By Anthony Sansonetti

Bijou Heron (1863-1937), baptized Helena¹ (Helen) Wallace Stoepel,² was born in New York City to actress Matilda Agnes Heron and orchestral conductor Robert August Stoepel.³ Before Heron and Stoepel’s divorce in 1869,⁴ Stoepel was said to have “squandered” his wife’s monetary compensation and abandoned Bijou in the face of financial distress.⁵ This was, of course, an upsetting event, which Heron ensured that her daughter would never forget. Stoepel found the security he needed at Wallack’s Theatre and Augustin Daly’s Fifth Avenue Theatre in New York City.⁶ Bijou’s mother, on the other hand, was able to obtain profitable ties on both sides of the Atlantic. Then again, Heron was the first American actress to play the admired role of Camille in what Bijou called “mamma’s play”⁷ at the Park Theatre. Heron received momentous praise for her portrayal of Camille in not only the United States of America, but the United Kingdom as well.⁸

In 1874, Heron retired from the stage for two years and found solace in New York. During this period of time, Heron found a job teaching aspiring young actresses the theatrical skill of clear and expressive speech, especially of distinct pronunciation and articulation.⁹ Her daughter Bijou was irrefutably her favourite student. The instruction and guidance of her virtuosic and beloved mother undeniably allowed Bijou to become a performing child. In other words, when health and artistic endeavors failed Heron, another talent was born via her child. This is illustrated most clearly by the fact that Matilda Heron’s penultimate public appearance in New York took place in April 1876 wherein she played the role of Medea for the debut of her daughter Bijou who most likely played the minor, yet ultimately climactic role of “the child” in Euripides’ classic drama.¹⁰ Heron’s last performance of Camille, her most popular role, was for the benefit of her daughter’s first performance of the “new role” of Meg in Meg’s Diversion, providing critics with convincing evidence that Bijou was “one of the most promising young actresses on the metropolitan boards.”¹¹

Bijou continued to take on minor parts in “pretty little plays” for quite some time and journalist Esther C. Quinn perceptively noticed that the everyday running of Bijou’s career was in her mother’s hands.¹² Night after night, Heron would draw attention to her presence in the audience. She “wildly waved her arms and handkerchief in token of admiration” for Bijou’s representation of juvenile characters.¹³ While Quinn admits that the interruption was “quite offensive,” the audience’s familiarity with and appeal to Heron seamlessly sutured “sympathy” and “pity” for the “weak” mother into a satisfying act of dramatic expression.¹⁴ Audiences bore witness to not only the talents of Bijou, but another kind of dramatic portrayal as well. No matter how minor the role of the child was in the production, this blend of theatrical representation and maternal affect allowed little Bijou to attract the most attention and praise and so steal the show. It can be said, therefore, that the late nineteenth-century was the precursor of a theatrical era wherein women and, in turn, mothers of child performers were an exhibition in themselves; that is, “there to be looked at as much as to do the looking.”¹⁵

Employing her mother’s teachings of acting as a stepping-stone to metropolitan success, Bijou quickly learnt to command the attention of those around her. While taking part in a theatrical production made up of little girls from her New York-based public school, an unnamed member of Daly’s circle had seen Bijou recite passages from a variety of plays.¹⁶ He had a penchant for watching Bijou perform “the poison scene” from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and soon mentioned her name to Daly.¹⁷ Daly, like his friend who spotted her, became quite fond of Bijou upon meeting her; and there is no doubt that Heron readily consented to Daly’s offer of employment. Interestingly, Bijou’s father was a “long time” employee of Daly’s theatre as well.¹⁸ This spontaneous and cooperative meeting led to Bijou’s acting debut at Daly’s theatre in 1874. Her inaugural performance of Adrienne in the much-produced Monsieur Alphonse by Alexander Dumas was met with warm praise and exhilarating accomplishment, since critics maintained that that the role of Adrienne was “too mature for a mere child.” ¹⁹ From here, Daly cast Bijou as Oliver Twist in the stage production of Charles Dickens’ early novel about the beloved “parish foundling” at the Fifth Avenue Theatre.²⁰ Bijou’s appeal to audiences improved so much that less than two weeks after opening night her name was, in line with the common editorial practice of the New York Times, bolded and typed out in large font.²¹

Instead of complimenting Bijou’s cross-dressed performance of Twist, critics made passing reference to this performance while continuously praising her success as Adrienne,²² suggesting that her latter performances in New York fell flat. The blame fell on Dickens’ character who, as essayist and critic Lawrence Hutton sees it, is “barely endurable in the novel and always insufferable on the stage.”²³ Despite Bijou’s “pleasing” representation of Twist, Hutton denigrated her “wearing of the jacket and trousers so trying to all actresses.”²⁴ Bijou was able to redeem herself at Daly’s Theatre in September of 1874 with her participation in what appears to be a hybrid performance of Victorien Sardou’s and Benjamin Webster’s The Fast Family.²⁵ The New York Times does not divulge Bijou’s contribution to Daly’s admired take on The Fast Family; instead, Bijou is simply cited as a contributor to the production. If we use Webster’s script as a jumping-off place, Bijou may have performed the role of Fanfan who—dressed in a “boy’s dark gray knickerbocker suit and cap”—is “about seven years of age, very practical and self-possessed.”²⁶

There was, however, a striking break in the well-crafted circuit of Bijou’s career when The Fast Family closed in December of 1874. This unexplained absence from the stage lasted for about a year: a time in which Heron’s health was most likely in decline.²⁷ Bijou returned to the stage in Boston where she performed the role of Katy, the Hot Corn Girl to the Howard Athenaeum’s crowded house.²⁸ Bostonian critics agreed that her persona was “clever” and her talent was “high order.”²⁹ Bijou went on to perform at Wallack’s Theatre in comedies and farces and the celebrated role of Eva in Uncle Tom’s Cabin during May of 1876.³⁰ Though Cordelia Howard’s initial performance of Eva was and still is a memorable event, ³¹ critics in New York believed that Bijou renewed the exhibition of Eva by reinscribing the over-sentimental qualities commonly associated with earlier visions of this popular character.³²

After her mother’s death in March 1877, the press fed off of a debate on Bijou’s guardianship in which Bijou became a nomadic figure looking for a guardian to sign her theatrical engagements in place of her father.³³ Eventually, after a few months, Bijou was forced to put her theatrical career on hold and spend some time in London with her father.³⁴ The events leading up to her first trip across the Atlantic were not joyous ones; they illustrate that journeys across the Atlantic can tear families apart while simultaneously bringing them closer together than ever before.³⁵ Shortly after arriving in London Bijou’s father sent her to a convent in Paris.³⁶ Did she partake in choir singing or other theatrical happenings? Was this experience a torturous one? Did she miss the familiarity of New York City and the admiration of her fandom? Bijou’s fanbase in New York readily denigrated Stoepel’s decision to send Bijou to a religious institution in Europe. “Bijou Heron, the child actress,” one critic frantically writes, “is an inmate of a European convent.”³⁷ It was also rumored that Bijou also took part in “education” amid the heart of London’s theatrical scene.³⁸ This frenzy of attention was another kind of stage for little Bijou, the one of popular opinion and a transatlantic audience’s love for a child who they saw transform into a phenomenon right before their eyes, only to have her stolen from them.

If we take, for example, Karen Sánchez-Eppler’s assertion that “the ideas, practices, and institutions of historical preservation reverberate with conceptions of childhood” as a jumping-off point,³⁹ then how ought we to read little Bijou as a treasured keeper of her mother’s corporeal appearance, historical objects, education, public respect and talent? When asked, “Who is the literary figure who has most inspired fashion designers?,” editor-in-chief of Vogue Magazine Anna Wintour—an editor who is renowned for her expertise in the historical as well as latest trends in fashion on both sides of the Atlantic—quickly replied: “Oliver Twist.”⁴⁰ Like Twist, a character she was once cast as, Bijou never went out of style. Described as “face refined, intelligent and attractive, in voice pleasant and sympathetic, in figure neat, graceful and petite even for her years,” Bijou was said to have “all of the personal requirements of the success in the profession, combined with careful training, quick comprehension, tact, intelligence and love for her art.”⁴¹ Does this explain transatlantic audiences’ appeals to her? The interpretation that the skill of the performing child is a carbon copy of a mother’s achievement should not be an inevitable conclusion like it is for Bijou’s critics. Can it not be a matter of a changed, performative perspective on Bijou’s capacity to harness her mother’s training, use it to her advantage and perform the role of a transatlantic celebrity amid the state and time of childhood in new and more creative ways? Fourteen-year-old Bijou was back in rehearsal only two months after her mother died without the desperate need for finances, supposedly at her request.⁴² The question is, why?

Notes

1. “Many Players Adopt ‘Noms Du Theatre,’” Los Angeles Herald, December 29, 1907, 6.
2. Esther C. Quinn, “The Sleeping Camille: Matilda Heron’s Unrivaled Reign on Two Continents,” The San Francisco Call, August 18, 1895, 18.
3. “Composer Stoepel Dead: Author of Many Orchestras, and for a Long Time Leader at Daly’s Theatre,” The Sun, October 2, 1887, 2.
4. “Matilda Agnes Heron,” The Rock Island Argus, March 12, 1877.
6. “Composer Stoepel Dead,” The Sun, 2.
7. Eli Perkins, “The Little Prodigy and Her Strange Mother,” The Leavenworth Weekly Times, June 4, 1874.
8. Quinn, “The Sleeping Camille,” 18.
9. “Bijou Heron,” The National Republican, November 28, 1874.
10. Quinn, “The Sleeping Camille,” 18.
11. “Musical and Theatrical Notes,” The Memphis Daily Appeal, July 13, 1876.
12. Quinn, “The Sleeping Camille,” 18.
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid.
15. Dorothy Chansky, “‘Fall Girls of Modernism’: Women and/as Audiences,” in Composing Ourselves: The Little Theatre Movement and the American Audience, (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2004), 112.
16. “Bijou Heron,” The National Republican.
17. Ibid.
18. “Composer Stoepel Dead,” The Sun, 2.
19. “Bijou Heron,” The National Republican.
20. “Amusements This Evening,” New York Times, May 19, 1874, 7.
21. “Fifth Avenue Theatre,” New York Times, May 24, 1874, 11.
22. “Bijou Heron,” The National Republican.
23. Lawrence Hutton, “Infant Phenomena,” Frank Leslie’s Popular Monthly, April, 1886, 439.
24. Ibid.
25. “Daly’s Fifth Avenue Theatre,” New York Times, September 1, 1874, 7.
26. Benjamin Webster, The Fast Family: A Comedy, In Four Acts, (London: Webster and Co.), 2.
27. Eli Perkins, “The Little Prodigy and Her Strange Mother.”
28. “Amusements in Boston (Mass.),” The Era, January 1, 1876.
29. Ibid.
30. “The Drama in America,” The Era, June 11, 1876.
31. “Lasting Grip of Uncle Tom: No Other Play has a Record so Remarkable,” The Sun, December 19, 1909, 10.
32. “The Drama in America,” The Era.
33. “Bijou’s New Guardian,” The Sun, March 16, 1877.
34. “Composer Stoepel Dead,” The Sun, 2.
35.  Ibid.
36. “Little Bijou Heron,” The Evening Star, January 4, 1879.
37. “Personal Points,” The Daily Astorian, April 6, 1879, 3.
38. “Composer Stoepel Dead,” The Sun, 2.
39. Karen Sánchez-Eppler, “In The Archives of Childhood,” in The Children’s Table: Childhood Studies and the Humanities, ed. Anna Mae Duane. (Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2013), 213.
40. Vogue Magazine, “73 Questions with Anna Wintour.” YouTube. September 10, 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhXwO_mkdzQ.
41. Lawrence Hutton, “Infant Phenomena,” 439.
42. “Bijou’s New Guardian,” The Sun.

Bibliography

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“Amusements in Boston (Mass.).” The Era, January 1, 1876.

“Amusements This Evening.” New York Times, May 19, 1874.

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Chansky, Dorothy. “‘Fall Girls of Modernism’: Women and/as Audiences.” In Composing Ourselves: The Little Theatre Movement and the American Audience, 107-148. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2004.

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“Lasting Grip of Uncle Tom: No Other Play has a Record so Remarkable.” The Sun, December 19, 1909.

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“Many Players Adopt ‘Noms Du Theatre.’” Los Angeles Herald, December 29, 1907.

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“Musical and Theatrical Notes.” The Memphis Daily Appeal, July 13, 1876.

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Quinn, Esther C. “The Sleeping Camille: Matilda Heron’s Unrivaled Reign on Two Continents.” The San Francisco Call, August 18, 1895.

Sánchez-Eppler, Karen. “In The Archives of Childhood.” In The Children’s Table: Childhood      Studies and the Humanities, edited by Anna Mae Duane, 213-237. Athens: The             University of Georgia Press, 2013.

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