MRS KENDAL'S CAREER.

Press, Volume XLVI, Issue 7451, 26 October 1889, Page 6

MRS KENDAL'S CAREER.

Murray's Magazine for September contains a very a aprigbtly. article by Mrs Kendal, which for some inscrutable reason is called " Dramatic Opinions," but is in fact a chap tor of autobiography. We give below a few of Mrs -Kendal srecollections, leaving our waders to discover the rest for themselves in the pages of Murray « itself:—

1 . Tier BOBEBTSOK DYNASTY. [ "Both my father and mother were on I the scage; so were-my .grandfather and 'grandmother, so were my great-grand- ! father and gre-^grandmother; so were my great aunts and uncles, my simple aunts and uncles, my brothers, my sisters, my nephews, my nieces. I hardly have a relation in the world that iasn C oeen on the stage, except the new-made kmgnc, Sir William Tindal Robertson, the member for Brighton; but his father, my uncle, was an actor for some years. We are very, very proud of the fact; when I say we, I mean the Robertson family. We sounds regal, doesn't It! but I can't say us because that wouldn't be grammatical, so lam obliged to say u-e. Yes, we are proud of it. The blood of the Montmorencys doesn't tire up more when they speak of their lorn..line of ancestry dating from the Conquest, than the Robertson blood burns with enthusiasm when speaking of our long line of descent from actors of old. And we shall, I hone, do nothing in the future to lessen that enthusiasm." HOW I PLAYED EVA WITH MY HAIR DOWN. "lam the twenty-second child of my parents. Yes, the twenty-second. My brother Tom, the author, was my father's eldest son. I am the youngest of the family. I never knew my brother Tom except as a man grown up—such a great many brothers and sisters came between us. It appears t_fat my mother wrote to Mr Chute, of .Ifkstol, and said: ' You were a poor acf&rjjbnce in our theatre; you have now one or your own ; let ine be an actress in it.' Mr Chute said ' Yes;' and in that theatre I was brought out as Eva in ' Uncle Tom*# Cabin.' Gentlemen who

acted with mc were George Melville, William Rignoid. and George Rignoid. A clever lady,: Miss Cleveland, wbo now is Mrs Arthur Stirling, was the Eliza. I was cast for'jthe part of Eva, wbich contained tbnjtt or four little songs, because I used to sing as a child, and was supposed to have something of a voice. At the end of the play I used to be carried up to heaven with Uncle Tom. I was put in a kind of machine, something was put round my waist, and I went up in a sort of apotheosis, as in ' Faust and Marguerite.' I remember too that all my hair was let down my back. I was very fair when I was a child. You can imagine that, as one grows older, hair gets darker if nature is nbt interfered with." M* "DESDEMONA" AND "LADY MACBETH."

Mrs Kendal next took singing lessons and played in burlesques at Bradford. She then continues: —*' After leaving Bradford, I came to London, and played for six weeks, at tbe Haymarket Theatre with Mr Walter Montgomery. The Hon. Lewis Wingfield played Roderlgo ; he was a great friend of my brother's, and a great lover of art i«j3 every way. During tbe time that I WIS there Mr Ira Aldridge was engaged tolact. Mr Ira Aldridge was a man who, being black, always picked out the fairest woman he could to play Desdemona with him, not because She was capable of acting the part, but because she had a fair head. One of tbe great bits of'business' that he used to do was where in one of the scenes he had to say, ' Your hand, Desdemona.' He made a very gre«>t point of opening his hand and making you place yours in it, and the audience nseaVto see the contrast. He always made a point of it, and got a round of applause: how, I do not know. It always struck mc that he had got some species of —welt I will not say 'genius, because I dislike that word, as used nowadays—but gleams of great intelligence. Although a genuine black, he was quite vreux chevalier in his manners to women. The fairer you were, the more obsequious he was to you. In the last act he used to take Desdemona out of bed by her hair, and drag her round the stage before he smothered her. You had to wear sandals and toed stockings to produce the effect of being undressed. I remember very dis.inefcly this dragging Desdemona about by the hair was considered so brutal that it was loudly hissed. Those are the main points of my performance in ' Othello,' to the success or,which I am afraid I did not very much contribute."

WHT n i'_tßD MY HUSBAND PLAT . .; TOGETHER.

"From Hull I came to the Haymarket under Mr Buckstono, where I remained seven years. There I met my husband and married. . I went to the Haymarket a single girl, andi left it the Matron of the Drama! I have of ten been asked, I may as by thousands, both in letters and in conversation, as a matter of interest by my friends and from curiosity by others, why my husband and I always act together, and have Tiever been parted. I wish to state to the public why it is so. My father was an actor who said be believed that the greatest amount ot domesticity and happiness in a,life devoted to art could exist upon the stage,, provided husbands and wives never parted. If, on the contrary, a man, because he could earn £10 a week more, went to one theatre, whilst his wife for a similar reason went to another, their interests tended to become divided ; their 'feelings ran In separate grooves, and gradually, a shadow would grow up at borne, which divided them for ever. On my expressing a wish that I should marry an actor, he said that only on this condition would he allow mc to marry my husband—that we should never be parted. Mr and Mrs Charles Kean always acted together, and she endorsed mv fat.-aqs words. If my husband and I bad been separated, if he had played Earts to other women ; if other women ad played parts to him, and I to other men, and other men to mc, there is no doubt that certain go-ahead people would have preferred it, and we should probably have been worth thousands of pounds more to-day; but, on the other hand, there is another section ofthe public who say they like to see us act together; that the very fact of knowing we are man aiid wife gives them a certain satisfaction in witnessing our performance, which they would not otherwise feel. That, however, I must leave for the public to decide ; as far as we are concerned, however, it was a vow made to my father, from which my husband has never departed; and if, when we are dead, we leave our children less money, let us hope they will respect what we have done.

"Letters have been written to mc, and friends have come to mc and argued the point, saying it would be more interesting to see another man embracing mc. Where the interest comes in, I do not know. Also that it would be infinitely more fascinating if somebody else acted with my husband. I believe, there is a littlf sort of story going forth that the reason of all this is to Be ih the existence of a peculiar green-eyed monster in Mrs Kendal's heart.. I -'It is a blessed fift that her shoulders are broad, because have found that; if a woman has lived many years happily and creditably with her husband some reason or reasons .must be given." ' '