If I had
not, she would have meant nothing for me, as the "faultily faultless"
person, the Mrs. Kendal, means nothing to me. The confusion can easily
be made, and there will probably always be people who will prefer Mrs.
Kendal to Miss Marlowe, as there are those who will think Mme. Melba a
greater operatic singer than Mme. Calve. What Miss Marlowe has is a
great innocence, which is not, like Duse's, the innocence of wisdom, and
a childish and yet wild innocence, such as we might find in a tamed wild
beast, in whom there would always be a charm far beyond that of the
domestic creature who has grown up on our hearth. This wildness comes to
her perhaps from Pan, forces of nature that are always somewhere
stealthily about the world, hidden in the blood, unaccountable,
unconscious; without which we are tame christened things, fit for
cloisters. Duse is the soul made flesh, Rejane the flesh made Parisian,
Sarah Bernhardt the flesh and the devil; but Julia Marlowe is the joy of
life, the plenitude of sap in the tree.
The personal appeal of Mr. Sothern and of Miss Marlowe is very
different. In his manner of receiving applause there is something almost
resentful, as if, being satisfied to do what he chooses to do, and in
his own way, he were indifferent to the opinion of others.
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