Page:Rachel (1887 Nina H. Kennard).djvu/210

 She arrived at New York on the 22nd and on the 3rd September, in spite of the disfigurement of the whole company, Beauvallet tells us, by mosquito bites, she gave her first representation on the boards of the Metropolitan Theatre, Broadway. The following account of it is given by a well-known pen in Harper's Magazine for November 1855:—

Rachel's first night was truly triumphant. It was a quiet, appreciative, sympathetic and intelligent audience. It was, perhaps, not more than one-third American. The rest were French, and foreigners of all nations. There were many from the South. Among the crowd, here and again, there were the faces of known and unknown poets; the editors were there There was an intellectual atmosphere of the house. "This is a service of art," seemed to be the feeling of everyone present. It had come round, in the inscrutable course of history, that Corneille and the old French drama was to make its appeal to America and a spirit the most different to its own The music ceased; there was a lull. The curtain rose and disclosed a scene in Rome. Two draped figures, like Romans in old pictures, entered and declaimed. They turned to go, but before they left the scene—before the eye was quite ready—as if she had suddenly become visible, without entering, like a ghost—there was Rachel. She stood in full profile to the audience. Her dress was a falling white cloud of grace. You have seen such drapery in your idealised remembrance of the great statues. Her left hand, which was toward the audience, hung by her side; the right was muffled in her robe. Her head was cast forward, a gold band circling her black hair. The pose, the expression, the movement, were all prelusive and prophetic; as an overture holds all the sadness of the lyrical tragedy—as a bud folds all the beauty of the flower—so that first glance of Rachel was the touch of the key-note.

The audience received her with solid applause. There was no hooting, no whistling, no tumult of any kind. One indiscreet brother tried to yelp, and was instantly suppressed. The reception was generous and intelligent. It was the right reception for a great artist. It acknowledged her previous fame by courtesy. It expressed the intelligence which could approve or revise that fame.

Yes, astonished friend, approve or revise even a Parisian decision.

Rachel was equal to that reception and to her rôle of great artist. There was not so much as the lift of an eyebrow in condescension to the audience. "I will not buy success at any easy rate," she seemed