But it is a long and exigent
part, and there were times in the play when her physical strength was
overtaxed. It would have taken the voice of a strongish _basso_ to drown
the roar of a whole battlefield of ghostly warriors, with a military
band thrown in.
I am not sure that Miss LOEHR quite realised for us the _Duke of
Reichstadt's_ personality. I should not care to have the task myself,
for a good many complicated elements were mixed in his nature. As Mr.
Louis PARKER reminds you, a French father supplied him with ambition
and love of action, an Austrian grandfather with hesitancy, and Spanish
ancestors with fatalism, a very trying combination for even the original
_Eaglet_ to handle--a mere boy who had never so much as heard of
President WILSON'S League of Nation's. So it was excusable if Miss LOEHR
failed to make us completely realise a personality which was almost
certainly too much for the comprehension of its actual owner.
But she was always ah intriguing figure. Perhaps, indeed--for the
apparel does not always proclaim the man, and the _Eaglet_ was no
_Hamlet_ in the matter of his clothes--her rather striking costumes were
a source of too much distraction.
[Illustration: THE LITTLE EAGLE TRIES TO FLY.
Miss MARIE LOEHR.]
In a very large cast, whose identities were here and there a little
shadowy, the interest was so distributed that nobody except Miss LOEHR
had very much chance.
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