Mrs. Patrick Campbell

New Zealand Listener, Volume 2, Issue 43, 19 April 1940, Page 19

Mrs. Patrick Campbell

LTHOUGH Mrs. Patrick Campbell retired from the stage some years ago, she is still remembered as one of the great actresses of late Victorian and Edwardian periods, when authors wrote their plays with actresses of her eminence in view. She belonged to the days of " The Second Mrs. Tanqueray" in which her interpretation of Paula Tanqueray set the seal to her reputation and sent the critics into ecstasies. That was in 1894. Later, in 1914, she created a furore as Eliza Doolittle in Shaw’s "Pygmalion." The famous line " Not bloody likely" nearly ruined the play, but Mrs. Campbell, by her brilliant acting, saved the day and enhanced her already world-wide reputation. Like all great actresses of the premotion picture era critics fought inky battles over her. She was not beautiful in the accepted sense, but she was distinguished. Everyone fell under the spell of her lovely voice and her superb stage presence, and many of the rdles she created will remain as individually and artistically her own. Stories of her wit, which could be barbed on occasion, her generosity, and her "temperament" are legion. Her "Life and Some Letters" conveys to the world something of her early struggles, her successes, her failures, and her friendships-these last including many great names in the world of art and letters, like Bernard Shaw, W. B. Yeats and Gilbert Murray. At the age of 19 she married Patrick Campbell, who was killed in the Boer War. Their son died in France during

the Great War, after a brilliant record on Gallipoli and on the Western Front. Their daughter is the actress Stella Campbell. In 1914 Mrs. Campbell married George Cornwallis-West. When she began her professional stage career Mrs. Campbell earned £2/10/a week, on which she lived and supported her two children. A few years later she was earning £60 a week.