Actress in Spite of Herself: The Life of Anna Cora Mowatt

By Mildred Allen Butler

Anna Cora Mowatt, married in 1834 at age 15, lived in luxury until her husband's health failed and he lost his money, forcing her to find a way to support them. She was the first woman to give public poetry readings; she wrote the first social satire for the stage; and, having become a star overnight without previous acting experience, she was the first American to make acting a respectable profession for women--proving that a lady could be an actress and an actress a lady.

“High school girls will find this an enthralling story of Anna Cora Mowatt, who ... was the first American to make the status of a woman in the theater both respectable and admirable. As a child, Anna enjoyed acting and performing in plays at home, but had no designs on becoming a professional because of society’s sentiments.... Then bankruptcy threatened her lavish estate and she turned to public reading of poetry, at which she was supremely successful. Success in playwriting led to her serious involvement in the theater.” --Best Sellers

“Married at 15, [Anna] flitted through a happy social life for a while, wrote pleasant articles for magazines of the time ... and, after her husband's health and fortune failed, supported them both by acting succesfully in this country and England.” --Seattle Daily Times

“She is a woman who will interest teenage girls.... The writing indicates close attention to Mrs. Mowatt's autobiography and family documents. It also offers a close scrutiny of nineteenth century theatre in America.” --Kirkus Reviews

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ad Stellae Books
• Release date: Apr 16, 2011
• ISBN: 9781452404141

Mildred Allen Butler

Mildred Butler Engdahl, who published under her maiden name Mildred Allen Butler, was the mother of writer Sylvia Engdahl. She had a B.A. from Wellesley College and an M.A. in Drama from the University of Oregon, and had worked both as a high school English teacher and as a director of community theaters. Late in her life she wrote several historical books for teens as well as articles for scholarly magazines. She died in 1987 at the age of ninety.

Book preview

FROM THE REVIEWS OF

Actress in Spite of Herself

The Life of Anna Cora Mowatt

High school girls will find this an enthralling story of Anna Cora Mowatt, who . . . was the first American to make the status of a woman in the theater both respectable and admirable. As a child, Anna enjoyed acting and performing in plays at home, but had no designs on becoming a professional because of society’s sentiments. . . . Then bankruptcy threatened her lavish estate and she turned to public reading of poetry, at which she was supremely successful. Success in playwriting led to her serious involvement in the theater. —Best Sellers

Married at 15, [Anna] flitted through a happy social life for a while, wrote pleasant articles for magazines of the time . . . and, after her husband's health and fortune failed, supported them both by acting successfully in this country and England. —Seattle Daily Times

She is a woman who will interest teenage girls. . . . The writing indicates close attention to Mrs. Mowatt's autobiography and family documents. It also offers a close scrutiny of nineteenth century theatre in America. —Kirkus Reviews

Actress in Spite of Herself

The Life of Anna Cora Mowatt

by

Mildred Allen Butler

Copyright © 1966 by Mildred Allen Butler

All rights reserved. For information contact [e-mail]

Funk & Wagnalls edition (hardcover) published in 1966

Ad Stellae Books edition (ebook) published in 2011

This edition distributed by Smashwords

Illustrated with 19th-century portraits

Cover: Portrait of Anna Cora Mowatt in Autobiography of an Actress,

Ticknor, Reed and Fields, 1854.

CONTENTS

1. The Earliest Days

2. On the Brink

3. The Elopement

4. Melrose

5. Visiting England and Germany

6. A Need for Courage

7. Talent to the Rescue

8. Again the Grim Monster

9. My Children

10. Fashion

11. A Star is Born

12. The Actress

13. The After Years

14. The Last Chapter

Acknowledgement

About the Author

Anna Cora Mowatt, Engraving (1853)

Chapter 1: The Earliest Days

In the years 1819 and 1820, three babies were born who were to become three of the most famous women of their time—one in Sweden, one in England, and one in France. The last was not French, but American. There was Jenny Lind, the great singer, Florence Nightingale, who made nursing a highly respected profession, and Anna Cora Mowatt (born Ogden) who, though perhaps not the greatest actress of her day, proved, to even prudish people in America, that a lady could be an actress and an actress, a lady.

When Anna Cora was born in Bordeaux, France, in 1819, there were already eight children in her family. Her father, Samuel Ogden, was the proprietor of a flourishing import-export business. Having found it more profitable for him to reside in France rather than in his native New York, he had, in 1818, taken his wife and children to Bordeaux, where they lived for a number of years. He was related to several of the first families of New York, and his wife, Eliza Lewis, was the granddaughter of Francis Lewis, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. It was partly because of the aristocratic and wealthy position of her family, as well as her own charm and unblemished reputation, that Anna Cora, when she grew up, was able to raise the position of actress to one of admiration and respect.

Her earliest recollections were of the beautiful estate, called La Castagne, just outside the gates of Bordeaux, to which the family moved when she was a few months old. It was a place of enchantment and her memory often returned to it in the troubled times of her later life as to a half-remembered dream of paradise. Situated on a slope and covering about thirty acres, it was bordered on one side by a lovely little river and enclosed on all other sides by an eight-foot wall. The stone and brick chateau of twenty-two rooms, high on a large terrace, looked out upon a pleasant view. Immediately in front of it was an immense flower garden in the center of which was a summerhouse; beyond that was a row of plane trees, and, farther down, the river. The extensive lawn behind the chateau was bordered by stone outbuildings: first the homes of the servants, who were French peasants; then the stables, wine buildings, granaries, poultry yard, pigeon house, aviary, and coops for rabbits and guinea pigs. The rest of the property not given over to a vegetable garden, orchards, vineyards, fields, and meadows, was cultivated as a park with many paths bordered by trees whose branches met overhead. One place of particular beauty, called Calypso’s Grotto, was a cluster of trees surrounding moss-covered stones which formed seats; there a cascade in the spring-fed stream constantly murmured. Two small lakes were a part of the grounds, one a pond for washing and the other, which was larger, for fishing and boating. The peasants of La Castagne harvested the grapes and the grain, made the wine, and ground the wheat in a self-contained estate almost medieval in its insularity.

Life in this beautiful setting was a round of continuous pleasure for the children with merry fetes at harvesting, May Day, Christmas, and birthdays—and there were many birthdays in the large family. One French custom that left a deep impression on Anna Cora was the early morning birthday celebration for her parents. Each of the children, who were assembled in the breakfast room to greet their mother and father, was ready with a gift. The older ones usually presented an ornamented scroll on which a verse was written, original or copied, and the younger ones gave bouquets of violets or other flowers from the conservatory. Each in turn, the eldest first, gave his gift and received a kiss and words of praise. When she was five years old, Anna Cora’s present to her parents was a scroll, nicely rolled and tied with gay ribbons. She had labored long over it with many blottings and new beginnings, till a poem was neatly copied in a large, round hand. The delight she felt in that accomplishment was seldom equaled in later years.

In those early, happy days in France, the children had to find their own amusements. Aside from ramblings in their huge, beautiful outdoor playground, their favorite pastime was the performance of plays. Anna Cora was too young then to take part, but she was an avid listener. She did, indeed, make her theatrical debut at the time she was four years old. The older children were performing Shakespeare’s Othello—in French, since at that time they were most familiar with that language—and because most of them were already doubling in the principal roles, there were no players left over to be the judges in the trial scenes. So the four youngest children were dressed up in red gowns and white wigs, made to sit on a bench and promise not to laugh, and thus, as Anna Cora says in her autobiography: At four years old, in the sedate and solemn character of a judge, upon a mimic stage, I made my first appearance in that profession of which it was the permission of divine Providence that I should one day in reality become a member.

When Anna Cora was six years old, her father decided to return with his family to New York, and beautiful La Castagne was left behind them forever. For a time, while arrangements were being made for a ship, they lived in Bordeaux. Here they played with a great many little French children, dancing and singing the old chansons.

Finally a ship was ready for them, the Brandt, a solid German craft with an experienced seaman for captain, and then began for the Ogdens an ordeal which was to leave its mark on all of them, particularly Anna Cora. Their plan was to sail for Le Havre and there pick up an elder son who was to return to America with them.

They had no more than set sail when a storm arose. At first the bad weather did not cause them too much distress. The large family was made comfortable in a spacious cabin in which meals were served, not only to them, but to a few additional passengers. Sea journeys were long in the days of sails, and two weeks later they had not cleared the Bay of Biscay. It was then that a gale struck. Since when she came to write her autobiography Anna Cora had only a vague memory of this horror, she quotes a letter from her brother, Charles, who describes the terror and tragedy of that terrible voyage.

He tells of the dawn of their fifteenth day at sea when two of his brothers, aged ten and twelve, left the stateroom they shared with him to go on deck. No one had been able to sleep much that night because of the pitching and tossing of the vessel, and the boys were restless. Charles describes what followed in these words:

"At about half-past six there was a terrible, deafening crash, the sound of which, breaking upon the drowsy ears, still reverberates in my mind. The vessel had been struck on the larboard bow by a tremendous wave, which, crossing her from stem to stern, rent up everything, and completely swept our decks, whilst it threw the ship with her beam ends in the sea. The caboose, longboat, water casks, cables, and everything amidships, her bulwarks and every particle of the saloon were violently shattered and washed away, and the deck and companionway and forecastle hatch completely torn up, making the whole ship a wreck indeed. The masts alone were uninjured. Fortunately she soon righted.

"My first thought was, of course, for my brothers, knowing that they had gone on deck; as soon as possible, I rushed, half-clad, up the companionway. Here a scene of desolation presented itself. . . . The naked decks, with nothing but the masts standing, the rigging flying in every direction, the bulwarks destroyed, and presenting no barrier to the sea which, with every roll of the vessel, washed over the deck and down into the cabin; then the waves, mountain high and foaming with fury, that seemed at every moment to threaten destruction. . . .

I could not reach the deck. Struck with awe and wonder, I looked around for some living being to tell me of my brothers. A sturdy seaman . . . was seen cramped to the rigging, about midships, and drawing something out of the sea. Presently our youngest brother appeared, and as the mate reached me and placed his almost inanimate figure in my arms, he pointed astern and said, ‘The other is lost!’ I looked, and on a crested billow, fast receding, and already far from us, I caught a momentary glimpse—the last, of poor Gabriel!

Charles carried his half-drowned brother into the small cabin which was all that remained protected on the stricken ship, and repeated to his parents what the seaman had said, The other is lost! Their grief may be imagined! Yet they had to turn their attention to the boy who must be revived. They were all in great danger, for it was two days more before the storm abated. Fortunately, the Brandt was still afloat, though all the provisions had been swept away, and the family existed on a stock of delicacies in the cabin—paté de foie gras and conserves—until five days later, when they sighted another ship which recognized their plight and supplied them with food and an iron kettle to cook it in.

Never shall I forget, wrote Charles, the delightful relish that those potatoes proved to have after we had remained so long without the means of cooking anything!

They reached Le Havre twenty-five days after having set sail from Bordeaux and a week later departed for New York on another boat, the packet ship Queen Mab. The passage lasted forty days and they encountered much rough weather, but nothing serious by comparison with the terrifying experience on the Brandt. It was a long time before Anna Cora recovered from the disastrous sea voyage, and that traumatic experience resulted, during the next years, in frequent illnesses which interrupted her school work.

On the whole, during her childhood, she lived the life of a normal girl of wealth in early nineteenth century New York City. During her first school years she had to learn to speak English more perfectly, as did her brothers and sisters, for they had had a bilingual childhood much influenced by French servants and playmates. They comforted each other when their classmates teased them. However, Anna Cora was young and a natural linguist, and it was easy for her to become perfect in any language. She attended, with her sisters, several boarding schools outside the city and finally, when she was twelve and thirteen, a fashionable school for young ladies just across the street from her home. She learned easily and received good marks, but she was a lively child and was considered by her teachers to be the ringleader in much of the misbehavior they frowned upon. She made the other girls laugh and she disobeyed the rules, but there was nothing malicious in her mischief. She was always forgiven and everybody loved her.

She was usually at the head of her class in recitation, mythology, history, physiology, and mental philosophy, but at the foot in grammar, arithmetic, and algebra. She wrote excellently and voluminously.

It was perhaps because of her frequent illnesses that she had so much time to read. She was allowed to read anything in her father’s library, French or English, selecting at random. This was a day when few books were written especially for children and she read eagerly all that the library contained, including the books that are now called classics, which must have been beyond her comprehension. By the time she was ten, she had read all of Shakespeare’s plays and frequently acted out scenes from them for the family. She loved drama and poetry, and Shakespeare’s plays were both.

Reading poetry led inevitably to an attempt to write, and every marriage, birth, or death in the family furnished her with a subject for a poem. She wrote by the hour and thought she was writing poetry because she could make the lines rhyme. She longed to show her verses to someone who would appreciate them, but was fearful of being laughed at. Sometimes, however, she would leave a poem where it might be picked up and read by some member of the family. She also scribbled on the garden walls, and at one time these were almost fully covered with her rhymes. One day she left a short poem in the room of one of her brothers and waited nearby to see what would happen. When he read it and started downstairs with the paper in his hand, she followed him, hoping against hope that at last someone appreciated her ability. Her brother went into their father’s study.

Just read this, Papa, she heard him say. "It is some of Anna’s