another, exceptional memory; to another, grace and charm; to still
another, physical ugliness and spiritual obliquity, moral taint, and
every sort of disabling weakness. To the majority of persons Nature
imparts mediocrity, and it is from mediocrity that the derogatory denial
emanates as to the superior men and women of our race. A woman of the
average kind is not difficult to comprehend. There is nothing
distinctive about her. She is fond of admiration; rather readily
censorious of other women; charitable toward male rakes; and partial to
fine attire. The poet Wordsworth's formula, "Praise, blame, love,
kisses, tears, and smiles," comprises all that is essential for her
existence, and that bard has himself precisely described her, in a
grandfatherly and excruciating couplet, as
"A creature not too bright and good
For human nature's daily food."
Women of that sort are not called "cold." The standard is ordinary and
it is understood. But when a woman appears in art whose life is not
ruled by the love of admiration, whose nature is devoid of vanity, who
looks with indifference upon adulation, whose head is not turned by
renown, whose composure is not disturbed by flattery, whose simplicity
is not marred by wealth, who does not go into theatrical hysterics and
offer that condition of artificial delirium as the mood of genius in
acting, who above all makes it apparent in her personality and her
achievements that the soul can be sufficient to itself and can exist
without taking on a burden of the fever or dulness of other lives, there
is a flutter of vague discontent among the mystified and bothered rank
and file, and we are apprised that she is "cold." That is what happened
in the case of Mary Anderson.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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