Speaking of the Gilders reminds me, albeit indirectly, of Helena Modjeska, whom I first saw in Sacramento, playing _Adrienne Lecouvreur_. I was simply enchanted and thought I had never seen such delicate and yet such forcible acting. One reason why I was so greatly impressed was that I had acquired the foreign standard of acting, and had been much disturbed when I came home to find such lack of elegance and ease upon the stage. She had the foreign manner--the grace and, at the same time, the authority of the great French and German players; and it seemed to me that she ought to be heard by the big critics. So I wrote home to Jeannette Gilder in New York an enthusiastic account of this actress who was being wasted on the Sacramento Valley. The public-spirited efforts of the Gilders in promoting anything artistic was so well and so long known that it is almost unnecessary to add that they interested themselves in the Polish artist and secured for her an opportunity to play in the East. She came, saw, and conquered; and I shall always feel, therefore, that I was definitely instrumental in launching Modjeska in theatrical New York.
"Didn't I tell you so?" I said to Jeannette Gilder. There was always something very odd to me about Helena Modjeska. I never liked her personally half as much as I did as an actress. But she certainly was a wonderful actress. I once met John McCullough and talked with him about Modjeska, and he told me that she first acted in Polish to his English--Ophelia to his Hamlet--out West somewhere, I think it was in San Francisco. He said that he had been the first to urge her to learn English, and he was most enthusiastic about the wonderful effect she created even at that early time. As I had seen her in Sacramento during, approximately, the same period, I could discuss her with him sympathetically and intelligently.
Although I never personally liked Helena Modjeska, I have liked as well as known many stage folk and have had, first and last, many real friends among them. It was my good fortune to know the elder Salvini in America. He happened to be stopping at the same hotel. He looked like a successful farmer; a very plain man,--very. He told me, among other interesting things, that no matter how small his part happened to be, he always played each succeeding act in a stronger colour, maintaining a steady _crescendo_, so that the last impression of all was the climax. I remember him in Othello, particularly his delicate and lovely _silent_ acting. When Desdémona came in and told the court how he had won her, Salvini only looked at her and spoke but the one word: "Desdémona!"--but the way he said it "made the tears rise in your heart and gather to your eyes."