Life
Born in 1886 at Hackney, Middlesex, Carlisle was the daughter of Henry Swift, a schoolmaster, and his wife Alexandra.[1]
In 1903, she was Audrey in a stage production of As You Like It and Maria in Twelfth Night. In March 1907, she played the lead in Gladys Buchanan Unger's play Mr. Sheridan at the Garrick Theatre.[2] In September 1908, at the Garrick Theatre, she played the title role in Hubert Henry Davies's play The Mollusc, with Joseph Coyne.[3] Also in 1908, she appeared in two Shakespeare productions by Herbert Beerbohm Tree: as Olivia in Twelfth Night and as Portia in The Merchant of Venice.[4]
In 1905, Carlisle had married Victor Herbert Miller at Maidenhead.[5] In 1907, she petitioned for divorce,[6] and in 1908 she married Joseph Coyne, her leading man in The Mollusc. This marriage also ended in divorce.[1]
On 17 May 1911, Carlisle played the part of Georgina Vesey in a royal command performance of the play Money at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane for King George V, and the Emperor and Empress of Germany.[7]
In 1912, in Marylebone, London, Carlisle married Albert Pfeiffer, a dental surgeon from the U.S.[8] from Bedford, Massachusetts. In 1914, Carlisle's mother died, and in 1915 she settled in the U.S., becoming a notable speaker for women's suffrage and for the Republican Party. By her third marriage, she had one daughter, Elizabeth Ann Pfeiffer.[1] During 1917 she starred in The Country Cousin on Broadway.[9]
In the Spring 1920, Carlisle directed the show Barnum Was Right for Harvard's Hasty Pudding Club.[10] At the Republican National Convention of 1920, she was the main speaker for Massachusetts and seconded the nomination of Calvin Coolidge as the party's candidate for vice president.[11][12] In 1926, Carlisle directed a production of The Tragedy of Nan at Chicago's Goodman Theatre that ran from 25 March to 10 April.[13]
In 1923, Carlisle's third marriage was dissolved, and she then married J. Elliot Jenkins, an American engineer. In 1934, Jenkins committed suicide.[1] As well as taking occasional film roles, Carlisle continued to work on Broadway, including playing the role of Lady Macduff in a production of Macbeth in October 1935.[14] She died of a heart attack on 21 April 1936 in the Hotel Astor in New York City,[15] and was buried in Shawsheen Cemetery.[12]
