3-052-728 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Madame Modjeska as Constance, in "Heartsease", at the Royal Court Theatre, [London], 1880. '"I take leave of you, as it were, for ever! Adieu! Adieu!" - Act 3...this actress, a Polish lady, [plays] Constance, in Mr. James Mortimer's "Heartsease." It is an adaptation, which might perhaps well have been spared, of the too-famous "Dame aux Camélias," by Alexandre Dumas the younger; and we do not at all intend to imply any approbation of this choice of a subject for her unquestionable dramatic talent, in presenting an illustration of Madame Modjeska's figure and gesture, as she appears when bidding farewell to Armand Duval...[A critic writes:] "the character she impersonates cannot make any genuine appeal to English feelings. It is unnatural and sickly; but she contrives to make it appear deliciously fresh and sympathetic. We forget the vices, and the amazing selfishness, only to think of the sweet and pathetic girlish woman a great sorrow is killing, inch by inch, quite as rapidly as consumption. We love, pity, and admire the creation of Modjeska, as heartily as we dislike that of Dumas...Constance has killed la Dame aux Camélias." And we will conclude with the hope that this character, having been killed, may soon be decently buried'. From "Illustrated London News", 1880.