by Susan Sontag
* * *
THEY LEFT POLAND in late July; journeyed to Paris, where Maryna spent three weeks creating a dozen new wardrobes, sitting for her portrait, going to the theatre (she did see Sarah Bernhardt as Doña Sol in Victor Hugo’s Hernani, and went backstage afterward to offer gracious homage to her magnificent rival), visiting the galleries and the Exposition Universelle; and sailed from Cherbourg on August 20th, arriving a week later, in time for the last month of New York’s malodorous summer. They stayed again in the theatre district, off Union Square: the suite at the Clarendon Hotel filled with flowers, which quickly rotted in the lancing, muzzy heat. Maryna had found her hotel, where she would always stay when performing in New York; and she would accumulate, on this second national tour, other inflexible inclinations. Those who are professionally itinerant want to be greeted and fussed over reliably, familiarly, at the longer pauses on their circuits. Settling into the same room in the usual hotel, taking every supper at the same restaurant—the pleasure lies in having as little as possible to decide.
Maryna had been so happy to return to America, and then unable to repress a flare of disappointment (she felt let down by her imagination) as soon as they docked. But whether it was frustration at never being truly understood, or impatience with everyone for being so picturesquely, amusingly, earnestly, complacently American (had she imagined them otherwise?), disappointment, and frustration, and impatience were all quelled once she started auditioning actors for her company. To feel well, steady, it was enough to enter a theatre each morning and take command, the theatre where she would start playing in early October for six weeks. Emerging in the early afternoon, she felt weakened by the sunlight and the heat and the bumptious, adamant crowds. She had to remind herself that this was not America but only New York, so self-important and so sweaty, so narrow and so filled up. Home—the part of her new country Maryna could imagine claiming as home—was not New York, where the immigrant’s America begins, but where America runs into the next ocean and ends. Bogdan needed California, the ending, the last beginning, and so did she.
For her second New York season at the Fifth Avenue Theatre, Maryna repeated, to even greater acclaim, her Adrienne and Marguerite Gautier and Juliet, and in the last two weeks forged a new triumph in the title role of Frou-Frou, another much loved French play about the wages of adultery. The story? Ah, the story! Vivacious, immature Gilberte de Sartorys, whose nickname is Frou-Frou, has introduced into her household her self-effacing unmarried sister, Louise, a paragon of female virtue, who inevitably comes to replace the spoiled child-wife in the affections of her little son and her husband, whereupon, imagining herself betrayed by her sister, Frou-Frou runs off with the caddish former suitor who had never stopped pursuing her, only to return several years later, penitent and mortally enfeebled, and be forgiven by her husband and permitted to embrace their child before she dies.
“I think it not quite as treacly as East Lynne,” said Maryna. “Yes? No?”
“East Lynne is English, Frou-Frou is French,” said Bogdan. “American audiences weep most liberally over the fate of disgraced women who are foreign.”
“And rich. And titled,” observed Miss Collingridge.
“Bogdan, tell me it’s not as bad.”
“How can I? Look at how they both end, with you laid out and readying to expire in the nobly proportioned drawing room of the home you had foolishly, criminally abandoned. In East Lynne your last words are, and don’t we all know them by heart, Ah, is this death? ’Tis hard to part! Farewell, dear Archibald! my husband once, and loved now in death, as I never loved before! Farewell, until eternity! Think of me sometimes, keep one little corner in your heart for me—your poor—erring—lost Isabel! Curtain.”
“Mildewed, I expect,” said Maryna. She was laughing.
“Ah, is this death?” said Peter.
“You’re not to interrupt, you,” said Maryna, pulling him into a hug.
“Think of me sometimes, keep one little corner in your heart for me,” said Miss Collingridge.
“You too!” exclaimed Maryna.
“Whereas,” continued Bogdan, “whereas in Frou-Frou you say instead—though you can use the same sofa, covered with another fabric—Ah, at this time to die is very hard. Nay, do not grieve for me. This to your woeful husband, sister, and father, all instructed to be sobbing into their handkerchiefs so the audience can better fix its attention on you. What had I to expect but to die deserted by all, despairing and abandoned? In place of that, surrounded by those I love, I die peacefully—happy—no suffering—all calm, quiet—”
“Spare me!” Maryna cried.
“And there is soft music and loud grief to escort you to your last words, You all forgive—do you not?—Frou-Frou—poor Frou-Frou! Curtain. Now, tell me, is this not the same play?”
“It is the same play.”
“But why does Frou-Frou have to die?” said Peter. “She could jump up and say, I changed my mind.”
“That would make a difference,” said Maryna, kissing his hair.
“Then she could go out to California and go up in an airship and say, Try to catch me if you can.”
“I like this end much better,” Miss Collingridge said.
“So do I,” said Maryna. “Yes, I am becoming quite American. I would much prefer to have a happy ending.”
* * *
“IMPOSSIBLE,” said Bogdan. The schedule was impossible. “You’ll kill yourself.”
On her first tour Maryna had been limited to playing in theatres that had resident companies, of which there were many fewer than a decade ago. With her own company, thirteen women and twelve men, she could perform wherever there was a theatre, and every town in America had a theatre, many of them called opera houses to make them sound more respectable, though no opera was ever performed there.
In New York State alone, Warnock had booked her for one or two performances in Poughkeepsie, Kingston, Hudson, Albany, Utica, Syracuse, Elmira, Troy, Ithaca, Rochester, and Buffalo.
After the week in Boston, this time at the Globe Theatre, came a string of nights in Lowell, Lawrence, Haverhill, Fall River, Holyoke, Brockton, Worcester, Northampton, and Springfield.
In Pennsylvania, between the week in Philadelphia and the four days in Pittsburgh, single performances in Bradford, Warren, Scranton, Erie, Wilkes-Barre, Easton, Oil City—“Oil City. An unusual name for a town in the eastern part of America, if I am not mistaken,” murmured Bogdan.
In Ohio …
“Kalamazoo,” said Peter. “It must be an Indian name.”
“My stepson is reminding me,” Bogdan continued, “that in Michigan all Madame’s engagements are for a single night. Kalamazoo, Muskegon, Grand Rapids, Saginaw, Battle Creek, Ann Arbor, Bay City, Detroit. Eight cities in ten days.”
“Chief Saginaw and his wife Detroit are camping by the Bay City under the Ann Arbor after the Battle Creek before they go on a raft down the Grand Rapids and return to Kalamazooooooo,” said Peter.
“You left out Muskegon,” said Miss Collingridge.
“But they won’t forget to take their little son, named Muskegon.”
“Perfect,” said Miss Collingridge.
“Rushing around the country”—Bogdan refolded the map—“and for weeks at a time sleeping, if at all, in a different, uncomfortable hotel room every night? Do you want to kill your star, Mr. Warnock? These single evening engagements that follow mercilessly one after another will have to be dropped from the schedule.”
“My dear sir, you must be joking. One-night stands bring in the biggest profit of the tour.”
Maryna professed herself above the battle and ready for any exertion; Bogdan remained indignant; Warnock was frantic. He saw the whole tour collapsing unless …
Warnock’s solution, Bogdan had to admit, was clever.
“Our own private railroad car? Is that common in America?” asked Maryna.
Not at all. Hers would be the very first company to travel the theatrical circuit by a mean
s hitherto reserved for railroad magnates and slain presidents. Maryna liked being part of the wave of the future. Warnock liked the attention from the press which the car would command. In each town they visited, reporters were invited aboard to marvel at the double-height clerestory roof, watery legends on the frescoed ceiling (Moses in the bulrushes, Narcissus at his looking-glass pond, King Arthur on his funeral barge), carved black-walnut interiors, velvet window hangings, silver-plated gas lamps and hardware, Persian carpet and upright piano in Madame’s saloon, zebra carpet and gilt-framed cheval glass and full-length portrait of the great actress on horseback in Western garb in her bedroom. Besides a large suite with its own dressing room and lavatory for Madame and her husband, there was a cozy office and adjoining bedroom for Madame’s manager, bedrooms for Madame’s son and Madame’s secretary, and two tiers of comfortable sleeping berths for the actors and Madame’s personal maid and the wardrobe mistress: “the sleeping arrangements of the ladies and gentlemen being separated at night by a screen in the middle of the car,” which folded back during the day to leave the floor clear for setting out the fauteuils and dining furniture; at the far end of the car were three washrooms, a galley kitchen, and clothes and bedding closets. Warnock let it be known that the interior redesign and outfitting of the seventy-foot-long former Wagner Sleeper had cost nine thousand dollars. On the exterior, painted a deep burgundy, oval panels on both sides announced in curly gold script: ZALENSKA AND COMPANY, HARRY H. WARNOCK, MANAGER. His middle name, he liked to mention, was Hannibal. The car’s name, its new name, was Poland.
