Chapter XIX Salvini as Man and Actor
It is not often, I fancy, that one defends one’s hero or friend from himself. Yet that about describes what I am doing now for the famous Salvini. An acquaintance of mine, a man self-contained and dignified, who was reading the other day, startled me by muttering aloud, “Oh, that mine enemy would write a book!” and a moment later, flinging the volume from him, he cried: “Where were his friends? Why did they permit him to write of himself?”
“Good gracious!” I exclaimed in bewilderment, “where were whose friends? Of whom are you speaking, and why are you so excited?”
“Oh,” he answered impatiently, “it’s the disappointment! I judged the man by his splendid work; but look at that book—the personal pronoun forms one solid third of it. I know it does!” and he handed me the volume in question.
“Well,” I said, as I glanced at the title,—“Autobiography of Tommaso Salvini,”—“no matter what the book may say, Tommaso Salvini is a mighty actor.” And then I began to read. At first I was a bit taken aback. I had thought Mr. Macready considered himself pretty favourably, had made a heavy demand on the I’s and my’s in his book; but the bouquets he presented to himself were modest little nosegays when compared with the gorgeous floral set pieces provided ad libitum for “Signor Salvini” by Signor Salvini.
Then presently I began to smile at the open honesty of this self-appreciation, at the naïve admiration he expresses for his figure, his voice, his power. “After all,” I said, “when the whole civilized world has for years and years affirmed and reaffirmed that he is the greatest actor living, is it strange that he should come to believe the world?”
“But,” growled my friend, “why could he not be content with the world’s statement? Why had he no reticence? Look at these declarations: that no words can describe his power, that everybody wished to know him, that everybody wished to claim his friendship, that everybody made it his boast to be seen in his company, etc.”
“Well,” I answered, “you certainly cannot doubt the truth of the assertions. I believe every one of them. You see, you are not making any allowance for temperament or early environment. Those who are humbly born in a kingdom are lifted by a monarch’s praise to the very pinnacle of pride and joy and superiority. Think of the compliments paid this man by royalty. Think, too, of his hot blood, his quick imagination. You can’t expect calm self-restraint from him; and just let me tell you, for your comfort, that this ‘book Salvini’ is utterly unlike the kindly gentleman who is the real, everyday Salvini.”
My friend looked at me a moment, then shaking hands he added gravely: “Thank you. The great actor goes upon his pedestal again, to my own satisfaction; but—but—don’t think I care for this book. I’ll wait till some one else tells of his triumphs and his gifts,” and laying it upon the table he took his departure.
It is astonishing what a misleading portrait Signor Salvini has drawn of himself. I worked with him, and I found him a gentleman of modest, even retiring, disposition and most courtly manners. He was remarkably patient at the long rehearsals which were so trying to him because his company spoke a language he could not understand.
The love of acting and the love of saving were veritable passions with him, and many were the amusing stories told of his economies; but, in spite of his personal frugality, he was generous in the extreme to his dear ones.
When I had got over my first amazement at receiving a proposal to act with the great Italian, Mr. Chizzola, his manager, stated terms, and hastened to say that a way had been found by which the two names could be presented without either taking preference of the other on the bill, and that the type would of course be the same in both—questions I should never have given a thought to, but over which my manager stood ready to shed his heart’s blood. And when I said that I should willingly have gone on the bills as “supporting Signor Salvini,” I thought he was going to rend his garments, and he indignantly declared that such talk was nothing less than heresy when coming from a securely established star.
At one of our rehearsals for the “Morte Civile,” a small incident occurred that will show how gracious Signor Salvini could be. Most stars, having the “business” of their play once settled upon, seem to think it veritable sacrilege to alter it, no matter how good the reason for an alteration; and a suggestion offered to a star is generally considered an impertinence. In studying my part of Rosalia, the convict’s wife, a very pretty bit of “business” occurred to my mind. I was to wear the black cross so commonly seen on the breast of the Roman peasant women, and once at an outbreak of Conrad’s, I thought if I raised that cross without speaking, and he drooped before it, it would be effective and quite appropriate, as he was supposed to be superstitiously devout. I mentioned it to young Salvini, who cried eagerly, “Did you tell my father—did he see it?”
“Good heavens!” I answered, “do you suppose I would presume to suggest ‘business’ to a Salvini? Besides, could anything new be found for him in a play he has acted for twenty years? No, I have not told your father, nor do I intend to take such a liberty.”
But next morning, when we came to that scene, Signor Salvini held up his hand for a halt in the rehearsal, called for Alessandro, and, bidding him act as interpreter, said, smiling pleasantly, to me, “Now zee i-dee please you, madame?” for young Alessandro had betrayed my confidence. There was a mocking sparkle in Salvini’s blue eyes, but he was politely ready to hear and reject “zee i-dee.” I felt hot and embarrassed, but I stood by my guns, and placing Alessandro in the chair, I made him represent Conrad; and when he came to the furious outburst, I swiftly lifted the cross and held it before his eyes till his head sank upon my breast. But in a twinkling, with the cry, “No—no! I show!” Salvini plucked Alessandro out of the seat, flung himself into it, resumed the scene, and as I lifted the cross before his convulsed features, his breath halted, slowly he lifted his face, when, divining his meaning, I pressed the cross gently upon his trembling lips, and with a sob his head fell weakly upon my breast. It was beautifully done; even the actors were moved. Then he spoke rapidly to his son, who translated to me thus: “How have I missed this ‘business’ all these years? It is good—we will keep it always—tell madame that.” And so, courteously and without offence, this greatest of actors accepted a suggestion from a newcomer in his play.
A certain English actor, who had been with him two or three seasons, made a curious little mistake night after night, season after season, and no one seemed to heed it. Of course Salvini, not speaking English, could not be expected to detect the error. Where the venomous priest should humbly bow himself out with the veiled threat, “This may yet end in a trial—and—conviction!” the actor invariably said, “This may yet end in a trial of convictions!” Barely three nights had passed when Signor Salvini said to his son, “Why does Miss Morris smile at that man’s exit? It is not funny. Ask why she smiles.” And he was greatly put out with his actor when he learned the cause of my amusement. A very observant man, you see.
He is a thinking actor; he knows why he does a thing, and he used to be very intolerant of some of the old-school “tricks of the trade.” Mind, when I was acting with him, he had come to understand fairly well the English of our ordinary, everyday vocabulary, and if he was quite calm and not on exhibition in any way, he could speak it a little and quite to the point, as you will see. He particularly disliked the old, old trick called “taking the stage,” that is, when a good speech has been made, the actor at its end crosses the stage, changing his position for no reason on earth save to add to his own importance. It seemed Salvini had tried through his stage manager to break up the wretched habit; but one morning he saw an actor end his speech at the centre of the stage, and march in front of every one to the extreme right-hand corner. A curl came to the great actor’s lip, then he said inquiringly, “What for?” The actor stammered, “I—I—it’s my cross, you know—the end of my speech.”—“Y-e-es,” sweetly acquiesced the star. “Y-e-es, you cross, I see—but what for?” The actor hesitated. “You do so,” went on Salvini, giving a merciless imitation of the swelling chest and stage stride of the guilty one, as he had crossed from centre down to extreme right. “You do so—but for why? A-a-ah!” Suddenly he seemed to catch an idea. “A-a-ah! is it that you have zee business with zee people in zee box? A-a-ah! you come spik to zose people? No? Not for that you come? You have no reason for come here, you say? Then, for God’s sake, stay centre till you have a reason!”
It was an awful lesson, but what delicious acting. The simple, earnest inquiry, the delighted catching at an idea, the following disappointment, and the final outburst of indignant authority—he never did anything better for the public.
During the short time we acted together but one cloud, a tiny, tiny one of misunderstanding, rose between us, but according to reports made by lookers-on a good deal of lightning came out of it. Of course not understanding each other’s language, we had each to watch the other as a cat would watch a mouse, in order to take our cues correctly. At one point I took for mine his sudden pause in a rapidly delivered speech, and at that pause I was to speak instantly. We got along remarkably well, for his soul was in his work, and I gave every spark of intelligence I had in me to the effort to satisfy him; so by the fifth or sixth performance we both felt less anxiety about the catching of our cues than we had at first. On the night I speak of, some one on Salvini’s side of the stage greatly disturbed him by loud whispering in the entrance. He was nervous and excitable, the annoyance (of which I was unconscious) threw him out of his stride, so to speak. He glanced off warningly and snapped his fingers. No use; on went the giggling and whispering. At last, in the very middle of a speech, wrath overcame him. He stopped dead. That sudden stop was my cue. Instantly I spoke. Good heaven! he whirled upon me like a demon. I understood that a mistake had been made, but it was not mine. I knew my cue when I got it. The humble Rosalia was forgotten. With hot resentment my head went up and back with a fling, and I glared savagely back at him. A moment we stood in silent rage. Then his face softened, he laid the fingers of his left hand on his lips, extending his right with that unspeakably deprecating upturning of the palm known only to the foreign-born. An informing glance of the eye toward the right, followed by a faint “Pardon!” was enough. I dropped back to meek Rosalia, the scene was resumed, the cloud had passed. But one man who had been looking on said: “By Jove! you know, you two looked like a pair of blue-eyed devils, just ready to rend each other. Talk about black-eyed rage; it’s the lightning of the blue eyes that sears every time.”
I had been quite wild to see Signor Salvini on his first visit to America, and at last I caught up with him in Chicago, and was so happy as to find my opportunity in an extra matinee. The play was “Othello,” and during the first act he looked not only a veritable Moor, but, what was far greater, he seemed to be Shakespeare’s own “Moor of Venice.” The splendid presence, the bluff, soldierly manner, the open, honest look, as the “round unvarnished tale” was delivered, made one understand, partly at least, how “that maiden never bold, a spirit so still and quiet,” had come at last to see “Othello’s visage in his mind, and to his honour and his valiant parts to consecrate her fortune and her soul!” Through all the noble scene, through all the soldierly dignity and candid speech, there was that tang of roughness that so naturally clung to the man whose life from his seventh year had been passed in the “tented field,” and who himself declared, “Rude am I in speech, and little bless’d with the set phrase of peace.”
In short, Salvini was a delight to eye and ear, and satisfied both imagination and judgment in that first act. Like many people who are much alone, I have the habit of speaking sometimes to myself—a habit I repented of that day, yes, verily I did; for when, at Cyprus, Othello entered and fiercely swept into his swarthy arms the pale loveliness of Desdemona, ’twas like a tiger’s spring upon a lamb. The bluff and honest soldier, the English Shakespeare’s Othello, was lost in an Italian Othello. Passion choked, his gloating eyes burned with the mere lust of the “sooty Moor” for that white creature of Venice. It was revolting, and with a shiver I exclaimed aloud, “Ugh, you splendid brute!” Realizing my fault, I drew quickly back into the shadow of the curtain; but a man’s rough voice had answered instantly, “Make it a beast, ma’am, and I’m with you!” I was cruelly mortified.
But there was worse to happen that day. The leading lady, Signora Piamonti, an admirable actress, was the Desdemona. She played the part remarkably well, and was a fairly attractive figure to the eye, if one excepted her foot. It was exceptionally long and shapeless, and was most vilely shod. Her dresses, too, all tipped up in the front, unduly exposing the faulty members; many were the comments made, and often the query followed, “Why doesn’t she get some American shoes?” I am sorry to say that some of our daily papers even were ungracious enough to refer to that physical defect, when only her work should have been considered and criticised.
The actors had reached the last act. The bed stood in the centre of a shallow alcove, heavily curtained. These hangings were looped up at the beginning of the act, and were supposed to fall to the floor, completely concealing the bed and its occupant after the murder. The actor had long before become again Shakespeare’s Othello. We had seen him tortured, racked, and played upon by the malignant Iago; seen him, while perplexed in the extreme, irascible, choleric, sullen, morose; but now, as with tense nerves we waited for the catastrophe, he was truly formidable. The great tragedy moved on. Desdemona’s piteous entreaties had been choked in her slim throat, the smothering pillow held in place with merciless strength. Then at Emilia’s disconcerting knock and demand for admission, Othello had let down and closely drawn the two curtains. But alas and alack a day! though they were thick and rich and wide, they failed to reach the floor by a good foot’s breadth—a fact unnoticed by the star. You may not be an actor; but really when you add to that twelve or fourteen-inch space the steep incline of the stage—why, you can readily understand how advisable it was for the dead Desdemona that day to stay dead until the play was over.
Majestically Othello was striding down to the door, where Emilia was knocking for admittance, when there came that long in-drawn breath—that “a-a-h!” that from the auditorium always means mischief—and a sudden bobbing of heads this way and that in the front seats. In an instant the great actor felt the broken spell, knew he had lost his hold upon the people—but why? He went on steadily, and then, just as you have seen a field of wheat surged in one wave by the wind, I saw the closely packed people in that wide parquet sway forward in a great gust of laughter. With quick, experienced eye I scanned first Othello’s garb from top to toe, and finding no unseemly rent or flaw of any kind to provoke laughter, I next swept the stage. Coming to the close-drawn curtains, I saw—heavens! No wonder the people laughed. The murdered Desdemona had risen, was evidently sitting on the side of the bed; for beneath the curtains her dangling feet alone were plainly seen, kicking cheerfully back and forth. Such utterly unconscious feet they were that I think the audience would not have laughed again had they kept still; but all at once they began a “heel-and-toe step,” and people rocked back and forth, trying to suppress their merriment. And then—oh, Piamonti!—swiftly the toe of the right foot went to the back of the left ankle and scratched vigorously. Restraint was ended, every one let go and laughed and laughed. From the box I saw in the entrance the outspread fingers, the hoisted shoulders, the despairingly shaken heads of the Italian actors, who could find no cause for the uproar. Salvini behaved perfectly in that, disturbed, distressed, he showed no sign of anger, but maintained his dignity through all, even when in withdrawing the curtains and disclosing Desdemona dead once more the incomprehensible laughter again broke out. But late as it was and short the time left him, he got the house in hand again, again wove his charm, and sent the people away sick and shuddering over his too real self-murder.
As I was leaving the box I met one connected with the management of the theatre, who, furious over the faux pas, was roughly denouncing the actress, whom he blamed entirely, and I took it upon myself to suggest that he pour a vial or two of his wrath upon the heads of his own property man and the stage manager, who had grossly neglected their duty in failing to provide curtains of the proper length. And I chuckled with satisfaction as I saw him plunge behind the scenes, calling angrily upon some invisible Jim to come forth. I had acted as a sort of lightning-rod for a sister actress.
Salvini’s relations with his son were charming, though it sounded a bit odd to hear the stalwart young man calling him “papa.” Alessandro had dark eyes and black hair, so naturally admired the opposite colouring, and I never heard him speak of his father’s English second wife without some reference to her fairness. It would be “my blond mamma,” “my little fair mamma,” “my father’s pretty English wife,” or “before my little blond mamma died.” He felt the “mamma” and “papa” jarred on American ears, and often corrected himself; but when Signor Salvini himself once told me a story of his father, he referred to him constantly as “my papa,” just as he does in this book of his that makes him seem so egotistical and so determined to find at all costs the vulnerable spot, the weak joint in the armour, of all other actors.
Certainly he could not have been an egotist in the bosom of his family. A friend in London went to call upon his young wife, his “white lily.” She was showing the house to her visitor, when, pausing suddenly before a large portrait of her famous husband, she became silent, her uplifted eyes filled, her lips smiled tremulously, she gave a little gasp, and whispered, “Oh, he’s almost like God to me!”
The friend, startled, even shocked, was about to reprove her, but a glance into the innocent face showed no sacrilege had been meant, only she had never been honoured, protected, happy, before—and some women worship where they love. Could an egotist win and keep such affection and gratitude as that?
Among those who complain of his opinionated book I am amused to find one who fairly exhausted himself in praise, not to say flattery, of this same Salvini. It is very diverting to the mere looker-on, when the world first proclaims some man a god, bowing down and worshipping him, and then anathematizes him if he ventures to proclaim his own godship. I have my quarrel with the book, I confess it. I am sorry he does not show how he did his tremendous work, show the nature of those sacrifices he made. How one would enjoy a word-picture of the place where he obtained his humble meals in those earliest days of struggle; who shared them, and in what spirit they were discussed, grave or gay! Italian life is apt to be picturesque, and these minor circumstances mean much when one tries to get at the daily life of a man. But Salvini has given us merely splendid results, without showing us how he obtained them. Yet what a lesson the telling would have been for some of our indolent actors! Why, even at the zenith of his career, Salvini attended personally to duties most actors leave to their dressers. He used to be in his dressing-room hours before the overture was on, and in an ancient gown he would polish his armour, his precious weapons or ornaments, arrange his wigs, examine every article of dress he would require that night, and consequently he never had mishaps. He used to say: “The man there? Oh, yes, he can pack and lock and strap and check, but only an actor can understand the care of these artistic things. What I do myself is well done; this work is part of my profession; there is no shame in doing it. And all the time I work, I think—I think of the part—till I have all forgot—all but just that part’s self.”
And yet, O dear, these are the things he does not put in his book. When he was all dressed and ready for the performance, Salvini would go into a dark place and walk and walk and walk; sometimes droopingly, sometimes with martial tread. Once, I said, “You walk far, signor?”
“Si, signorina,” he made answer, then eagerly, “I walk me into him!” And while the great man was “walking into the character,” the actors who supported him smoked cigarettes at the stage door until the dash for dressing room and costume.
Some women scold because he has not given pictures of the great people whom he met. “Why,” they ask, “did he not describe Crown Princess Victoria” (the late Empress Frederick) “at least—how she looked, what she wore? Such portraits would be interesting.” But Salvini was not painting portraits, not even his own—truly. He was giving a list of his triumphs; and if he has shown self-appreciation, he was at least perfectly honest. There is no hypocrisy about him. If he knew Uriah Heep, he did not imitate him; for in no chapter has he proclaimed himself “’umble.” If one will read Signor Salvini’s book, remembering that the pæans of a world have been sung in his honour, and that he really had no superior in his artistic life, I think the I’s and my’s will seem simply natural.
However he may have been admired in other characters, I do truly believe that only those who have seen him in “Othello” and “Morte Civile” can fully appreciate the marvellous art of the actor. I carry in my mind two pictures of him,—Othello, the perfect animal man, in his splendid prime, where, in a very frenzy of conscious strength, he dashes Iago to the earth, man and soldier lost in the ferocity of a jungle male beast, jealously mad—an awful picture of raging passion. The other, Conrad, after the escape from prison; a strong man broken in spirit, wasted with disease, a great shell of a man—one who is legally dead, with the prison pallor, the shambling walk, the cringing manner, the furtive eyes. But oh, that piteous salute at that point when the priest dismisses him, and the wrecked giant, timid as a child, humbly, deprecatingly touches the priest’s hand with his finger-tips and then kisses them devoutly! I see that picture yet, through tears, just as I saw for the first time that illustration of supreme humility and veneration.
Oh, never mind a little extravagance with personal pronouns! A beloved father, a very thorough gentleman, but above all else the greatest actor of his day. There is but the one Salvini, and how can he help knowing it? So to book and author—ready! Viva Salvini!