HOME AND EDUCATION
Follette, Belle Case La
Home and Education Conducted by BELLE CASE LA FOLLETTE Emily M. Bishop "I am so sorry for the world, so sorry for those who loved her, so sorry for you,'' wrote a friend when she learned of the...
...Those in the company who had been with her at Daly's said it was ]ike the most brilliant of the old days...
...For many days a dancing master had been struggling to teach us the dainty steps and the difficult courtesies...
...The scenes were all boxed in above the first entrance and I was quite downcast until I discovered that by climbing up into the "flies" I could see over the top of the set...
...As much as any one I have ever known, her faith in the continuance of life was deep-seated, abiding...
...What one might call, for lack of a better term, the caste of the theatre was maintained...
...She moved among us with a quiet dignity and remoteness which always suggested to me not a voluntary isolation but rather that which inevitably emanates from a saddened and lonely spirit...
...MY FIRST personal word from Miss Rehan occurred during the dress rehearsal of The School for Scandal...
...her figure slender and perfect in proportion...
...NOVEMBER 22nd there came this telegram from our daughter in New York, telling us of the death of one of the world's best workers: "Aunt Emily, not aware of the seriousness of her condition, her mind alert—she was happy seeing her friends up till late yesterday afternoon—died this morning at six-tiventy...
...not a factory where a new inventor turns out profitable personalities overnight...
...She began teaching school very young...
...Despite my pleading the Wardrobe Mistress had assigned it to me, refusing to cut off any of the handsome velvet...
...She was associated with Mr...
...Bishop was the author of three other interesting books of great practical value...
...During the first weeks of rehearsal, however, that was more than many of the company did...
...At rehearsal, when it it same to the scenes in which Miss Rehan herself participated, she only "said the lines," never really playing the part...
...Wherever she lived, the place took on an air of comfort, beauty, and individuality...
...Every seat in the theatre was sold and standing room was at a premium...
...In the first act there were several moments when she was on the stage, but had no lines to speak...
...One evening she stopped in front of me, tilted her head and half closed her eyes as artists look at a picture, saying: "Child, how do you put on your make-up...
...I felt always that it was in the essentials, not the surface things, that Miss Rehan related herself to others...
...I little realized at that time what influence this volume would have upon my own life...
...I wonder how even her generosity and helpfulness dared trust the precious original into my hands the weeks I was copying the directions line for line...
...Oh, Mr...
...Bishop at many of the well-known clubs of New York, Chicago, Boston, and smaller centers...
...But the dirt and difficulty of the narrow stairs barred me from watching Lady Teazle's lovely quarrel scene without risk to the dainty costume I had been so generously given...
...He was a man of intellectual power, rare wit, wide reading, and advanced theories...
...Bishop had the art of home-making...
...I had, owing to high cheek bones and small eyes, an extremely difficult face to make up...
...But Miss Rehan had not stopped with a general criticism...
...Later, when our daughter Fola went to New York for study, she and Mrs...
...But my dearest token of all those memorable weeks in her company is a transcript of the prompt book of the Taming of the Shrew...
...And just as she restored the opportunity for me to watch the play again, so now she gave me copies of the acting version of a number of plays in her repertoire which had been privately printed by Augustin Daly...
...One afternoon she sent for a young girl who had rare beauty of the Rosetti type, which she practically negated by dressing in a cheaply ostentatious imitation of the latest mode...
...BISHOP was versatile and creative...
...If she had been aware, she would have said good-bye as the Germans say it, "Auf Wieder-sehen...
...MRS...
...However, in spite of the contemptuous nickname of "The Fly," which my lofty pilgrimage earned for me, I continued for several days to console myself with this bird's-eye view of the fourth act of The Shrew...
...For instance, she had taken it for granted until quite recently that she had no ear for music, although possessed of a wonderful sense of rhythm in movement...
...Bishop made her home with them for a number of years...
...But it was she who first rescued me from hopeless manipulation of the grease paint...
...Before I ever heard her wonderful voice I had learned to worship her infectious comedy and to wait spell bound for her inimitable reading of "I know it is the moon" and a hundred other lines...
...The comedy had flown...
...One morning when we went through the measures for Miss Rehan, our mechanical performance was too much for her...
...She ever supported and sustained her with the sympathetic understanding of a disciple and with a love and devotion like that of an unselfish daughter...
...I knew this, as various members of the company had taken occasion to inform me, but few had given me any helpful suggestions...
...Her relation with her company was a work rather than a social one...
...She represented to me all that I worshipped most in the theatre—and then I worshipped the theatre beyond everything else—for I still had illusions...
...The curtain had fallen...
...To my inexpressible joy I heard Miss Rehan direct him to admit me to the first entrance and to see that a chair was provided for me whenever I wished to watch the play...
...Although they had been married some years, strangers always took them for bride and groom...
...But the theatrical booking war was at its height and the management found it impossible to secure consecutive city time...
...We had been playing the School a week before I was again aware of Miss Rehan's helpfulness...
...Even the best hotels are none too good, but the second or third rate accommodations, which the slender pay envelope necessitates, are a menace to health...
...Two incidents stand out vividly in regard to the rehearsals...
...She did not rest until she had prepared a series of condensed debates on subjects of great national importance...
...Bishop had been an editor of note, but because of failing health had accepted a position in the government service...
...As I remember, her mother died when she was born...
...When they expressed their deep gratitude for all the happiness she had given them that night and in the years past, her eyes filled with tears and she said this was to be her last season...
...her voice rich and pleasing...
...They were exceptionally "slow study...
...Still more closely associated with Mrs...
...Our early "Washington acquaintance was most congenial and pleasant, and was the beginning of our close and abiding friendship...
...Daly was producing...
...How else are the young people to grow...
...Miss Rehan attended and directed, with the assistance of her stage manager, practically all of the rehearsals...
...While she "cut" the text, she always adhered to the exact words of the Record...
...every movement rhythmical...
...The philosophy of James, Henderson, Dewey, Hall—then stirring the educational world—she had absorbed, assimilated, and put into practice...
...A club, whose members were composed almost altogether of busy women, kept up their study and practice for over twelve years...
...Bishop received a call to teach in the School of Expression at the great New York "mother" Chautauqua, she was told that she must not encroach on the field of voice culture, which was already occupied...
...I was again aware of Miss Rehan's generous and all-seeing eye when she sent for me shortly before the company closed...
...Then I explained...
...Had the manager who gave me my first engagement known the background of my devotion to Misa Rehan's art he would not have been so surprised when I refused his offer to understudy a leading actress in a Broadway production, and eagerly seized the opportunity to "play bits" in Ada Rehan's company...
...La Follette, I am an old woman...
...The audience gave Miss Rehan an ovation and she rose to their loving appreciation with elemental fire and winged comedy that have rendered all other Katharines like babbling brooks to the memory of Niagara...
...Ada Rehan: Some Personal Recollections By Fola La Follette (In "The Bookman") ALTHOUGH I had never seen Ada Rehan play until I had joined her company, my admiration for her and her art dates from early childhood...
...I felt, and I am certain I looked like a druiiKen Falstaff whenever I tried to courtesy...
...She seldom came out of her stateroom, but would occasionally send for some member of the company to come to her...
...But this happy privilege was closed to me after the opening performance of The Country Girl...
...Home and Education Conducted by BELLE CASE LA FOLLETTE Emily M. Bishop "I am so sorry for the world, so sorry for those who loved her, so sorry for you,'' wrote a friend when she learned of the death of Mrs...
...I was lighter of heart and of foot...
...Bishop was suddenly inspired with the idea that the Con- gressional Record could be made the source of dramatic readings...
...I naturally thought of Mrs...
...A desolate group we were, contemplating the prospect of eight weeks of such fare, when our horizon was suddenly brightened by word from Miss Rehan...
...TWO weeks before we were to appear in Madison, Wisconsin, Miss Rehan sent for me and offered to let me play one of the more important women roles in my home town...
...I always regretted that she herself did not join the dance in the performance, as she had in the earlier days...
...During the first figure of the dance Miss Rehan abruptly stopped the rehearsal and called me to the footlights...
...The idea once conceived, she was convinced that readings from the Congressional Record could be made entertaining, educational, and dramatic...
...It seemed that at rehearsals she had seen me making cuttings of the plays corresponding to those she used...
...Miss Rehan, dressed in a simple tailored suit of old blue, was seated at the prompt table...
...All that was best of new education was hers...
...Six years ago when listening to a heated debate in the Senate, Mrs...
...Bishop was busy teaching, lecturing, and also engaged in writing her first book, Health and Self Expression, which was published in 1891...
...A more striking and important illustration was her dramatic readings from the Congressional Record...
...Owing to Miss Rehan's generosity the most insignificant members of her company travelled luxuriously at the ridiculously small cost of a dollar a day...
...These readings were highly successful and were given by Mrs...
...Someone whispered a jest, and a general titter passed along the line...
...They were everywhere recognized as one of the most original and important contributions to the work of the platform in recent years...
...Interpretative Forms of Literature, published in 1903, Seventy Years Young, published in 1907, and Daily Ways to health, published in 1910...
...She was essentially an artist...
...Our schedule was particularly difficult, catching trains at from four to six a. m. and travelling until two or three in the afternoon...
...Then she directed that the rehearsal proceed...
...Many of those have been shattered in relation to the theatre, but Miss Rehan's art justified and has kept intact for me all that I had woven about her...
...But at that time I was absorbed in the social obligations of the wife of a young Congressman...
...She took it exactly as he handed it to her and quite solemnly rested it on her lap, without turning it over...
...Here was another of those revealing flashes of keen observation...
...her dress free and artistic...
...Her face lighted for a moment in appreciation of the sincerity and in-tensity of my father's feeling and then she sighed...
...All this emanated from and was personified by Miss Rehan herself...
...From the instant of his arrival at the theatre, terrified by the stormy sea voyage, he had attached himself to her, and she volunteered to take him home for one night until a suitable abiding place could be found...
...My father protested that she had no right to withdraw her magic from people's lives...
...Miss Rehan was not well, and I think would have infinitely preferred cancelling the season to enduring the hardships of one-night stands...
...You shall have a costume out of my trunk—an old Chinese brocade...
...But mind you take good care of it, child...
...They came forward in the order of their prominence, and, as I had only "bits," I was among the last to be called...
...Her taste for literature and gift for interpretation lead her to specialize in that line...
...ALTHOUGH a tireless worker, she never lost her spontaneity...
...to her it was only a tiny incident in the day's routine, but to me it was a supreme moment of homage as I took my little eight-word part from that lovely hand...
...After Mr...
...I went in trepidation, wondering in what way I had brought Miss Rehan's displeasure upon me...
...I well remember my first impression of her...
...A smile stole across Miss Rehan's face—that inimitable smile—as she remarked: "I thought as much...
...The day of the first rehearsal was a wonder day for me...
...S. H. Clark, head of the Department of Public Speaking of Chicago University, and with Bertha Kunz Baker, the great dramatic reader...
...I knocked timidly at the door of her dressing-room, and felt somewhat relived as Lizzie greeted me in friendly fashion...
...He had been sent across the water as an indispensable actor in a play Mr...
...The gift consisted in mounting chronologically in a scrap book the theatre programmes which father had saved from college days and through the years when he and mother were first in Washington...
...When it occurred to her that she might learn to understand and appreciate music by means of a Victrola, she began the experiment with characteristic enthusiasm, and found great joy and happiness in listening to the reproduction of the great composers...
...she gave me practical suggestions, and as I incorporated them one after another she would approve or discard the alteration...
...And she read the debates with great skill, interpreting the effect and significance of epoch-making events in the Senate...
...People outside the theatre have little realization of what a hardship this constant travel is to the smaller-salaried members of a company...
...She had invited my father and mother to come back after the performance...
...Though I preferred not to do anything different there than elsewhere, I have always held very dear this memory of her generous thoughtfulness...
...With only one discordant exception the people playing the roles had earned their relative places by long experience and earnest work, and the order had a basis of reality which everyone recognized in a gentle deference...
...Bishop's influence, and who was later her assistant at Chautauqua and elsewhere...
...We were to pay only the actual cost of food...
...she caught up a fan and showed us the minuet as I had dreamed it might be danced...
...Bishop made their home together...
...During the many years at Chautauqua, she taught thousands and thousands of women who, like myself, can find no words to express their appreciation and gratitude for her influence...
...She thought the very foundation of her work was taken from her...
...Her father married again, and Emily had a cheerless, repressed childhood...
...The theatre seemed even in a wretched one-night stand the temple of a dignified and beautiful art, which one might worship and strive to master...
...As the director read the names of the company they stepped forward one by one to be presented to Miss Rehan and to receive from her the copies of their parts...
...and Mrs...
...But this feather-brain, who would have accepted unquestioningly the edict of a Poiret, was too obsessed by superficial Broadway standards to utilize this wise word of a great artist...
...Among her many gifts, Mrs...
...Though Miss Rehan never knew it, during many weeks of devastating one-night stands, the packing of that precious gown with tender care was a silent ceremonial of gratitude for her thoughtful kindness...
...Bishop were singularly companionable and happy...
...She was most unostentatious and simple in dress and in her whole habit of life...
...a part of herself...
...But Bobsy had captured her and enlarged her understanding of what she had considered merely an affectation...
...In Miss Rehan's company the old traditions of the theatre were rigidly observed...
...She had a spiritual vision, a perspective and philosophy that was as essential to her as the air she breathed...
...Instead she asked why I had on "that costume...
...The stage manager was summoned at once...
...This distinguished trio were in close sympathy in their work and were warm personal friends...
...Bishop's life was never an easy one...
...I have known many stars who were superficially more social in their personal contact with certain members of their companies...
...I was as ecstatic but far more inarticulate than Cinderella when the fairy godmother turned her pumpkin into a coach...
...Bishop's most effective exponent...
...IT WAS understood when we opened that Miss Rehan was to play nothing shorter than week-stand engagements...
...We were dancing the minuet in the first act and I was particularly unhappy in mind and body owing to my ridiculous costume...
...The forlorn waif's need captured her, and in spite of her aversion to the idea she became his devoted servant...
...But for all her apparent aloofness there would come sudden amazing flashes revealing a detailed knowledge of a situation or an intimate discernment of people to whom she had scarcely spoken...
...It was not, however, until some years after, when I was fortunately able to follow Miss Rehan's advice and submit the problem to a painter, that I finally worked out a really satisfactory "makeup...
...La Follette's six years' service in the House, when we had come home to stay, the Advisor of Women at the University consulted me as to whom she could get to speak to the University girls on better ways to health and dress...
...I followed every one with intense interest, making cuttings of my own copies of the plays to correspond with those she used...
...But my greatest debt, outside of our personal friendship, is to her genius as a teacher...
...Then she added to me: "If there is anyone in my company who cares enough about acting to wish to watch and learn they are to have the opportunity...
...Regularly, when I was not required on the stage, I slipped into the first entrance to watch Miss Rehan play my favorite scenes...
...She lived her philosophy, appreciative of the value and importance of every hour, keenly alive to each day's opportunities for joy and helpfulness, for growth and progress...
...Her grandmother, a strong character of the pioneer type, was, however, a comfort and solace to the lonely child...
...Of this we had many tokens...
...When the curtain fell two prominent men in the company seized the stage director and demanded that the first entrance be cleared...
...He died at their Chautauqua home twenty years ago...
...He was playing a woman's role and had important "business" with a fan...
...He was given a proper dog rug near her bed, but before morning the lonely little fellow had curled himself close beside her...
...On particularly difficult jumps this same courtesy was extended to the men...
...As a rule, Miss Rehan seemed rather unaware of those about her...
...She invited the women members of her company to travel on her special car and offered the services of her chef and waiter...
...It was not an undemocratic atmosphere, but merely lent a dignity to one's hope of honest achievement in the same field...
...Many of the company needed no introduction, for she had gathered about her those of the old Daly company who were still there to answer her roll call...
...Suddenly Miss Rehan halted him in his smooth recital of verse, saying:"----give me your hat...
...Contrasted with this storm of emotion within me, her casual and almost abrupt nod sent me back to my chair in a dark corner of the stage, suffering all the agonies of the inarticulate, and yet with a thrill of happiness as I remembered the beauty with which that hand of hers had moved in giving me my poor little part...
...It seemed an eternity as I walked the length of the stage...
...Always her influence as a teacher of reading, and as a dramatic reader, was for the Natural, and she was among the first to oppose the old elocutionary method of impersonation and rant...
...One memorable day after a "letter perfect" rehearsal had been called, most of the actors seemed to know their lines...
...It was a heavy red velvet brocade, which had been originally designed for a very tall woman...
...Roe were married and went to New York to live, Mrs...
...her face irregular, but expressive, and of the cast that attracted the sculptor...
...A wistful smile shadowed the quivering corners of her wonderful mouth before she answered: "Oh, I don't mean these white hairs, but old here," and her hand rested on her heart...
...On tour, Miss Rehan lived quietly and apart with her faithful colored maid, Lizzie, and her little dog, Bobsy, as her inseparable companions...
...unconscious, peaceful passing...
...When I explained she added: "It's ridiculous for a tiny person like you...
...The actor deprived of his hat stumbled hopelessly, "fluffed" and improvised strange annotations of Shakespeare...
...She was Mrs...
...Bishop was director of health culture and co-principal of the School of Expression at Chautauqua...
...But always resourceful, she began to direct her attention to the more vital and fundamental problem of education for health, for freedom, and grace, for overcoming self-consciousness, for making the body a more "admirable tool for the admirable purposes of heart and mind.'' For more than twenty years Mrs...
...It was usually to give a helpful suggestion in relation to work...
...Miss Rehan once told me that in early years she had always had a consummate contempt for the actress with the pet lap dog and had vowed solemnly she would never join their ranks...
...One was when Miss Rehan rehearsed the minuet which was danced in The School for Scandal...
...Mrs...
...Of the many times I watched Miss Rehan's Katharine, her performance the night we played in Madison stands out above all the others...
...The next day that actor and every other was letter perfect...
...During this time she always went "up stage" moving in and out among the "silent guests" or "extras...
...and Mrs...
...It was the one thing that might have made even an unimaginative manager appreciate her pictorial possibilities...
...She had the power to awaken courage, enthusiasm, zeal, that often changed the whole thread of a life...
...but I have never known another star who was so fundamentally and genuinely solicitous of the well-being and comfort of every member of the company as to relinquish the freedom of her own special car for the confinement of a tiny stateroom...
...It happened that soon after Mr...
...This some of the company at times resented...
...WE WERE eight weeks rehearsing The Taming of the Shrew and The School for Scandal before we opened in New Haven...
...for Lizzie's manner was a certain barometer of Miss Rehan's mood toward anyone...
...It was zero weather, and when we finally reached a town it meant being transferred from a draughty train to a cold and dismal hotel...
...It is very bad...
...Inherently teachable and open-minded, she herself best exemplified her fundamental belief in the power of continued growth...
...My recollection of my most successful and cherished gift to my father is always intimately associated with her name...
...We bade her good-night with aching hearts and a burning resentment that some deep lack in our country could have let this happen to our Ada Rehan, when the adoration of France had endowed a much older artist with abiding youth.—The Bookman...
...As a result of a course of lectures, a large and enthusiastic class was formed at Madison, which was the beginning of the "Emily Bishop League...
...In The Shrew I wore a boy's costume and could easily climb up for my beloved fourth act...
...There was nothing of the hail-fellow-well-met about her...
...We had not yet been given properties, and so he was using his derby hat to indicate the business...
...She had a wonderful sense of color and harmony...
...This distraction added to the nervousness of a "first night," threw the actors off and caused them to "go up in their lines...
...He passed the hat, crown toward her...
...Bishop in all her life work and in personal friendship was Gwyneth King Roe, who when a very young girl had come under Mrs...
...However, I think that my happy figure in that first entrance night after night must have told Miss Rehan all that I could not formulate into words...
...I supposed I was to be reprimanded if not dismissed for my awkwardness...
...One of the dearest tributes I can pay Miss Rehan is that when I, at last, saw her play her art did not mar the dreams of my childhood, but only dwarfed them through the greater brilliance and beauty of the reality...
...But she never failed to think of her company from the most insignificant member up—that was the way Miss Rehan thought—when it could increase their well-being or comfort...
...One young actor, a relative of Miss Rehan, who had known scarcely a word of his part the day before, was particularly glib...
...Your gift of comedy is eternal youth, Miss Rehan...
...She achieved large success as a lecturer and writer...
...Is it not," she asked "the stenographic report of dramas that often crowd the galleries and fill the corridors for hours and often days, dramas that keep hundreds of the ablest newspaper men in Washington supplying the country with reports of what is transpiring...
...And without looking into the hat herself, returned it to the youth, but in such a way that the entire company was enabled to see his part neatly folded across the inside of his hat...
...and Mrs...
...When hotels drew the colour line and refused to give Lizzie a room, she would have a cot placed in her own room rather than have her devoted servant discriminated against...
...The company was assembled on the bare stage...
...However, it was characteristic of her that rather than throw her company out of work she finally agreed to do some eight weeks of one-night engagements...
...The result was that the following day a general edict was issued and my old haunt became forbidden ground...
...After her talk she related with some amusement how Miss Rehan had advised her to study Burne Jones's paintings as a basis for her own costuming...
...On that night a group of "extras" had gathered in the entrance near the electrician's switchboard...
...The name of Ada Rehan was like a motif through the whole collection...
...And although mounting the programmes was an arduous task for a youngster I was amply rewarded by the inspiration the book gave to what I regarded as the golden hours of my childhood—hours when mother or father would tell me of Miss Rehan's interpretation of this or that role...
...Long years ago when we first went to Washington we had the good fortune to live in the same house with Mr...
...If she had been aware she would still, I believe have been alert and happy...
...Somewhat near-sighted, she seldom gave any token of recognition beyond a general impersonal good morning or good evening when she entered the theatre...
...It was all caught up around my five foot three inches in an overskirt af dimensions ridiculous even for that period...
...When Mrs...
...AFTER the opening performances of The Shrew and The School, the company settled down to routine work...
...It was one of delicacy and refinement, yet of strength...
...There was no domestic work she could not do to perfection, and delight in doing the most delicate cookery, the finest needlework...
...When the costume came it proved an exquisite old yellow satin Chinese embroidery...
...Miss Rehan turned from her dressing table: "Child, why don't I see you any more in the first entrance during the second act of The School or the fourth act of The Shrew...
...I stood for an instant in dumb amazement, as I did not know she had ever noticed me there...
...One evening after the second act of The School the stage manager rapped on my door with a summons for me to go to Miss Rehan at once...
...She was stimulating, inspirational, intuitive...
Vol. 8 • December 1916 • No. 12
