. One day Elma
and Leonard are together in the theatre; she tells him that she can never marry
him because of her vow to her father to marry Gerald. The tragedian overheard the conversation, and
the following night, in the tragedy of Bertram,
he mortally stabbed himself.3
Major Themes:
Theatrical professionals deserve the same respect granted to other professions
Jealousy is corrosive Work is redemptive True love is sacrificial
Characters: Stella: Stella
Rosenvelt: a young actress Mrs.
Rosenvelt: Stella’s mother Ernest
Rosenvelt: Stella’s brother, a young tragedian Mattie:
Stella’s maid Mr.
Oakland: teacher of elocution who serves as Stella’s advisor, tutor, and
friend Mr.
Grimshaw: sleazy manager of a
popular Boston theater Mr.
Belton: manager of a Boston
theater who hires Stella Mrs.
Fairfax: experienced actress of the company, friend to Stella Mrs.
Pottle: a comical elderly lady
who plays bit parts in the company Perdita:
young chorus girl who makes extra money by making deliveries for the actors of
the company Floy:
her brother Edwin
Percy: young playwright, falls in love with Stella Mr.
Tennent: visiting star tragedian at the theater where Stella works Miss
Malvina Doran: young actress, rival to Stella Mr.
Finch: stage manager Fisk:
impudent call boy of the theater The Prompter’s
Daughter: Robin
Trueheart: prompter of the theatrical company, father to Tina Sue
Trueheart: minor player of the company, mother to Tina Tina
Trueheart: gifted child actress Mr.
Higgins: Manager of the theater Mr.
Tuttle: the unscrupulous stage-manager Miss
Armory: Tina’s Sunday-school teacher Mr.
Upton: Veteran tragedian who plays opposite Tina in several productions The Unknown Tragedian: Elma
Ruthven: daughter of two performers who reluctantly becomes an actress Arthur
Ruthven: tragedian, father of Elma Mary Ruthven: comedienne, mother of Elma Gerald
Mortimer: young successful tragedian, in love with Elma Leonard
Edmonton: divinity student, falls in love with Elma Lord
Oranmore: relative and friend of Gerald Mortimer Publication
History:
Many critics greeted Mimic
Life as a sequel in fictional form to Mowatt’s 1854 Autobiography. Reviewers had commented positively on her choice not
to include the sort of green room gossip that they complained typically filled
theatrical memoirs in her Mimic Life was
published in January of 1856. Mowatt had been out of the public limelight for
nearly two years following a media blitz in 1854 that consisted of her
retirement from the stage, the publication of her Autobiography, and her highly publicized marriage to William
Foushee Ritchie all packed into the first six months of that year. After two years of silence, the public was again
ready for news of their long-absent darling.
Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Paper
glowingly titled their announcement of Mimic
Life’s publication “A Welcome New Book” in a bold-face, all-caps font.4 Ticknor and Reed, the book’s publisher, anticipating sales
as brisk as Mowatt’s Autobiography of an
Actress had achieved, began teasing the book’s impending arrival mid-summer
1855. Mimic Life appeared on the
Boston publisher’s Christmas list of forthcoming publications alongside Longfellow’s
“Hiawatha” and a collection of stories from Grace Greenway. Advance copies of the book were released in
December to selected newspaper reviewers, generating a crop of highly positive
reviews for Ticknor and Reed to quote in their ads for Mimic Life’s January release. The book-buying public responded eagerly according to this
report from The Charlotte Democrat; Mrs. Anna Cora Ritchie’s (wife of
the Editor of the Richmond Enquirer)
new work, “Mimic Life,” it is stated, has sold at the rate of a thousand copies
a day, for the ten days it has been in the market.5
Reception: Most of the critical reaction to Mimic Life -- particularly that of those reviewers who received
advance copies of the book in December -- was overwhelmingly positive. Many of
the reviews read along the lines of the following; This volume may be regarded as a
sequel to the charming “Autobiography of an Actress,” from the same pen written
while Other critics took an approach similar to that of the Southern Literary Messenger’s John
Reuben Thompson, who, though lavish with his praise of the author’s work and
style, betrays a more dubious attitude towards her project of defending the
honor of theatrical professionals; Mrs. Ritchie has added largely to
an already enviable literary reputation by this delightful collection of
"Narratives," in which the graceful and the tender meet and mingle in
the most charming and touching manner. Having herself won on the stage a renown
scarcely below that of the highest names in histrionic annals, she manifests a
pardonable esprit-de-corps, in her
retirement, by seeking to dignify the actor's profession and to enlist public
sympathy for the trials that wait upon dramatic life. Whatever may be thought
of the design, and there is little charity, we fear, in this censorious world
for the followers of the theatrical calling, there can be but one opinion as to
its execution, and the sweet creations of the gifted writer cannot fail of
endearing themselves to all who read of their ambitions and triumphs and
sorrows. We do not recall a brighter picture in the range of modern literature
than Tina Truehart, and if it be not drawn from the life, it shows with what
pure and lovely images the limner's imagination is stored. The style of
"Mimic Life" is almost faultless, indicating far greater care than
any of Mrs. Ritchie's previous compositions, and giving promise of a fame as
high in the walks of Belles Lettres
as Mrs. Mowatt achieved in her interpretations of Shakespeare.7 A.B. Peabody, in his critique for the North American Review, points out that in constructing this
particular “defense” of the stage, Mowatt has paradoxically made the theatre a
locus of corruption and misery for her characters; “The Lights and Shadows of the
Stage” would have been a not inappropriate alias for this title. Mrs. Ritchie
vindicates the capacity of her late profession, not only to preserve
uncontaminated, but to nurture and cherish, glorious types of moral beauty no less
than of genius; and at the same time lets us into the source and process of the
debasing and corrupting influences to which many of its members have yielded. The stories are all tragedies,
unless we except the last, in which the heroine is made happy by the suicide of
her accepted, but unloved lover, who adopts this ultra-heroic mode of
abdicating in favor of his successful rival. The interest of each of the tales
is even painfully intense; and they are all characterized by pure and lofty
sentiment, and wrought out in a style of exquisite grace and beauty.8
With no other criterion of the
stage than what the womanly delicacy of Mrs. Ritchie permits her to disclose of
life behind the scenes, we must believe that the theater is a most dangerous
school for those who are in its service.
The coarse nature and vulgar manners which pertain to nearly all her
stage characters, the petty jealousies and rivalries of actors, the spirit of
envy and detraction, the eagerness after applause and the artifices used to
secure the mead of popularity, the gross familiarities of the green-room, the
loose morality of the rehearsal – where the omission of indecent words by a
novice raises a jeer from prompter, manger, and actors – the presumptuous
advances of mangers towards their employees, and of star actors towards their
subordinates – showing that poverty and necessity are held akin to vice in the
scale of the theater – the daily routine of excitement, of deception, of coarse
wit and unbecoming revelry – things such as these which Mrs. Ritchie
incidentally discloses, and which she could ignore only by merging the woman in the artiste convince us that the theater in its best estate is under an
inevitable law of deterioration most dangerous to all concerned in it. We honor those who have clean escaped its
corruptions; we tremble for those who are yet exposed to them.9 Although such a conservative view did reflect reservations
that many in the U.S. still held about theatre and its practitioners, this
review, unlike an earlier debate between Boston newspapers about the true
identity of the character of Stella, was not picked up for reprint by other
news outlets throughout the country. The
average occupant of one of the rapidly expanding urban centers in the U.S.
still might not welcome the idea of an actor marrying their sister or daughter. However, by 1856, theatre-going was becoming
more of a socially acceptable entertainment option for city dwellers of all
ages, both sexes, and all income brackets.
Mimic Life provided a glimpse
behind the footlights into a world that had captured the interest of a
book-reading public who, unlike their parents and grandparents, could quite
possibly also be theatre patrons.
External
Links Read the novel online here: https://archive.org/details/mimiclifeorbefor00ritcrich Audiobook available here: https://librivox.org/mimic-life-by-anna-cora-mowatt-ritchie/ Further discussion on this book: Anna
Cora Mowatt and the Tragic Fate of Stella https://kellystaylor.wixsite.com/the-lady-actress/post/anna-cora-mowatt-and-the-tragic-fate-of-stella Anna
Cora Mowatt and the Ill-Starred Lovers: Part I – Gustavus Brooke https://kellystaylor.wixsite.com/the-lady-actress/post/anna-cora-mowatt-and-the-ill-starred-lovers Anna Cora Mowatt and the
Ill-Starred Lovers: Part II – Avonia Jones https://kellystaylor.wixsite.com/the-lady-actress/post/acm-and-the-ill-starred-lovers Anna Cora Mowatt and the
Ill-Starred Lovers: Part III https://kellystaylor.wixsite.com/the-lady-actress/post/anna-cora-mowatt-and-the-ill-starred-lovers-part-iii Notes
1. Blesi, Marius. The Life and
Letters of Anna Cora Mowatt. Dissertation, University of Virginia, 1938.
Pages 318-320. 2. Ibid. Page 323. 3. Ibid. Pages 324-325. 4. “Now Ready.” Frank Leslies’ Illustrated Paper. December 29, 1855. Page 15. 5. “Quick Sales.” The Charlotte Democrat: North Carolina. Jan. 15, 1856. Page 1,
col. 4. 6. “New Books.” Worcester Palladium. December 26. Page 3, col.2. 7. Thompson,
John Reuben. “Notices of New Works.” Southern
Literary Messenger. Vol. 22. Issue 1. Jan. 1856. Page 79. 8. Peabody,
A.P. “Mimic Life.” North American Review.
Vol. 82 (April, 1856.). Page 580 9. “The Theater as a School.” Buffalo Christian Advocate. Vol. VII, Number
324. Thursday, March 20, 1856. Page 1, col.1.
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recounting of her theatrical career. Unlike her
sometimes co-star George Vandenhoff, Mowatt diplomatically avoided naming names
or going into detail when relating incidents that reflected badly on those she
had worked with during her years on the stage.
she was Mrs. Mowatt. It of course abounds with reminiscences of events of
which she was cognizant, or in which she bore a part, during the nine years of
professional life in which she was an ornament of the stage.
Because the anti-theatrical prejudice that Mowatt was
combatting in this book and many of her other works was real and still active
in many sections of the U.S. at this time despite growing acceptance of
theatre, there were scattered examples in the press of pushback against Mimic Life’s popularity.
