Boston, October 16, 1853, when the old West End was the residence of some of the leading citizens. A few years later the Kent family moved to Belmont, Mass., and thence to Charlestown, where, in the old and spacious house, 25 Monument Square, the daughter still lives with her present husband, Truman Lee Quimby, to whom she was married November 21, 1901.
Her education was acquired in private schools, the one from which she was graduated having been Miss Catherine Willby's, afterward Miss Ellen Hubbard's, at 52 Bowdoin Street, Boston.
From her early childhood Alice Kent's love for reading and recitation was pronounced, and this taste was carefully nurtured during the last three years of her school life by her teacher in literature, the late Theodore Weld. His enthusiasm for the study of Shakespeare he was successful in transmitting to his pupils, being especially so in her case. She first appeared on the amateur stage in Boston in 1871, taking the role of Lady Viola Harleigh in "Dreams of Delusion," and showed unusual promise for a girl of eighteen. The part of Sir Bernard Harleigh was played by George Riddle.
Some time afterward Miss Sarah Starr (aunt of the renowned Starr King), a woman of marked individuality and culture, and possessed of discriminating literary taste, urged her young friend Alice Kent to interest herself in Robert Browning. The poet was then generally considered too obscure for comprehension, and was not widely read in this country. Miss Starr, who was an ardent admirer of Browning, little thought that this suggestion would, after her death, be so richly fruitful. The immediate result was the purchase of two second-hand volumes of Browning, which the girl read with lukewarm interest from time to time.
Alice Kent was married in Charlestown, in 1879, to William Duncan Robertson, M.D., and until his death, in 1883, resided with him at Stanstead, P.Q., returning then to the Charlestown home of her parents. The marriage was without issue.
In the years directly following, Mrs. Robertson carried on by herself a serious study of Browning, so that when the Boston Browning Society was formed in 1885 she was ready to take great interest in its work. At one of the early meetings her interpretation of "James Lee's Wife" was received with marked favor, being the forerunner of her later success in this line. Until 1889 Mrs. Robertson's work was in ever-increasing demand, and she read entirely for charity on numberless occasions.
In 1890 she made a departure in her work by giving a subscription course of readings from Shakespeare and Browning in Boston drawing-rooms. Her immediate success warranted her continuance, and she appeared before many women's clubs in and about Boston until 1897, when, on January 20, she gave her first public reading at the Christian Association Hall, Boston.
During Mrs. Robertson's school-days Mrs. Julia Ward Howe started a girls' club in the Back Bay district, Boston, to meet Saturday mornings to read and discuss literature, with the idea of fostering the literary passion which her youngest daughter and her friends had acquired at school. This Saturday Morning Club gave occasional theatricals for charity, and in a production of Tennyson's "Princess," in May, 1885, Mrs. Robertson for the first time essayed a man's part, playing the Prince with much skill. At another time the club produced Browning's "In a Balcony" in Charles Adams's little hall on Tremont Street, Mrs. Robertson taking the part of the Queen. This proved so successful that by urgent request the performance was repeated in New York, for charity, at the Berkeley Lyceum Theatre. Mrs. Robertson has played the Queen many times. Mr. Edward H. Clement, editor-in-chief of the Boston Evening Transcript, says of her in an editorial, April 3, 1897: "To judge only by her truly thrilling performance—at once graceful and tender and overwhelmingly powerful—of the Queen in Browning's Balcony, if Mrs. Robertson should go upon the professional stage and play the great tragic rôles, the Saturday Morning Club would gain permanent fame as the Alma Mater of the finest genius of tragedy since Ristori."
The next noteworthy performance of this club was the Sophocles "Antigone," with Mrs. Robertson as Creon the King. The play was
