The curi­ous case of a lit­tle old book — Part 2, orig­i­nally uploaded by Thorsten Becker.

Last year I related the story of an unusual find in a post titled “The curi­ous case of a lit­tle old book”. I’ve had pur­chased a copy of the Roycrofter’s edi­tion of Aucassin & Nico­lette which also, unex­pect­edly so, con­tained a small gift note. Upon fur­ther research it turned out the book was orig­i­nally bought by a famous Vic­to­rian era actress, a cer­tain Clara Mor­ris (Har­riot). Since this post is going to build upon infor­ma­tion pro­vided in the pre­vi­ous one I rec­om­mend read­ing the orig­i­nal post first if needed (there is a link back to this arti­cle at the end). I orig­i­nally planned on pre­sent­ing this sec­ond part much sooner but for var­i­ous rea­sons always got delayed, until now.

After unrav­el­ing the fas­ci­nat­ing story behind the afore­men­tioned note I decided to take my sleuthing a lit­tle fur­ther and try to find inter­est­ing items relat­ing to Clara Mor­ris. So I went back to eBay and started search­ing. There were quite a few inter­est­ing items to be found:

The first thing I came across was a CDV, a carte de vis­ite or “vis­it­ing card”. These types of small, carded pho­tographs became rather pop­u­lar in the lat­ter part of the 1800s and turned into col­lectibles that were often traded sim­i­lar to base­ball cards and such in more mod­ern times. This par­tic­u­lar CDV was pro­duced by Sarony at 680 Broad­way in NYC. There is no date printed but by the looks of it it seems to date from the mid 1870s. The clar­ity of the photo is quite astound­ing as is the depth of field. It can be seen on the right in the photo above. Fur­ther details regard­ing CDVs can be found here.

Next I found some type of trad­ing card, this time a por­trait rather than a pho­to­graph. It’s roughly the same size as the CDV but unfor­tu­nately has no date indi­cated either (prob­a­bly also mid 1870s). It was made by Union Nov­elty Co. in Mont­pe­lier, Ver­mont. It’s adver­tis­ing “The Favorite Pic­to­r­ial, Defin­ing and Pro­nounc­ing Dic­tio­nary of the Eng­lish Lan­guage… neatly bound in Cloth and con­tain­ing 320 pages.” It can be seen on the left in the photo on top.

Of course one of the most inter­est­ing items to find would be a play bill or any sort of pro­gram of one of her shows. Luck­ily such an item was up for sale, and not just for any the­ater but the Boston The­ater. Given that I’ve lived around Boston that was a great find. “The Ray” was the offi­cial pro­gram of the Boston The­ater and was pub­lished daily by H. A. M’Clenen. This issue dates from Mon­day, May 7, 1877, and adver­tises “Clara Mor­ris, The Great­est Liv­ing Actress” in the play “Camille — Or, The Fate of a Coquette”. The author had the fol­low­ing to say:

“Clara Mor­ris, This great actress, of whom it is said that she “fills the widest space in the pub­lic eye and the warmest cor­ner of the heart of every lover of the drama in Amer­ica,” will be with us for a brief sea­son only, and will repeat the role of Camille every evening of the week (except Sat­ur­day), and on Sat­ur­day after­noon. Dur­ing her stay she will pro­duce “Miss Mul­ton,” a grand play, deal­ing with a phase of human pas­sion that touches an answer­ing chord in every heart. Hop­ing to achieve suc­cess from the favor Miss Mor­ris has com­manded wher­ever she has appeared, other actresses have pre­sented ver­sions of “Miss Mul­ton,” which com­pare with hers as thinnest veneer­ing does to solid mahogany.” *Notes

Adding to this praise is a poem sim­ply titled “Clara Morris”,written by a cer­tain G. C. Howard of Cam­bridge, Mass­a­chu­setts (I am assum­ing this is actor George C. Howard, later man­ager of the Howard and Foxes the­ater troupe whose reper­toire included a ren­di­tion of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Some details here):

“When Clara Mor­ris treads the stage,
A queen com­mands the mimic scene;
This bril­liant genius of the age
Paints what will be and what has been.

Yes, the fierce pas­sions of the soul,
That sway the human heart through time,
Her magic pow­ers so con­trol
As ren­der the effect sublime.

Society’s frail, fickle train
She illus­trates with charms that please;
The proud her art can­not dis­dain;
The hum­ble, near her, feel at ease.

As suf­fer­ing “Mul­ton,” her tones move
And set the heart and soul on fire;
Till, crushed by unre­quited love,
We pity, weep, and then admire

Sen­sa­tions gain from her their dower,
Which so enrich us through the play;
Even ill­ness fails to check the power
In this great actress of the day.”

Well, even Oscar Wilde pro­claimed once “Miss Mor­ris is the great­est actress I ever saw, if it be fair to form an opin­ion of her from her ren­di­tion of this one role. â€? We have no such pow­er­fully intense actress in Eng­land. She is a great artist, in my sense of the word, because all she does, all she says, in the man­ner of the doing and of the say­ing con­stantly evokes the imag­i­na­tion to sup­ple­ment it. That is what I mean by genius. We have no one like her.” Judg­ing by all this rev­er­ence Clara Mor­ris must have been an actress com­pa­ra­ble in fame to per­haps a Meryl Streep today.

Now that I had acquired the pro­gram I also wanted to see if I could find any of the books and sto­ries Mrs. Mor­ris had writ­ten. While most of them deal w