Women in Turmoil: Six Plays by Mercedes de Acosta

Introduction

Introduction By 1924, Mercedes de Acosta, who was then only thirty-one years of age, had clearly established herself as an author on the move. She had published three volumes of poetry—Moods (1920),Archways of Life (1921), Streets and Shadows (1924)—a novel entitled Wind Chaff (1920), and a one-act play about World War I called For France (1917).1 The haunting quality of her imagery prompted poet and critic Charles Hanson Towne to declare that her poetry “bears promise of even ¤ner achievement . . . . She may go far.”2 A critic for the New York Herald called Wind Chaff “an illuminating commentary on modern society.”3 Almost always , her writing was praised for its charm, freshness, sincerity, and frankness. Mercedes gained such prominence and credibility that when Isadora Duncan was writing her autobiography in 1927, Mercedes served as her unof¤cial agent and arranged for a publisher solely on the basis of her own personal endorsement of the manuscript. Descended from a noble and proud Spanish family, Mercedes’s orphaned mother had traveled at the age of fourteen to the United States, where she fought successfully in the New York Supreme Court for the return of the family fortune that had been stolen by her sinister uncle. Her father had migrated from Spain to Cuba, where he is said to have led a group of revolutionaries in an attempt to overthrow Spanish rule. The story goes that he was arrested but escaped from a ¤ring line and®ed to New York, where he eventually met Mercedes’s mother. He persuaded his future wife to remain in the United States and marry him rather than return to Spain with her inheritance. Mercedes, along with her parents and seven siblings, lived in New York City on fashionable Forty-seventh Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, where their neighbors included such personalities as former President Theodore Roosevelt,statesman Joseph Choate,and the William Vanderbilts. Mercedes’s parents often took part in the genteel social activities of the neighborhood. The escapades of her beautiful older sister , Rita, were often mentioned in the society sections of the daily newspapers . When Mercedes was about four years old, her nanny began taking her to daily Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, where she always made faces and stuck out her tongue at one particular parishioner in a pew behind her. Charmed by the precocious little girl, the elderly man went to the mother superior of the orphanage next to the church and asked whether xv he might adopt her. Since she always sat next to the orphan children, he had assumed she was one of them. When he persisted even after the mother superior identi¤ed Mercedes, a meeting between him and Mercedes’s mother was arranged. In the end, it was agreed that this kindly gentleman, who was none other than the famous theater producer Augustin Daly, could fetch Mercedes every Sunday afternoon so she could spend the day with him. He did not take Mercedes home, however. Instead, unbeknownst to Mercedes’s mother, he would steal her off to the home of actress Ada Rehan where the three of them would create a world of little toy stages and reenact a delightful mix of plays. When Mercedes’s mother learned where her daughter was spending Sunday afternoons, the visits came to a halt.Mercedes was allowed, however , to go backstage with Daly during matinees at his theater. Sometimes she would sit on his lap and watch a rehearsal; other times, he carried her around on his shoulders and told people that Mercedes was going to become a great actress one day. Needless to say, her visits to the theater left a strong stamp on the impressionable young girl. I remember distinctly being perched on Mr. Daly’s shoulder in the wings and listening to the overture. I remember the excitement of the curtain going up and the hush that fell over everyone in the wings. Mr. Daly would put his ¤nger to his lips to make sure I would be quiet. I remember the footlights and the ‘spots’ and the smell of grease paint and the continual coming and going of actors and actresses in strange costumes.4 Enthralled by the world of the theater, the young Mercedes walked along Fifth Avenue to catch glimpses of her favorite actors, swooning if she saw John or Ethel Barrymore. She “had a mania for going to the theatre. On the sly,” she attended matinees when...