Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly
Speaker 1: Frye and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. So today we are
Speaker 1: going to talk about an actress actor, although she would
Speaker 1: have called herself an actress because that sort of more
Speaker 1: standardized form of using a non gendered noun for it
Speaker 1: would not have existed then. She was hugely famous in
Speaker 1: the early twentieth century, although she has not really retained
Speaker 1: her iconic status the way some other actors have. She
Speaker 1: kind of got into acting in a surprising, sort of
Speaker 1: sideways way, but she quickly had a reputation as a
Speaker 1: stage diva with a sharp tongue, and she also originated
Speaker 1: one of the most beloved characters of the stage and screen.
Speaker 1: We are talking about missus Patrick Campbell, which was the
Speaker 1: name that she used publicly and professionally throughout her her life.
Speaker 1: It was her stage name, but it was also what
Speaker 1: people knew her as we will talk about her birth name.
Speaker 1: But we have to talk about names being tricky here
Speaker 1: because in her personal life, some people, especially family members,
Speaker 1: called her Beatrice. Particularly older family members always called her that.
Speaker 1: Other people called her Stella. That was her middle name,
Speaker 1: but she also had a daughter named Stella that comes
Speaker 1: up a few times in this episode. So if we
Speaker 1: refer to her by first name, we're using Beatrice just
Speaker 1: to avoid confusion. But I think with her closest friends
Speaker 1: and beloved she was Stella. She was also often called
Speaker 1: Missus Pat, though even by people who knew her pretty well,
Speaker 1: So we will generally refer to her either as Beatrice,
Speaker 1: Missus Pat, or Missus Campbell when we're talking about her.
Speaker 1: Her daughter Stella is only going to be called Stella
Speaker 1: and will be the only one. Additionally, to make things
Speaker 1: a little confusing, I feel like their family just liked
Speaker 1: to play fast and loose with names and nicknames. Because
Speaker 1: she had a son who was named Alan, he also
Speaker 1: went by the nickname Bo and people referred to him
Speaker 1: as that throughout his life. So if you hear either
Speaker 1: of those, we mean her son, it's a lot. I'm
Speaker 1: sure I missed something in there. So Beatrice Stella Tanner
Speaker 1: was born on February ninth, eighteen sixty five, in London, England.
Speaker 1: Her parents were John Tanner and Maria Luigia Jovanna Romanini,
Speaker 1: and according to Beatrice, the two of them fell in
Speaker 1: love at first sight the first time they met in Bombay, India.
Speaker 1: John's father was an army contractor for the British East
Speaker 1: India Company and Maria's father was a political exile, so
Speaker 1: both of their families were there. Neither of them spoke
Speaker 1: the other one's language, but John and Maria got married
Speaker 1: while still living there in India and had six children
Speaker 1: there before moving to London. Once they got to London,
Speaker 1: three more kids, including Beatrice. According to Beatrice, when she
Speaker 1: was tiny, she cried so much that the nurse the
Speaker 1: family hired for her told her parents, quote, she is
Speaker 1: not a baby, she is a tiger. She also caused
Speaker 1: the same nurse unintelligent. Yeah, I told you she had
Speaker 1: a biting tongue. In her autobiography, Beatrice wrote of her father, quote,
Speaker 1: my father, it seems, managed to get through two large fortunes.
Speaker 1: He was careless with money, exceptionally generous, delighting in business,
Speaker 1: enterprise and speculation. In that book, she details a letter
Speaker 1: that he once wrote her, in which he explained the
Speaker 1: various pitfalls of life that had cost him his financial security,
Speaker 1: and she concludes that discussion with quote, people who knew
Speaker 1: my father well, spoke with much love of his extraordinary
Speaker 1: kindness and buoyant spirits. As for her mother, Beatrice clearly
Speaker 1: just thought the world of her. Reminisced about her beautiful
Speaker 1: singing voice and how she spoke so many languages and
Speaker 1: played guitar. She wrote of Maria Luigia, quote, my Italian
Speaker 1: mother and her beautiful sisters were invested for me with
Speaker 1: great romantic glamour that has remained with me, and the
Speaker 1: few stories I was told about their youthful adventures delight
Speaker 1: me now as they did when I was a child,
Speaker 1: and felt proud that they were my people. While her
Speaker 1: eldest brother was away at school, he died unexpectedly, and
Speaker 1: her father was often back in India, so her memory
Speaker 1: of all of this appears to be her mother. In mourning,
Speaker 1: she describes her as elegant and beautiful, and also wrote
Speaker 1: of her mother, quote, she gave me her great love
Speaker 1: of beauty. She could not pass by beauty unnoticed. Beatrice's
Speaker 1: mother influenced and nurtured her love of the arts, and
Speaker 1: she wrote of it, quote from my mother, I learned
Speaker 1: my love of music. Schubert was my first love. She
Speaker 1: sang his songs in French with a touch a unsentimental simplicity.
Speaker 1: My mother spoke to me with enthusiasm of the Italian
Speaker 1: actor Salvini Rossi and Madame Roustori, also of the singers
Speaker 1: Mario and Grisi and Adelina Patti. I do not think
Speaker 1: she ever saw any of our English players. If she did,
Speaker 1: I never heard her speak of them. And writing of
Speaker 1: herself and her formative years, she said quote, I think
Speaker 1: I was neither a sweet, amiable nor amenable child. I
Speaker 1: was physically strong, very affectionate, imaginative, but temperamentally alien to
Speaker 1: those around me. I believe I was impatient with unintelligent
Speaker 1: people from the moment I was born. A tragedy for
Speaker 1: I myself am three parts a fool. She mostly speaks
Speaker 1: of her childhood as pretty enjoyable, though one of her
Speaker 1: favorite activities was digging holes in the garden and filling
Speaker 1: them with water and then sitting in a mud bath,
Speaker 1: sort of inspired by tales of ancient Roman baths. This
Speaker 1: caused her siblings embarrassment, though, because she often looked like
Speaker 1: a wild child just covered in mud. Yeah. She tells
Speaker 1: one story in her memoir about her sister basically having
Speaker 1: a boy come over and what he was greeted with
Speaker 1: was like this little crazed looking kid that was just
Speaker 1: a mud pile. At the age of ten, Beatrice started
Speaker 1: attending school in Brighton. She did not like it. She
Speaker 1: found it dull, and she was also kind of generally
Speaker 1: frightened and shy around people outside of the family. A
Speaker 1: new period of upheaval came when, following the marriage of
Speaker 1: her oldest sister, Nina, her father and brothers moved to
Speaker 1: the US to help her uncle who was trying to
Speaker 1: set up some business in Texas. So Beatrice, her sisters,
Speaker 1: and their mother moved into a smaller home. Then her
Speaker 1: mother's friend, Catherine Bailey, offered to take Beatrice to Paris
Speaker 1: to live for a year to study French and music,
Speaker 1: which she did and that year, she said, quote filled
Speaker 1: me with delight. But by the time she returned home
Speaker 1: to England, the family for was really in pretty bad shape.
Speaker 1: A cousin of Beatrice's father named Eliza Hogarth heard her
Speaker 1: playing the piano and thought she was talented enough that
Speaker 1: she needed lessons, so Eliza offered to pay for her
Speaker 1: to attend formal lessons at the Guildhall School of Music.
Speaker 1: Things went well there. They went well enough that Beatrice
Speaker 1: won a scholarship to a three year music school in Leipzig,
Speaker 1: but she never used that scholarship because when Beatrice was seventeen,
Speaker 1: she met Patrick Campbell at a card party. As we said,
Speaker 1: she was seventeen when she met Pat and he was twenty.
Speaker 1: She described him as handsome and gentle, with the love
Speaker 1: of nature and his family. They married just four months
Speaker 1: after they met, and Beatrice never finished her music studies.
Speaker 1: They had eloped, and when they told Beatrice's mother, she
Speaker 1: was not entirely happy. She felt that her daughter had
Speaker 1: given up everything for a sudden romance. Beatrice later wrote
Speaker 1: of this relationship quote, after more than thirty five years
Speaker 1: of life, with its battles, its wounds, its every ready pain,
Speaker 1: it is not easy to write of the joy of
Speaker 1: that first love. Incapable of pause or reckoning. With the
Speaker 1: divine faith and courage of fearless children, we faced the
Speaker 1: world we thought ours, and paid the price bravely. Beatrice
Speaker 1: and Patrick had a son named Alan Urqhart Campbell. The
Speaker 1: family called Alan Bo as a nickname. It's a variation
Speaker 1: on Beatrice. Two years later, the Campbells welcomed their second
Speaker 1: child that was a daughter named Stella. But unfortunately, Beatrice
Speaker 1: and Patrick were faced with some unfortunate news. Patrick's health
Speaker 1: had never been robust, and his doctor said that he
Speaker 1: was too weak to remain in the city. Beatrice recalled
Speaker 1: being terrified of what was going to happen to them,
Speaker 1: and at the time, she was still pregnant with Stella,
Speaker 1: and she describes this night where she couldn't sleep and
Speaker 1: she was pacing in their small garden late at night, worrying.
Speaker 1: She wrote quote, I knew was not strong enough to
Speaker 1: continue working in the city, and that I must help.
Speaker 1: I could not imagine what work I could do. I
Speaker 1: had given up my musical scholarship and so was not
Speaker 1: qualified for a musical career. My lovely baby and another
Speaker 1: coming in a few weeks, must be provided for. I
Speaker 1: was bewildered, lost with the daylight. Something entered my soul
Speaker 1: and has never since left me. It seemed to cover
Speaker 1: me like a fine veil of steel, giving me a
Speaker 1: strange sense of security. Slowly I became conscious that within
Speaker 1: myself lay the strength I needed, and that I must
Speaker 1: never be afraid. In eighteen eighty six, she joined the
Speaker 1: Anomalies Dramatic Club, which was a London group that staged
Speaker 1: plays so its members could gain experience and hone their skills.
Speaker 1: There were three hundred and sixty five members. They paid
Speaker 1: three pounds, three shillings and dues to pay for the
Speaker 1: plays that they were performing each year at the Town Hall.
Speaker 1: She was asked to play a lead role in one
Speaker 1: of their stagings after the original actor got sick. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: Patrick's health got worse and his doctor prescribed him time
Speaker 1: at sea in the hopes that he would improve. He
Speaker 1: left first for Australia. The idea was that he was
Speaker 1: going to stay with a family member who lived there
Speaker 1: and he would look for work once he got there,
Speaker 1: and then he would send for Beatrice and the kids
Speaker 1: once he settled. But that didn't work out and he
Speaker 1: ended up moving from Australia to Zimbabwe. He found work
Speaker 1: here and there, and for a while he was connected
Speaker 1: with the imperialist Cecil Rhodes and his debier's Diamond operation.
Speaker 1: Patrick would send checks home as often as he could,
Speaker 1: although there were sometimes large gaps in between, and that
Speaker 1: lack of steady income led Beatrice to ask Pat if
Speaker 1: he was okay with her seeking professional acting jobs, and
Speaker 1: he wrote back that he was supportive of this idea.
Speaker 1: So this is all the version of the events as
Speaker 1: told largely from Beatrice's perspective. Seems that Beatrice was pregnant
Speaker 1: with Alan already when the two lovebirds eloped. So there
Speaker 1: are some interpretations of this situation that kind of take
Speaker 1: the position that Beatrice entrapped Patrick in a marriage that
Speaker 1: he never wanted. So in that interpretation, that's the reason
Speaker 1: that he left to travel. Missus Patt never mentions the
Speaker 1: date of her first child's birth in her memoir. That
Speaker 1: may be why, but it does seem like Patrick was
Speaker 1: truly almost always in precarious health. He wrote her a
Speaker 1: lot of letters while traveling that indicate a tenderness and
Speaker 1: a genuine love between them. I have some questions about
Speaker 1: the medical advice he was receiving. Way, go to sea
Speaker 1: well and like advising people to go to the seaside
Speaker 1: with the salt air to recover their health, like that
Speaker 1: was pretty common, but like taking on a boat taking
Speaker 1: a long voyage that like that was recognized as being
Speaker 1: really hard on your health. So I'm like, I'm confused here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think the thinking was that at least
Speaker 1: if you buy this version of it. England, no matter
Speaker 1: how remote you tried to become, was too industrialized at
Speaker 1: that point for him to be healthy, and he needed
Speaker 1: to get out of the country. That's my guess. I
Speaker 1: don't think there's any validity to that, but that's what
Speaker 1: I think was probably the logic and play. Beatrice started
Speaker 1: working with a touring company in eighteen eighty seven which
Speaker 1: put on almost exclusively Shakespeare plays. She made two pounds
Speaker 1: a week initially, and she had to provide her own dresses,
Speaker 1: and she started going by missus Patrick Campbell at that time,
Speaker 1: and that was, as we said, her stage name throughout
Speaker 1: her life. She wrote of her first professional appearance, quote,
Speaker 1: when I came to the stage, my first feeling was
Speaker 1: that the audience was too far away for me to
Speaker 1: reach out to them. So I must, as it were,
Speaker 1: quickly gather them up to myself. And I think I
Speaker 1: may say that this has always been the instinctive principle
Speaker 1: of my acting. Whether it is the wrong or the
Speaker 1: right principle, I leave it for others to decide. I
Speaker 1: am sure I had no technique and my voice this
Speaker 1: was the voice of a singing mouse. The papers praised me,
Speaker 1: and they also praised my dresses, and I was very
Speaker 1: proud and happy. From there, she really became an audience favorite.
Speaker 1: She was often cast in leading roles, although she describes
Speaker 1: herself as delicate and having to miss a number of
Speaker 1: performances and one time coming down with typhoid and having
Speaker 1: to sit out six weeks of shows. After weathering the
Speaker 1: most serious of her illnesses, she describes regaining her health,
Speaker 1: but not her faith in the world. Having come out
Speaker 1: of this experience without the naive positivity of her youth,
Speaker 1: she knew that life was fragile and that Pat may
Speaker 1: never really be able to provide for the family. Patrick
Speaker 1: was away from the family for six and a half years,
Speaker 1: during which Missus Pat, as she was often called, was
Speaker 1: continuing her career rise. In eighteen ninety three, Missus Campbell
Speaker 1: appeared in her breakout role in the play The Second
Speaker 1: Missus tanker A. In this play, written by Sir Arthur
Speaker 1: Wing Pinero, she played Paula. This is what's known as
Speaker 1: a problem play, meaning that the central device of the
Speaker 1: plot is driven by social issues that were considered controversial
Speaker 1: in the time the play is written. It's a genre
Speaker 1: that is credited in its early development to Alexandre duma Feis.
Speaker 1: In the case of Panero's play, mister tanker A, a widower,
Speaker 1: announces his upcoming marriage to a woman named Paula Jarmont.
Speaker 1: That's Missus Campbell's character, who is considered a ruined woman,
Speaker 1: i e. She has had sexual relations outside of marriage.
Speaker 1: The two wed and their marriage is plagued by problems,
Speaker 1: made much worse when mister Tankeray's daughter gets engaged unknowingly
Speaker 1: to the man who Paula had an affair with years earlier.
Speaker 1: It is a drama and it ends tragically. But even
Speaker 1: though some critics were really kind of displeased by the
Speaker 1: subject matter and thought the whole thing was icky, Missus
Speaker 1: Campbell's performance was raved over that had really not been
Speaker 1: a guaranteed situation. Rehearsals had not gone particularly well. Missus
Speaker 1: pat developed what she called nervous exhaustion and some rehearsals
Speaker 1: right up through the second dress rehearsal, she just walked
Speaker 1: through her part with minimal emotion. But on opening night
Speaker 1: she was in full force and the reviews really reflected it.
Speaker 1: She was instantly famous in London, but she found this
Speaker 1: attention Jarring, writing quote, I was surrounded by what seemed
Speaker 1: to me intolerable curiosity. There were searching, thrill seeking questions
Speaker 1: and strange, critical glances which offended me, sometimes arousing impertinent
Speaker 1: courage on my part. She found herself trying to reconcile
Speaker 1: the stage star that people perceived her to be, with
Speaker 1: the quote fragile, unsophisticated young woman whose heart and nerves
Speaker 1: had been torn by poverty, illness, and the cruel strain
Speaker 1: of a long separation from the husband she loved. She
Speaker 1: found the experience of celebrity and strangers speculating about her
Speaker 1: life really isolating. I feel like this is one of
Speaker 1: the earliest instances where people where someone really has insight
Speaker 1: and is able to articulate what that feeling must be like,
Speaker 1: of like why being a celebrity is actually quite stressful.
Speaker 1: We are gonna pause here for a sponsor break, and
Speaker 1: when we come back, we'll talk about some of the
Speaker 1: challenges that arose in Beatrice's early fame. Although she was
Speaker 1: lauded for her talents, Missus Campbell still was sometimes seized
Speaker 1: with nerves during one of her performances as Missus Tankery.
Speaker 1: Well into the play's run, she forgot all her lines
Speaker 1: and she could not clearly hear the prompt that she
Speaker 1: was given from the wings, so someone had to physically
Speaker 1: walk on stage and hand her a script to read
Speaker 1: from until she recovered. But she recovered so well that
Speaker 1: the incident actually seemed to bolster her reputation instead of
Speaker 1: harming it. As her career was really taking off. There
Speaker 1: was a lot going on in her personal life. Her
Speaker 1: father died during the second run of Missus Tanker A.
Speaker 1: He was living in Texas at the time with her brothers,
Speaker 1: so she found out via a letter. And then in
Speaker 1: March of eighteen ninety four, Patrick finally returned from Africa
Speaker 1: after six and a half years away. She wrote of
Speaker 1: their reunion quote, when Pat arrived, I saw in his
Speaker 1: eyes that youth, with all the belief and faith in
Speaker 1: his own efforts and his luck had gone. His health
Speaker 1: and his energies were undermined by fever, failure, in the
Speaker 1: most bitter disappointments. Nothing had come of his hard work,
Speaker 1: his hopes, and his sacrifice. The expression in his face
Speaker 1: wrung my heart, But the old gentleness and tenderness were there.
Speaker 1: He still loved me. His pride in his beautiful children,
Speaker 1: and in my success that was by reward. The transition
Speaker 1: back to life together was kind of a strange one.
Speaker 1: Patrick returned to a wife who was famous and in demand,
Speaker 1: and at a time when he kind of wanted to
Speaker 1: take some time to have quiet family time at home.
Speaker 1: He became a curiosity to Missus Campbell's fans and the press. Additionally,
Speaker 1: Beatrice was busy. She had eight performances a week, so
Speaker 1: that time together was kind of limited, but they were together.
Speaker 1: They were, by her accounts, still in love, and Patrick
Speaker 1: supported her career as best he could in between relapses
Speaker 1: of malaria. After the second Missus Tanka for Missus Patrick Campbell,
Speaker 1: as the New York Times put it, quote, thereafter one
Speaker 1: success followed another, It's not entirely accurate. There were definitely
Speaker 1: some bad reviews in the mix, and some instances where
Speaker 1: one of her performances and her run was especially uneven
Speaker 1: due to her ongoing nervous exhaustion. Her next critically acclaimed
Speaker 1: role was as Juliet in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet in
Speaker 1: eighteen ninety five, but that was one where her opening
Speaker 1: wasn't really strong. Although all the other shows were in
Speaker 1: the case of one original play, Michael and His Lost Angel,
Speaker 1: she dropped out because she found it too vulgar and
Speaker 1: the playwright's edits to it weren't sufficient. That play failed.
Speaker 1: She was blamed in part for the failure, but overall
Speaker 1: her success seemed to climb pretty consistently. In nineteen hundred,
Speaker 1: she starred in Magda, which is a play about a
Speaker 1: German girl who has left her small town and has
Speaker 1: become a famous singer. Because of her leaving, her father
Speaker 1: refuses to ever even speak her name again, and when
Speaker 1: she returns home after having achieved fame, her father scorns
Speaker 1: her and it is revealed that she had a child
Speaker 1: out of wedlock and that pregnancy was the cause of
Speaker 1: her leaving town. This leads to pressures to accept a
Speaker 1: marriage proposal and a tense final scene where Magda's father
Speaker 1: threatens to shoot her if she does not marry to
Speaker 1: save her reputation. Both the play, which was trans from
Speaker 1: the original German play written by Ermann Sudermann, and Missus
Speaker 1: Campbell's performance were panned, but despite its rocky start, this
Speaker 1: actually became one of her most popular roles, and that
Speaker 1: play was staged many many times throughout her life due
Speaker 1: to demand. In March of nineteen hundred, pat left again,
Speaker 1: this time to join the volunteer horse regiment known as
Speaker 1: the Imperial Yeomanry. That regiment was engaged in the Boer War,
Speaker 1: and on April fifth of that year, he was killed
Speaker 1: in action. Beatrice took a week off of work and
Speaker 1: then she returned to the stage. In addition to her
Speaker 1: personal loss, she also felt responsibility to the backers of
Speaker 1: the repertoire of the Royalty Theater. The theater was popular,
Speaker 1: but it had not made its money back on the season.
Speaker 1: In an effort to try to get some fresh money
Speaker 1: into the theater company, in nineteen oh one, Beatrice began
Speaker 1: her first booking in the US and started doing a
Speaker 1: tour there. This was part of a repertory engagement which
Speaker 1: lasted for six months, and it included two of her
Speaker 1: established claims to fame, the Second Missus Tankery and the
Speaker 1: Notorious Missus Ebbsmith. The Notorious Missus Ebbsmith was also written
Speaker 1: by Arthur Wing Pinero, and just as Tankeray, it debuted
Speaker 1: with Missus Patrick Campbell playing the lead role. Her character,
Speaker 1: Agnes Ebbsmith, is a woman who bucks social convention choosing
Speaker 1: to live with a man she's not married to after
Speaker 1: the passing of her husband. Agnes, in fact, is deeply
Speaker 1: against marriage, having been very unhappy in hers, and she's
Speaker 1: an outspoken advocate of society abandoning the practice altogether. The
Speaker 1: entire plot plays out as the various people in the
Speaker 1: lives of Agnes and her lover Lucas, try to intervene
Speaker 1: to get each of them to behave in the ways
Speaker 1: that conform to the various ideals that the other characters hold.
Speaker 1: As with the second Missus Tankeray, this story resolves in
Speaker 1: an unhappy way. In this case, the lead character is
Speaker 1: ultimately being broken of her spirit. In nineteen oh two,
Speaker 1: Missus Campbell was once again back in New York. This
Speaker 1: time she was starring in various plays in repertory, including Magda,
Speaker 1: Aunt Jenny, and The Joy of Living. But she was
Speaker 1: not happy. The noise out on the busy street was
Speaker 1: she felt bleeding into the theater and ruining her performances,
Speaker 1: and she complained so much that forty Second Street was
Speaker 1: covered in mulch to muffle the sounds of carriages on
Speaker 1: the street for the run of this show. While in
Speaker 1: New York, Missus Campbell also got a lot of attention
Speaker 1: this time around when she allegedly went to a lady's
Speaker 1: bridge party and walked away with twenty two thousand dollars
Speaker 1: in winnings. In nineteen oh seven, theater became a family
Speaker 1: affair for Missus Campbell. Her son Alan wrote a play
Speaker 1: called The Ambassador's Wife. She would later write of this play,
Speaker 1: which she starred in and which her daughter Stella also
Speaker 1: appeared in. It was quite a success in its way.
Speaker 1: Te teen oh seven, Beatrice also made news in a
Speaker 1: less artistic way when she was staying at the Plaza Hotel.
Speaker 1: Missus Campbell, in the course of the evening socializing, lit
Speaker 1: a cigarette and the staff was shocked. She was told
Speaker 1: she must douse that cigarette immediately, not because they didn't
Speaker 1: allow smoking on the premises, but they did not allow
Speaker 1: ladies to smoke on the premises. We're using the words
Speaker 1: ladies instead of women here, very deliberately, because she was
Speaker 1: informed that the hotel only sought ladies as guests, so
Speaker 1: she should not smoke there lest the hotel's reputation be tarnished.
Speaker 1: The years from nineteen oh nine to nineteen fourteen were
Speaker 1: very tumultuous for Campbell. In nineteen oh nine, having become
Speaker 1: her own manager and director, she took on a new
Speaker 1: role as producer. Socialite Jenny Spencer Churchill, known publicly as
Speaker 1: Lady Randolph Churchill, read Missus Campbell her play his borrowed plumes,
Speaker 1: and Campbell offered to produce it for her. The opening
Speaker 1: to a very specific crowd, given the status of the playwright.
Speaker 1: The Times theater critic Aby Walkley wrote of the opening quote,
Speaker 1: when mundane ladies produce original modern comedies out of their
Speaker 1: own original modern and quite charming heads. All the other
Speaker 1: mundane ladies who have written original modern comedies themselves, or
Speaker 1: might have done so if they had chosen, or are
Speaker 1: intending to do so the very next wet afternoon, come
Speaker 1: and look on so ah well refresher here Lady Randolph
Speaker 1: Churchill was Sir Winston Churchill's mother. Lord Randolph had already died.
Speaker 1: At this point. She was married to her second husband,
Speaker 1: George Cornwallis West. We're telling you that for a reason.
Speaker 1: Although the play itself got sort of amused to lukewarm reviews,
Speaker 1: something much more impactful on Missus Campbell's personal life happened
Speaker 1: as a result of all of this. In missus Pat's
Speaker 1: own words quote, then, in the unexpected way things sometimes
Speaker 1: happen in this world, George Cornwallis West was seriously attracted
Speaker 1: by me. I believed his life was unhappy and warmly
Speaker 1: gave him my friendship and affection. This caused gossip, misjudgment,
Speaker 1: and pain that cannot be gone into here. The two
Speaker 1: of them became quite close over the next several years.
Speaker 1: Missus Pat came down with an illness in nineteen twelve
Speaker 1: that was quite serious. Depending on the source you look at,
Speaker 1: you might see it categorized as a head injury, or
Speaker 1: as peritonitis, or as a nervous breakdown. And the truth
Speaker 1: is it's actually pretty nuanced, and there are two different
Speaker 1: instances that are conflated. It's easy to see how any
Speaker 1: one of these might wind up being mentioned. While she
Speaker 1: was performing in a play called Bella Donna, missus Pat
Speaker 1: was on her way to the theater when her taxi
Speaker 1: hit another taxi after swerving to avoid a child on
Speaker 1: a bicycle. She recalled that her head went through the
Speaker 1: window and she saw stars. Yeah. I have to give
Speaker 1: her a like bless this woman's tenacity moment because She
Speaker 1: got out of the crash taxi and hailed another cab
Speaker 1: to get to the theater, but she was a mess.
Speaker 1: She should not have done that. For the next six months,
Speaker 1: she was confined to bed and she was unconscious for
Speaker 1: a lot of that. She describes having to regain her
Speaker 1: physical strength and essentially relearning to walk in her memoir,
Speaker 1: but she also mentions that once she was told she
Speaker 1: was expected to make a full recovery, she experienced a
Speaker 1: wave of panic. The idea of returning to work and
Speaker 1: information that she had received about George Cornwallis West's marriage
Speaker 1: failing her possibly being involved in it. The idea that
Speaker 1: she was going to have to quote pick up the
Speaker 1: senseless things of life and go on with my career
Speaker 1: made her feel like she never wanted to return to
Speaker 1: her old life. It all seemed meaningless to her at
Speaker 1: the time. So then later in nineteen twelve, in the autumn,
Speaker 1: a second round of news came out that missus Pat
Speaker 1: had been stricken suddenly in the Pain Paper's words, and
Speaker 1: that Ford doctors had been called to the scene and
Speaker 1: could not agree on the diagnosis. Two of them believed
Speaker 1: it was partonitis and that she needed immediate surgery. The
Speaker 1: other two weren't sure and they wanted to postpone any
Speaker 1: surgical intervention. This illness was speculated to have been related
Speaker 1: to the car accident. She didn't wind up having an operation,
Speaker 1: and she slowly recovered. Yeah, you could see how all
Speaker 1: of those things got a little confused for people in
Speaker 1: some of the retellings of this story. But if you
Speaker 1: kind of pick through papers, you'll see where it all
Speaker 1: plays out. We're gonna pause here for a word from
Speaker 1: the sponsors who keep stuff you missed in history class going,
Speaker 1: and when we come back, we will talk about the
Speaker 1: relationship between Missus pat and George Bernard Shaw. So when
Speaker 1: she was still convalescing, George Cornwallis West had come to
Speaker 1: visit Missus Patt whispering, according to her account, that he
Speaker 1: needed her help. That was the thing she describes as
Speaker 1: like helping her get through her sickness, knowing that someone
Speaker 1: needed her. But there was another man who also reached
Speaker 1: out to her while she was convalescing, and she wrote
Speaker 1: of this admirer quote, there was one who, perhaps through
Speaker 1: the intelligent grasp of his genius, understood a little the
Speaker 1: nerve wrack of my illness himself living in dreams. He
Speaker 1: made a dream world for me. Only those who can
Speaker 1: understand this can understand the friendship Bernard Shaw gave to
Speaker 1: me by my sick bed, the foolish, ridiculous letters he
Speaker 1: wrote me, and his pretense of being in love with me.
Speaker 1: Missus Pat published some of these letters in her memoir,
Speaker 1: which was a pretty scandalous move when it came out
Speaker 1: in nineteen twenty two and one. He wrote to her, quote,
Speaker 1: I haven't been quite the same man since our meeting.
Speaker 1: I suppose you are a devil, they all tell me,
Speaker 1: so when I go on raving about you, Well, I
Speaker 1: don't care. I've always said that it is the devil
Speaker 1: that makes the hell, But here is the devil who
Speaker 1: makes heaven. Wherefore I kiss your hands and praise creation
Speaker 1: for you, and hope you are well. As this leaves
Speaker 1: me at present, thank God for it. So. Missus Pat
Speaker 1: and George Bernard Shaw, who she called Joey, are often
Speaker 1: described as having an affair. They had actually known each
Speaker 1: other casually at least since the eighteen nineties, but it
Speaker 1: really wasn't until nineteen twelve that he seemed to become
Speaker 1: romantically fixated on her, and the two exchanged a lot
Speaker 1: of emotional letters, so while it could for sure be
Speaker 1: categorized as an emotional affair, it doesn't appear that they
Speaker 1: ever had a physical relationship. And from the outside, when
Speaker 1: you read them, it really seems like this correspondence may
Speaker 1: have helped Beatrice find her strength again, and the playwright
Speaker 1: noted that he sensed she was improving, writing at one
Speaker 1: point quote, I think you are getting well. I hear
Speaker 1: a ring, I see a flash in your letter. The able,
Speaker 1: courageous Stella is stirring. And perhaps she will put me
Speaker 1: away with the arrow route. No matter, I shall rejoice
Speaker 1: and glory in her. And that kind of was what happened.
Speaker 1: Beatrice shut the romance down as she got better, although
Speaker 1: she did become best friends with his sister Lucy, and
Speaker 1: she and George Bernard Shaw remained close friends. As she
Speaker 1: put it quote, when my illness was over, the real
Speaker 1: friendship which exists today was between us. In nineteen fourteen,
Speaker 1: missus Pat starred as Eliza Doolittle in the first English
Speaker 1: language version of Pigmalion. It had actually been staged in
Speaker 1: German after Shaw wrote it in nineteen twelve, but it
Speaker 1: was postponed in English until Missus pat recovered so that
Speaker 1: she could be the debut star in it. We think
Speaker 1: of Eliza Doolittle as Audrey Hepburn's role thanks to the
Speaker 1: movie My Fair Lady, but that role was written for
Speaker 1: Campbell by George Bernard Shaw. But the two of them
Speaker 1: really disagreed on the play's ending. So if you read
Speaker 1: the play as written, it ends like this. Higgins says
Speaker 1: to his mom, goodbye mother. Oh, by the way, Eliza
Speaker 1: or her a ham and Stilton cheese, will you and
Speaker 1: buy me a pair of reindeer gloves number eight and
Speaker 1: a tie to match that new suit of mine at
Speaker 1: Elan Binman's. You can choose the color. And at this
Speaker 1: point Eliza Toolittle says buy them yourself. Uh, and his
Speaker 1: mother says, I'm afraid you've spoiled that girl, Henry. But
Speaker 1: never mind, dear, I'll buy you the tie and gloves,
Speaker 1: and Higgins says to his mom, Oh, don't bother, She'll
Speaker 1: buy them all right enough. So Missus Campbell felt like
Speaker 1: this ending was ambiguous and it wasn't clear whether Eliza
Speaker 1: and Higgins would be together. She thought it lacked romance,
Speaker 1: and she did the audience out of knowing what happens
Speaker 1: to the characters that they had come to love over
Speaker 1: the course of this show. She wanted the play to
Speaker 1: have a happier ending, so when she performed it in
Speaker 1: its English language debut, she changed that line from buy
Speaker 1: them yourself to what size to indicate that Eliza was
Speaker 1: getting the gloves and would be back. This is so
Speaker 1: funny to me because it's not a particularly romantic line,
Speaker 1: but she is smart enough to be like, yes, but
Speaker 1: then they know I'm coming back, right. It's very sneaky.
Speaker 1: The playwright and his actor remained in locked horns over
Speaker 1: this issue, but every single time Missus Patt performed it,
Speaker 1: which was a lot because it really became known as
Speaker 1: her role, she finished it her way. He wrote her
Speaker 1: a letter detailing what he felt were the four levels
Speaker 1: of illiteracy, with the fourth being quote the illiteracy of
Speaker 1: Eliza Doolittle, who couldn't even read the end of her
Speaker 1: own story. He then continued, quote, there is only one
Speaker 1: person alive who is such a monster of illiteracy as
Speaker 1: to combine these four illiteracies in her single brain, and I,
Speaker 1: the greatest living master of letters, made a perfect spectacle
Speaker 1: of myself with her before all Europe. While she was
Speaker 1: making controversy on stage by defying a well known playwright,
Speaker 1: Missus Campbell was also making another controversy in her personal life.
Speaker 1: She remarried in nineteen fourteen to Major George Frederick Middleton
Speaker 1: Cornwallis West. The reason this was controversial was because Cornwallis
Speaker 1: West had just gotten divorced, as in the paperwork was
Speaker 1: completed hours before he and Missus Campbell got married. This
Speaker 1: is one of those things that sounds really sensational, but
Speaker 1: the divorce proceedings had started in the autumn of nineteen thirteen.
Speaker 1: They got married in April of nineteen fourteen, so they
Speaker 1: were waiting for these legal steps to be complete, and
Speaker 1: her children and friends all seemed pretty happy about the marriage.
Speaker 1: Any scandal about it seems to have been outside of
Speaker 1: their actual social circle, probably because the two of them
Speaker 1: were so well known. Yeah, there had been all those
Speaker 1: rumors about them, and there are some reads that she
Speaker 1: basically cut off her her flirtation or emotional affair with
Speaker 1: George Bernard Shaw because she was like, no, I'm picking
Speaker 1: George Cornwallis West. Early nineteen eighteen, Beatrice received news that
Speaker 1: her son Alan had been killed in action in France
Speaker 1: during World War One. She wrote quote one day's rest
Speaker 1: to get my heart steady and then work again. Life
Speaker 1: was pitiless. The theater hell I was in deep sea
Speaker 1: and there was no light anywhere. She includes what appeared
Speaker 1: to be all of Allan's letters from his time away
Speaker 1: at war in her memoir, as well as letters written
Speaker 1: to her about her son by his fellow soldiers and
Speaker 1: leaders in the military after he was killed. After Allan died,
Speaker 1: Missus Campbell grieved really deeply, but she did continue to work,
Speaker 1: but she was feeling worn down. In late nineteen twenty
Speaker 1: she was put on bed rest by her doctor for
Speaker 1: her nerves, and she stayed there for three months, but
Speaker 1: anxiety over money made her want to end her convalescence.
Speaker 1: She took a brief engagement where she got on stage
Speaker 1: to give a prologue at an epilogue for a short
Speaker 1: film that was being shown in between. Then she was
Speaker 1: ordered by her doctor to go to the country alone
Speaker 1: for six to eight weeks. She sold her London home,
Speaker 1: bought a small cottage and spent time writing her memoir,
Speaker 1: which was published in nineteen twenty two. In nineteen twenty seven,
Speaker 1: Missus Campbell returned to the New York stage for the
Speaker 1: first time since the loss of her son. She had
Speaker 1: not really wanted to do a big international trip. That
Speaker 1: play was The Adventurous Age, written by Frederick Whitney, and
Speaker 1: it premiered in the US on February seventh, nineteen twenty seven,
Speaker 1: at the Mansfield Theater. The play was billed as a
Speaker 1: farcical comedy and it featured a mature couple by the
Speaker 1: name of Rivers, each of whom was hoping to ensnare
Speaker 1: a much younger paramour for themselves. In Missus Pat's obituary,
Speaker 1: The New York Times stated that critics didn't like the play,
Speaker 1: and nowhere was that more apparent than in the Time's
Speaker 1: own review by Jay Brooks Atkinson, which ran the morning
Speaker 1: after the play opened, under the headline Missus Campbell returns
Speaker 1: at redd in part quote for her first appearance in
Speaker 1: America after ten or twelve years, Missus Patrick Campbell has
Speaker 1: not been happy in the selection on her play. To
Speaker 1: be perfectly candid, her selection could not have been worse.
Speaker 1: Beyond the faintest glimmering of dramatic idea, The Adventurous Age
Speaker 1: has nothing to recommend it upon any save the amateur stage,
Speaker 1: and then only among close friends who dare not show
Speaker 1: their boredom. How came an actress of her distinction to
Speaker 1: select the adventurous age. The review does seem to conclude
Speaker 1: by suggesting that missus Campbell is not the problem, that
Speaker 1: just she has terrible material in the play, and it
Speaker 1: concludes with quote, Missus Campbell deserves at least a play
Speaker 1: commensurate with her abilities. Throughout the nineteen twenties, Missus Patt's
Speaker 1: appeal to the public was waning. She was aging at
Speaker 1: a time when youthful flappers were the trend, and she
Speaker 1: knew it. She had a reputation for being bossy and
Speaker 1: biting with her words, and fewer and fewer people were
Speaker 1: willing to put up with that in an actor who
Speaker 1: was losing star power. She really got to a place
Speaker 1: financially of just screeping by for a while. Although the
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty nine play The Matriarch by Gladys bronwin Stern
Speaker 1: was successful enough and ran long enough that she was
Speaker 1: able to write her financial boat. In nineteen thirty she
Speaker 1: made the transition to film, appearing in the movie The
Speaker 1: Dancers by Sir Gerald Marier, which originated as a play
Speaker 1: in nineteen twenty three. The plot is a story of
Speaker 1: two childhood sweethearts, Una and Tony, who promised to get
Speaker 1: married as adults. Then as adults, they're reunited after Tony
Speaker 1: inherits a fortune and appears once more in UNA's life
Speaker 1: to make good on their agreement. Una agrees, but she's
Speaker 1: harboring the secret that she has not stayed true to him,
Speaker 1: whereas he has waited for her. Like many of the
Speaker 1: plots we've discussed here, particularly the ones where a woman
Speaker 1: is determined to be ruined, it ends tragically. In nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty four, she was in three more films, Riptide, One
Speaker 1: More River, An Outcast Lady, and then she appeared in
Speaker 1: the nineteen thirty five film adaptation of Crime and Punishment.
Speaker 1: In addition to acting, Missus Campbell also started booking appearances
Speaker 1: on the lecture circuit in the United States, where she
Speaker 1: taught diction. Missus Campbell's last performance was in nineteen thirty eight.
Speaker 1: She started in the thirteenth chair in Connecticut. Her career
Speaker 1: had gone on for fifty years. When she finished the show.
Speaker 1: She moved to Paris instead of going back to London.
Speaker 1: At some point she and her second husband became estranged,
Speaker 1: but they lived more or less separately, so he wasn't
Speaker 1: with her during this time. When World War Two began,
Speaker 1: Missus Patt moved from Paris to Powe in southern France.
Speaker 1: She lived there only a few months before dying of
Speaker 1: pneumonia on April ninth, nineteen forty, at the age of
Speaker 1: seventy five. Although her obituary in The New York Times
Speaker 1: was lengthy and full of praise, it's likely that she
Speaker 1: didn't get as much notice as she might have if
Speaker 1: she had died at a different time. By that point,
Speaker 1: most of the newspaper was dedicated to war coverage. The
Speaker 1: front page on April eleventh, nineteen forty had the headline
Speaker 1: Nazis driven from Bergen Trondheim. Yeah. Her o bit was
Speaker 1: kind of buried in that that obituary did manage to
Speaker 1: talk about Missus Campbell's demanding nature, but in a positive way.
Speaker 1: That write up states quote, had her temperamental whims been
Speaker 1: those of a middling talent, she probably would have faded
Speaker 1: into obscurity. But because they were coupled with a first
Speaker 1: rate ability, those who worked with her seemed to enjoy them.
Speaker 1: George C. Tyler for many years. Her American producer said
Speaker 1: of her temperament, you laughed instead of trying to strangle her.
Speaker 1: Oh that's missus, Pat. Yeah, I find her charming in
Speaker 1: her own way. I have so many things to talk
Speaker 1: about him behind the scenes. Oh good, do you have
Speaker 1: some listener maw before we do that? I do. It's
Speaker 1: from our listener, Elizabeth, and it's about our Louis Sullivan
Speaker 1: episode and buildings I got wrong, although I did go
Speaker 1: back and double check, and they seemed to be wrong
Speaker 1: in a number of places, which makes me think it's
Speaker 1: one of those cases of something being printed wrong in
Speaker 1: an authoritative place and then being repeated elsewhere. But here's
Speaker 1: the scoop, Elizabeth writes, Dear Holly and Tracy, I'm sure
Speaker 1: you've had an architecture nerd or to descend on you already.
Speaker 1: Actually not really, but just in case, I wanted to
Speaker 1: provide you a clarification on a couple of the Chicago
Speaker 1: buildings you mentioned in the Louis Sullivan episode. The Field's building,
Speaker 1: designed by Henry Hobson Richardson, was the wholesale warehouse, not
Speaker 1: the department store. The wholesale store is regarded as a
Speaker 1: landmark in the development of an American architectural style, and
Speaker 1: group floors together on the exterior in a way that
Speaker 1: foreshadowed Sullivan's later work and the commercial style of the
Speaker 1: early twentieth century. The original part of the Field's department
Speaker 1: store building was designed by Charles Attwood, who eventually took
Speaker 1: over for John Root at the Columbian Exposition. The larger
Speaker 1: parts of the building on State Street were designed by
Speaker 1: Pierce Anderson, who worked in the successor firms of D. H.
Speaker 1: Burnaman Co. Personally, I love all the Fields buildings, but
Speaker 1: I have to chuckle at what Sullivan might think. Keep
Speaker 1: up the good work. Thank you for that clarification. Never
Speaker 1: would have figured that one out on my own. If
Speaker 1: you would love to write to us, you could do
Speaker 1: so at History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. You can
Speaker 1: find us on social media as Missed in History and
Speaker 1: if you have not subscribed yet, that is very easy
Speaker 1: to do on the iHeartRadio app pretty much anywhere you
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