Page:Rachel (1887 Nina H. Kennard).djvu/31

 There was no girlish attempt to enhance her beauty, or hide natural defects of which none more than she was conscious. She only thought of her part and how best to personify it. She did not attempt to appear other than the peasant girl in rough shoes and coarse dress; but there was something heroic in her very walk, something infinitely pathetic in the voice "that seemed too big for the fragile body"; something tragically passionate under the calm quiet dignity of the unpropitiating appearance. Many are the proofs, both in print and on hearsay, we have of the effect she produced on appreciative critics from the first.

Janin thus describes her, in the weekly feuilleton of his paper: "The author of La Vendéene has not only wished to write a drama, but also to bring forward a little girl, a child of barely fifteen, called Rachel. This child is no phenomenon, and will never, thank goodness, be a prodigy. Mademoiselle Rachel acts with much feeling, enthusiasm, and intelligence, but with very little skill. She intuitively understands the part given to her; she has no need of lessons or counsel from anyone. There is no effort, no exaggeration, no cries, no strained attitudes, and above all no coquetry; on the contrary, she is extremely quiet and dignified, and makes no attempt to move or propitiate her audience by airs and graces. The child's voice is rough and hoarse, like the voice of a child; her hands are red, like a child's hands; her foot, like her hand, is hardly formed; she is not pretty, but pleasing: in a word, there is a great future in store for this young genius, and she receives a tribute of tears, emotion, and interest from the as yet small audience that come to do her honour."

Edwin Forrest, the well-known American actor, was