Page:Sketches of representative women of New England.djvu/439

324 She is a member of the Independent Women Voters and of the Home Club of East Boston. She attends the Unitarian Church of East Boston, of which the Rev. Warren H. Cudworth was for many years the pastor. She has aided the enterprises of other churches, as she believes in doing good whenever and wlierever the opportunity presents itself.

ILLIAN LAWRENCE, for several years the leading lady at the Castle Square Theatre in Boston, occupies a unique position among American stage favorites. Many an actress possessing her beauty, grace, and charm of manner might have been content with the measure of public applause bestowed upon her for these qualities alone. She, however, has preferred to win her laurels by steady application and untiring devotion to her work, striving constantly and earnestly to attain to her highest conception of each new role, doing always her best. As a reward for this persistent endeavor and constant study, she holds to-day an en- viable place as a stock company principal of great versatility. She was born in picturesque Alexandria, Va. Her family later removing to California, her girlhood was spent within sight of the Golden Gate.

When she was in the grammar school in San Francisco, she was chosen by the manager of the Bush Street Theatre as one of more than a score of children to take part in a living chess spectacle, and began her stage career as Queen's Knight in "A Royal Middy." For the next three seasons she sang in light opera in the same theatre. At the age of sixteen she began a two years' engagement with a stock company in Oakland, Cal., and when twenty years of age she joined a small dramatic company which toured California. She next made her appearance with the Cordray Stock Company in engagements which took her outside the State, presenting each week a different play. Here it was that she acquired her remarkable facility for acting one part while studying another. Here, too, she realized to the full how different from the stage-struck girl's idea are the realitie^s of stage life, with its endless routine of rehearsals every morning, matinee every day, fitting of new costumes, attention to infinitesimal details, new parts to study and prepare for, and evening performances before entirely different audiences each night.

In 1892 she came East, and was at once engaged to play Marie Louise to Rhea's Josephine. Her next engagement was with Kate Claxton, when she played Henriette in "The Two Orphans." After that a stock company in Dayton, Ohio, claimed her services. Following these experiences she appeared with Miss Minnie Seligman at the Madison Square Theatre, with Miss Katherine Clemmons at the Fifth Avenue, and with Miss Carrie Turner in "The Crust of Society." She also filled engagements with the National Theatre Stock Company in Washington, and played Shakespearean roles with Thomas W. Keene. After a successful season in the rôle of Mrs. Bulford in "The Great Diamond Robbery" and in a widely different role in "The Bachelor's Baby" she began in 1895 an engagement at the Castle Square Theatre in Boston, which lasted five years. The next two years she played in Washington, D.C., returning in 1903 to the Castle Square Theatre.

The Washington Post of April 6, 1902, says of her: "Although she has been here for so short a time, we have come to look upon this popular leading lady as one of us, and we want to keep her There is something- about her which is distinctly refreshing. She is a woman whom every one is glad to know and welcome in hrs home. 'Everybody loves her' is very generally the comment whenever her name is mentioned.

"Miss Lawrence possesses beauty and personality as distinct from those of other actresses as is her work. Her Grecian profile is known and admired all over the United State's. Photographers have taken pictures of her, artists have painted her, and sculptors have perpetuated her features in marble, because of their classic beauty combined with the dignity and sweetness of her character. It has been surprising to those who have watched Miss Lawrence's work to discover that with the majesty of her carriage and the classic outline of her face she possesses a love for com-