Page:Woman of the Century.djvu/31

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26
ANDERSON.
ANDREWS.

John T. Ford, of Washington and Baltimore, to join his company as a star at three-hundred dollars a week. Accompanied by her parents, as was her invariable custom, she went on a tour with Mr Ford's company and everywhere won new triumphs. The management reaped a rich harvest. On this tour Miss Anderson was subjected to annoyance through a boycott by the other members of the company, who were jealous of the young star. She had added Lady Macbeth to her list of characters. The press criticisms that were showered upon her make interesting reading. In St. Louis, Baltimore, Washington and other cities the critics were agreed upon the fact of her genius, but not all agreed upon her manner of expressing it. Having won in the West and Southwest, she began to invade eastern territory. She appeared in Pittsburgh in 1880, and was successful. In Philadelphia she won the public and critics to her side easily. In Boston she opened as Evadne, with great apprehension of failure, but she triumphed and appeared as Juliet and Meg Merrilies, drawing large houses. While in Boston, she formed the acquaintance of Longfellow, and their friendship lasted through the later-life of the venerable poet. After Boston came New York and in the metropolis she opened with a good company in "The Lady of Lyons." Her engagement was so successful there that it was extended to six weeks. During that engagement she played as Juliet and in "The Daughter of Roland." After the New York engagement she had no more difficulties to overcome. Everywhere in the United States and Canada she was welcomed as the leading actor among American women. In 1879 she made her first trip to Europe, and while in England visited the grave of Shakespeare at Stratford-on-Avon, and in Paris met Sarah Bernhardt, Madame Ristori and other famous actors. In 1880 she received an offer from the manager of Drury Lane, London, England, to play an engagement. She was pleased by the offer, but she modestly refused it, as she thought herself hardly finished enough for such a test of her powers. In 1883 she also refused an offer to appear in the London Lyceum. In 1884-5 she was again in London, and then she accepted an offer to appear at the Lyceum in "Parthenia." Her success was pronounced and instantaneous. She drew crowded houses, and among her friends and patrons were the Prince and Princess of Wales, Lord Lytton and Tennyson. She played successfully in Manchester, Edinburgh and other British towns. During that visit she opened the Memorial Theater in Stratford-on-Avon, playing Rosamond in "As You Like It." Her portrait in that character forms one of the panels of the Shakespeare Theater. In 1885-6 she played many engagements in the United States and Great Britain. In 1889 a serious illness compelled her to retire from the stage temporarily. In 1890 she announced her permanent withdrawal from it, and soon after she was married to M. Antonio Navarro de Viano, a citizen of New York. They now live in England.


ANDREWS, Miss Alice A., composer and director, born in St. Peter, Minn. She is a member of the musical Andrews family, now grown into the well-known Andrews Opera Company. It has been said of her that she could sing before she could lisp a word, as she began to sing at the early age of two years. When she was nine years of age, she started out with her brothers and sisters as one of the family concert troupe, giving sacred concerts in the churches throughout the State. After a few musical seasons she left the concert stage for the school-room, where she spent her time for several years, taking a trip with the family now and then in the summer vacations. As a child she had a remarkably strong voice, but at twelve years of age it failed completely, and for six years she did not sing a note. After that time she regained it in a measure, but not in its completeness, and she has since turned her attention more to instrumental music, being for eight or nine years the ALICE A. ANDREWS. pianist and musical director of the company. She has composed several vocal pieces, which she is now having published. She has a remarkable talent for transposition, and could transpose music as soon as she could read it. The Andrews family is of Spanish descent by the line of the father who was a man of much intellectual ability. The paternal grandfather came to this country when quite a young boy, leaving his parents upon large landed estates to which he, the only child, would one day be heir. Here he married, and his wife would never consent to his returning to look after his interests in far-away Spain. Much of the musical and dramatic talent of his grandchildren is doubtless an inheritance, brought to them by him from the land of the vine and the olive, of sunshine and song.


ANDREWS, Miss Eliza Frances, author and educator, born in Washington, Ga., 10th August, 1847. Her father was Judge Garnett Andrews, an eminent jurist and the author of a book of amusing sketches entitled "Reminiscences of an Old Georgia Lawyer." Among others of her immediate family who have distinguished themselves are her brother, Col. Garnett Andrews, a brave Confederate officer and the present mayor of Chattanooga, and her niece, Maude Andrews, of the Atlanta "Constitution." Soon after the death of her father, in 1873, his estate was wrecked by one of those "highly moral" defaulters, whose operations Miss Andrews has vividly portrayed in her novel, "A Mere Adventurer" (Philadelphia,