.

Possibly no actress, singer, or other public woman ever received such
homage and general recognition. With all her great qualities as an
actress, vigor, grandeur, wild, savage energy, superb articulation,
irreproachable diction, and a marvellous sense of situations, she
lacked the one quality which we miss in Sarah Bernhardt also--a true
tenderness and compassion. As a tragedienne she can be compared to
Talma only. Her greed for money soon ended her brilliant career;
unlike her sister in art, she amassed a fortune, leaving over one
million five hundred thousand francs.

Compared with Bernhardt, Rachel is said to have been the greater in
pure tragedy, but she did not possess as many arts of fascination.
There are many points of similarity between the two actresses: Rachel
was at times artificial, wanting in tenderness and depth, while at
times she was superhuman in her passion and emotion, and often
put more into her role than was intended; and the acting of Sarah
Bernhardt has the same characteristics. Rachel, however, was much more
subject to moods and fits of inspiration than is Bernhardt--especially
was she incapable of acting at her best on evenings of her first
appearance in a new role. Her critical power was very weak in
comparison with her intellectual power, the reverse being true of her
modern rival. Rachel's greatest inspiration was _Phedre_, and in
this role Bernhardt "is weak, unequal. We see all the viciousness
in _Phedre_ and none of her grandeur. She breaks herself to pieces
against the huge difficulties of the conception and does not succeed
in moving us.... Rachel was the mouthpiece of the gods; no longer a
free agent, she poured forth every epithet of adoration that Aphrodite
could suggest, clambering up higher and higher in the intensity of her
emotions, whilst her audience hung breathless, riveted on every word,
and dared to burst forth in thunders of applause only after she had
vanished from their sight."

Both of these artists were children of the lower class, and struggled
with a fate which required grit, tenacity, and determination to
win success. The artist of to-day is no social leader--"never the
companion of man, but his slave or his despot." It is entirely her
physical charms and the outward or artificial requisites of her art
that make her what she is. According to Mr. Lynch, her tragedy "is but
one of disorder, fury, and folly--passions not deep, but unbridled and
hysterical in thei