PART II: RUMINATIONS ON THE ROAD NOT TAKEN
[A full cast recording of this play is available at LIBRIVOX ]
Anna Cora Mowatt’s career on the U.S. stage reached its apex in years 1852-53. Despite illness, injury, and turmoil in her personal life, she achieved her greatest critical and popular successes during this time. Although some theatre historians have marked her down a limited performer, skilled only in playing pretty ingénues, Anne Blake serves as a prime example of the type of the character Mowatt took on throughout her career that demonstrated her eagerness to take on challenging roles and willingness to play against type. Although this play did not become part of her touring repertoire for very long, it did help the actress become a serious contender for the honorary title of “Queen of the American Stage” in the eyes of many contemporary critics during this capstone interval of her career.
Theatre history slights Mowatt’s achievements as a stage artist, in my opinion. When summarizing Mowatt’s work as an actress in the late 19th and early 20th century, influential writers such as Laurence Hutton and William Winter dismissed her as only being capable of playing charming young women in light comedies and saccharine melodramas. The tendency of these authors to undervalue her range and talent can be best understood (and disputed) if one considers the following three factors. First, Mowatt’s stage life is bookended by two great successes in ingénue roles. With no prior stage experience and only a month of preparation, she debuted in a surprise smash hit with the critics and the public alike as Pauline in “Lady of Lyons” (Listen to a full cast reading of this play on Librivox ) at the Park Theatre in early summer of 1845. This character would be a fan-favorite throughout her decade on the stage. In 1852, Mowatt scored her last great box-office triumph as Parthenia in the romantic comedy “Ingomar, the Barbarian.” Public and critical approval for the actress in these two roles was of such magnitude that it is easy to see how some commentators who did not wish to expend a lot of time on research might be content to assume that Mowatt chose to perform nothing but similar characters throughout the rest of her career.
A second element, I think, of the insistence of selected theatre historians on tagging Mowatt as a performer who was limited to playing ingénues is an element of an impulse on the part of those writers to create a falsely sharp contrast between the actress and her contemporary, the great Charlotte Cushman. The two performers appealed to the theater-going public in different ways, but were not the opposites that writers paint them as in statements such as Joseph Ireland employs when describing Mowatt in his “Records of the New York Stage;”
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.1
In fact, much of Mowatt’s repertoire is comprised of many roles that duplicate the list of characters played by Cushman. Like Cushman, Mowatt appeared in “breeches roles” on several occasions. Charlotte Cushman was generally recognized by most U.S. theatre critics of the mid-1840-1850s as the leading U.S. actress of her day. She, along with British actress Ellen Tree, was noted for bringing not only an emotional, but an intellectual depth to the roles she played. Cushman was also adored by the public. All of these qualities were ones that were very much in line with what seem to have been Mowatt’s professional objectives during her years on stage. Rather than regarding the more experienced performer as representing a stark contrast to the type of stage persona she was cultivating, surviving evidence tends to indicate that it is more probable that Mowatt, like the majority of her peers, viewed Cushman as a role model who set a bar for excellence in the profession. Efforts by writers in the late 19th and early 20th century to minimize Cushman’s success and use comparisons to Mowatt to make her seem less mainstream tarnish the accomplishments of both actresses.
Finally, I believe that Mowatt herself bears some of the load of blame when we search for the causes for theatre historians’ dismissal of her as a lightweight in terms of her range as an actress. Much of history’s lasting impressions of Mowatt are derived from her best-selling autobiography, “Autobiography of an Actress: Eight Years on the Stage.” (Listen to a reading of this book online at Librivox. ) In it, the actress provides many charming stories of her experiences. She does not, however, frame those narratives in terms of career strategies and goals achieved. Gender norms prevalent in the U.S. at that time frowned on young, upper-class women displaying naked ambition and a lust for fame. Mowatt’s social position and religious beliefs would have greatly discouraged her from openly reveling in her achievements as an actress since the theatrical profession was still looked upon as dubiously déclassé by much of U.S. high society and regarded as a deadly den of vice by a significant portion of American clergy.
Also, I believe a hidden aim of Mowatt’s autobiography was to firmly bury for once and all her association with the scandal surrounding Walter Watts’ embezzlement of funds to finance the operations of the Marylebone Theater. Therefore instead of foregrounding personal achievement -- as might be a more typical narrative strategy for crafting the life story of a celebrity -- she strategically stressed her devotion to her late husband, James Mowatt. Throughout the text, she consistently creates a narrative in which she characterizes her stage career as an endeavor that she entered upon to support her ailing spouse. Mowatt makes it quite clear that her decision to become an actress therefore had a perfectly respectable for Victorian-era type of profit motive behind it. She is adamant that her desire to appear on stage was not spurred by any dubious pleasure she found in the activity or was driven by a selfish desire for notoriety.
Mowatt also carefully disengages herself from the business side of her career. The actress places all significant professional decisions – particularly financial – in the hands of her recently deceased husband. (The book lightly glosses over the time Mowatt spends adroitly managing all aspects of her career during her difficult return to the U.S.) At the end of this charming and affecting tale of devotion, any reader hearing of the Watts Scandal would naturally conclude that Mrs. Mowatt was utterly faithful to her spouse and could have no knowledge of vast amounts of embezzled funds being used to support the theater where she starred.
…And this was exactly the effect that her book seemed to have on American readers when publishers Ticknor and Fields released it early in the winter of 1854. Fueled by a frenzy of publicity surrounding Mowatt’s retirement tour and her upcoming marriage to newspaperman William Foushee Ritchie, the book became a bestseller. Faint echoes of the scandal continued to reverberate in the U.K. (where the book had not sold as well) until well into the 1920s. However, in the U.S., no whisper of Walter Watts accompanied the many laudatory reviews of the book or any of the rest of the deluge of press coverage associated with the actress/author that year. I believe that the narrative of wifely devotion that Mowatt fashioned in “Autobiography of an Actress” was strong factor that helped completely erase the Watts Scandal from her biography in America and thus save her memory from the taint of infamy.
Given that the title is “Autobiography of an Actress,” Mowatt’s book actually gives the reader surprisingly little depth of insight into her life as a stage artist. Of twenty-five chapters, only ten deal with Mowatt’s experiences in the theater. She does not go into extensive detail to recount her creative process in building an interpretation of any particular role. She is usually silent on the reasoning behind much of her strategic professional decision-making and the extent to which she had a voice in determining the course of her career. The few roles she does talk about in the book are typically examples from Shakespeare, the Classics, and contemporary tragedies. Mowatt includes almost no anecdotes surrounding her many successful outings as the leading lady in popular comedies such as “The Serious Family,” “The Trumpeter’s Daughter,” and “Faint Heart Never Won Fair Lady.” Perhaps these omissions were due to the fact that her roles in these plays were among those that conservative readers might deem her most transgressive, in scripts that poked fun at the uptight social/sexual mores of the day.
Given the popularity of the book and the warm critical reception it received, I think it would be instructive to create a side-by-side comparison that contrasts the anecdotes Mowatt employs in her autobiography and descriptive statements about herself as an artist with similar stories and statements from Cushman or another actress from the same time period. Comparing Mowatt’s autobiography to a similar work by a male performer such as William Macready would also yield interesting insights, I believe. However, these are topics for future blogs (and perhaps the germ of an idea for a nice research project for someone looking for that sort of thing…?). What I want to discuss in this essay are the reasons why “Anne Blake” – though not at all the simpering ingénue role theater history might tell us was her specialty – was exactly in line with the type of roles that Mowatt was taking on in 1852. Conversely, I also will explain why this production had many practical and personal factors that made it a likely target to be dropped from the actress’ repertoire by early 1853.
Part One: The Positives
Reason 1: Connection to Marston
The first positive in “Anne Blake’s” column is Anna Cora Mowatt’s prior knowledge of the playwright, Westland Marston. I cannot verify that Marston and Mowatt had any social connections, but the actress did have professional contact with the writer prior to 1852. Marston’s “Marie de Meranie” was in pre-production for performance at Walter Watts’ newly renovated Olympic Theatre in London in early spring of 1850 when scandal struck and the venue abruptly closed. Mowatt makes the following mention of the playwright in her autobiography:
The success of Ariadne determined the manager to offer the public a series of new plays. This announcement caused some of the first dramatists in London to devote their talents to the interest of the theatre.
The first play accepted was the historical tragedy of Marie de Meranie, by Mr. Marston, author of the Patrician's Daughter, Strathmore, &c. I was to personate Queen Marie.2
The drama was eventually produced at the Olympic in 1856. Gustavus Brooke played Philip of France as originally intended. Helene Faucit took Mowatt’s role of Queen Marie.
I have no idea what Westland Marston’s writing process was like, or how far in advance he planned his writing projects, however it seems to me that “Anne Blake” would have been ideally suited for the company of players Walter Watts had gathered at first the Marylebone, then the Olympic. The script was a perfect specimen of type of stylish ensemble drama he was actively seeking at the end of his run as manager to showcase his stars. I can easily picture Gustavus Brooke or E.L. Davenport in the roles of either Thorold or Llaniston. In fact, the two actors seemed to relish opportunities to swap parts and allow their audiences to compare their interpretations. The title role, as Mowatt’s experience in 1852 would bear out, provided ample opportunity for the actress to shine. Fanny Vining and company member George C. Cooke could have rounded out the cast delightfully as the serio-comically wicked Lord and Lady Toppington.
Of course, this is pure speculation. I have seen no correspondence between Watts and Marston to bolster my theory. “Anne Blake” was a play that proved a perfect fit for many other companies after its première. However, in 1850, although the Olympic was neither the largest nor the most prestigious theater in London, Walter Watts was one of the only managers who was offering fat paychecks to playwrights for original scripts. The manager was able to lure veteran writers like Douglas Jerrold and Leigh Hunt out of semi-retirement to produce scripts for him. Westland Marston might have had a follow-up to “Marie de Meranie” already in the early planning stages. It’s possible -- though far from certain -- that “Anne Blake” might have been written with Anna Cora Mowatt at least vaguely in mind.
Irrespective of whomever Marston might have had in mind when he penned the script, Charles Kean and his wife, the former Ellen Tree, played Thorald and Anne Blake when the drama premièred on the London stage in 1852. In my opinion, the couple’s association with the drama comprised another factor in its favor for Mowatt. As you may remember from a previous blog entry, in 1848, the actress and her then new acting partner, E.L. Davenport, signed with the same management company as the Keans for one of their U.S. tours.
Instead of being daunted by the prospect of being scheduled opposite the phenomenally popular Brits, the Americans took this challenge head on. Mowatt and Davenport frequently staged dueling versions of the same show days apart or in a theater just across town from the Keans. Their publicity stressed their image as younger, more dynamic versions of the popular performers. This strategy came back to bite the Americans a few times on occasions when they ran afoul of aggrieved Kean aficionados who happened to also be theatre critics, fellow performers, or managers. However the tactic had worked well enough often enough that by 1852, Mowatt was bound to have noticed that if audiences liked Mrs. Kean in a particular part, odds were good that they were going to love her in that role.
Reason 2: Strong premiere of play in New York
Mowatt starred in the U.S. première of “Anne Blake” in December of 1852 at New York’s Broadway Theater. She was ably supported by her co-star, Mr. Frederick Bartlett Conway. Laurence Hutton, lamenting both the passing of Conway and the fading popularity of the comedy, “All that Glitters Is Not Gold,” (Listen to a full cast recording of this play here. ) in which he had memorably starred, said of the actor;
Mr. Conway — the announcement of whose death, received last autumn while we were writing these very lines, recalls such a flood of recollections of the stage —won for himself many fresh laurels by his masterly enacting of the part of Stephen Plum. Both Mr. Conway and Stephen Plum are now, alas! men of the past; both belong to that class so sadly out of fashion now, so much derided, so utterly ignored, whose virtues in these pages we are striving to write in something more stable than water; that body of men at whom the young laugh, for whom the old sigh; that body of men, and women too, known carelessly by the many, remembered fondly by the few, and called by both “The Old School!” Stephen Plum we may see again, but Mr. Conway has gone forever! 3
Any lasting notoriety Conway might have achieved during his long career at New York’s Broadway Theater was completely eclipsed by his flamboyant colleague, Victorian-era superstar, Edwin Forrest. Hutton said of their partnership;
He was a great favorite with Mr. Forrest and with the public in the pieces in which they jointly appeared, playing second parts, and often alternating first parts, with the “old man,” not only in New York, Philadelphia, and Boston, but in other cities. It is recorded that the great tragedian declared that he had found no stock actor in America to equal Conway; and, on the occasion of Mr. Forrest's farewell benefit here at the Old Broadway, in 1852, he paid Mr. Conway the handsome compliment of pronouncing him, before the curtain, in his farewell speech, “the best support he ever had!” 4
Reviews of the December 1852 production of “Anne Blake” at the Broadway Theater indicate that Conway provided Mowatt with very competent support for her star turn in the title role. When his performance was noted by critics, it received favorable comments. The bulk of the commentary, however, was devoted to Mowatt’s acting.
Reason 3: Good Reviews for Mowatt as Anne
The issue of critical notice brings me to my next rationale supporting why this script could have reasonably found its way into the actress’ repertoire of roles as she went on tour. Her reviews for this play were quite positive. Most critics do mention that she was recovering from a serious bout of the flu. On one of the opening nights of performance, Mowatt seemed to have trouble controlling her voice, which resulted in some isolated moments of her failing to make herself sufficiently audible or delivering what some identified as a “ranting” style of performance in which she misjudged her volume and delivered some lines at an inappropriately loud tone. However, even these difficulties didn’t prevent auditors from ranking Anne Blake as being one of her finest delineations of character.
The Albion, though supportive of Mowatt, was never shy to call her out on faults and flaws. That paper’s reviewer said of the performance;
Mrs. Mowatt has grasped the character of the heroine thoroughly, and set it before the audience with intense power. The poor dependent girl, taunted and scored, and driven almost to desperation by the contumelies that she suffers from her heartless protectors, and by the supposed infidelity of her lover Thorold, was pictured with a vividness and power, such as we could scarcely have imagined Mrs. Mowatt to possess. Indeed, on the first night, the effects were altogether too strong for modern comedy. The excuse is that she was evidently suffering from her distressing malady; hence all the effort and exaggeration. Nevertheless the play went off well; and at the close of the third act, where the discovery of her mother’s picture assures her of Thorold’s love, she gave one of those impassioned and genuine bursts that drew down hearty cheers from the audience, and a simultaneous call before the curtain. 5
Those commentators who dismiss Mowatt’s artistry frequently say that she was suited only for light comedies that called for her to do little more than speak clearly and look pretty. In the character of Anne, however, as these reviews make clear, she was able to quite satisfactorily convey the full and varied emotional intensity of a dynamic dramatic role.
The New York Post detailed her performance as follows;
Mrs. Mowatt’s personation of Anne Blake was one of her happiest efforts. Nothing could be more chaste in the delineation, nor more finely conceived. Her reading was excellent. We have not room for an extended notice, but must confine ourselves to saying that in her actions she presented a life-like picture of Anne, with her proud, impulsive nature writhing under a galling dependence, wrought up by false representations to a maddening jealousy and a sense of wrongs, and exhibiting the fearful struggles of pride, honor, and the spirit of revenge, and the most deep and impassioned love. Conway played in his usual admirable manner, and the piece, as a whole, was well received.6
The Dispatch was equally enthusiastic;
Mrs. Mowatt, whose first appearance on the stage seems to us but yesterday, has returned to us from England after an absence of about five years, an accomplished, a finished actress, one whom the country may justly be proud of. Every character in which she has thus far appeared, whether Rosalind, Ion, Parthenia, or Anne Blake, she conceived with truthfulness, and represented with a vigor, intensity, and energy which we were, judging from her first efforts six years ago, but little prepared for. Mrs. Mowatt is personally one of the most prepossessing women on the stage; handsome, intelligent and extremely graceful, she seems in every character she undertakes by the intensity with which she identifies herself with the part, to be the exact ideal the poet had in view. 7
The reviewer here is emphasizing a quality that theater historians who dismiss her body of work ignore. The Anna Cora Mowatt who played Pauline after only a month’s worth of rehearsal in 1845 was not identical to the performer who debuted the role of Anne Blake in 1852. She studied, worked, challenged herself, and grew as an artist during those years. Reviewers and audiences recognized and appreciated the maturity and exciting new depths of expression the actress now had at her command.
The Times found a way to work in an echo of the English debut in its review of the New York premier of the play;
In London, where the drama was produced for the first time in November, Chas. Kean played Thorold, and his wife, (formerly Ellen Tree,) Anne Blake. A t the Broadway, Conway and Mrs. Mowatt personate the same characters, and we confess that we have seldom seen a more finished performance of any character than Mrs. Mowatt gave last evening. It is true that on one or two occasions she played rather too much at the depraved tastes of those who can only recognize feeling and passion when it is “torn to atoms” –raising her voice to such a pitch that it was almost impossible to distinguish the language, and thus rendering the scenes painful rather than impressive. With these exceptions, she must be awarded the encomium due to a great artist.8
In the mid-1800s, the U.S. was still suffering from a cultural inferiority complex. The nation might have won its independence politically, but Europe still set the standards for achievement in the Arts. Mentioning Mowatt and Conway in the same breath as the Keans in this sort of positive manner therefore elevated the overall perceived tone of the production for readers and added extra burnish to its triumph.
A further notice of the play in the Post, reveals that Mowatt had chosen “Anne Blake” as a benefit performance;
Mrs. Mowatt takes her benefit this evening at the Broadway Theatre. Her engagement has been a highly successful one, and we think, in all that constitutes the intellectual and discriminating actress, united to refinement of manners and a pure taste, she has established a solid reputation. She plays Anne Blake, in a new and attractive comedy of that name, and in no character, save perhaps Ion, does she appear to as great advantage.9
I have pointed this tendency out a number of times before, but as a rule, performers selected plays they evaluated as possessing the highest potential to be big box-office draws for benefit performances. On these occasions, there was usually an agreement between the performer and the management of the theater that the beneficiary would receive either all or a substantial portion of ticket sales. Although not proof positive, the fact that Mowatt chose “Anne Blake” for her benefit at the Broadway is probably a good indication of healthy bookings at the box office for the show.
Part II: The Negatives
With all these factors in its favor, why did Mowatt fail to add “Anne Blake” to her U.S. tour?
At the risk of spoiling all sense of suspense, I’m going to start by putting forth an obvious, pragmatic, and, frankly, relatively uninteresting reason why she might have failed to add the show to her repertoire.
Reason 1: It was about the money
I think the most probable reason that “Anne Blake” was dropped so quickly from Anna Cora Mowatt’s repertoire of roles could have been due to licensing issues. Permission to perform Marston’s drama for its U.S. première in 1852 was almost certainly secured by the Broadway Theater, not the actress herself. Assuming this was the case, Mowatt would have needed to negotiate separately for the right to perform the play on tour. Difficulties might have arisen over such issues as the price the playwright’s agents were asking per performance or because of difficulties with other actresses or venues that had conflicting agreements. (I will discuss one specific conflict that I found later in this section.) In short, the actress might have decided against further performances of the script because an extended license was prohibitively expensive or because someone else had booked this hot new English drama first.
Having led with pragmatics, I now feel free to reach for more exotic, theoretically daring explanations. So hold onto your lorgnette for these, Dear Reader...
Reason 2: Anne has no fancy costumes
I know this consideration may sound excessively shallow at first – especially after I have gone on at length about how this character was an example of Mowatt’s work as a mature artist -- but one factor that I think may have been a consideration is how unexciting the costuming and setting for Marston’s drama is. The play would have been performed in contemporary clothing with a rather minimal set. The Toppingtons are very wealthy, therefore their dwelling would be need to appear attractive. However the script doesn’t call for us to see very much of the manor beyond their drawing room. Lady Toppington is the only character in the show who might have been costumed in a colorful gown for her appearances. Scene directions call for one high fashion dress for Anne in Act III. For the rest of the duration of the drama, the script specifies that character dresses in relatively plain and simple clothing.
In everyday life, Mowatt was said to have preferred an unadorned style of dress; however spectacle was a very important factor that drew Victorian audiences to the theatre. For example, posters for Walter Watts’ Marylebone Theater frequently advertised the inclusion of special scenery and costumes for certain plays. Reviewers were careful to commend such elements as highlights of those performances. Blanche, the character that Mowatt wrote for herself to play in her drama, “Armand,” wears a different, elaborately described costume in each scene in which she appears. In the large theaters of the 1800s, lit by gaslight, costuming was a critical factor in determining visual impact.
The role of Martha Gibbs in "All That Glitters is Not Gold” already required that Mowatt dress in simple contemporary costume for most of that play. The actress may not have wished to have two roles featured in her repertoire that limited her clothing options to drab modern dresses in such a manner.
Reason 3: Anne lacks applause lines
A far more serious consideration that might have possibly pushed "Anne Blake" out of Mowatt's rotation of touring titles was that the character has very few lines that seemed designed to provoke a strong positive response from the audience. I have written in previous blogs about the difficulties Victorian-era actresses faced in finding material that featured female characters. Marston’s “Anne Blake” is a rare exception to this rule. Unlike a surprising number of leading ladies in romantic dramas of the mid-1800s, character of Anne is actually on stage for most of the duration of all five acts. If you were an actress from that time period, you would definitely want to find a play that maximized your stage time so that the reviews of your play would reflect your performance not the performance of whatever leading man you were able to scrape up in the city you were visiting for that stop of your national tour.
Unlike the majority of his fellow Victorian era playwrights, Westland Marston was very generous when portioning out dialogue to his female lead. Anne has as many lines as any of the male characters. She even has a couple of monologues. However, her character is undergoing serious moral turmoil during the play. Anne starts the play as a difficult and unlikeable person who audiences of the mid-1800s might have trouble finding wholly sympathetic. In the following monologue, for example, she goes from anguished to defiant;
ANNE (discovered seated on a low stool, her arm supporting her head):
He loves another! loves another. Why,
I dwell upon the sounds as repetition
Could exorcise their sense. My heart rebels
Against my eyes. -Have I not seen the face,
The painted face which glowed 'neath warmer kisses
Than pressed my living lips? Have I not heard
Those words-token from one more dear than life?
'Tis true, dupe, true! As drowning men recall
Old dreams of shipwreck, and in horror's face
Gasp-This is sleep! I cling to hope till billows
Of proof o'erwhelm me!-Yes, he loves another.
"Tis best to meet truth calmly. This explains
His frequent absence, mystery, reproofs,
And for his vows to me I stand a debtor
To jealous pique or pity. Am I then
So base as to accept them, or so weak
That he who feels not richer for my love
Should see the loss of his has left me beggared?—
(Springing to her feet.)
Pride's a good robe-I famish; but I wear
No rags! 11
The actress who could navigate these emotional transitions skillfully might impress an audience with her technique. However, I think auditors of that day might pause before putting their hands together in approval of the display such an aggressively unladylike attitude in the heroine.
Thorold, Anne’s true love, is more consistently heroic in a fashion that would not trouble contemporary sensibilities. He has several speeches about love and loyalty such as the following short snippet;
THOROLD:
A wife, my friend, should be
A sweet bird won
To one's breast by cherishing; not a wild quarry
To be hawked down.12
Or the following moment that occurs in the midst of an argument with Anne;
THOROLD:
Count what she forfeits
Who weds and gives no heart? I'll try, though words,
Which figure outward loss, appraise not ruin
In things immortal. -- First, she forfeits truth;
She forfeits womanhood in love, its essence;
Cuts off earth's blessed commerce with the skies;
Profanes all sacred forms; makes home-a sound,
The temple -- an exchange, the shrine-a counter,
The grave a common sod where never kneels
Love that points upward! 13
Unless I seriously miss my guess about the general Victorian tendency to be complete suckers for this genre of romantic rhetoric – these are examples of exactly the sort of language that -- when delivered with appropriate aplomb -- had the audience cheering their lungs out.
Such a potential inequity of audience affection is quite likely to pose a serious downside for a Victorian-era stage professional. No matter how sweet and generous a person you are, if you are an actress selecting material for your multi-city national tour, it's just not good business practice – not to mention fairly annoying -- to nightly perform a show designed to automatically garner more applause for your male co-star instead of yourself.
Reason 4: Bad timing
Having indulged in a bit of speculation on some of the more esoteric possibilities, let me now return to pragmatics. The spring of 1853 brought a number of twists and turns in Anna Cora Mowatt’s personal and professional life. Any one or combination of these could have created conditions that might have helped bump “Anne Blake” from her touring roster.
In the fall of 1852, Anna Cora Mowatt was challenging herself as an artist. Instead of reprising old roles in which she had already experienced success, or even playing the safer bet of expanding her catalogue of characters from Shakespeare and other classics, Mowatt took a chance by debuting three new plays. Her gambit paid off. Each show proved successful.
Mowatt was undoubtedly a more shrewd judge of contemporary audience appeal that I am, but looking at the scripts she selected in 1852, I would have never predicted that her big success of the three was not going to come from either proven hit-maker J. Maddison Morton’s sassy comedy “All That Glitters is Not Gold” or respected veteran Westland Morton’s stylish romance, “Anne Blake.” I think even Mowatt might have been surprised that the runaway fan-favorite of the trio was instead, “Ingomar, the Barbarian,” a somewhat goofy historio-romantic comedy translated from the original German by former actress and first-time playwright, Maria Lovell. I think it is entirely possible that plans for additional “Anne” performances could have been shelved to make room for more “Ingomar” as soon as it was clear that was what audiences wanted.
As I mentioned earlier, I do know of at least one rival performance of “Anne Blake” that might have posed concerns for Mowatt. At the same time she was premiering the play in New York, Mary Warner was supposed to have been opening a production of Marston’s drama in Boston. Warner and Mowatt shared acquaintances in William Macready and Walter Watts. It is not at all unlikely that they attended dinner parties together during Mowatt’s years in London.
Warner had contracted breast cancer. She was in the U.S. in order to seek treatment from noted surgeon Dr. Valentine Mott. (Mott had performed surgery on Anna Cora’s husband, James for his eye ailments back in the early 1840s.) She and Mowatt were scheduled to perform together at a benefit as Mowatt describes in this passage from her autobiography;
At this period, Warner was about to leave America, where she had encountered a series of most heartbreaking trials. The autumn previous I had promised her my services for a benefit, at any time when she chose to call upon me. I thus hoped to make amends, in a slight degree, for the losses and discomfitures which had waylaid her whole path in a foreign land. She was now just recovering from a dangerous illness — or rather, was supposed to be recovering.
Late tidings bring the sad intelligence of a relapse, which it is feared may prove fatal. She was to receive a complimentary benefit at the Howard Athenaeum, in Boston, and requested the fulfilment of my promise. I consented to enact Desdemona to her Emelia, and went to Boston for that purpose about the middle of May.
On the morning of the benefit Mrs. Warner was still unable to leave her apartment. The benefit, however, took place, and a thronged attendance proved the high estimation in which she was held by an American public. Mrs. M. Jones filled the role of Emelia in Mrs. Warner's stead. I represented Desdemona — Mr. Marshall Othello. I once more used my voice with great facility; but the exertion consequent even upon so unarduous a performance made me conscious of unusual deficiency of strength and elasticity. 10
I suggest that Mowatt might have opted to not do to Mary Warner in 1852 what she had done to Mrs. Charles Kean in 1848. That is to say she did not create a dueling interpretation by a younger American actress with which critics and audiences could unfavorably contrast the older English performer. After “Anne Blake” closed in New York, Mowatt’s next scheduled performances were in Boston where Warner was slated to perform. In the end, performances of the play by both actresses seem to have been cancelled.
Mowatt herself was struggling with health issues as she alludes to in the last quote. The actress’ performance schedule apparently did not allow her to completely recover from the bout of flu she had suffered prior to the beginning of “Anne Blake’s” run. She struggled with upper respiratory infections throughout the winter. Her condition deteriorated to the point that she eventually collapsed onstage during a performance of “The Stranger” in Memphis in early March of 1853. 11 Her touring came to a complete halt when, adding to her existing respiratory problems, the actress broke a rib in a riding accident in June.
Since the character remains on stage speaking for most of five acts, Anne Blake is a physically and vocally demanding role that provides the performer little opportunity to rest and recover during the performance. Mowatt’s health was fragile during the spring and summer of 1852. She might have shied away from the exertions the script required of her.
Finally, in the spring of 1853, William Foushee Ritchie became a fixture in the actress’ life. He launched an aggressive campaign of courtship – turning up at tour dates and showering her with flowers and gifts. Although Ritchie seemed untroubled by Mowatt’s profession, his family’s position in conservative Richmond society was incompatible with her career as an actress. Rumors of their engagement and marriage grew in direct proportion to rumors of her coming retirement from the stage. After Ritchie entered her life, Mowatt was never again as focused on the advancement of her career as an actress as she seemed to be in the fall of 1852.
Conclusion:
All historians obsess over what they identify as fulcrum points in the lives of their subjects. We love to isolate those moments at which a culture or an individual teeters on the precipice of radical change. From this vantage, we academics then delight in contemplating the myriad possibilities of paths not taken. For me, the production of “Anne Blake” at the Broadway Theater in December of 1852 was such a moment in the life of Anna Cora Mowatt. In the fall of that year, she was aggressively expanding her portfolio as an actress, assertively augmenting her claim to challenge Charlotte Cushman and a bevy of younger rivals for the honorary title of “Queen of the American Stage.” By the following fall, Mowatt was bedridden at her father’s house, engaged to William Foushee Ritchie, writing her autobiography, and planning her grand retirement tour.
As you can glean from my discussion in this essay, there is no great mystery or scandal surrounding her appearance in “Anne Blake” in the fall of 1852. In the moment, decisions concerning whether or not Mowatt would schedule further performances of this particular play were probably mixed among thousands of other unremarkable choices and routine factors she weighed daily in managing her career. However, different outcomes concerning this single play might have radically changed the way she is remembered today. William Foushee Ritchie fell in love with Mowatt when he attended one of her performance as sweet, chatty Parthenia in “Ingomar, the Barbarian.” Would he have fallen for her equally in the guise of the rebellious, sharp-tongued Anne? If Mowatt had continued to perform this strenuous role nightly throughout the winter of 1853, would her health have broken sooner? How might the thinking process behind composing her autobiography have changed if she had written it during a convalescence in which she was not engaged to be married or contemplating retirement? Conversely, what if Mowatt had decided to cancel or delay the opening of “Anne Blake” at the Broadway Theatre in December until she was fully recovered from flu? Might her performance have had a greater impact? If not fighting persistent illness throughout the spring and summer of 1853, would she have made the same decision about retirement from the stage?
These are the sort of vapor trails of possibility that pave the interior of historians’ minds. With her timeline unaltered, however, “Anne Blake” represents an instance of unfulfilled potential in Anna Cora Mowatt’s career. The performance was a success that she might have built upon to continue to further her reputation as a serious actress. Instead of a triumphant milestone, the show became a marginalized footnote, marking the beginning of a time when ill-health and divided attention was eroding her commitment to growth as an artist.
As concerns “Anne Blake,” Mowatt’s decision to give weight to soothing the pressures of her personal affairs over dedication to life on stage might have been part of a developing conscious scheme symptomatic of shifting priorities. It is equally possible that the judgments simply might have been the result of an accrual of pragmatic professional choices.
We will probably never know.
Notes:
Ireland, Joseph Norton. Records of the New York Stage, Vol. 2. (New York, T.H. Morrell, 1866) Pages 437-438.
Mowatt, Anna Cora. Autobiography of an Actress; Eight Years on the Stage. Boston: Ticknor, Reed and Fields, 1854. Page 335.
Hutton, Laurence. Plays and Players. Pages 133.
Ibid. Page 134.
“Drama.” The Albion. December 11, 1852. Page 596, col. 3.
“Mrs. Mowatt – The New Play.” New York Evening Post. Dec. 9, 1852. Page 2, col. 5.
“Broadway Theatre.” Sunday Dispatch. Dec. 12, 1852. Page 3, col. 6.
“Amusements.” The New York Times. December 10, 1852. Page 3, col. 2.
“Benefit of Mrs. Mowatt.” New York Evening Post. Dec. 10, 1852. Page 1, col. 4.
Mowatt, Anna Cora. Autobiography of an Actress; Eight Years on the Stage. Boston: Ticknor, Reed and Fields, 1854. Page 420-421.
Ibid. Page 420.
Marston, John Westland. Anne Blake. London: C. Mitchell and Co. 1852. Page 34.
Ibid, page 11.
Ibid, page 54.