Representative women of New England/Alice K. Robertson
ALICE KENT ROBERTSON, now known in private life as Mrs. Truman Quimby, is the only child of the Hon. William Henry and Rebecca (Prentiss) Kent, late of Charlestown, both deceased.
Alice Kent was born on Staniford Street, Boston, October 16, 1853, when the old West End was the residence of some of the leading citizens. A few years later the Kent family moved to Belmont, Mass., and thence to Charlestown, where, in the old and spacious house, 25 Monument Square, the daughter still lives with her present husband, Truman Lee Quimby, to whom she was married November 21, 1901.
Her education was acquired in private schools, the one from which she was graduated having been Miss Catherine Willby's, afterward Miss Ellen Hubbard's, at 52 Bowdoin Street, Boston.
From her early childhood Alice Kent's love for reading and recitation was pronounced, and this taste was carefully nurtured during the last three years of her school life by her teacher in literature, the late Theodore Weld. His enthusiasm for the study of Shakespeare he was successful in transmitting to his pupils, being especially so in her case. She first appeared on the amateur stage in Boston in 1871, taking the role of Lady Viola Harleigh in "Dreams of Delusion," and showed unusual promise for a girl of eighteen. The part of Sir Bernard Harleigh was played by George Riddle.
Some time afterward Miss Sarah Starr (aunt of the renowned Starr King), a woman of marked individuality and culture, and possessed of discriminating literary taste, urged her young friend Alice Kent to interest herself in Robert Browning. The poet was then generally considered too obscure for comprehension, and was not widely read in this country. Miss Starr, who was an ardent admirer of Browning, little thought that this suggestion would, after her death, be so richly fruitful. The immediate result was the purchase of two second-hand volumes of Browning, which the girl read with lukewarm interest from time to time.
Alice Kent was married in Charlestown, in 1879, to William Duncan Robertson, M.D., and until his death, in 1883, resided with him at Stanstead, P.Q., returning then to the Charlestown home of her parents. The marriage was without issue.
In the years directly following, Mrs. Robertson carried on by herself a serious study of Browning, so that when the Boston Browning Society was formed in 1885 she was ready to take great interest in its work. At one of the early meetings her interpretation of "James Lee's Wife" was received with marked favor, being the forerunner of her later success in this line. Until 1889 Mrs. Robertson's work was in ever-increasing demand, and she read entirely for charity on numberless occasions.
In 1890 she made a departure in her work by giving a subscription course of readings from Shakespeare and Browning in Boston drawing-rooms. Her immediate success warranted her continuance, and she appeared before many women's clubs in and about Boston until 1897, when, on January 20, she gave her first public reading at the Christian Association Hall, Boston.
During Mrs. Robertson's school-days Mrs. Julia Ward Howe started a girls' club in the Back Bay district, Boston, to meet Saturday mornings to read and discuss literature, with the idea of fostering the literary passion which her youngest daughter and her friends had acquired at school. This Saturday Morning Club gave occasional theatricals for charity, and in a production of Tennyson's "Princess," in May, 1885, Mrs. Robertson for the first time essayed a man's part, playing the Prince with much skill. At another time the club produced Browning's "In a Balcony" in Charles Adams's little hall on Tremont Street, Mrs. Robertson taking the part of the Queen. This proved so successful that by urgent request the performance was repeated in New York, for charity, at the Berkeley Lyceum Theatre. Mrs. Robertson has played the Queen many times. Mr. Edward H. Clement, editor-in-chief of the Boston Evening Transcript, says of her in an editorial, April 3, 1897: "To judge only by her truly thrilling performance—at once graceful and tender and overwhelmingly powerful—of the Queen in Browning's Balcony, if Mrs. Robertson should go upon the professional stage and play the great tragic rôles, the Saturday Morning Club would gain permanent fame as the Alma Mater of the finest genius of tragedy since Ristori."
The next noteworthy performance of this club was the Sophocles "Antigone," with Mrs. Robertson as Creon the King. The play was given at Bumstead Hall, Boston, March, 1890, and was a great artistic success. In the diffi- cult nMe of Creon, Mrs. Robertson showed the possibilities that were later to win her fame in the "Winter's Tale," which was given in Feb- ruary, 1895. The extraordinary interest awakened by this performance will not soon be for- gotten. Historically it was absolutely correct, dramatically it was a revelation. Boston was familiar with the play only through Mary Anderson's production of it during her last visit here. Her Leontes was a man of no great dramatic power, whose work was mediocre and colorless. Mrs. Robertson had fairly to create the part. The Boston Transcript referred as follows to hei' undertaking: "To conciuer Le- ontes with tone and dress and stride and man- ner is, to begin with, an apparently impossible task, but it was accomplished.
" ' The king himself has followed her
WHen she has walked before.'
Then to win sympathy to the mea.sure of the dramatist's desire for the tyrant who doomed fair Hermione to death is a trial for kn actor. Mrs. Robertson has added to the capabilities revealed in Creon, and shows a depth of pas- sion and power of uncjualified merit. Criti- cism of her work must mean chiefly an attempt at appreciation."
Henry A. Cla))p, dramatic critic of the Bos- ton Daily Advertiser, in the issue of January 21, IS97, says- "Mrs. Robertson has a fine stage presence, an earnest, dignifietl, antl un- affected manner, and a noble voice, the reach and symi)athetic adaptai)ility of which are re- markable, the range being from a great depth of note, with the quality of a profound mascu- line bass, up to a fair me?zo-sopraio altitude. Her enunciation is excellent, and her pronun- ciati(m very near perfection, both having the constant mark of cultivation. Thus richly furnished with the tools of her art, Mrs. Robert- son's performance demonstrated (what her friends have claimed for her) that her powerful and clear intelligence, pure taste, soimd judg- ment, and dramatic sensibility would bring her great natural gifts to noble results. Her read- ing of the balcony scene from ' Romeo and Juliet' put it once niore where it belongs — in the Garden of Eden before the fall. Mrs. Robertson's interpretation of Arlo Bates's 'The Sorrow of Rohab' is to be singled out for ex- ceptional praise. Its heroic aspects were shown ith full fire and potency, and its love lyrics were so given that their excjuisite nmsic seemed to proceed from an accomplished singer, ac- companied by an orchestra, rather than from a mere reader using the reatler's tones. Many of the audience will find the repetitions of 'Sweetheart, sweetheart,' as strains of pas- sionate music which shall long haunt the mem- ory and surge up from it to stir the heart. The best word yet remains to be said: Mrs. Robert- son practises none of the teasing and trivial trick(>ries of vocal gymnastics which are the ojjprobria of vulgar elocutionism ; she eschews superelaboration and over-accent, which clog the wheels of the great authors. In short, her reading is a triumph of intelligence and sym- pathy skilfully applied to great natural gifts.
"To fully appreciate the depth arul power of Mrs. Robertson's work it nmst be borne in mind that she has never receiAcd any instruc- tion in .so-called elocution. To be sure, in the Saturday Morning Club performances she, with the others, was coached by Mr. Franklin Haven Saigent, of New Yoik, and she grate- fullj' acknowledges deep indebtedness to the late William H. Ladd, of Chauncy Hall School, for criticism of .some of her Shakespeare read- ings: but. in the large, it may truthfully be said that she is self-taught. This very lack of conventional training it is which gives to her work the delightful freshness and originality for which it is remarkalile. Moreover, Mrs. Robertson has not only the voice and personal- ity to help her in her work, but also the sym- pathy and the intellectual (jnalities which worthy inter|)retation of great poets like Brown- ing, Tennyson, and Shakespeare demands. Her fervor has been compared to Fanny Kemble's, and her power of carrying her audience with her is certainly masterful. Though it is per- haps as a reader of Browning that sIk; has ap- peared most often in drawing-rf)oms, Mrs. Robert-son finds her fullest o])])ortunities in Shakespeare."
Her repertory of readings al.so includes Hauptmann's "The Sunken Bell," Stephen Phillips's
"Paolo and Francesca," and the French Canadian dialect poems of Henry Drummond.