and English Library Associations, supplies equally striking evidence of library enterprise. The Library Association of the United Kingdom may have been inspired by the American spirit of associated labor, but it has soon become a thoroughly British body. I doubt whether any association could be named, which, in two short years, or, including the preliminary conference of librarians, in three years, has done more real and useful work. The two Annual Reports, together with the Conference Report, owe much to the editing which they have received from Mr. Henry R. Tedder and Mr. Ernest Thomas. The indexes prepared by Mr. Tedder are models of the indexing art, and must almost satisfy the requirements of the Index Society. These Reports, too, will probably be sought after by bibliophiles on account of their beautiful typographical execution, due to Messrs. Whittingham & Co., of the Chiswick Press. A French critic recently writing in Le Livre, the French Bibliographical Journal, has commented on the luxurious paper and printing of these remarkable Reports. But it is more pertinent to our immediate purpose to observe that the Reports are full of all kinds of information bearing upon the advantages, purposes, and management of public libraries. The

Library Association has also recently commenced the issue, through Messrs. Trübner, of a monthly journal of proceedings which contains much additional information. Those who are unable to consult these more voluminous publications, but desire to know how a free public library is started, should procure Mr. W. E. A. Axon's well-known little brochure, "Hints on the Formation of Small Libraries intended for Public Use." This tract was prepared for the Co-operative Congress of 1869, has been printed several times in a separate form at home and abroad, and is to be found reprinted in Mr. Axon's Hand-book of the Public Libraries of Manchester and Salford" (pp. 183-9). More detailed information, including the text of the Free Libraries Acts, is to be found in Mr. J. D. Mullins' tract on "Free Libraries and News-rooms; their Formation and Management, the third edition of which was lately on sale by Messrs. Henry Sotheran & Co., at 36 Piccadilly. The standard work upon the subject is, of course, Mr. Edward Edwards' "Memoirs of Libraries," published in two volumes in 1859, a work which has been of great service in promoting the cause of the Libraries Acts.-Contemporary Review.

YES, my dear friend, I will try to gratify your wish, that I should put before you in words the Desdemona that was in my heart and mind in the days when I was first called to embody her upon the stage. It was among my earliest efforts, and I was then a very young girl; but she had been long for me a creature into whose life I had entered with a passionate sympathy, which I cannot even now recall without emotion. In the gallery of heroes and heroines which my young imagination had fitted

46

up for my daily and nightly reveries, Desdemona filled a prominent place. How could it be otherwise? A being so bright, so pure, so unselfish, generous, courageous-so devoted in her love, so unconquerable in her faith to her kind lord," even while dying by his hand; and all this beauty of body and mind blasted by the machinations of a soulless villain, who "out of her own goodness" made the net that enmeshed her too credulous husband, and her absolutely guileless self!

The manner, too, of her death increased her hold upon my imagination. Owing, I suppose, to delicate health and the weak action of my heart, the fear of being smothered haunted me continually. The very thought of being in a

crowd, of any pressure near me, would fill me with terror. I would give up any delight rather than face it. Thus it was that, because of this favorite terror of my own, the manner of Desdemona's death had a fearful significance for me. That she should, in the midst of this frightful death-agony, be able not only to forgive her torturer, but to keep her love for him unchanged, was a height of nobleness surpassing that of all the knights and heroes I had ever read of. Hers, too, was the pang without the palm." Juliet, Cordelia, Imogen, Hermione, sufferers as they were, had no such suffering as this. For hers was the supreme anguish of dying, while the one in whose regard she desired to stand highest believed her tainted and impure! To a loving, noble woman, what fate could be more terrible than this!

66

66

Of course I did not know in those days that Desdemona is usually considered a merely amiable, simple, yielding creature, and is also generally so represented on the stage. This is the last idea that would have entered my mind. To me she was in all things worthy to be a hero's bride, and deserving the highest love, reverence, and gratitude from the noble Moor. Gentle" she was, no doubt (the strong are naturally gentle) and Othello in one place calls her so. But he uses the epithet in the Italian and old English sense, implying that union of nobility of person and of disposition which speaks in an unconscious grace of movement and of outward look. This was what I imagine was in Wordsworth's mind when speaking of "the gentle lady married to the Moor;" and when he discoursed on that favorite theme, on which, he says, “right voluble I am," I can fancy that he drew his heroine in much the same lines as those in which she presented herself to my young imagination. I cannot think he would have singled her out in his famous sonnet as he does, had he not thought her as brave as she was generous, as high of heart as she was sweet of nature, or had he regarded her as a soft, insipid, plastic creature, ready to do any one's bidding, and take placidly any ill-usage from mere weakness and general characterless docility. Oh no! Such creatures do not win the love of

the purest and noblest, and the attachment and admiration of all.

It was well for me that I never saw Desdemona, or indeed any of Shakespeare's heroines, on the stage, before I had to impersonate them myself. I was thus hampered by no traditions, and my ideals were not interfered with by recollections of what others had done. I struggled, as best I could, to give expression to the characters, as I had thought them out for myself, looking only at the text, and ignoring all commentators and critics, for they perplexed but did not help me. Crude and imperfect as my conceptions were- and no one found this out sooner than myself, as time and experience widened themyet they seemed to make themselves felt by my audiences, who, to my surprise and delight, were always most kind and indulgent to me.

Very often I meet people now who tell me they saw my first performances, and speak of them as though they were great things. (You ask me to talk of myself, so you see I do.) They were better satisfied than I was, because I knew that I could do far better with encouragement and practice.

For

But ah, how my heart ached when the critics flung great naines at me. A Siddons, an O'Neill-what could I know of them? How they thought about my heroines for they were mine, a part of me-I could not tell. Did they look at them with the same eyes, think the same thoughts about them, as I did? No one could tell me that. I was only told with what grand effect one spoke certain lines, how another looked and sobbed and fainted in a certain situation. tunately for me, the critics then, as now, did not all agree. I was not allowed to see newspapers; but somehow unkind criticisms are sure to find their way through one channel or another, and to make their barb felt. A critic, to do good, and give a lesson worth learning, should find out first what is good-for no work worth speaking of at all can be without some good-and then the faults can be told and listened to in a proper and patient spirit.

Happily, however, I found not a few who did not daunt me with tales of my predecessors, but encouraged me to per

severe in my own course, to trust to my own conceptions, and to believe that these would work out a more adequate expression as I gained a greater mastery of my art. Among such, my Desdemona was peculiarly welcomed as rescuing the character, as I was told, out of the commonplace, and lifting her into her true position in the tragedy. This view was especially pressed upon me by Mr. Elton, the gentleman who acted Brabantio an excellent actor in Mr. Macready's picked company, who, alas! was drowned in a shipwreck a year or two later. He told me that my Desdemona was a new creation for him; that, to use his own phrase-and I remember it well-it restored the balance of the play by giving her character its due weight in the action, and thus for the first time was the chiaroscuro of the tragedy, as he said, seen by him. Words no less encouraging fell from Mr. Macready, my Othello. He told me my brightness and gaiety in the happy early scenes at Cyprus helped him greatly, and that, when sadder, I was not lachrymose; and, above all, that I added intensity to the last act by "being so difficult to kill." Indeed, I felt that last scene as if it were a very struggle for my own life. I would not die with my honor tarnished, without the chance of disabusing my husband's mind of the vile thoughts that tore it. I felt for him as well as for myself, for I knew what remorse and misery would overwhelm him when he should come to know how cruelly he had wronged me; and therefore I threw into my remonstrance all the powers of passionate appeal that I could command.

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cruel

He was

men;

I recall with gratitude the comfort and instruction for which I was indebted to my good friend Brabantio-my father," as I used to call him. the kindest and gentlest of thoroughly well read, of fine tastes, and an accomplished rather than a powerful actor. It seems but yesterday that I sat by his side in the green-room at the reading of Robert Browning's beautiful drama, The Blot in the Scutcheon." As a rule, Mr. Macready always read the new plays. But owing, I suppose, to some press of business, the task was intrusted on this occasion to the head prompter a clever man in his way, but

66

wholly unfitted to bring out, or even to understand, Mr. Browning's meaning. Consequently, the delicate subtle lines were twisted, perverted, and sometimes even made ridiculous in his hands. My "cruel father" was a warm admirer of the poet. He sat writhing and indignant, and tried by gentle asides to make me see the real meaning of the verse. But somehow the mischief proved irreparable, for a few of the actors during the rehearsals chose to continue to inisunderstand the text, and never took the interest in the play which they must have done had Mr. Macready read it-for he had great power as a reader. I always thought it was chiefly because of this contretemps that a play, so thoroughly dramatic, failed, despite its painful story, to make the great success which was justly its due.

44

Kind Mr. Elton ! In those cold, cheerless, wintry days, his salutation was always the same : Well, how does Spring Morning?" And if my eyes and heart were heavy from having heard my faults too harshly censured, he would say-noticing, I suppose, my depressed manner-" So April showers have been falling!" When I asked him to watch and check my faults, he positively refused, saying, "I heard already too much of them. I must remember I was passing through my novitiate-not, like most others, before a provincial, but before a London audience, and that I must expect to have much to learn. But if I kept always thinking of myself and my shortcomings, I should spoil my style, the charm of which was my self-forgetfulness and power of identifying myself with the character I was acting. How was I to be a real Juliet or Desdemona if I had my defects uppermost in my mind? I must trust to their falling away from me by practice in my art.' He was the more tender, I can now see, partly in consequence of my extremne sensitiveness and my dissatisfaction with my own efforts, and partly from seeing too strong a disposition in Mr. Macready to take exception to everything I did which was not exactly in accordance with his own notions. "My dear, you

are entirely wrong in this conception,' was a phrase constantly in his mouth. The young girl was expected to take the same view as the ripe artist, who had

had great experience, no doubt, but who had also confirmed habits, and whose strong masculine mind had in it but little of the feminine element. I believed in him, and could not act by his side without being moved and influenced by his intense earnestness and power. I tried hard to do what he advised-too much so; for, perhaps you remember, I was accused of having caught his manner and expression. It was almost impossible to do otherwise, considering the many hours one had to pass under his direction. Rehearsals began at ten in the morning, and usually went on until three or four. In the revival of an old, or the bringing out of a new play, these rehearsals were continued daily for three weeks at least, sometimes four or five.

Still, unflinching disciplinarian as he was, Mr. Macready was not always stern. He could joke, and had “pretty things to say" upon occasion. I always did my best to be punctual; but I had to drive three miles to the theatre-a distance which, if I had acted the previous night, I found rather trying in the early winter mornings. I remember well one morning when I was a little late, I found that I had been already called" for the stage. On reaching it, I made my apologies, but said that if they looked at the time they would find I was but ten minutes after the hour, and I understood that ten minutes' grace was always given. "Ah," said Mr. Macready, turning gravely to me, "not to you! We all agree that you do not require it you have enough already." In the general laugh I was of course forgiven. Then with all his sternness, how tender-hearted he was when illness was present! All knew, that for the great exertion of the lungs in this my first girlhood nature revenged herself by inflicting on me a cough which harassed and distressed me night and day. Often, often has Mr. Macready said to me, My poor child, your cough goes to my heart. How I wish I could spare

you!" And when at last, after my third winter, I had to give up and go to a milder climate for a year, he never omitted writing to me every week, advising me what books to read, and encouraging and expecting me to write and give him my criticisms upon them; sending me news of the theatre; and,

I

best of all, bidding me get well soon, as I was greatly asked for and missed, and he could not revive or bring forward certain plays without my help. This was my only drop of comfort; for, despite the love and care of a dear friend who left her home to tend and watch over me, it was a weary time this banishment-this separation from the art which was all in all to me; for from it I had derived almost my only happiness in a hitherto lonely, little-cared-for life. could not but see, too, that my friends did not expect I should grow better. I do not think I very much cared. By the very young I believe life is not highly prized. But oh, the inaction, the en. forced care and thought for myself, the wearing cough by night, the sameness of the dreary days! Had my life not been just before so different, so full of work, of imaginative excitement, doubtless my spirits would not have sunk so low. But happily, the dreary winter and trying spring gave way at last to summer summer and youth triumphed over my illness, and before another winter I was well again.

I have wandered far from my text. "Old memories, they cling, they cling!"' But as my thoughts travel back to these well-remembered days, and the

"Manche liebe Schatten steigen auf,"

of which Goethe speaks, my pen runs on with a freedom which I feel sure your friendship will forgive. You see, with encouragement, how conceited and

self-imbued" I can become.

Now let me go back to Desdemona, as I dreamed of her in those days, and as I think of her still. As in the case of Ophelia and Portia, so her mother has obviously been long dead before Shakespeare takes up the story. Desdemona only once alludes to her mother, and that is in her hour of deepest bewilderment and sorrow; then she simply says,

My mother had a maid called Barbara," whose lover had "proved mad, and did forsake her." Like Portia, she was a noble Venetian lady, but there was a whole world of difference between their homes and their bringing up. proud indulgent father watched the training of Desdemona's youth, and studied the progress of her heart and mind. Absorbed in state affairs, he seems to

have been at no pains to read his daughter's nature, to engage her affections or her confidence. Thus, a creature, loving, generous, imaginative, was thrown back upon herself, and left to dream over characters more noble, and lives more checkered with adventure, than those she was in the habit of seeing in her father's luxurious home. Making so small a part of her father's life, and missing the love, or the display of it, which would have been so precious to her, she finds her happiness in dreams. of worth more exalted than any she has seen, but which she has heard and read of in the poets and romancers of her own and other times. Supreme mistress of her father's house, she receives his guests, dispenses his hospitalities; and, except that she has never felt the assurance of that father's love, she yet hath felt no age nor known no sorrow," and is "a child to chiding."

Her father finds her obedient to his every wish, a most diligent mistress of his house affairs-" a maiden never bold;" of "spirit still and quiet." He never thinks of the depths that may lie under this unruffled surface-not only hidden from his sight, but unknown to his child herself. He has found her "opposite to marriage" with the "curled darlings" of Venice, who had solicited her. As these have never moved her quiet, her love for what he imagines she feared to look on is, to his thinking, "against all rules of nature," and could only be brought about "by spells and medicines bought of mountebanks." The enchantment, the witchcraft with which love fills the heart, Brabantio has never felt or believed in. All must be magic which is not custom

ary.

And what is her

Shakespeare carefully shows, in Desdemona's address to the Senate, how matters stood between her father and herself. 66 Do you know in all this noble company, "he asks her, where most you owe obedience?" Obedience, observe, not affection. reply? Not that of a shrinking, timid girl, but that of a thoughtful woman; one whose mind and heart went with her love, whose courage is as great and as high as she thinks the object of it worthy-ready to meet the consequences, and, above all, to transfer to her own

'But here's my husband;
And so much duty as my mother show'd
To you, preferring you before her father,
So much I challenge that I may profess
Due to the Moor, my lord."

From all we see of Desdemona's readiher of love and service, even to those ness to give more than is expected from who had much slighter claims upon her, I cannot think she would have been wanting in these to her father, had he strations of affection. There is a kind not chilled her girlhood's natural demonof proud frowardness in some natures which, even while loving dearly, will yet hold aloof from, keep at a distance, the right that which will not grow without objects of their love. They claim as a some care and fostering, some responsive look, some tender words.

It is hardly conceivable that Brabantio should not have been proud of this daughter, of whose beauty and fascination he must have heard all tongues speak in praise. What pains has not Shakespeare taken to tell us over and over again what this gracious creature was! As she moved among her father's her gondola along the canals of Venice, guests in his palace halls, or flashed in her! Of her serene grace and womanly what admiring eyes must have followed gentleness Brabantio's words have informed us. Cassio, the gentleman and scholar of high blood and breeding, speaks of her as

" A maid That paragons description and wild fame."