Helena Modjeska Biography

(continued)

 

Helena Modjeska was also interested in traveling to California, but not to

become a farm housewife. She knew that now, a generation after the Gold

Rush, San Francisco had become a cosmopolitan city with fine theaters that

welcomed European actors. Although she knew no English, she longed to try out

her talents in this faraway place where, if she failed, Warsaw officialdom would

never hear that she had even tried. Success in San Francisco, she believed,

would open the way to triumphs in New York and finally in London.

In the summer of 1876 the Chlapowskis, Helena's 15-year-old son Rudolf

(later Ralph), and a small party of friends crossed the Atlantic. After visits to New

York theaters and the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, they sailed down the

Coast, crossed the Isthmus of Panama by rail, and reached San Francisco

after a three-week voyage up the Pacific coast in a creaky wooden paddlewheel

steamer. After visiting the San Francisco theaters, they went south to the little

grape-growing settlement of Anaheim where they joined Henryk Sienkiewicz

who had been in California since the previous winter.

Chlapowski bought a 47-acre orange ranch, but his homesick friends were

not cut out to be western pioneer farmers. It was a year of drought and

depression for southern California. The farm brought in no income and

Chlapowski's funds were running low. For Helena, an American stage debut was

no longer just a hope, but now a financial necessity. Brave but apprehensive,

she went to San Francisco to learn some of her former roles in English. After

eight long mouths of waiting for an audition, she at last made a brilliant debut on

the stage of the California Theatre. Before long the theaters of New York and

other eastern cities welcomed her. Two years of triumphant American tours were

followed by London successes beginning in the spring of 1880.

 

 

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