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Life on the Stage: My Personal Experiences and Recollections

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Title: Life on the Stage: My Personal Experiences and Recollections

Author: Clara Morris


        
Release date: August 26, 2010 [eBook #33537]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/33537

Credits: Produced by Suzanne Shell and the Online Distributed
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIFE ON THE STAGE: MY PERSONAL EXPERIENCES AND RECOLLECTIONS ***




Produced by Suzanne Shell and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net





Life on the Stage


_Previous Books by Clara Morris_

The Silent Singer

Little Jim Crow

[Illustration: Frontispiece, photograph of Clara Morris]




CLARA MORRIS

Life on the Stage

My Personal Experiences and Recollections

New York

McClure, Phillips & Co.

MCMII

_Copyright, 1901, by_ S. S. MCCLURE CO.

_1901, by_ CLARA MORRIS HARRIOTT

FIFTH IMPRESSION




  In memory of a labor shared, I affectionately dedicate this
  book to my husband.





CONTENTS


CHAPTER FIRST--I am Born

CHAPTER SECOND--Beginning Early, I Learn Love, Fear, and Hunger--I Become
Acquainted with Letters, and Alas! I Lose One of my Two Illusions

CHAPTER THIRD--I Enter a New World--I Know a New Hunger and we Return to
Cleveland

CHAPTER FOURTH--I am Led into the Theatre--I Attend Rehearsals--I am Made
Acquainted with the Vagaries of Tights

CHAPTER FIFTH--I Receive my First Salary--I am Engaged for the Coming
Season

CHAPTER SIXTH--The Regular Season Opens--I have a Small Part to Play--I
am among Lovers of Shakespeare--I too Stand at his Knee and Fall under
the Charm

CHAPTER SEVENTH--I find I am in a "Family Theatre"--I Fare Forth away
from my Mother, and in Columbus I Shelter under the wing of Mrs. Bradshaw

CHAPTER EIGHTH--I Display my New Knowledge--I Return to Cleveland to Face
my First Theatrical Vacation, and I Know the very Tragedy of Littleness

CHAPTER NINTH--The Season Reopens--I meet the Yellow Breeches and become
a Utility Man--Mr. Murdock Escapes Fits and my "Luck" Proves to be Extra
Work

CHAPTER TENTH--With Mr. Dan. Setchell I Win Applause--A Strange
Experience comes to Me--I Know Both Fear and Ambition--The Actress is
Born at Last

CHAPTER ELEVENTH--My Promiscuous Reading wins me a Glass of Soda--The
Stage takes up my Education and Leads me through Many Pleasant Places

CHAPTER TWELFTH--The Peter Richings' Engagement brings me my First Taste
of Slander--Anent the Splendor of my Wardrobe, also my First Newspaper
Notice

CHAPTER THIRTEENTH--Mr. Roberts Refers to Me as "That Young Woman," to My
Great Joy--I Issue the "Clara Code"--I Receive my First Offer of Marriage

CHAPTER FOURTEENTH--Mr. Wilkes Booth comes to us, the whole Sex Loves
him--Mr. Ellsler Compares him to his Great Father--Our Grief and Horror
over the Awful Tragedy at Washington

CHAPTER FIFTEENTH--Mr. R. E. J. Miles--His two Horses and our Woful
Experience with the Substitute "Wild Horse of Tartary"

CHAPTER SIXTEENTH--I perform a Remarkable Feat, I Study _King Charles_ in
One Afternoon and Play Without a Rehearsal--Mrs. D. P. Bowers makes Odd
Revelation

CHAPTER SEVENTEENTH--Through Devotion to my Friend, I Jeopardize my
Reputation--I Own a Baby on Shares--Miss Western's Pathetic Speech

CHAPTER EIGHTEENTH--Mr. Charles W. Couldock--His Daughter Eliza and his
Many Peculiarities

CHAPTER NINETEENTH--I Come to a Turning-Point in my Dramatic Life--I play
my First Crying Part with Miss Sallie St. Clair

CHAPTER TWENTIETH--I have to pass through Bitter Humiliation to win High
Encomiums from Herr Bandmann; while Edwin Booth's Kindness Fills the
Theatre with Pink Clouds, and I Float Thereon

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIRST--I Digress, but I Return to the Columbus Engagement
of Mr. and Mrs. Charles Kean--Their Peculiarities and their Work

CHAPTER TWENTY-SECOND--I hear Mrs. Kean's Story of Wolsey's Robe--I laugh
at an Extravagantly Kind Prophecy

CHAPTER TWENTY-THIRD--Mr. E. L. Davenport, his Interference, his Lecture
on Stage Business, his Error of Memory or too Powerful Imagination--Why I
remain a Dramatic Old Slipper--Contemptuous Words arouse in me a Dogged
Determination to become a Leading Woman before leaving Cleveland

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOURTH--I recall the Popularity and too early Death of
Edwin Adams

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIFTH--I See an Actress Dethroned--I make myself a
Promise, for the World does Move

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIXTH--Mr. Lawrence Barrett the Brilliant and his Brother
Joseph the Unfortunate

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVENTH--I Play "Marie" to Oblige--Mr. Barrett's
Remarkable Call--Did I Receive a Message from the Dying or the Dead?

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHTH--I accept an Engagement with Mr. Macaulay for
Cincinnati as Leading Lady--My Adieus to Cleveland--Mr. Ellsler Presents
Me with a Watch

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINTH--My first Humiliating Experience in Cincinnati is
Followed by a Successful Appearance--I Make the Acquaintance of the
Enthusiastic Navoni

CHAPTER THIRTIETH--New York City is Suggested to Me by Mr. Worthington
and Mr. Johnson--Mr. Ellsler's Mild Assistance--I Journey to New York,
and Return to Cincinnati with Signed Contract from Mr. Daly

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIRST--John Cockerill and our Eccentric Engagement--I Play
a Summer Season at Halifax--Then to New York, and to House-Keeping at
Last

CHAPTER THIRTY-SECOND--I Recall Mr. John E. Owens, and How He "Settled my
Hash"

CHAPTER THIRTY-THIRD--From the "Wild West" I Enter the Eastern "Parlor of
Home Comedy"--I Make my First Appearance in "Man and Wife"

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOURTH--I Rehearse Endlessly--I Grow Sick with Dread--I
Meet with Success in _Anne Sylvester_

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIFTH--I Am Accepted by the Company--I am Warned against
Mr. Fisk--I Have an Odd Encounter with Mr. Gould

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIXTH--A Search for Tears--I Am Punished in "Saratoga"
for the Success of "Man and Wife"--I Win Mr. Daly's Confidence--We Become
Friends

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVENTH--A Study of Stage-Management--I Am Tricked into
Signing a New Contract

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHTH--I Go to the Sea-shore--The Search for a "Scar"--I
Make a Study of Insanity, and Meet with Success in "L'Article 47"

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINTH--I Am too Dull to Understand a Premonition--By Mr.
Daly's Side I See the Destruction of the Fifth Avenue Theatre by Fire

CHAPTER FORTIETH--We Become "Barn-stormers," and Return to Open the New
Theatre--Our Astonishing Misunderstanding of "Alixe," which Proves a
Great Triumph

CHAPTER FORTY-FIRST--Trouble about Obnoxious Lines in "Madeline
Morel"--Mr. Daly's Manipulation of Father X: In Spite of our Anxiety the
Audience accepts the Situation and the Play--Mr. Daly gives me the
smallest Dog in New York

CHAPTER FORTY-SECOND--I am Engaged to Star part of the Season--Mr. Daly
Breaks his Contract--I Leave him and under Threat of Injunction--I meet
Mr. Palmer and make Contract and appear at the Union Square in the
"Wicked World"

CHAPTER FORTY-THIRD--We Give a Charity Performance of "Camille," and Are
Struck with Amazement at our Success--Mr. Palmer Takes the Cue and
Produces "Camille" for Me at the Union Square

CHAPTER FORTY-FOURTH--"Miss Multon" Put in Rehearsal--Our Squabble over
the Manner of her Death--Great Success of the Play--Mr. Palmer's Pride in
it--My _Au Revoir_




LIFE ON THE STAGE




CHAPTER FIRST

  I am Born.


If this simple tale is to be told at all, it may as well begin at the
beginning and in the good old-fashioned and best of all ways--thus: Once
upon a time in the Canadian city of Toronto, on the 17th of March, the
sun rose bright and clear--which was a most surprising thing for the sun
to do on St. Patrick's Day, but while the people were yet wondering over
it the sunlight disappeared, clouds of dull gray spread themselves evenly
over the sky, and then the snow fell--fell fast and furious, quickly
whitening the streets and house-tops, softly lining every hollow, and was
piling little cushions on top of all the hitching-posts, when the flakes
grew larger, wetter, farther apart, and after a little hesitation turned
to rain--a sort of walk-trot-gallop rain, which wound up with one vivid
flash of lightning and a clap of thunder that fairly shook the city.

Now the Irish, being a brave people and semi-amphibious, pay no heed to
wet weather. Usually all the Hibernians residing in a city divide
themselves into two bodies on St. Patrick's Day, the ones who parade and
the ones who follow the parade; but on this occasion they divided
themselves into three bodies--the men who paraded, the men and women who
followed the parade, and the Orangemen who made things pleasant for both
parties.

As the out-of-time, out-of-tune band turned into a quiet cross-street to
lead its following green-bannered host to a broader one, the first brick
was thrown--probably by a woman, as it hit no one, but metaphorically it
knocked the chip off of the shoulder of every child of Erin. Down fell
the banners, up went the fists! Orange and Green were at each other tooth
and nail! Hats from prehistoric ages side by side with modern beavers
scarcely fifty years old received the hurled brick-bat and went down
together!

The band reached the broad avenue alone, and looked back to see the short
street a-sway with struggling men, while women holding their bedraggled
petticoats up, their bonnets hanging down their backs by green ribbon
ties, hovered about the edges of the crowd, making predatory dashes now
and then to scratch a face or rescue some precious hat from the melee,
meanwhile inciting the men to madness by their fierce cries--and in a
quiet house, in the very midst of this riot--just before the constabulary
charged the crowd--I was born. I don't know, of course, whether I was
really intended from the first for that house, or whether the stork
became so frightened at the row in the street that he just dropped me
from sheer inability to carry me any farther--anyway, I came to a house
where trouble and poverty had preceded me, and, worse than both these put
together--treachery.

Still, I accepted the situation with indifference. That the cupboard
barely escaped absolute emptiness gave me no anxiety, as I had no teeth
anyway. As a gentleman with a medicine-case in his hand was leaving the
house he paused a moment for the slavey to finish washing away a pool of
blood from the bottom step--and then there came that startling clap of
thunder. Brand new as I was to this world and its ways, I entered my
protest at once with such force and evident wrath that the doctor
down-stairs exclaimed: "Our young lady has temper as well as a good pair
of lungs!" and went on his way laughing.

And so on that St. Patrick's Day of sunshine, snow, and rain, of riot and
bloodshed, in trouble and poverty--I was born.




CHAPTER SECOND

  Beginning Early, I Learn Love, Fear, and Hunger--I Become Acquainted
  with Letters, and Alas! I Lose One of my Two Illusions.


Of the Days of St. Patrick that followed, not one found me in the city of
my birth--indeed, six months completed my period of existence in the
Dominion, and I have known it no more.

Some may think it strange that I mention these early years at all, but
the reason for such mention will appear later on. Looking back at them,
they seem to divide themselves into groups of four years each. During the
first four, my time was principally spent in growing and learning to keep
out of people's way. I acquired some other knowledge, too, and little
child as I was, I knew fear long before I knew the thing that frightened
me. I knew that love for my mother which was to become the passion of my
life, and I also knew hunger. But the fear was harder to endure than the
hunger--it was so vague, yet so all-encompassing.

We had to flit so often--suddenly, noiselessly. Often I was gently roused
from my sleep at night and hastily dressed--sometimes simply wrapped up
without being dressed, and carried through the dark to some other place
of refuge, from--what? When I went out into the main business streets I
had a tormenting barege veil over my face that would not let me see half
the pretty things in the shop windows, and I was quick to notice that no
other little girl had a veil on. Next I remarked that if a strange lady
spoke to me my mother seemed pleased--but if a man noticed me she was not
pleased, and once when a big man took me by the hand and led me to a
candy store for some candy she was as white as could be and so angry she
frightened me, and she promised me a severe punishment if I ever, ever
went one step with a strange man again. And so my fear began to take the
form of a man, of a big, smiling man--for my mother always asked, when I
reported that a stranger had spoken to me, if he was big and smiling.

I had known the sensation of hunger long before I knew the word that
expressed it, and I often pressed my hands over my small empty stomach,
and cried and pulled at my mother's dress skirt. If there was anything at
all to give I received it, but sometimes there was absolutely nothing but
a drink of water to offer, which checked the gnawing for a moment or two,
and at those times there was a tightening of my mother's trembling lips,
and a straight up and down wrinkle between her brows, that I grew to
know, and when I saw that look on her face I could not ask for anything
more than "a dwink, please."

As an illustration of her almost savage pride and honesty: I one day saw
a woman in front of the house buying some potatoes. I knew that potatoes
cooked were very comforting to empty stomachs. One or two of them fell to
the street during the measuring and I picked one up, and, fairly wild
with delight, I scrambled up the stairs with it. But my mother was angry
through and through.

"Who gave it to you?" she demanded.

I explained with a trembling voice: "I des' founded it on the very
ground--and I'se so hungry!"

But hungry or not hungry, I had to take the potato back: "Nothing in the
world could be taken without asking--that was stealing--and she was the
only person in the world I had a right to ask anything of!"

It was a bitter lesson, and was rendered more so by the fact that when I
carried the tear-bathed potato back to the street and laid it down,
neither the woman who bought nor the man who sold was in sight--and, dear
Heaven! I could almost have eaten it raw.

But I was learning obedience and self-respect; more than that, I was
already acquiring one of the necessary qualities for an actress--the
power of close observation.

The next four years (the second group) were the hardest to endure of them
all. True, I now had sufficient food and warmth, since my mother had
given up sewing for shops--which kept us nearly always hungry--and had
found other occupations. But the great object of both our lives was to be
together, and there are few people who are willing to employ a woman who
has with her a child. And if her services are accepted, even at a reduced
salary, it is necessary for that child to be as far as possible neither
seen nor heard. Therefore until I was old enough to be admitted into a
public school I never knew another child--I never played with any living
creature save a remarkable cat, that seemed to have claws all over her,
and in my fixed determination to trace her purr and find out where it
came from, she buried those claws to the very last one in my fat,
investigating little hands.

Meantime my "fear" had assumed the shape and substance of a man, a man
who bore a name that should have been loved and honored above all others,
for this "bogey" of my baby days--this nightmare and dread--was my own
father. When my mother had discovered his treachery--which had not
hesitated to boldly face the very altar--she took her child and fled from
him, assuming her mother's maiden name as a disguise. But go where she
would, he followed and made scenes. Finally, understanding that she was
not to be won back by sophistries, he offered to leave her in peace if
she would give the child to him. And when that offer was indignantly
rejected, he pleasantly informed her that he would make life a curse to
her until she gave me up, and that by fair means or by foul he would
surely obtain possession of me. Once he did kidnap me, but my mother had
found friends by that time, and their pursuit was so swift and unexpected
that he had to abandon me.

So, he who should have been the defender and support of my mother--whose
arms should have been our shelter from the world--the big, smiling
French-Canadian father--became instead our terror and our dread.
Therefore when my mother served in varying capacities in other people's
homes, and I had to efface myself as nearly as possible, I dared not even
go out to walk a little, so great was my mother's fear.

It seems odd, but in spite of my far-reaching memory, I cannot remember
when I learned to read. I can recall but one tiny incident relating to
the subject of learning. I stood upon a chair and while my hair was
brushed and braided I spelled my words, and I had my ears boxed--a custom
considered criminal in these better days--because, having successfully
spelled "elephant," I came to grief over "mouse," as, according to my
judgment, m-o-w-s filled all the requirements of the case. I remember,
too, that the punishment made me afraid to ask what "elephant" meant; but
I received the impression that it was some sort of a public building.

However, when I was six years old I joyfully betook myself to a primary
school, from which I was sent home with a note, saying that "in that
department they did not go beyond the 'primer,' and as this little girl
reads quite well from a 'reader,' she must have been taught well at
home." We were a proud yet disappointed pair, my mother and I, that day.

An odd little incident occurred about that time. One of our hurried
flights had ended at a boarding house, and my extreme quietude--unnatural
in a child of health and intelligence--attracted the attention of a
certain boarder, who was an actress. She was very popular with the
public, and both she and her husband were well liked by the people about
them. She took a fancy to me, and informing herself that my mother was
poor and alone, she offered to adopt me. She stated her position, her
income, and her intention of educating me thoroughly. She thought a
convent school would be desirable--from ten, say to seventeen.

Perhaps my mother was tempted--she was a fanatic on the question of
learning--but, oh! what a big _but_ came in just then: "but when I should
have, by God's will, reached the age of seventeen, she (the actress)
would place me upon the stage."

"Gracious Heaven! her child on the stage!" my mother was stricken with
horror! She scarcely had strength to make her shocked refusal plain
enough; and when her employer ventured to remonstrate with her, pointing
out the great advantage to me, she made answer: "It would be better for
her to starve trying to lead a clean and honorable life, than to be
exposed to such publicity and such awful temptations!"

Poor mother! the theatre was to her imagination but a beautiful vestibule
leading to a place of wickedness and general wrong-doing!

During those endless months, when I had each day to sit for hours and
hours in one particular chair in a corner, well out of the way--sit so
long that often when I was lifted down I could not stand at all, my limbs
being numbed to absolute helplessness, I had two great days to dream of,
to look forward to--Christmas and that wonderful 17th of March, when
because it was my birthday all those nice gentlemen, with the funny hats
and green collars, walked out behind the band. And I felt particularly
well disposed toward those most amusing gentlemen who wore, according to
my theory at least, their little girls' aprons tied about their big
waists.

I did not like so well the attendant crowd, but then I could not be
selfish enough to keep people from looking at "my procession" and
enjoying the music that made the blood dance in my own veins, even as my
feet danced on the chill pavement.

I always received an orange on that day from my mother, and almost always
a book, so it was a great event in my life, and I used to get down my
little hat-box and fix the laces in my best shoes days ahead of time that
I might be ready to stand on some steps where I could bow and smile to
the nice gentlemen who walked out in my honor. Heaven only knows how I
got the idea that the procession was meant for me, but it made me very
happy, and my heart was big with love and gratitude for those people who
took so much trouble for me.

I had but two illusions in the world--Santa Claus and "my
procession"--but, alas! on my eighth birthday, when in an outburst of
innocent triumph and joy I cried to a grown-up: "Ain't they good--those
funny gentlemen--to come and march and play music for my birthday?" I was
answered with the assurance that I "was a fool--that no one knew or cared
a copper about me--that it was a Saint, a dead and gone man, they marched
for!"

All the dance went out of my feet, heavy tears fell fast and stood round
and clear on the woolly surface of my cloak, and bending my head low to
hide my disappointment, I went slowly home, where the chair seemed
harder, the hours longer, and life more bare because I had lost the
illusion that had brightened and glorified it.

At the present time, here in my home, there is seated in an arm-chair, a
venerable doll. She is a hideous specimen of the beautiful doll of the
early "fifties." She sits with her soles well turned up, facing you, her
arms hanging from her shoulders in that idiotically helpless
"I-give-it-up" fashion peculiar to dolls. With bulging scarlet cheeks,
button-hole mouth and flat, blue staring eyes she faces Time and
unwinkingly looks him down. To anyone else she is stupidity personified,
but to me she speaks, for she came to me on my fourth Christmas, and she
is as gifted as she is ugly. Only last birthday--as I straightened out
her old, old dress skirt--she asked me if I remembered how I cried, with
my face in her lap, over that first loss of an illusion--and I told her
quite truly that I remembered well!




CHAPTER THIRD

  I Enter a New World--I Know a New Hunger and we Return to Cleveland.


The experiences of the first two of my third group of years have
influenced my entire life. Still flying from my seemingly ubiquitous
father, my mother after a desperate struggle gained enough money to pay
for our journey to what was then called the "far West"--namely, the
southwestern part of Illinois. Child-fashion, I was delighted at the
prospect of a change, and happy over the belief that I was going to some
place where I could be free to go and come like other children, without
dreading the appearance of a big, smiling man from any deep doorway or
from around the next corner. To tell the truth, that persistent,
indestructible smile always seemed an insult added to the injury of his
malicious and revengeful conduct.

Then, too, I experienced my first delicious thrill of imaginary terror.
In a torn and abandoned old geography I had seen a picture labelled
"Prairie." The grass was as high as a man's shoulders, and stealthily
emerging from it was a sort of compound animal, neither tiger nor
leopard, but with points of resemblance to both. And here every day I was
listening to the grown-ups talking of "prairie lands," and how far we
might have to drive across the prairie after leaving the train; and I
made up my mind that I would hold our umbrella all the time, and when the
uncertain beast came out I'd try to stick his eyes with it, and under
cover of the confusion we would undoubtedly escape.

That being settled, I could turn all my attention to preparations for
the long journey. Dear me, I remember just where each big red rose came
on the carpet-bag, and how sorry I was that the tiny brass lock came
right in the side of one. It was a large bag and held a great deal, but
was so arranged that whatever you wanted was always found at the
bottom--whether it was the tooth-brush or a night-gown or a pair of
rubbers. It had a sort of dividing wall of linen in its middle, and while
one side held clothing, the other side was the commissary department. No
buffet-cars then, travellers ran their own buffets, and though the things
did not come into actual contact, there was not an article, big or
little, in that bag that did not smell of pickles. And once when my
mother had hastily attended to my needs in the miserable toilet-room of
the car (no sleeper--just a sit-up-all-night affair), my clean stockings,
white apron and little handkerchief all exhaled vinegar so strongly that
I wrinkled up my nose, exclaiming: "I smell jes' like a pickled little
girl--don't I, ma'ma?" And then, when weary and worn and dusty, we left
the cars and had to drive some thirty miles, in a carriage of uncertain
class, over the open prairie--then smooth and bright and green--I wearily
remarked, after a time, that it was a "pretty big lawn, but where was the
prairie?" for true to my plan I had secured the umbrella, and being told
that I was crossing the prairie then, I was a bitterly disappointed young
person. Oh, how I longed to give way to one of those passionate outbursts
we so often see children indulge in! Oh, how I wanted to hurl aside the
umbrella I had begged for, to fling my weary self down on the floor and
cry, and cry! But I dared not--never in my whole life had I ventured on
such an exhibition of temper or feeling--so I winked fast and held very
still and swallowed hard at the disappointment, which was but the first
of such a number of very bitter pills that I was yet to swallow.

But, thank God! if I was easily cast down, I was as easily cheered; and
the prairie left behind, the sight of the first orchard we passed, with
the soft perfumed snow of the blossoms floating through the rosy sunset
light, raised my spirits to an ecstasy of joy; and when our journey
ended, at the rough farm-house, with my arm around the surly looking
watch-dog, I stood and heard for the first time the mournful cry of the
whippoorwill out in the star-pierced dark of the early May night, I
thrilled with the unspoken consciousness that this was a new world that I
was entering--a lovely, _lovely_ world, that the grown-ups called the
"country"!

For the two years I knew it the charm of that backwood life never palled.
I had never seen the country before, and I found it a place of beauty and
many marvels. I did not miss the fine city shops, for I never had had
money to spend in them. I did not miss the people, for they had been
nothing to me. And here no day that dawned failed to bring me some new
experience. With what awed wonderment I faced the mystery of the
springing grain. I saw the seed, hard and dry, fall into the furrowed
earth and, a few days later, with gentle strength, tiny pale green spears
come pricking through the brown. I learned not to look under the
hickory-trees for the oak acorns that I adored. I was soon able to tell
the rapidly forming furry green peaches from the smooth young apples, and
I literally fell down upon my knees and worshipped before lambs, calves,
and colts.

In this new, strange life everyone worked, but they worked for
themselves--to use a country expression, no one "hired out." I was a very
little girl. I could not spin as could my mother, who had passed her
childhood in backwood life. Of course I could not weave, but I was taught
to knit my own stockings--such humpy, lumpy knitting! But I was very
proud of the accomplishment, even though my mother did have to "turn the
heel." Then, too, I with other children at planting-time dropped corn in
the sun-warmed furrows, while a man followed behind with a hoe covering
it up; and when it had sprouted and was a tempting morsel for certain
black robbers of the field, I made a very active and energetic young
scare-crow.

Here, too, I became acquainted with children. They were all older than I
was, a hearty, healthy, wisely-ignorant lot. They knew so much about
farming and so little about anything else. Not one of them could tell a
story out of the Bible, and as for the "Pilgrim's Progress," they had
never heard tell of it; while Bunyan only meant to them an enlarged
toe-joint--not a great author.

The lack of reading matter was the one blemish on my country life. The
library, composed of the Bible and the almanac, was not satisfying to my
inquiring mind. One paper was taken in by the head of the family--it was
a weekly, in every possible sense--but I came to watch eagerly for it,
and it filled the family with amazement to see me sit down on the step
and gravely wade through its dreary columns--happy if I could catch hold
of some idea--some bit of news--some scrap of story; and my farmer host
one day at his noon smoke removed his corn-cob pipe from his lips long
enough to remark of me: "Dogorne my skin! if that young 'un ain't awake
and enj'ien hersel'. Now I allers go ter sleep over that paper mysel'!"
So should I--now--I presume.

These children being for-true, real children had no idea of showing
courtesy or politeness to a stranger, but they had a very natural
yearning to get fun out of that stranger if they could, and so they
blithely led me forth to a pasture shortly after our arrival at the farm,
and catching a horse they hoisted me up on to its bare, slippery back. I
have learned a good bit about horses since then--have hired, borrowed,
and bought them--have been to circuses and horse shows, but never since
have I seen a horse of such appalling aspect. His eyes were the size of
soup-plates, large clouds of smoke came from his nostrils. He had a
glass-enamelled surface, and if he was one half as tall as he felt, some
museum manager missed a fortune. Then the young fiends, leaving me on my
slippery perch, high up near the sky, drew afar off and stood over
against the fence and gave me plenty of room--to fall off. But when I
suddenly felt the world heave up beneath me, I uttered a wild
shriek--clenched my hands in the animal's back hair, and, madly flinging
propriety to any point of the compass that happened to be behind me, I
cast one pantalet over the enamelled back, and thus astride, safely
crossed the pasture--and lo! it was not I who fell, but their faces
instead. When they came to take me down, somehow the animal seemed
shrunken and I hesitated about leaving it, whereupon the biggest boy said
I had "pluck" (I had been frightened nearly to death, but I always could
be silent at the proper moment; I was silent then), and he would teach me
to ride sideways, for my mother would surely punish me if I sat astride
like that; and in a few weeks, thanks to him, I was the one who was
oftenest trusted to take the horses to water at noon, riding sideways and
always bare-back, mounted on one horse and leading a second to the creek,
until all had had their drink. Which habit of riding--from balance--has
made me quite independent of stirrups on various occasions since those
far-away days.

In the late autumn, these same children taught me where and when and how
to find such treasures of the woods as hickory-nuts, chestnuts (rare
there), butternuts, and pecan-nuts, while the thickets furnished
hazel-nuts and the frost brought sweetness to the persimmon, and
consequently pleasure to our palates, but never could I acquire a taste
for the "paw-paw," that inane custard-like fruit, often called the
American banana.

I helped obtain the roots and barks and nut-shells from which the
grown-ups made their dyes. I learned to use a bow and arrow; and on rainy
days, having nothing new to read, I learned by heart the best chapters of
my own birthday books, and often repeated them to the other children when
we cuddled in the hayloft, above the horses.

One day I became too realistic, and in my "flight from my step-mother's
home" I fell through the hole where the hay was tossed down to old
Jerry's manger. He was a serious-minded and kindly old horse, and did
nothing worse than snort a little over the change in his diet, from hay
to small girl. My severe bruises would have been borne with fortitude,
but when I arose--behold a wretched wandering hen had been in the manger
before me, and if one judged from the state of my clothing, the egg she
had left behind must have been the size of a melon at least! If that
seems an exaggeration, just break an egg in your pocket, if you don't
care to sit down on one, and see how far it will spread. Then, indeed, I
lifted my voice and wept!

Yes, those were two precious years, in which I learned to love
passionately the beauty of the world! The tender, mystic charm of dawn,
the pomp and splendor of the setting of the sun! Finding in the tiny
perfection of the velvety moss the minute repetition of the form and
branching beauty of the stately tree at whose root it grew! Seeing all
the beauty of the blue sky and its sailing clouds encompassed by a
quivering drop of dew upon a mullein leaf I dimly felt some faint
comprehension of the divine satisfaction when the Creator pronounced the
work of His hands, "Good!"

From the first my mother had been greatly distressed by the absence of
any school to which I might go, and also by her inability to earn money.
She had been wise enough not to leave Cleveland without sufficient means
to bring us back again--which proved most fortunate. For when quite
suddenly we heard of the published death of my father, we immediately
returned and she obtained employment, while I was sent to the public
school. But, oh, what a poor, meagre course of study I entered on.
Reading, writing, spelling, arithmetic, and geography--that was all! Only
one class in the grammar-school studied history. However, improvements
were being discussed, and I remember that three weeks before my final
withdrawal from school my mother had to buy me a book on physiology,
which was to be taught to the children, who had not even a bowing
acquaintance with grammar. But I hungered and thirsted for knowledge--I
craved it--longed for it. During the weary years of repression I had
fallen back upon imagination for amusement and comfort, and when I was
ten my "thinks," as I then called my waking dreams, almost surely took
one of these two forms. Since I had abandoned "thinks" about fairies
coming to grant my wishes, I always walked out (in my best hat), and
saved either an old lady or an old gentleman--sometimes one, sometimes
the other--from some imminent peril--a sort of impressionist peril--vague
but very terrible! and the rescued one was always tremblingly grateful
and offered to reward me, and I always sternly refused to be rewarded,
but unbent sufficiently to see the saved one safely to his or her
splendid home. There I revelled in furniture, pictures, musical
instruments and an assortment of beautiful dogs. On leaving this palatial
residence I consented to give my address, and next day the "saved" called
on my mother and after some conversation it was settled that I was to go
to the convent-school for four years, where I knew the education was
generous and thorough, and that languages, music, and painting were all
taught. As these "thinks" took place at night after the ill-smelling
extinguishment of the candle, I generally fell asleep before, in white
robe and a crown of flowers, I gathered up all the prizes and diplomas
and things I had earned.

When my mother in the performance of her duties had to accept orders, she
received them calmly and as a matter of course--whatever she may have
felt in her heart--but I loved and reverenced her so! To me she was the
one woman of the world; and when I saw her taking orders from another I
flinched and shrank as I would have done beneath the sharp lash of a
whip, and then for nights afterward (so soon as I had released my nose,
tightly pinched to keep out the smell of candle-smoke), I settled down,
with my mother's hand tight clasped in mine, to my other favorite
"thinks" wherein I did some truly remarkable embroidery, of such
precision of stitch, such perfection of coloring and shading, that when
I offered it for sale I was much embarrassed by the numbers of would-be
buyers. However, an old lady finally won me away from the store (that old
lady was bound to appear in all my "thinks"), and I had to be very firm
with her to keep her from over-paying me for the work of my hands.

Then, as I had graciously promised the store-keeper any over-plus of
embroidery not needed by the generous old person, I felt my income
secure, and hastened to rent two rooms and furnish them, ready to take my
astonished mother there--where she could do the ordering herself.

I hung curtains, laid carpets, put dishes in the cupboard, gave one
window to my mother and kept one for myself and my very exceptional
embroidery; and, though I laugh now, I had then many an hour of genuine
happiness, furnishing this imaginary home and refuge for the mother I
loved!




CHAPTER FOURTH

  I am Led into the Theatre--I Attend Rehearsals--I am Made Acquainted
  with the Vagaries of Tights.


I was approaching my thirteenth birthday when it came about that a
certain ancient boarding-house keeper--far gone in years--required
someone to assist her, someone she could trust entirely and leave in
charge for a month at a time; and I, not being able to read the future,
was greatly chagrined because my mother accepted the offered situation. I
was always happiest when she found occupation in a house where there was
a library, for people were generally kind to me in that respect and gave
me the freedom of their shelves, seeing that I was reverently careful of
all books; but in a boarding-house there would be no library, and my
heart sank as we entered the gloomy old building.

No, there were no books, but among the boarders there were two or three
actors and two actresses--a mother and a daughter. The mother played the
"first old women"; the daughter, only a year or two older than I was,
played, I was told, "walking-ladies," though what that meant I could not
imagine.

The daughter (Blanche) liked me, while I looked upon her with awe, and
wondered why she even noticed me. She was very wilful, she would not
study anything on earth save her short parts. She had never read a book
in her life. When I was home from school I told her stories by the hour,
and she would say: "You ought to be in a theatre--you could act!"

And then I would be dumb for a long time, because I thought she was
making fun of me. One day I was chewing some gum she gave me--I was not
chewing it very nicely, either--and my mother boxed my ears, and Blanche
said: "You ought to be in a theatre--you could chew all the gum you liked
there!"

And just then my mother was so cruelly overworked, and the spring came in
with furious heat, and I felt so big and yet so helpless--a great girl of
thirteen to be worked for by another--and the humiliation seemed more
than I could bear, and I locked myself in our dreary cupboard of a room,
and flung myself upon my knees, and in a passion of tears tried to make a
bargain with my God! I meant no irreverence--I was intensely religious. I
did not see the enormity of the act--I only knew that I suffered, and
that God could help me--so I asked His help! But, instead of stopping
there, I cried out to Him this promise: "Dear God! just pity me and show
me what to do! Please--please help me to help my mother--and if you will,
I'll never say 'No!' to any woman who comes to me all my life long!"

My error in trying to barter with my Maker must have been forgiven, for
my prayer was answered within a week, while there are many women
scattered through the land who know that I have tried faithfully to keep
my part of that bargain, and no woman who has sought my aid has ever been
answered with a "No!"

One day Blanche greeted me with the news that extra ballet-girls were
wanted, and told me that I must go at once and get engaged.

"But," I said, "maybe they won't take me!"

"Well," answered she, "I've coaxed your mother, and my mother says she'll
look out for you--so at any rate go and see. I'll take you to-morrow."

And so dimly, vaguely, I seemed to see a way opening out before me, and
again behind the locked door I knelt and said: "Dear God! dear God!" and
got no further, because grief has many words and joy has so few.

The school term had closed on Friday, and on Saturday morning, with my
heart beating almost to suffocation, I started out to walk to the theatre
with Blanche, who had promised to ask Mr. Ellsler (the manager) to take
me on in the ballet. When we reached the sidewalk we saw the sky
threatened rain and Blanche sent me back for an umbrella. I had none of
my own, so I borrowed one from Mrs. Miller (our landlady), and at sight
of it my companion broke into laughter. It was a dreadful affair--with a
knobby, unkind handle, a slovenly and corpulent body, and a
circumference, when open, that suggested the idea that it had been built
to shelter not only the landlady, but those wise ones of the boarders who
had paid up before the winds rose and the rain fell. Then we proceeded to
the old Academy of Music on Bank Street, and entering, went upstairs, and
just as we reached the top step a small dark man hurried across the hall
and Blanche called quickly: "Oh, Mr. Ellsler--Mr. Ellsler! wait a moment,
please--I want to speak to you!"

I could not know that his almost repellent sternness of face concealed a
kindness of heart that approached weakness, so when he turned a frowning,
impatient face toward us, hope left me utterly, and for a moment I seemed
to stand in a great darkness. I think I can do no better than to give Mr.
Ellsler's own account of that, our first meeting, as he has given it
often since. He says: "I was much put out by a business matter and was
hastily crossing the corridor when Blanche called me, and I saw she had
another girl in tow; a girl whose appearance in a theatre was so droll I
must have laughed, had I not been more than a little cross. Her dress was
quite short--she wore a pale-blue apron buttoned up the back, long braids
tied at the ends with ribbon, and a brown straw hat, while she clutched
desperately at the handle of the biggest umbrella I ever saw. Her eyes
were distinctly blue and were plainly big with fright. Blanche gave her
name and said she wanted to go on in the ballet, and I instantly answered
she would not do, she was too small--I wanted women, not children, and
started to return to my office. Blanche was voluble, but the girl herself
never spoke a single word. I glanced toward her and stopped. The hands
that clutched the umbrella trembled--she raised her eyes and looked at
me. I had noticed their blueness a moment before--now they were almost
black, so swiftly had the pupils dilated, and slowly the tears rose in
them. All the father in me shrank under the child's bitter
disappointment; all the actor in me thrilled at the power of expression
in the girl's face, and I hastily added: 'Oh, well! You may come back in
a day or two, and if anyone appears meantime who is short enough to march
with you I'll take you on,' and after I got to my office I remembered the
girl had not spoken a single word, but had won an engagement--for I knew
I should engage her--with a pair of tear-filled eyes."

The following Tuesday, under the protection of the ever-faithful Blanche,
I again presented myself and was engaged for the term of two weeks, to go
on the stage in the marches and dances of a play called "The Seven
Sisters," for which service I was to receive three dollars a week, or
fifty cents a night, as there were no matinees then, and so I entered,
with wide-astonished eyes, into that dim, dusty, chaotic place known as
"behind the scenes"--a strange place, where nothing _is_ and everything
_may be_.

In the daytime I found the stage a thing dead--at night, with the blazing
of the gas, it lived! for light is its life, music is its soul, and the
play its brain.

Silently and cautiously I walked about, gazing curiously at the "scenes,"
so fine on one side, so bare and cheap on the other; at the tarlatan
"glass windows"; at the green "calico sea," lying flat and waveless on
the floor. Everything there pretended to be something else, and at last I
said solemnly to Blanche: "Is everything only make-believe in a theatre?"

And she turned her gum to the other side and answered: "Yes, everything's
make-believe--except salary day!"

Then came the rehearsal--everything was military just then--and there was
a Zouave drill to learn, as well as a couple of dances. The women and
girls who had been engaged were not the very nicest people in the world,
though they were the best to be found at such short notice; and Mrs.
Bradshaw told me not to stand about with them, but to come to her as soon
as my share in the work was over. "But," said this wise woman, "don't
fail in politeness to them; for nothing can hold a person so far off as
extreme politeness."

To me the manual of arms was mere child's play, and the drill a veritable
delight. The second day I scribbled down the movements in the order that
they had been made, and learned them by heart, with the result that on
the third day I sat aside chewing gum, while the stage-manager raved over
the rest. Then the star--Mr. McDonough--came along and furiously demanded
to know why I was not drilling. "The gentleman sent me out of the ranks,
sir," I answered, "because he said I knew the manual and drill!"

"Oh, indeed! well, there's not one of you that knows it--and you never
will know it! You're a set of numbskulls! Here!" he cried, catching up a
rifle, "take hold of this--get up here--and let's see how much you know!
Now, then, shoulder arms!"

And standing alone--burning with blushes, blinded with tears of
mortification--I was put through my paces with a vengeance; but I really
knew the manual as thoroughly as I knew the drill, and when it was over
Mr. McDonough took the rifle from me, and exclaimed: "Well, saucer-eyes,
you do know it! I'm d----d if you don't! and I'm sorry, little girl, I
spoke so roughly to you!"

He held out his fat white hand to me, and as I took it he added: "You
ought to stay in this business--you've got your head with you!"

It was a small matter, of course, but there was a faint hint of triumph
in it, and the savor was very pleasant to me.

Naturally, with a salary of but three dollars a week, we turned to the
management for our costumes. I wonder what the _danseuse_ of to-day
would think of the costume worn by her sister of the "sixties"? Now her
few gauzy limb-betraying skirts reach but to the middle of the thigh; her
scrap of a bodice, cut far below the shoulder blades at the back, being
absolutely sleeveless, is precariously held in place by a string or two
of beads. To be sure, she is apt to wear a collar of blazing diamonds,
instead of the simple band of black velvet that used to be sufficient
ornament for the peerless Bonfanti and the beautiful and modest Betty
Rigl, who in their graceful ignorance of "splits" and athletic "tours de
force," managed in their voluminous and knee-long skirts to whirl, to
glide, to poise and float, to show, in fact, the poetry of motion.

But we, this untrained ballet, were not Bonfantis nor Morlachis, and we
wore our dancing clothes with a difference. In one dance we were supposed
to be fairies. We wore flesh-colored slippers and tights. It took one
full week of our two weeks' engagement to learn how to secure these
treacherous articles, so that they would remain smooth and not wrinkle
down somewhere or twist about. One girl never learned, and to the last
added to the happiness of the public by ambling about on a pair of legs
that looked as if they had been done up in curl papers the night before.

We each had seven white tarlatan skirts, as full as they could be
gathered--long enough to come a little below the knee. Our waists were
also flesh-colored, and were cut fully two or three inches below our
collar-bones, so you see there was plenty of cloth at our backs to hook
our very immature wings to. We had wreaths of white roses on our
heads--Blanche, who was very frank, said they looked like wreaths of
turnips--and garlands of white roses to wave in the dance. I remember the
girl with the curled legs was loathed by all because she lassoed everyone
she came near with her garland--so you see we were very decorous fairies,
whether we were decorative or not.

Of course we were rather substantial, and our wings did seem too thin and
small to sustain us satisfactorily. One girl took hers off in the
dressing-room and remarked contemptuously that "they couldn't lift her
cat even!"

But another, who was dictatorial and also of a suspicious nature,
answered savagely: "You don't know nothing about wings--and you haven't
got no cat, nohow, and you know it--so shut up!" and the conversation
closed.

In our second costume we were frankly human. We still wore dancing
skirts, but we were in colors, and we had, of course, shed our
wings--nasty, scratchy things they were, I remember. Then for the drill
and march we wore the regular Fire Zouave uniform.

It was all great fun for me--you remember I was not stage-struck.
Dramatically speaking, I was not yet born--I had neither ambition nor
fear--I was simply happy because I was going to earn that, to me, great
sum of money, and was going to give it to my mother, and planned only
what I should say to her, and had no thought at all of the theatre or
anything or any person in it.

The donning of fleshings for the first time is an occasion of anxiety to
anyone, man or woman. I, however, approached the subject of tights with
an open mind, and Blanche freely gave me both information and advice. She
chilled my blood by describing the mortifying mishaps, the dread
disasters these garments had brought to those who failed to understand
them. She declared them to be tricky, unreliable, and malicious in the
extreme.

"There's just one way to succeed with 'em," she said, "and that's by
bullying 'em. Show you're afraid and they will slip and twist and wrinkle
down and make you a perfect laughing-stock. You must take your time, you
know, at first, and fit 'em on very carefully and smoothly over your feet
and ankles and up over your knees. See that they are nice and straight or
you'll look as if you were walking on corkscrews, but after that bully
'em--yank and pull and drag 'em, and when you have 'em drawn up as tight
as you can draw 'em, go at 'em and pull 'em up another inch at least.
They'll creak and snap and pretend they're going to tear, but don't you
ever leave your dressing-room satisfied, unless you feel you can't
possibly get down-stairs without going sideways."

"But," I remonstrated, "they'll break and let my knees through!"

"Oh, no they won't!" she cheerfully answered. "They'll make believe
they're going to split at the knee, of course, but instead they'll just
keep as safe and smooth as the skin on your arm. But, for Heaven's sake,
don't be afraid of 'em!"

And I gravely promised to be as bold as I possibly could in my first
encounter with the flesh-colored terrors.




CHAPTER FIFTH

  I Receive my First Salary--I am Engaged for the Coming Season.


At last the night came. Hot? Oh, my, hot it was! and we were so crowded
in our tiny dressing-room that some of us had to stand on the one chair
while we put our skirts on. The confusion was great, and I was glad to
get out of the room, down-stairs, where I went to show myself to Mrs.
Bradshaw or Blanche, to see if I was all right. They looked at me, and
after a hopeless struggle with their quivering faces they burst into
shrieks of laughter. With trembling hands I clutched my tarlatan skirts
and peering down at my tights, I groaned: "Are they twisted, or run down,
or what?"

But it was not the tights, it was my face. I knew you had to put on
powder because the gas made you yellow, and red because powder made you
ghastly, but it had not occurred to me that skill was required in
applying the same, and I was a sight to make any kindly disposed angel
weep! I had not even sense enough to free my eyelashes from the powder
clinging to them. My face was chalk white and low down on my cheeks were
nice round bright red spots.

Mrs. Bradshaw said: "With your round blue eyes and your round
white-and-red face, you look like a cheap china doll! Come here, my
dear!"

She dusted off a few thicknesses of the powder, removed the hard scarlet
spots, took a great soft hare's foot, which she rubbed over some pink
rouge, and then holding it in the air she proceeded: "To-morrow, after
you have walked to get a color, go to your glass and see where that color
shows itself. I think you will find it high on your cheek, coming up
close under the eye and growing fainter toward the ear. I'll paint you
that way to-night on chance. You see _my_ color is low on my cheek. Of
course when you are making-up for a character part you go by a different
rule, but when you are just trying to look pretty be guided by nature.
Now----"

I felt the soft touch of the hare's foot on my burning cheeks; then she
gave me a tooth-brush, which had black on it, and bade me draw it across
my lashes. I did so and was surprised at the amount of powder it removed.
She touched her little finger to some red pomade, and said: "Thrust out
your under lip--no, not like a kiss--that makes creases--make a sulky
lip--so!"

She touched my lip with her finger, then she drew back and laughed again,
in a different way. She drew me to the glass, and said, "Look!"

I looked and cried: "Oh--oh! Mrs. Bradshaw, that girl doesn't look a bit
like me--she's ever so much nicer!"

In that lesson on making-up was the beginning and the ending of my
theatrical instruction. What I have learned since then has been by
observation, study, and direct inquiry--but never by instruction, either
free or paid for.

Now, while I was engaged to go on with the crowd, fate willed after all
that I should have an independent entrance for my first appearance on the
stage. The matter would be too trivial to mention were it not for the
influence it had upon my future. One act of the play represented the back
of a stage during a performance. The scenes were turned around with their
unpainted sides to the public. The scene-shifters and gas-men were
standing about--everything was going wrong. The manager was giving orders
wildly, and then a dancer was late. She was called frantically and
finally when she appeared on the run, the manager caught her by the
shoulders, rushed her across the stage and fairly pitched her on the
imaginary stage--to the great amusement of the audience.

The tallest and prettiest girl in the ballet had been picked out to do
this bit of work, and she had been rehearsed and rehearsed as if she were
preparing for the balcony scene of "Romeo and Juliet"; and day after day
the stage-manager would groan: "Can't you run? Did you never run? Imagine
the house a-fire and that you are running for your life!"

At last, on that opening night, we were all gathered ready for our first
entrance and dance, which followed a few moments after the incident I
have described. The tall girl had a queer look on her face as she stood
in her place--her cue came, but she never moved.

I heard the rushing footsteps of the stage-manager: "That's you!" he
shouted; "go on! go on, run!"

Run? She seemed to have grown fast to the floor. We heard the angry
_aside_ of the actor on the stage: "Send someone on here--for Heaven's
sake!"

"Are you going on?" cried the frantic prompter.

She dropped her arms limply at her sides and whispered: "I--I--c-a-n-t!"

He turned, and as he ran his imploring eye over the line of faces, each
girl shrank back from it. He reached me--I had no fear, and he saw it.
"Can you go on there?" he cried. I nodded. "Then for God's sake go!"

I gave a bound and a rush that carried me half, across the stage before
the manager caught me--and so I made my entrance on the stage, and danced
and marched and sang with the rest, and all unconsciously took my first
step upon the path that I was to follow through shadow and through
sunshine--to follow by steep and stony places, over threatening bogs,
through green and pleasant meadows--to follow steadily and faithfully for
many and many a year to come.

On our first salary day, to the surprise of all concerned, I did not go
to claim my week's pay. To everyone who spoke to me of the matter, I
simply answered: "Oh, that will be all right." When the second day came I
was the last to present myself at the box-office window. Mr. Ellsler was
there and he opened the door and asked me to come in. As I signed my name
on the salary list I hesitated perceptibly and he laughingly said: "Don't
you know your own name?" Now on the first day of all, when the
stage-manager had taken down our names, I had been gazing at the scenery
and when he called out: "Little girl, what is your name?" I had not
heard, and someone standing by had said: "Her name is Clara--Clara
Morris, or Morrisey, or Morrison, or something like that," and he dropped
the last syllable from my name Morrison, and wrote me down Morris; so
when Mr. Ellsler put his question, "Don't you know your name?" that was
certainly the moment when I should have spoken--but I was too shy, and
there and thereafter held my peace, and have been in consequence Clara
Morris ever since.

I having signed for and received my two weeks' salary, Mr. Ellsler asked
why I had not come the week before, and I told him I preferred to wait
because it would seem so much more if I got both weeks' salary all at one
time. And he gravely nodded and said "it was rather a large sum to have
in hand at one time"--and, though I was very sensitive to ridicule, I did
not suspect him of making fun of me.

Then he said: "You are a very intelligent little girl, and when you went
on alone and unrehearsed the other night you proved you had both
adaptability and courage. I'd like to keep you in the theatre. Will you
come and be a regular member of the company for the season that begins in
September next?"

I think it must have been my ears that finally stopped my ever-widening
smile while I made answer that I must ask my mother first.

"To be sure," said he, "to be sure! Well, suppose you ask her, then, and
let me know whether you can or not."

Looking back and speaking calmly, I must admit that I do not now believe
that Mr. Ellsler's financial future depended entirely upon the yes or no
of my mother and myself; but that I was on an errand of life or death
everyone must have thought who saw me tearing through the streets on that
90-in-the-shade summer day, racing along in a whirl of short skirts, with
the boyish, self-kicking gait peculiar to running girls of thirteen.

One man, a tailor, ran out hatless and coatless and looked up the street
anxiously in the direction from which I came. A big boy on the corner
yelled after me: "S-a-a-y, Sis, where's the fire?" but you see they did
not know that I was carrying home my first earnings--that I was clutching
six damp one-dollar bills in the hands that had been so empty all my
life! Poor little hands that had never held a greater sum than one big
Canadian penny, that had never held a dollar bill till they had first
earned it. But if the boy was blind to what I held, so was I blind to
what the future held--which made us equal.

I had meant to take off my hat and smooth my hair, and in a decorous and
proper manner approach my mother and deliver my nice little speech, and
then hand her the money. But, alas! as I rushed into the house I came
upon her unexpectedly--for, fearing dinner was going to be late, she was
hurrying things by shelling a great basket of peas as she sat by the
dining-room window. At sight of her tired face, all my nicely planned
speech disappeared. I flung my arm about her neck, dropped the bills on
top of the empty pods, and cried with beautiful lucidity: "Oh, mother!
that's mine--and it's all yours!"

She kissed me, but to my grieved amazement put the money back into my
hand, folding my four stiff, unwilling fingers over it, as she said: "No,
you have earned this money yourself--you are the only one who has the
right to use it--you are to do with it exactly as you please."

And while tears of disappointment were yet swimming in my eyes, triumph
sprang up in my heart at her last words; for if I could do exactly as I
pleased, why, after all, she should have the new summer dress she needed
so badly. So I took the money to our room, and having secreted it in the
most intricate and involved manner I could think of, I returned and laid
Mr. Ellsler's offer before my mother, who at first hesitated, but
learning that Mrs. Bradshaw was engaged for another season, she finally
consented, and I rushed back to the theatre, where, red and hot and out
of breath, I was engaged for the ballet for the next season. After this I
was conscious of a new feeling, which I would have found it very hard to
explain then. It was not importance, it was not vanity, it was a pleasant
feeling, it lifted the head and gave one patience to bear calmly many
things that had been very hard to bear. I know now it was the
self-respect that comes to everyone who is a bread-winner.

Directly after breakfast next day I was off to get my mother's dress. I
went quite alone, and my head was well in the air; for this was indeed an
important occasion. I looked long and felt gravely at the edges of the
goods, I did not know what for, but I had seen other people do it, and
when my lavender-flowered muslin was cut off, done up and paid for, I
found quite a large hole in my six dollars; for it was war time, and
anything made of cotton cost a dreadful price. But, good Heaven! how
happy I was, and how proud that I should get a dress for my mother,
instead of her getting one for me! Undoubtedly, had there been a fire
just then, I would have risked my life to save that flowered muslin gown.

I had not been more than two or three days in the theatre when I
discovered that its people seemed to be divided into two distinct
parties--the guyers and the guyed--those who laughed and those who were
laughed at. All my life I have had a horror of practical joking, and I
very quickly decided I would not be among the guyed. I had borrowed many
of Mrs. Bradshaw's play books to read, and often found in the directions
for costumes the old word "ibid." "Count Rudolph--black velvet doublet,
hose and short cloak. Count Adolph, ibid." So when the property-man, an
incorrigible joker, asked me to go home and borrow Mrs. Bradshaw's ibid
for him, I simply looked at him and smiled a broad, silent smile and
never moved a peg. He gave me a sharp look, then affecting great anger at
my laziness, he wrote a request for an ibid and gave it to the fattest
girl in the crowd, and she carried it to Mrs. Bradshaw, who wrote on it
that her ibid was at Mrs. Dickson's, and the fat girl went to Mrs.
Dickson's, who said she had lent it to Mr. Lewis--so the poor fat goose
was kept waddling through the heat, from one place to another, until she
was half dead, to the great enjoyment of the property-man.

Next day he was very busy, when, glancing up, he saw me looking on at his
work. Instantly he caught up a bottle, and said: "Run upstairs to the
paint-frame (three flights up) and ask the painter to put a little
ad-libitum in this bottle for me--there's a good girl!"

Now I did not yet know what ad-libitum meant, but I was a very close
observer, and I saw the same malicious twinkle in his eye that had shone
there when he had sent the fat girl on her hot journey, and once more I
slowly chewed my gum, and smiled my wide, unbelieving smile. He waited a
moment, but as I did not touch the bottle he tossed it aside, saying:
"What a suspicious little devil you are!"

But when a man wanted me to blow down a gun-barrel next morning, the
property-man exclaimed: "Here, you! let saucer-eyes alone! I don't know
whether she gets her _savey_ out of her head or chews it out of her gum,
but she don't guy worth a cent, so you needn't try to put anything on to
her!"

And from that day to this I have been free from the attacks of the
practical joker.




CHAPTER SIXTH

  The Regular Season Opens--I have a Small Part to Play--I am among
  Lovers of Shakespeare--I too Stand at his Knee and Fall under the
  Charm.


Up to this time the only world I had known had been narrow and sordid and
lay chill under the shadow of poverty; and it is sunlight that makes the
earth smile into flower and fruit and laugh aloud through the throats of
birds. But now, standing humbly at the knee of Shakespeare, I began to
learn something of another world--fairy-like in fascination, marvellous
in reality. A world of sunny days and jewelled nights, of splendid
palaces, caves of horror, forests of mystery, and meadows of smiling
candor. All peopled, too, with such soldiers, statesmen, lovers, clowns,
such women of splendid chill chastity, fierce ambition, thistle-down
lightness, and burning, tragic love as made the heart beat fast to think
of.

Perhaps if I had attempted simply to read Shakespeare at that time, I
might have fallen short both in profit and in pleasure; but it was the
_hearing_ him that roused my attention. There was such music in the sound
of the words, that the mind was impelled to study out their meaning. It
seems to me that a human voice is to poetry what a clear even light is to
a reader, making each word give up its full store of meaning.

At that time Forrest, crowned and wrapped in royal robes, was yet
tottering on his throne. Charlotte Cushman was the Tragic Queen of the
stage. Mr. James Murdoch, frail and aging, but still acting, was highly
esteemed. Joseph Jefferson, E. L. Davenport, J. K. Hackett, Edwin Adams,
John E. Owens, Dan. Setchell, Peter Richings and his daughter Caroline,
Mrs. D. P. Bowers, Miss Lucille Western, Miss Maggie Mitchell, Mr. and
Mrs. Conway, Matilda Heron, Charles Couldock, Joseph Proctor, Mr. and
Mrs. Albaugh, Mr. and Mrs. Barney Williams, the Webb Sisters, Kate
Reynolds, were all great favorites, not pausing to mention many more,
while Edwin Booth, the greatest light of all, was rising in golden glory
in the East.

Of the above-mentioned twenty-eight stars, eighteen acted in
Shakespeare's plays. All stars played a week's engagement--many played
two weeks, therefore at least twenty-four of our forty-two week season
was given over to Shakespearean productions, and every actor and actress
had the Bard at their tongue's tip.

In the far past the great disgrace of our profession was the inebriety of
its men. At the time I write of, the severity of the managers had nearly
eradicated the terrible habit, and I never saw but two of that class of
brilliant actor-drunkards, beloved of newspaper story writers, who made
too much of their absurd vagaries.

Looking back to the actors of '65, I can't help noticing the difference
between their attitude of mind toward their profession, and that of the
actor of to-day. Salaries were much smaller then, work was harder, but
life was simpler. The actor had no social standing; he was no longer
looked down upon, but he was an unknown quantity; he was, in short, an
actor pure and simple. He had enthusiasm for his profession--he lived to
act, not merely living by acting. He had more superstition than religion,
and no politics at all; but he was patriotic and shouldered his gun and
marched away in the ranks as cheerfully as any other citizen soldier.

But above all and beyond all else, the men and women _respected_ their
chosen profession. Their constant association of mind with Shakespeare
seemed to have given them a certain dignity of bearing as well as of
speech.

To-day our actors have in many cases won some social recognition, and
they must therefore give a portion of their time to social duties. They
are clubmen and another portion of their time goes in club lounging.
They draw large salaries and too frequently they have to act in long
running plays, that are made up of smartish wit and cheapest
cynicism--mere froth and frivolity, while the effective smashing of the
Seventh Commandment has been for so long a time the principal _motif_ of
both drama and farce, that one cannot wonder much at the general tone of
flippancy prevailing among the theatrical people of to-day. They guy
everything and everybody, and would jeer at their profession as readily
as they would at an old man on the street wearing a last year's hat.

They are sober, they are honest, they are generous, but they seem to have
grown utterly flippant, and I can't help wondering if this alteration can
have come about through the change in their mental pabulum.

At all events, as I watched and listened in the old days, it seemed to me
they were never weary of discussing readings, expressions, emphasis, and
action. One would remark, say at a rehearsal of "Hamlet," that Macready
gave a certain line in this manner, and another would instantly express a
preference for a Forrest--or a Davenport--rendering, and then the
argument would be on, and only a call to the stage would end the weighing
of words, the placing of commas, etc.

I well remember my first step into theatrical controversy. "Macbeth" was
being rehearsed, and the star had just exclaimed: "Hang out our banners
on the outward walls!" That was enough--argument was on. It grew
animated. Some were for: "Hang out our banners! on the outward walls the
cry is still: they come!" while one or two were with the star's reading.

I stood listening and looking on and fairly sizzling with hot desire to
speak, but dared not take the liberty, I stood in such awe of my elders.
Presently the "old-man" turned and, noticing my eagerness, laughingly
said: "Well, what is it, Clara? you'll have a fit if you don't ease your
mind with speech."

"Oh, Uncle Dick," I answered, my words fairly tripping over each other
in my haste. "I have a picture home, I cut it out of a paper, it's a
picture of a great castle, with towers and moats and things, and on the
outer walls there are men with spears and shields, and they seem to be
looking for the enemy, and, Uncle Dick, the _banner_ is floating over the
high tower!"

"Where it ought to be," interpolated the old gentleman, who was English.

"So," I went on, "don't you think it ought to be read: 'Hang out our
banners! on the outward walls'--the outward walls, you know, is where the
lookout are standing--'the cry--is still, they come!'"

A general laugh followed my excited explanation, but Uncle Dick patted me
very kindly on the shoulder, and said: "Good girl! you stick to your
picture--it's right and so are you. Many people read the line that way,
but you have worked it out for yourself, and that's a good plan to
follow."

And I swelled and swelled, it seemed to me, I was so proud of the gentle
old man's approval. But that same night I came quite wofully to grief. I
had been one of the crowd of "witches"; I had also had my place at that
shameless _papier-mache_ banquet given by _Macbeth_ to his tantalized
guests, and then, being off duty, was, as usual, planted in the entrance,
watching the acting of the grown-up and the grown-great. _Lady Macbeth_
was giving the sleep-walking scene. Her method was of the old, old
school. She spoke at almost the full power of her lungs, throughout that
mysterious, awe-inspiring sleep-walking scene. It jarred upon my
feelings--I could not have told why, but it did. I believed myself alone,
and when the memory-haunted woman roared out: "Yet, who would have
thought the old man to have had so much _blood_ in him?" I remarked,
_sotto voce_: "Did you expect to find ink in him?"

A sharp "ahem!" right at my shoulder told me I had been overheard, and I
turned to face--oh, horror! the stage-manager. He glared angrily at me,
and began: "Since when have the ladies of the ballet taken to
criticising the work of the stars?"

Humbly enough, I said: "I beg your pardon, sir, I was just talking to
myself, that was all."

But he went on: "Oh, you would not criticize a reading, unless you could
better it--so pray favor us with _your_ ideas on this speech!"

Each sneering word cut me to the heart. Tears filled my eyes. I struggled
hard to keep them from falling, while I just murmured: "I beg your
pardon!" Again he demanded my reading, saying they were not "too old to
learn," and in sheer desperation, I exclaimed: "I was only speaking to
myself, but I thought _Lady Macbeth_ was amazed at the _quantity_ of
blood that flowed from the body of such an old man--for when you get old,
you know, sir, you don't have so much blood as you used to, and I only
just thought, that as the 'sleeping men were laced,' and the knives
'smeared,' and her hands 'bathed' with it, she might have perhaps
whispered: 'Yet, who would have thought the old man to have had _so much_
blood in him?' I didn't mean an impertinence!" and down fell the tears,
for I could not talk and hold them back at the same time.

He looked at me in dead silence for a few moments, then he said: "Humph!"
and walked away, while I rushed to the dressing-room and cried and cried,
and vowed that never, never again would I talk to myself--in the theatre
at all events. I mention these incidents to show how quickly I came under
the influence of these Shakespeare-studying men and women, some of whom
had received their very adequate education from him alone.

It was odd to hear how they used his words and expressions in their daily
conversation. 'Twas not so much quoting him intentionally, as it was an
unconscious incorporation into their own language of Shakespeare's lines.

Tramps were to them almost always "vagrom men." When one did some very
foolish thing, he almost surely begged to be "written down an ass." The
appearance of a pretty actress in her new spring or fall gown was as
surely hailed with: "The riches of the ship have come on shore!"

I saw a pet dog break for the third time from restraint to follow his
master, who put his hand on the animal's head and rather worriedly
remarked: "'The love that follows us sometimes is our trouble--which
still'" (with a big sigh) "'we thank as love!' But you'll have to go
back, old fellow, all the same." If someone obliged you, and you
expressed the fear that you had given him trouble, he would be absolutely
certain to reply, pleasantly and quite honestly: "The labor we delight in
physics pain!" And so on and on unendingly. And I almost believe that had
an old actor seen these three great speeches: The "seven ages" of man,
"To be or not to be!" and "Othello's occupation's gone," grouped
together, he would have fallen upon his knees and become an idolator
there and then.

Yes, I found them odd people, but I liked them. The world was brightening
for me, and I felt I had a right to my share of the air and light, and as
much of God's earth as my feet could stand upon.

I had had a little part entrusted to me, too, the very first week of the
season. A young backwoods-boy, Tom Bruce, by name, and I had borrowed
some clothes and had slammed about with my gun, and spoken my few words
out loud and clear, and had met with approving looks, if not words, but
not yet was the actress aroused in me, I was still a mere school-girl
reciting her lessons. My proudest moment had been when I was allowed to
go on for the longest witch in the cauldron scene in "Macbeth." Perhaps I
might have come to grief over it had I not overheard the leading man say:
"That child will never speak those lines in the world!" and the leading
man was six feet tall and handsome, and I was thirteen and a half years
old, and had to be called a "child!"

I was in a secret rage, and I went over and over my lines, at all hours,
under all kinds of circumstances, so that nothing should be able to
frighten me at night. And then, with my paste-board crown and white sheet
and petticoat, I boiled-up in the cauldron and gave my lines well enough
for the manager (who was _Hecate_ just then) to say low, "Good! Good!"
and the leading man next night asked me to take care of his watch and
chain during his combat scene, and my pride of bearing was most unseemly,
and the other ballet-girls loved me not at all, for you see they, too,
knew he was six feet tall and handsome.




CHAPTER SEVENTH

  I find I am in a "Family Theatre"--I Fare Forth away from my Mother,
  and in Columbus I Shelter under the wing of Mrs. Bradshaw.


This theatre in which I found myself was, in professional parlance, a
family theatre, a thing abhorred by many, especially by actresses. Not
much wonder either, for even as the green bay tree flourisheth in the
psalm, so does nepotism flourish in the family theatre; and when it's a
case of the managerial _Monsieur_, _Madame_, _et Bebes_ all acting, many
are the tears, sobs, and hot words that follow upon the absorption by
these three of all the good parts, while all the poor ones are placed
with strictest justice where they belong. At that time men and women were
engaged each for a special "line of business," and to ask anyone to act
outside of his "line" was an offence not lightly passed over.

For the benefit of those who may not be familiar with theatrical terms of
procedure, I will state that a company was generally made up of a leading
man (heroes, of course), first old man, second old man, heavy man, first
comedian, second comedian, juvenile man, walking gentleman, and utility
man.

That term, "heavy man," of course had no reference to the actor's
physical condition, but it generally implied a deep voice, heavy
eyebrows, and a perfect willingness to stab in the back or smilingly to
poison the wine of the noblest hero or the fairest heroine in the
business; so the professional player of villains was a heavy man.

The juvenile man may have left juvenility far, far behind him in reality,
but if his back was flat, his eyes large and hair good; he would support
old mothers, be falsely accused of thefts, and win wealthy sweethearts in
last acts, with great _eclat_--as juvenile men were expected to do.

Walking gentlemen didn't walk all the time; truth to tell, they stood
about and pretended a deep interest in other people's affairs, most of
the time. They were those absent Pauls or Georges that are talked about
continually by sweethearts or friends or irate fathers, and finally
appear just at the end of everything, simply to prove they really do
exist, and to hold a lady's hand, while the curtain falls on the
characters, all nicely lined up and bowing like toy mandarins.

The utility man was generally not a man, but a large, gloomy boy, whose
mustache would not grow, and whose voice would crack over the few lines
he was invited to address to the public. He sometimes led mobs, but more
often made brief statements as to the whereabouts of certain
carriages--and therein laid his claim to utility.

Then came the leading lady, the first old woman (who was sometimes the
heavy woman), the first singing soubrette, the walking ladies, the second
soubrette (and boys' parts), the utility woman, and the ladies of the
ballet. These were the principal "lines of business," and in an artistic
sense they bound actors both hand and foot; so utterly inflexible were
they that the laws of the Medes and Persians seemed blithe and friendly
things in comparison.

"Oh, I can't play that; it's not in my line!" "Oh, yes, I sing, but the
singing don't belong to my line!" "I know, he _looks_ the part and I
don't, but it belongs to my line!" and so, nearly every week, some
performance used to be marred by the slavish clinging to these defined
"lines of business."

Mr. Augustin Daly was the first manager who dared to ignore the absolute
"line." "You must trust my judgment to cast you for the characters you
are best suited to perform, and you must trust my honor not to lower or
degrade you, by casting you below your rightful position, for I will not
be hampered and bound by any fixed 'lines of business.'" So said he to
all would-be members of his company. The pill was a trifle bitter in the
swallowing, as most pills are, but it was so wholesome in its effect that
ere long other managers were following Mr. Daly's example.

But to return to our mutton. If the family theatre was disliked by those
who had already won recognized positions, it was at least an ideal place
in which a young girl could begin her professional life. The manager, Mr.
John A. Ellsler, was an excellent character-actor as well as a first old
man. His wife, Mrs. Effie Ellsler, was his leading woman--his daughter
Effie, though not out of school at that time, acted whenever there was a
very good part that suited her. The first singing soubrette was the wife
of the prompter and the stage-manager. The first old woman was the mother
of the walking lady, and so it came about that there was not even the
pink flush of a flirtation over the first season, and, though another
season was shaken and thrilled through and through by the elopement and
marriage of James Lewis with Miss Frankie Hurlburt, a young lady from
private life in Cleveland, yet in all the years I served in that old
theatre, no real scandal ever smirched it.

True, one poor little ballet-girl fell from our ranks and was drawn into
that piteous army of women, who, with silk petticoats and painted cheeks,
seek joy in the bottom of the wine cup. Poor little soul! how we used to
lock the dressing-room door and lower our voices when we spoke of having
seen her.

I can never be grateful enough for having come under the influence of the
dear woman who watched over me that first season--Mrs. Bradshaw, one of
the most versatile, most earnest, most devoted actresses I ever saw, and
a good woman besides.

She had known sorrow, trouble, and loss. She was widowed, she had two
children to support unaided, but she made moan to no one. She worked
early and late; she rehearsed, studied, acted, mended, and made; for her
salary absolutely forbade the services of a dress-maker. She had two
gowns a year, one thick, one thin. She could not herself compute the age
of her bonnets, so often were they blocked over, or dyed and retrimmed.
Yet no better appearing woman ever entered a stage-door than this
excessively neat, well-groomed, though plainly clad, old actress.

It is not to be denied that a great many professional women are
absolutely without the sense of order. Their irregular hours, their
unsettled mode of life, camping out a few days in this hotel and then in
that in a measure explain it, but Mrs. Bradshaw set an example of neat
orderliness that was well worth following.

"I can't see," she used to say, "why an actress should be a slattern."

Then if anyone murmured: "Early rehearsals, great haste, you know!" she
would answer: "You know at night the hour of morning rehearsal--then get
up fifteen minutes earlier, and leave your room in order. Everything an
actress does is commented upon, and as she is more or less an object of
suspicion, her conduct should be even more rigidly correct than that of
other women." She had been a beauty in her youth, as her regular features
still proclaimed, and though her figure had become almost Falstaffian,
her graceful arm movements and the dignity of her carriage saved her from
being in the slightest degree grotesque. The secret of her smiling
contentment was her honest love for her work.

We had one taste in common--this experienced woman and my now
fourteen-year-old self--books! books! and yet books, we read. I borrowed
from my friends and she also read--she borrowed from her friends and I,
too, read, and she came to speak of them, and then of her own ideas, and
so I found that this woman, already on the way to age, who was so poor
and hard-working, and had nothing to look forward to but work, was yet
cheerfully contented, because she loved the work--yes, and honored it,
and held her head high, because she was an actress with a clean
reputation!

"Study your lines--speak them with exactitude, just as they are written!"
she used to say to me, with a sort of passion in her voice.

"Don't just gather the idea of a speech, and then use your own words,
that's an infamous habit. The author knew what he wanted you to say--for
God's sake honor the poor dead writer's wishes and speak his lines
exactly as he wrote them! If he says: 'My lord the carriage waits!' don't
you go on and say: 'My lord the carriage is waiting!'"

I almost believe she would have fallen in a dead faint had she been
prompted, and to have been late to a rehearsal would have been a shame
greater than she could have borne. To this woman's example, I owe the
strict business-like habits of attention to study and rehearsals that
have won so much praise for me from my managers.

Had Mr. Ellsler's intention of taking his company to another city for a
great part of the season been known in advance, my mother would never
have given consent to my membership; but the season was three months old
before we knew that we were to be transferred to Columbus, the State
capital, where we were to remain, while the Legislature sat in large
arm-chairs, passing bad bills, and killing good ones, for some three
months or more--at least that was the ordinary citizen's opinion of the
conduct of the State's wise men. It seemed to me that when a man paid his
taxes he felt he had purchased the right to grumble at his
representatives to his heart's content.

But that move to Columbus was a startling event in my life. It meant
leaving my mother and standing quite alone. She was filled with anxiety,
principally for my physical welfare, but I felt, every now and then, my
grief and fright pierced through and through with a delicious thrill of
importance. I was going to be just like a grown-up, and would decide for
myself what I should wear. I might even, if I chose to become so
reckless, wear my Sunday hat to a rehearsal; and when my cheap little
trunk came, with C. M. on the end, showing it was my very own, I stooped
down and hugged it. But later, when my mother with a sad face separated
my garments from her own, taking them from her trunk, where they had
always rested before, I burst into sobs and tears of utter forlornness.

The Columbus trip had a special effect upon the affairs of the ballet. We
had received $3 a week salary, but every one of us had had some home
assistance. Now we were going to a strange city, and no one on earth
could manage to live on such a salary as that, so our stipend was raised
to $5 a week, and the three of us (we were but three that season) set to
work trying to solve the riddle of how a girl was to pay her board-bill,
her basket-bill, her wash-bill, and all the small expenses of the
theatre--powder, paint, soap, hair-pins, etc., to say nothing at all of
shoes and clothing--all out of $5 a week.

Of course there was but one way to do it, and that was by doubling-up and
sharing a room with some one, and that first season I was very lucky.
Mrs. Bradshaw found a house where the top floor had been finished off as
one great long room, running the entire length of the building from gable
to gable, and she offered me a share in it.

Oh, I was glad! Blanche and I had one-half the room, and Mrs. Bradshaw
and the irrepressible little torment and joy of her life, small Jack, had
the other half. No wonder I grew to reverence her, whose character could
bear such intimate association as that. I don't know what her religious
beliefs were. She read her Bible Sundays, but she never went to church,
neither did she believe in a material hell; but it was not long before I
discovered that when I said my prayers over in my corner, she paused in
whatever she was doing, and remained with downcast eyes--a fact that made
me scramble a bit, I'm afraid.

There was but one thing in our close companionship that caused her pain,
and that was the inevitable belief of strangers, that I was her daughter
and Blanche her protegee--they being misled by the difference in our
manner toward her. In the severity of my upbringing I had been taught
that it was nothing short of criminal to be lacking in respect for those
who were older than myself; therefore I was not only strictly obedient to
her expressed wishes, but I rose when she entered a room, opened and
closed doors, placed chairs at table, gave her precedence on all
occasions, and served her in such small ways as were possible; while
Blanche ignored her to such a degree that one might have mistaken her for
a stranger to our little party.

Poor mother! the tears stood thick in her brave eyes when the landlady,
on our third day in her house, remarked to her, patting me on the
shoulder as she spoke: "You have a most devoted little daughter, here!"

And there was a distinct pause, before she answered, gently: "You
mistake--I have a devoted little friend here, in Clara, but Blanche is my
daughter!" She was a singular being, that daughter. It is seldom indeed
that a girl, who is not bad, can yet be such a thorn in the side of a
mother. She was a most disconcerting, baffling creature--a tricksy,
elfish spirit, that delighted in malicious fun. Pleasure-loving,
indolent, and indifferent alike to praise or blame, she (incredible as it
seems) would willingly give up a good part to save herself the trouble of
playing it. I recall a trick she once performed in my favor. I thought
the _Player-Queen_ in "Hamlet" was a beautiful part, and I hungered to
play it; but it belonged to Blanche, and, of course, she was cast for it;
but said she: "You could have it, for all I'd care!" Then, suddenly, she
added: "Say, you may play it with the next _Hamlet_ that comes along!"

I pointed out the impossibility of such an assertion coming true, but she
grinned widely at me and chewed her gum as one who knew many things
beyond my ken, and counselled me to "watch out and see what happened." I
watched out, and this happened:

When the mimic-play was going on before the King and Court, my impish
friend Blanche, as the _Player-Queen_, should have said: "Both here and
hence, pursue me lasting strife, if once a widow, ever I be wife!"

Instead of which, loudly and distinctly, she proclaimed: "Both here and
hence, pursue me lasting strife, _if once a wife, ever I be widowed_!"

_Hamlet_ rolled over on his face, _Queen Gertrude_ (Mrs. Bradshaw)
groaned aloud, _Polonius_ (Mr. Ellsler) threatened discharge, under cover
of the laughter of the audience, while guilty Blanche grinned in impish
enjoyment of her work, and next "Hamlet" I was cast for the
_Player-Queen_, to punish Blanche. To punish her, indeed--she was as
merry as a sand-boy, standing about chewing gum and telling stories all
the evening.

The "tatting" craze was sweeping over the country then, everybody wore
tatting and almost everybody made it. I worked day and night at it,
tatting at rehearsal and between scenes, and lady-stars often bought my
work, to my great pleasure as well as profit. Blanche wanted a new
shuttle, and her mother, who was under extra expense just then, told her
she could have it the next week. It was shortly before Christmas, and
next morning at rehearsal, with all the company present, Blanche walked
up to Mr. Ellsler and asked him if he had any money.

He looked bewildered, and answered somewhat doubtfully that he thought he
had a little. "Well," said she, "I want you to give me a quarter, so I
can get you a Christmas present."

There was a burst of laughter as Mr. Ellsler handed her the quarter, and
after rehearsal this is what she did with it:

On Superior Street a clothing store was being sold out--a forced sale.
There she bought a black shoe-string tie for five cents, as a gift for
Mr. Ellsler, and elsewhere got for herself a tatting-shuttle and five
pieces of chewing-gum, and chuckled over her caper, quite undisturbed by
her mother's tears.

One thing only moved her, one thing only she loved, music! She had a
charming voice, clear, pure, and cold as crystal, and she sang willingly,
nay, even eagerly, whenever she had the opportunity. In after years she
became a well-known singer in light opera.




CHAPTER EIGHTH

  I Display my New Knowledge--I Return to Cleveland to Face my First
  Theatrical Vacation, and I Know the very Tragedy of Littleness.


During that first season I learned to stand alone, to take care of myself
and my small belongings without admonition from anyone. One of my notions
was that, since an immortal soul had to dwell in my body, it became my
bounden duty to bestow upon it regular and painstaking care in honor of
its tenant. The idea may seem extravagant, yet it served me well, since
it did for me what a mother's watchful supervision does for other little
girls when habits are being formed.

I had learned, too, most of the technical terms used in the profession. I
knew all about footlights, wings, flies, borders, drops, braces, grooves,
traps, etc. I understood the queer abbreviations. Knew that O.P. side was
opposite the prompt side, where the prompter stood with his book of the
play to give the word to any actor whose memory failed him and to ring
the two bells for the close of the act--one of warning to the curtain-man
up aloft to get ready, the other for him to lower the curtain. Knew that
R.U.E. and L.U.E. were right or left upper entrance; C., centre of the
stage; R.C., right of centre; CD., centre-door. That to go D.S. or U.S.
was an intimation that you would do well to go down stage or up stage,
while an X. to C. was a terse request for you to cross to the centre of
the stage, and that a whole lot of other letters meant a whole lot of
other directions that would only bore a reader.

I understood how many illusions were produced, and one of the proofs that
I was meant to be an actress was to be found in my enjoyment of the
mechanism of stage effects. I was always on hand when a storm had to be
worked, and would grind away with a will at the crank that, turning a
wheel against a tight band of silk, made the sound of a tremendously
shrieking wind, which filled me with pride and personal satisfaction. And
no one sitting in front of the house looking at a white-robed woman
ascending to heaven, apparently floating upward through the blue clouds,
enjoyed the spectacle more than I enjoyed looking at the ascent from the
rear, where I could see the tiny iron support for her feet, the rod at
her back with the belt holding her securely about the waist (just as
though she were standing on a large hoe, with the handle at her back),
and the men hoisting her through the air, with a painted, sometimes
moving, sky behind her.

This reminds me that Mrs. Bradshaw had several times to go to heaven
(dramatically speaking), and as her figure and weight made the hoe
support useless in her case, she always went to heaven on the entire
paint-frame or gallery, as it is called--a long platform the whole width
of the stage that is raised and lowered at will by windlass, and on which
the artists stand while painting scenery. This enormous affair would be
cleaned and hung about with nice blue clouds, and then Mrs. Bradshaw,
draped in long, white robes, with hands meekly crossed upon her ample
breast and eyes piously uplifted, would rise heavenward, slowly, as so
heavy an angel should. But, alas! there was one drawback to this
otherwise perfect ascension. Never, so long as the theatre stood, could
that windlass be made to work silently. The paint-gallery always moved up
or down to a succession of screaks unoilable, untamable, blood-curdling,
that were intensified by Mrs. Bradshaw's weight, so that she ascended to
the blue tarlatan empyrean accompanied by such chugs and long-drawn
yowlings as suggested a trip to the infernal regions. Mrs. Bradshaw's
face remained calm and unmoved, but now and then an agonized moan
escaped her, lest even the orchestra's effort to cover up the
paint-frame's protesting cries should prove useless. Poor woman, when she
had been lowered again to terra firma and stepped off, the whole
paint-frame would give a kind of joyous upward spring. She noticed it,
and one evening looked back, and said: "Oh, you're not a bit more glad
than I am, you screaking wretch!"

I had learned to make up my face properly, to dress my hair in various
ways, and was beginning to know something about correct costuming; but as
the season was drawing to its close my heart quaked and I was sick with
fear, for I was facing, for the first time, that terror, that affliction
of the actor's life, the summer vacation.

People little dream what a period of misery that is to many stage folk.
Seeing them well dressed, laughing and talking lightly with the
acquaintances they meet on the street, one little suspects that the
gnawing pain of hunger may be busy with their stomachs--that a woman's
fainting "because of the extreme heat, you know," was really caused by
want of food. That the fresh handkerchiefs are of their own washing. That
the garments are guarded with almost inconceivable care, and are only
worn on the street, some older articles answering in their lodgings--and
that it is not vanity, but business, for a manager is not attracted by a
seedy or a shabby-looking applicant for an engagement.

Oh, the weary, weary miles the poor souls walk! with not a penny in their
pockets. They are compelled to say, "Roll on, sweet chariot!" to even the
street-car as it appears before their longing eyes.

Some people, mostly men, under these circumstances will stand and look at
the viands spread out temptingly in the restaurant windows; others,
myself among the number, will avoid such places as one would avoid a
pestilence.

We were back in Cleveland for the last of the season, and I used to
count, over and over again, my tiny savings and set them in little piles.
The wash, the board, and, dear heaven! there were six long, long weeks
of vacation, and I had only one little pile of board money to set against
the whole six. I had six little piles of wash money, and one other little
pile, the _raison d'etre_ of which I may explain by and by, if I am not
too much ashamed of the early folly.

Now I was staying at that acme of inconvenience and discomfort, a cheap
boarding-house, where, by the way, social lines were drawn with sharp
distinction, the upper class coldly recognizing the middle class, but
ignoring the very existence of the lower class, refugees from ignoble
fortune.

Mrs. Bradshaw, by right of dignity and regular payments for the best room
in the house, was the star-boarder, and it was undoubtedly her friendship
which raised me socially from that third and lowest class to which my
small payments would have relegated me.

Standing in my tiny, closet-like room, by lifting myself to my toes, I
could touch the ceiling. There was not space for a bureau, but the yellow
wash-stand stood quite firmly, with the assistance of a brick, which made
up for the absence of part of its off hind leg. There was a kitchen-chair
that may have been of pine, but my aching back proclaimed it lignum-vitae.
A mere sliver of a bed stretched itself sullenly in the corner, where its
slats, showing their outlines through the meagre bed-clothing, suggested
the ribs of an attenuated cab-horse. From that bed early rising became a
pleasure instead of a mere duty. Above the wash-stand, in a narrow, once
veneered but now merely glue-covered frame, hung a small looking-glass,
that, size considered, could, I believe, do more damage to the human
countenance than could any other mirror in the world. It had a sort of
dimple in its middle, which had the effect of scattering one's features
into the four corners of the glass, loosely--a nose and eyebrow here, a
mouth yonder, and one's "altogether" nowhere.

It was very disconcerting. Blanche said it made her quite sea-sick, or
words to that effect. This dreadful little apartment lay snug against the
roof. In the winter the snow sifted prettily but uncomfortably here and
there. In the summer the heat was appalling. Those old-timers who knew
the house well, called No. 15 the "torture-chamber," and many a time,
during the fiercest heat, Mrs. Bradshaw would literally drive me from the
small fiery furnace to her own room, where at least there was air to
breathe, for No. 15 had but half a window. And yet, miserable as this
place was, it was a refuge and a shelter. The house was well known, it
was ugly, as cheap things are apt to be, but it was respectable and safe,
and I trembled at the thought of losing my right to enter there.

In the past my mother had been employed by the landlady as seamstress and
as housekeeper, besides which she had once nursed the lonely old woman
through a severe sickness, and as I had been permitted to live with my
mother, Mrs. Miller of course knew me well; so one day when she found me
engaged in the unsatisfactory occupation of recounting my money she asked
me, very gruffly, what I was going to do through the summer. I gazed at
her with wide, frightened eyes, and was simply dumb. More sharply, she
asked: "Do you hear?--what are you going to do when the theatre closes?"

I swallowed hard, and then faintly answered: "I've got one week's board
saved, Mrs. Miller, but after that I--I--," had my soul depended upon the
speaking of another word I could not have uttered it.

She glared her most savage glare at me. She impatiently pushed her false
front awry, pulled at her spectacles, and finally took up one of my six
little piles of coin and asked: "What's this for?"

"Washing," I gasped.

"You don't send your handkerchiefs to the wash, do you?" she demanded,
suspiciously.

I shook my head and pointed to a handkerchief drying on a string at my
half-window.

"That's right," she remarked, in a slightly mollified tone. Then she
reached over, took up the pile that was meant for the next week's board,
and putting it in her pocket, she remarked: "I'll just take this _now_,
so you won't run no risk of losing it, and for the next five weeks after,
why, well your mother was honest before you, and I reckon you're going to
take after her. You promise to be a hard worker, too, so, well nobody
else has ever been able to stay in this room over a week--so I guess you
can go on stopping right here, till the theatre opens again, and you can
pay me by fits and starts as it comes handy for you. Why, what's the
matter with you? Well, I vum! you must be clean tuckered out to cry like
that! Land sakes, child! tie a wet rag on your head and lay right down,
till you can get picked up a bit!" and out she bounced.

Dear old raging savage! how she used to frighten us all! how she barked
and barked, but she never, never bit! How I wanted to kiss her withered
old cheek that day when she offered me shelter on trust! But she was
eighty-five years old and my honored guest here at "The Pines" before I
told her all the terror and the gratitude she brought to me that day.

My clear skin, bright eyes, and round face gave me an appearance of
perfect health, which was belied by the pain I almost unceasingly
endured. The very inadequate provision my poor mother had been able to
make for the necessaries of her child's welfare, the cruel restrictions
placed upon my exercise, even upon movement in that wooden chair, where I
sat with numb limbs five hours at a stretch, had greatly aggravated a
slight injury to my spine received in babyhood. And now I was facing a
life of hard work, handicapped by that most tenacious, most cruel of
torments, a spinal trouble.

At fourteen I knew enough about such terms as vertebra of the back,
spinal-column, spinal-cord, sheath of cord, spinal-marrow, axial nervous
system, curvatures, flexes and reflexes to have nicely established an
energetic quack as a specialist in spinal trouble; and, alas! after all
these years no one has added to my list of flexes and reflexes the words
"fixed or refixed," so my poor spine and I go struggling on, and I
sometimes think, if it could speak, it might declare that I am as dented,
crooked, and wavering as it is. However, I suppose that state of
uncertain health may have caused the capricious appetite that tormented
me. Always poor, I had yet never been able to endure coarse food. Heavy
meats, cabbage, turnips, beets, fried things filled me with cold
repulsion. Crackers and milk formed my dinner, day in and day out. Now
and then crackers and water had to suffice me; but I infinitely preferred
the latter to a meal of roast pork or of corned beef, followed by
rice-pudding.

But the trouble from the fastidious appetite came when it suddenly
demanded something for its gratification--imperiously, even furiously
demanded it. If anyone desires a thing intensely, the continual denial of
that craving becomes almost a torture. So, when that finical appetite of
mine would suddenly cry out for oysters, I could think of nothing else.
Quick tears would spring into my eyes as I approached the oysterless
table. Again and again I would dream of them, cans and cans would be
piled on my table (I lived far from shell-oysters then), and when I awoke
I would turn on my lumpy bed and moan like a sick animal. I mention this
because I wish to explain what that little odd pile of money had been
saved for.

At the approach of hot weather a craving for ice-cream had seized upon me
with almost agonizing force. It is a desire common to all young things,
but the poverty of my surroundings, the lack of the more delicate
vegetables, of fruits, of sweets, added to the intensity of my craving. I
had found a place away up on the market where for ten cents one could get
quite a large saucer of the delicate dainty. Fifteen or twenty-five cents
was charged elsewhere for no better cream, but a more decorative saucer.

But, good gracious! what a sum of money--ten cents for a mere pleasure!
though the memory of it afterward was a comfort for several days, and
then, oh, unfortunate girl! the sick longing would come again! And so, in
a sort of despair, I tried to save thirty cents, with the deliberate
intention of spending the whole sum on luxury and folly. Six long,
blazing-hot, idle weeks I should have to pass in the "torture-chamber,"
but with that thirty cents by me I could, every two weeks, loiter
deliciously over a plate of cream, feel its velvety smoothness on my lips
and its icy coldness cooling all my weary, heat-worn body. One week I
could live on memory, and the next upon anticipation, and so get through
the long vacation in comparative comfort.

There was no lock upon my room door, but I said nothing about it, as the
door would not close anyway; and at night, for security, I placed the
lignum-vitae chair against it. In the day-time I had to entrust my
belongings to the honor of my house-mates, as it were.

The six little piles of wash-money I had, after the manner of a squirrel,
buried here and there at the bottom of my trunk, which I securely locked;
but my precious thirty cents I carried about with me, tied in the corner
of a handkerchief. It generally rested in the bosom of my dress, but
there came a day when, for economy's sake, I washed a pair of stockings
as well as my three handkerchiefs, and Mrs. Miller said I might hang them
on the line in the yard below. My tiny window opened in that direction.
The day was fiercely hot. I put the money in my pocket and carefully hung
my dress up opposite the window, and, in a little white jacket, did out
my washing; then, singing happily, I ran down-stairs, two long flights,
to hang the articles on the line. As I was putting a clothes-pin in place
I glanced upward at the musk-plant on my window-sill--and then my heart
stood still in my breast. I could neither breathe nor move for the
moment. I could see my dress-skirt depending from its nail, and oh, dear
God! a man's great red hand was grasping it--was clutching it, here and
there, in search of the pocket! Suddenly I gave a piercing cry, and
bounding into the house, I tore madly up the stairs--too late. The dress
lay in the doorway--the pocket was empty! On the floor, with my head
against the white-washed wall, I sat with closed eyes. The smell of a
musk-plant makes me shudder to this day. I sat there stupidly till dusk;
then I crept to my sliver of a bed, and cried, and cried, and sobbed the
whole weary, hot night through. Next day I simply could not rise, and so
for weeks I dragged heavily up and down the stairs, loathing the very
sight of the dining-room, and driven half wild with that never-sleeping
craving for ice-cream.

It was purgatory, it was the very tragedy of littleness. And that was my
first theatrical vacation.




CHAPTER NINTH

  The Season Reopens--I meet the Yellow Breeches and become a Utility
  Man--Mr. Murdock Escapes Fits and my "Luck" Proves to be Extra Work.


The exuberance of my joy over the opening of the new season was somewhat
modified by my close relations with a certain pair of knee-breeches--and
I wish to say right here that when Gail Hamilton declared inanimate
things were endowed with powers of malice and general mischievousness,
she was not exaggerating, but speaking strictly by the card.

Some men think her charge was made solely against collar-buttons, whose
conduct the world admits is detrimental to good morals; but they are
wrong; she included many things in her charge. Consider the
innocent-looking rocking-chair, for instance. When it strikes does not
the rocker always find your ankle-joint? In darkness or in light did it
ever miss that exact spot? Never! And then how gently it will sway, while
you rear and stamp, and, with briny eyes, say--well, things you should
not say, things you would not say but for the malice of an inanimate
thing.

Perhaps the quickest way to win your sympathy is to tell you at once that
those knee-breeches were made of yellow plush, bright yellow--I thought
that would move you! There was a coat, too--yes, things can always be
worse, you see; and when I was crowded into that awful livery I felt like
hopping about in a search for hemp-seed, I looked so like an enormous
canary that had outgrown its cage.

Had Gail Hamilton known those breeches she would have said: "Here is
total depravity in yellow plush!"

You see, the way they got their grip on me originally was this. There had
been two utility men engaged for the company, but one of them was taken
sick and could not come to the city at all, and the other one made the
manager sick, and was discharged for utter incompetency, and that very
night there was required a male servant who could in the first act summon
the star to the presence of his employer, with a name hard to pronounce;
and in the last act, when the star had become the boss of the whole
affair, could announce the coming of his carriage.

"Could I do those two lines?"

"Oh, yes!" I joyfully announced my ability and my willingness; "but I had
no clothes."

And then, instead of turning the part into a girl attendant, in an evil
moment the manager bethought himself of some wardrobe he had purchased
from a broken up or down opera manager, and search discovered the
yellow-plush breeches, coat, and white wig. I put them on--the canary was
hatched!

I played the part of two announcements; I walked out clear from the hip,
like a boy--and I became the utility man of the company, and the
tormented victim of the yellow breeches.

I was a patient young person and willing to endure much for art's sake,
but that wig was too much. Built of white horse-hair mounted upon linen,
its heat and weight were fearful. It had evidently been constructed for a
big, round, perfectly bumpless head. It came down to my very eyebrows on
top, and at the sides, instead of terminating just at the hair-line above
the ear, it swallowed up my ears, covered my temples, and extended clear
to my eyes, giving me the appearance of being harnessed up in large white
blinders--like a shying horse. In common humanity the manager released me
from the wig and let me wear powder, but the clutch of the yellow
breeches remained unbroken.

As in their opera days (I don't know what they sang, but they were
probably in the chorus) they had wandered through the world, knowing all
continental Europe and the South Americas, so now they wandered through
dramatic literature. One night accompanying me on to deliver a note to
Madame de Pompadour, the next night those same yellow breeches and I
skipped back to Louis XIV., and admitted many lords and ladies, with
tongue-tying names, to that monarch's presence, only to skip forward
again, in a few days, to bring in mail-bags to snuffy rural gentry, under
almost any of the Georges. Though the lace ruffles and jabots of the
French period might give place to a plain red waistcoat for the Georgian
English household, the canary breeches were always there, ready to burst
into song at any moment, to basely fire off a button or break a buckle
just at the moment of my entrance-cue, treacherously suggesting, by their
easy wrinkling while I stood, that I might just as well sit down and rest
my tired feet, and the moment I attempted to lower myself to a chair,
beginning such a mad cracking and snapping in every seam as brought me
upright with a bound and the settled conviction that weariness was
preferable to public shame.

I am glad to this day that the stage-door was always kept locked, for,
had it been open, heaven only knows where those cosmopolitan breeches
might have taken me--they were such experienced travellers that a trip to
Havana or to the City of Mexico would have struck them as a nice little
jaunt.

My pleasantest moments as utility man came to me when, in a very brief
white cotton Roman shirt and sandals, I led the shouts for the _supers_,
who are proverbially dumb creatures before the audience, though noisy
enough behind the scenes. So all the furious and destructive mobs of that
season were led on by a little whipper-snapper who yelled like a demon
with a copper-lined throat and then stood about afterward peacefully
making tatting.

It must not be thought that I had in the first place a monopoly of the
small parts; far from it, but the company being rather short of utility
people, if the ballet-girls could play speaking servants, it not only
saved a salary or two to the manager, but it was of immense advantage to
the girls themselves. Then, too, Mr. Ellsler was particularly anxious to
avoid any charge of favoritism; so in the earliest days these little
parts were given out turn and turn about, without choice or
favor--indeed, two or three times my short dress caused me to be passed
over in favor of long dresses and done-up hair. But a few disasters,
caused by failure of memory or loss of nerve on the part of these
competitors, gave the _pas_ to me, and it must be remembered that these
lapses and mishaps, though amusing to recall, were absolutely disastrous
at the time, ruining, as they did, the scene, if not the entire act, in
which they occurred.

With special vividness I recall the first one of these happenings. "Romeo
and Juliet" was the play, and _Balthazar_ the part. I longed for it
because, aside from his fine speech, he was really quite important and
had to show tenderness, anxiety, and determination during the time
_Romeo_ addressed him. I pleaded with my eyes, but I could not, dared not
speak up and ask for the part, as did Annie, who was older than I. The
star and prompter exchanged a few low-spoken sentences. I caught the
condemnatory word "child," and knew my fate was sealed--long skirts and
turned-up hair had won. However, my wound was salved when the page to
_Paris_ was given me with two lines to speak.

Now there is no one but _Romeo_ on the stage when _Balthazar_ enters,
which, of course, gives him great prominence. His first speech, of some
fifty or fifty-six words, is simply expressed, not at all involved, yet
from the moment Annie received the part she became a broken,
terror-stricken creature. Many people when nervous bite their nails, but
Annie, in that state of mind, had a funny habit of putting her hand to
the nape of her neck and rubbing her hair upward. She had a pretty dress
of her own, but she had to borrow a wig, and, like all borrowed wigs, it
failed to fit; it was too small, and at last, when the best had been
done, its wobbly insecurity must have been terrifying.

The girl's figure was charming, and as she stood in the entrance in her
boy's costume, I remarked: "You look lovely, Annie!"

Silently she turned her glassy, unseeing eyes toward me, while she
shifted her weight swiftly from one foot to the other, opening and
shutting her hands spasmodically. _Romeo_ was on, and he joyously
declared:

      "My bosom's lord sits lightly in his throne!"

He then described his happy dream--I heard the words:

      "When but love's shadows are so rich in joy!"

And there Annie staggered forward on to the stage.

      "News from Verona!" cried _Romeo_: "How now, Balthazar?"

Oh, well might he ask "How now?" for, shifting from foot to foot, this
stricken _Balthazar_ was already feeling at the nape of her neck, and
instead of answering the questions of _Romeo_ about _Juliet_ with the
words:

      "Then she is well, and nothing can be ill,
      Her body sleeps in Capets' monument,
      And her immortal part with angels lives;
      I saw her laid low in her kindred's vault,
      And presently took post to tell it you:
      O pardon me for bringing these ill news,
      Since you did leave it for my office, sir,"

these were the startling statements he made in gulps and gasps:

      "O-Oh, y-yes! Sh-e's very well--and nothing's wrong;

[titter from audience, and amazement on _Romeo's_ face]

      H-her immortal parts are in a vault,
      I--I saw them laid there, and come to tell you!"

Perhaps she would have got to the right words at last, but just there the
wig, pushed too hard, lurched over on one side, giving such a piratical
look to the troubled face that a very gale of laughter filled the house,
and she retired then and there, though in the next speech she should have
refused to leave _Romeo_:

      "Pardon me, sir, I will not leave you thus:
      Your looks are pale and wild,"

yet now, because his looks were red and wild, she left without
permission, and the enraged instead of grieving _Romeo_ had no one to
receive his order:

      "----get me ink and paper,
      And hire post horses."

So when, in his confusion, he went on continuing his lines as they were
written, and, addressing empty space, fiercely bade _Balthazar_:

      "----get thee gone!"

and in unintentionally suggestive tones promised:

      "----I'll be with thee straight!"

the audience laughed openly and heartily at the star himself.

"Yes, sir," he snorted later on to Mr. Ellsler, "by heaven, sir! they
laughed at me--AT ME! I have been made ridiculous by your measly little
_Balthazar_--who should have been a man, sir! Yes, sir, a man, whom I
could have chastised for making a fool of himself, sir! and a d----d
fool of me, sir!"

For the real tragedy of that night lay in the wound given to the dignity
of Mr. F. B. Conway, who played a measured and stately _Romeo_ to the
handsome and mature _Juliet_ of his wife.

We had no young _Juliets_ just then, they were all rather advanced,
rather settled in character for the reckless child of Verona. But every
lady who played the part declared at rehearsal that Shakespeare had been
foolish to make _Juliet_ so young--that no woman had learned enough to
understand and play her before middle age at least.

Mrs. Bradshaw, one day, said laughingly to me: "By your looks you seemed
to disagree with Mrs. Ellsler's remarks this morning. She, too, thinks a
woman is not fit for _Juliet_ until she has learned much of nature and
the world."

"But," I objected, lamely, "while they are learning so much about the
world they are forgetting such a lot about girlhood!"

Her laughter confused and distressed me. "I can't say it!" I cried, "but
you know how very forward _Juliet_ is in speech? If she _knew_, that
would become brazen boldness! It isn't what she _knows_, but what she
_feels_ without knowing that makes the tragedy!" And what Mrs. Bradshaw
meant by muttering, "Babes and sucklings--from the mouths of babes and
sucklings," I could not make out; perhaps, however, I should say that my
mate Annie played few blankverse parts after _Balthazar_.

Then, one Saturday night, we were all corralled by the prompter before we
could depart for home, and were gravely addressed by the manager--the
whole thing being ludicrously suggestive of the reading of the riot act;
but after reminding us that Mr. James E. Murdoch would begin his
engagement on Monday night, that the rehearsals would be long and
important, he proceeded to poison the very source of our Sunday's rest
and comfort by fell suggestions of some dire mishap threatening the
gentleman through us. We exchanged wondering and troubled glances. What
could this mean?

Mr. Ellsler went on: "You all know how precise Mr. Murdoch has always
been about your readings; how exacting about where you should stand at
this word or at that; how quickly his impatience of stupidity has burst
into anger; but you probably do not know that since his serious sickness
he is more exacting than ever, and has acquired the habit, when much
annoyed, of--of--er--well, of having a fit."

"O-h!" it was unanimous, the groan that broke from our oppressed chests.
Stars who _gave us_ fits we were used to, but the star who went into fits
himself--good heavens! good heavens!

Rather anxiously, Mr. Ellsler continued: "These fits, for all I know, may
spell apoplexy--anyway, he is too frail a man to safely indulge in them;
so, for heaven's sake, do nothing to cross him; be on time, be
perfect--dead letter-perfect in your parts; write out all his directions
if necessary; grin and bear anything, so long as he doesn't have a fit!
Good-night."

The riot act had been read, the mob dispersed, but the nerve of the most
experienced was shaken by the prospect of acting a whole week with a
gentleman who, at any moment, might get mad enough to have a fit.

Think, then, what must have been the state of mind of my other
ballet-mate, Hattie, who, in her regular turn, had received a small part,
but of real importance, and who had to address her lines to Mr. Murdoch
himself. Poor girl, always nervous, this new terror made her doubly so.
She roused the star's wrath, even at rehearsal.

"Speak louder!" (imperatively). "_Will_ you speak louder?" (furiously).
"Perhaps, in the interest of those who will be in front to-night, I may
suggest that you speak loud enough to be heard by--say--the first row!"
(satirically). Now a calmly controlled body is generally the property of
a trained actress, not of a raw ballet-girl, and Hattie's restless
shifting about and wriggling drove him into such a rage that, to the
rest of us, he seemed to be trembling with inchoate fits, and I saw the
property man get his hat and take his stand by the stage-door, ready to
fly for the doctor, or, as he called him, "the fit sharp."

She, too, was to appear as a page. She was to enter hurriedly--always a
difficult thing for a beginner to do. She was to address Mr. Murdoch in
blank verse--a _more_ difficult thing--and implore him to come swiftly to
prevent bloodshed, as a hostile meeting was taking place between young
Count So-and-so and "your nephew, sir!"

This news was to shock the uncle so that he would stand dazed for a
moment, when the page, looking off the stage, should cry:

      "Ah, you are too late, sir, already their blades are out!
      See how the foils writhe," etc.

With a cry, the uncle should recover himself, and furiously order the
page to

      "----call the watch!"

Alas! and alas! when the night, the play, the act, the cue came, Hattie,
as handsome a boy as you could wish to see, went bravely on, as quickly,
too, as her terror-chilled legs could carry her, but when she got there
had no word to say--no, not one!

In a sort of icy rage, Mr. Murdoch gave her her line, speaking very low,
of course:

      "My lord--my lord! I do beseech you haste,
      Else here is murder done!"

But the poor girl, past prompting properly, only caught wildly at the
_sense_ of the speech, and gasped out:

      "Come on, quick!"

She saw his foot tapping with rage--thought his fits might begin that
way, and madly cried, at the top of her voice:

      "Be quick--see--see! publicly they cross their _financiers_!"

then, through the laughter, rushed from the stage, crying, with streaming
tears: "I don't care if he has a dozen fits! He has just scared the words
out of my head with them!"

And truly, when Mr. Murdoch, trembling with weakness, excitement, and
anger, staggered backward, clasping his brow, everyone thought the
dreaded fit had arrived.

Next day he reproachfully informed Mr. Ellsler that he could not yet see
blank verse and the King's English (so he termed it) murdered without
suffering physically as well as mentally from the shocking spectacle.
That he was an old man now, and should not be exposed to such tests of
temper.

Yes, as he spoke, he was an old man--pallid, lined, weary-faced; but that
same night he was young _Mirabel_--in spirit, voice, eye, and movement.
Fluttering through the play, "Wine Works Wonders," in his satins and his
laces--young to the heart--young with the immortal youth of the true
artist.

Both these girls spoke plain prose well enough, and always had their
share of the parts in modern plays; but, as all was grist to my
individual mill, most of the blankverse and Shakespearean small
characters came to me. Nor was I the lucky girl they believed me; there
was no luck about it. My small success can be explained in two
words--extra work. When they studied their parts they were contented if
they could repeat their lines perfectly in the quiet of their rooms, and
made no allowance for possible accidents or annoyances with power to
confuse the mind and so cause loss of memory and ensuing shame. But I was
a careful young person, and would not trust even my own memory without
first taking every possible precaution. Therefore the repeating of my
lines correctly in my room was but the beginning of my study of them. In
crossing the crowded street I suddenly demanded of myself my lines. At
the table, when all were chatting, I again made sudden demand for the
same. If on either occasion my heart gave a jump and my memory failed to
present the exact word, I knew I was not yet perfect, and I would repeat
those lines until, had the very roof blown off the theatre at night, I
should not have missed one. Then only could I turn my attention to the
acting of them--oh, bless you, yes! I quite thought I was acting, and at
all events I was doing the next best thing, which was trying to act.

But a change was coming to me, an experience was approaching which I
cannot explain to myself, neither has anyone else explained it for me;
but I mention it because it made such a different thing of dramatic life
for me. Aye, such a difficult thing as well. Looking back to that time I
see that all my childhood, all my youth, was crowded into that first year
on the stage. There I first knew liberty of speech, freedom of motion.
There I shared in the general brightness and seemed to live by right
divine, not by the grudging permission of some task-mistress of my
mother. I had had no youth before, for in what should have been babyhood
I had been a troubled little woman, most wise in misery. In freedom my
crushed spirits rose with a bound. The mimicry, the adaptability of
childhood asserted themselves--I pranced about the stage happily but
thoughtlessly.

It seems to me I was like a blind puppy, born into warmth and comfort and
enjoying both, without any fear of the things it could not see. As I have
said before, I knew no fear, I had no ambition, I was just happy, blindly
happy; and now, all suddenly, I was to exchange this freedom of
unconsciousness for the slavery of consciousness.




CHAPTER TENTH

  With Mr. Dan. Setchell I Win Applause--A Strange Experience Comes to
  Me--I Know Both Fear and Ambition--The Actress is Born at Last


My manager considered me to have a real gift of comedy, and he several
times declared that my being a girl was a distinct loss to the profession
of a fine low comedian.

It was in playing a broad comedy bit that my odd experience came to me.
Mr. Dan. Setchell was the star. He was an extravagantly funny comedian,
and the laziest man I ever saw--too lazy even properly to rehearse his
most important scenes. He would sit on the prompt table--a table placed
near the footlights at rehearsal, holding the manuscript, writing
materials, etc., with a chair at either end, one for the star, the other
for the prompter or stage manager--and with his short legs dangling he
would doze a little through people's scenes, rousing himself reluctantly
for his own, but instead of rising, taking his place upon the stage, and
rehearsing properly, he would kick his legs back and forth, and, smiling
pleasantly, would lazily repeat his lines where he was, adding: "I'll be
on your right hand when I say that, Herbert. Oh, at your exit, Ellsler,
you'll leave me in the centre, but when you come back you'll find me down
left."

After telling James Lewis several times at what places he would find him
at night, Lewis remarked, in despair: "Well, God knows where you'll find
_me_ at night!"

"Oh, never mind, old man," answered the ever-smiling, steadily kicking
Setchell, "if you're there, all right; if you're not there, no matter!"
which was not exactly flattering.

Of course such rehearsals led to many errors at night, but Mr. Setchell
cleverly covered them up from the knowledge of the laughing audience.

It is hard to imagine that lazy, smiling presence in the midst of awful
disaster, but he was one of the victims of a dreadful shipwreck while
making the voyage to Australia. Bat-blind to the future, he at that time
laughed and comfortably shirked his work in the day-time, and made others
laugh when he did his work at night.

In one of his plays I did a small part with him--I was his wife, a former
old maid of crabbed temper. I had asked Mr. Ellsler to make up my face
for me as an old and ugly woman. I wore corkscrew side curls and an awful
wrapper. I was a fearful object, and when Mr. Setchell first saw me he
stood silent a moment, then, after rubbing his stomach hard, and
grimacing, he took both my hands, exclaiming: "Oh, you hideous jewel! you
positively gave me a cramp at just sight of you! Go in, little girl, for
all you're worth! and do just what you please--you deserve the liberty
for that make-up!"

And goodness knows I took him at his word, and did anything that came
into my giddy head. Even then I possessed that curious sixth sense of the
born actress, and as a doctor with the aid of his stethoscope can hear
sounds of grim warning or of kindly promise, while there is but the
silence to the stander-by, so an actress, with that stethoscopic sixth
sense, detects even the _forming_ emotions of her audience, feeling
incipient dissatisfaction before it becomes open disapproval, or
thrilling at the intense stillness that ever precedes a burst of
approbation.

And that night, meeting with a tiny mishap, which seemed to amuse the
audience, I seized upon it, elaborating it to its limit, and making it my
own, after the manner of an experienced actor.

There was no elegant comedy of manners in the scene, understand, it was
just the broadest farce, and it consisted of the desperate effort of a
hen-pecked husband to assert himself and grasp the reins of home
government, which resolved itself at last into a scolding-match, in
which each tried to talk the other down--with what result you will know
without the telling.

The stage was set for a morning-room, with a table in the centre, spread
with breakfast for two; a chair at either side and, as it happened, a
footstool by mine. His high silk hat and some papers, also, were upon the
table. For some unexplainable cause the silk hat has always been
recognized, both by auditor and actor, as a legitimate object of
fun-making, so when I, absent-mindedly, dropped all my toast-crusts into
that shining receptacle, the audience expressed its approval in laughter,
and so started me on my downward way, for that was my own idea and not a
rehearsed one. When my husband mournfully asked if "There was not even
one hot biscuit to be had?" I deliberately tried each one with the back
of my knuckles, and remarking, "Yes, here is just one," which was the
correct line in the play, I took it myself, which was not in the play,
and so went on till the scolding-match was reached.

In my first noisy speech I meant to stamp my foot, but by accident I
brought it down upon the footstool. The people laughed, I saw a point--I
lifted the other foot and stood upon the stool. By the twinkle in Mr.
Setchell's eye, as well as by the laughter in front, I knew I was on the
right track.

He roared--he lifted his arms above his head, and in my reply, as I
raised my voice, I mounted from the stool to the seat of the chair. He
seized his hat, and with the toast-crusts falling about his face and
ears, jammed it on his head, while in my last speech, with my voice at
its highest screech, I lifted my foot and firmly planted it upon the very
breakfast-table.

It was enough--the storm broke from laughter to applause. Mr. Setchell
had another speech--one of resigned acceptance of second place, but as
the applause continued, he knew it would be an anti-climax, and he
signalled the prompter to ring down the curtain.

But I--I knew he ought to speak. I was frightened, tears filled my eyes.
"What is it?" I whispered, as I started to get down.

"Stand still," he sharply answered, then added: "It's you, you funny
little idiot! you've made a hit--that's all!" and the curtain fell
between us and the laughing crowd in front.

The prompter started for me instantly from his corner, exclaiming, in his
anger: "Well, of all the cheeky devilment I ever heard or saw--" But Mr.
Setchell had him by the arm in a second, crying: "Hold on, old man! I
gave her leave--she had my permission! Oh, good Lord! did you see that
ascent of stool, chair, and table? eh? ha! ha! ha!"

I stood trembling like a jelly in a hot day. Mr. Setchell said: "Don't be
frightened, my girl! that applause was for you! You won't be fined or
scolded--you've made a hit, that's all!" and he patted me kindly on the
shoulder and broke again into fat laughter.

I went to my room, I sat down with my head in my hands. Great drops of
sweat came out on my temples. My hands were icy cold, my mouth was dry,
that applause rang in my ears. A cold terror seized upon me--a terror of
what, the public?

Ah, a tender mouth was bitted and bridled at last! the reins were in the
hands of the public, and it would drive me--where?

The public! the public! I had never feared it before, because I had never
realized its power. If I pleased, well and good. If I displeased it, I
should be driven forth from the dramatic Eden I loved, in which I hoped
to learn so many things theatrical and to become very wise, and I should
wander all my life in the stony places of poverty and disappointment! I
clenched my hands and writhed in misery at the thought. I seemed again to
hear that applause, which had been for me--my very self! and I thrilled
at its wild sweetness. Ah, the public! it could make or it could mar my
whole life. Mighty monster, without mercy! The great many-headed
creature, all jewelled over with fierce, bright eyes, with countless ears
a-strain for error of any kind! That beat the perfumed air with its
myriad hands when pleased--when pleased! A strange, great stillness
seemed to close about me; something murmured: "In the future, in the
_dim_ future, a woman may cause this many-headed monster you fear to
think as one mind, to feel as one heart! _Then_ the bit and bridle will
be changed--that woman will hold the reins and will drive the public!" At
which I broke into shrill laughter, in spite of flowing tears. Two women
came in, one said: "Why, what on earth's the matter? Have they blown you
up for your didoes to-night? What need you care, you pleased the
audience?" But another said, quietly: "Just get a glass of water for her,
she has a touch of hysteria--I wonder who caused it?"

But I only thought of that woman of the dim future, who was to conquer
the public--who was she?

Why that round of applause should have so shattered my happy confidence I
cannot understand, but the fact remains that from that night I never
faced a new audience, or attempted a new part, without suffering a
nervous terror that sometimes but narrowly escaped collapse.




CHAPTER ELEVENTH

  My Promiscuous Reading wins me a Glass of Soda--The Stage takes up my
  Education and Leads me through Many Pleasant Places.

I suppose it sounds absurd to say that during those first seasons, with
choruses, dances, and small parts to learn, with rehearsals every day and
appearances every night, I was getting an education.

But that depends upon your definition of the word. If it means to you
schooling, special instruction, and formal training, then my claim is
absurd; but if it means information, cultivation of the intellectual
powers, enlightenment, why then my claim holds good, my statement stands,
I was getting an education. And let me say the stage is a delightful
teacher; she never wearies you with sameness or drives you to frenzy with
iteration. No deadly-dull text-book stupefies you with lists of bare,
bald dates, dryly informing you that someone was born in 1208, mounted
the throne in 1220, died in 1258, and was succeeded by someone or other
who reigned awhile--really you can't remember how long, and don't much
care. There's nothing in figures for the memory to cling to. But no one
can forget that Edward V. was born in 1470, because he is such a tragic
little figure, only thirteen years old and of scant two months reign,
because there was the Tower and there the crafty, usurping Duke of
Gloster eager for his crown.

Perhaps people would remember that Edward III. was born in 1312 and was
succeeded by his grandson, Richard, if they were told at the same moment
that he was father to that superb Black Prince, beloved alike of poet,
painter, and historian.

Now, to be a good actress and do intelligent work, one should thoroughly
understand the play and its period in history, as the mainspring of its
action is often political. To be able to do that requires a large fund of
general information. That I had from my very babyhood been a reckless
reader, came about from necessity--I had no choice, I simply read every
single thing in print that my greedy hands closed upon; the results of
this promiscuous reading, ranging from dime novels to Cowper, were
sometimes amusing. One day, I remember, an actress was giving a very
excited account of a street accident she had witnessed. Her colors were
lurid, and some of her hearers received her tale coldly. "Oh!" she cried,
"such an awful crowd--a mob, you know--a perfect mob!"

"Oh, nonsense!" contradicted another, "there couldn't have been a mob,
there are not people enough in that street to make a mob!"

Then I mildly but firmly remarked: "Oh, yes, there are, for you know that
legally three's a mob and two's a crowd."

A shout of laughter followed this bit of information. "How utterly
absurd!" cried one. "Well, of all the ridiculous ideas I ever heard!"
laughed another. And then, suddenly, dear old Uncle Dick (Mr. Richard
Stevens and player of old men, to be correct) came to my support, and,
with the authority of a one-time barrister, declared my statement to be
perfectly correct.

"But where, in the name of Heaven, did you get your information?"

"Oh," I vaguely replied, "I just read it somewhere."

"That's a rather broad statement," remarked Uncle Dick; "you don't give
your authority, page and line, I observe. Well, see here, now, Clara
_mia_, in whatever field you found that one odd fact, you certainly
gleaned others there, so if you can produce, at once, three other legal
statements, I will treat you to soda-water after rehearsal."

Oh, the delicious word was scarcely over his lips when I was wildly
searching my memory, and presently, very doubtfully, offered the
statement: "It is a fraud to conceal a fraud."

But Uncle Dick gravely and readily accepted it. Another search, and then
joyfully I announced: "Contracts made with minors, lunatics, or drunkards
are void."

A shout of laughter broke from the kind old man's lips, but he accepted
that, too. Oh, almost I could hear the cool hiss of the soda--but now not
another thing could I find. My face fell, my heart sank. Hitherto I had
been thinking of papers, now I frantically ran through stories. Suddenly
I cried: "A lead-pencil signature stands in law."

But, alas! Uncle Dick hesitated--my authority was worthless. Oh, dear!
oh, dear! was I to lose my treat, just for lack of a little legal
knowledge? Sadly I remarked, "I guess I'll have to give it up,
unless--unless you'll take: 'Principals are responsible for their
agents,'" and, with pleasure beaming in his kind old eyes, he accepted
it.

Ah, I can taste that vanilla soda yet--and, what is more, the old
gentleman took the trouble to find out about the legality of the
lead-pencil signature; and, as my statement had been correct, he took
great pains to make the fact known to all who had heard him question it,
and he added to my little store of knowledge, "that a contract made on
Sunday would not stand," which, by the way, later on, saved me from a
probably painful experience.

I mention this to show that even my unadvised reading had not been
absolutely useless, I had learned a little about a variety of things; but
now, plays continually presented new subjects to me to think and read
about; thus "Venice Preserved" set me wild to find out what a _Doge_ was,
and why Venice was so adored by her sons, and I straightway obtained a
book about the wonderful city--whose commerce, power of mart and
merchant may have departed, but whose mournful beauty is but hallowed by
her weakness.

So many plays were produced, representing so many periods, so many
countries, I don't know how I should have satisfied my craving for the
books they led me to had not the Public Library opened just then. I was
so proud and happy the day my mother surprised me with half the price of
a membership, and happier yet when I had the right to enter there and
browse right and left, up and down, nibbling here, feeding long and
contentedly there. Oh, the delight of reading one book, with two or three
others in my lap; 'twas the pleasure of plenty, new to one who could have
spelled "economy" in her sleep.

Then, again, if it is the Stage that is making you read, you have to keep
your eyes wide open and take note of many things. Some girls read just
for the sake of the story, they heed nothing but that, they are even
guilty of the impertinence of "skipping," "to get to the story more
quickly, you know." But if you are on the stage you understand, for
instance, that different kinds of furniture are used for different
periods and for different countries; so even the beginner knows, when she
sees the heavy old Flemish pieces of furniture standing on the stage in
the morning, that no modern play is on that night, and is equally sure
that the bringing out of the high tile-stove means a German interior is
in preparation. Therefore, if you read for the stage, you watch
carefully, not only Sir Thomas's doings, but his surroundings. If his
chair or desk or sideboard is described, you make a note of the "heavily
carved wood," or the "inlaid wood," or the "boule," or whatever it may
be, and then you note the date of the story, and you say to yourself:
"Ah, such and such furniture belongs to such a date and country."

I once heard the company expressing their shocked amazement over the
velvet robes of some _Macbeth_. I could not venture to ask them why it
was so dreadful, but later I found some paper stating that velvet was
first known in the fifteenth century, and was confined to the use of the
priests or high ecclesiastical authorities--and my mind instantly grasped
the horror of the older actors at seeing _Macbeth_ swathed in velvet in
the grim, almost barbaric Scotland of about 1012; for surely it was a
dreadful thing for an actor to wear velvet four hundred years ahead of
its invention.

You never know just where the Stage is going to lead you in your search
for an education; only one thing you may be sure of, it will not keep you
very long to any one straight road, but will branch off in this direction
or in that, taking up some side issue, as it seems, like this matter of
furniture, and lo, you presently find it is becoming a most important and
interesting subject, well worth careful study. You come to believe you
could recognize the workmanship of the great cabinet-makers at sight. You
learn to shrink from misapplied ornament, you learn what gave rise to the
"veneering reign-of-terror," you bow at the name of Chippendale, and are
filled with wonder by the _cinque-cento_ extravagance of beauty. You find
yourself tracing the rise and fall of dynasties through the chaste beauty
or the over-ornamentation of their cabinet work. If all that Sir Henry
Irving knows on this subject could be crowded into a single volume, the
book would have at least one fault--'twould be of most unwieldy size.

Then holding you by the hand the Stage may next lead you through the
green and bosky places that the poets loved, and, having had your eyes
opened to natural beauties, lo! you go down another lane, and you are
learning about costumes, and suddenly you discover that "sumptuary laws"
once existed, confining the use of furs, velvets, laces, etc., to the
nobility. Fine woollens and linens, and gold and silver ornaments being
also reserved for the privileged orders. That the extravagant young maids
and beaux of the lower class who indulged in yellow starched-ruff, furred
mantle, or silver chain were made to pay a cruel price for their folly
in aping their betters. So it was well for me to make a note of the date
of the "sumptuary law," that I might not some day outrageously overdress
a character.

It is a delightful study, that of costume--to learn how to drape the
toga, how to hang the peplum; to understand the meaning of a bit of
ribbon in the hair, whether as arranged in the three-banded fillet of the
Grecian girl or as the snood of the Scottish lassie; to know enough of
the cestus and the law governing its wearing, not to humiliate yourself
in adopting it on improper occasions; to have at least a bowing
acquaintance with all foot-gear, from sandals down to an Oxford tie; to
be able to scatter your puffed, slashed, or hanging sleeves over the
centuries, with their correct accompanying, small-close, large-round, or
square-upstanding ruffs. Why the mere detail of girdles and hanging
pouches, from distant queens down to "Faust's" _Gretchen_, was a joy in
itself.

Then a girl who played pages, and other young boys, was naturally anxious
to know all about doublets, trunks, and hose, as well as Scottish
"philibeg and sporran." And wigs? I used to wonder if anyone could ever
learn all about wigs--and I'm wondering yet.

But as one studies the coming and going of past fashions in garments, it
is amusing to note their influence upon the cabinet-makers, as it is
expressed in the changing shape of their chairs. For instance: when
panniers developed into farthingale and monstrous hoop, chairs, high and
narrow, widened, lowered their arms--dropped them entirely, making indeed
a fair start toward our own great easy-chair of to-day.

I remember well what a jump my heart gave when in rooting about among
materials--their weaves and dyes--I came upon the term "samite." It's a
word that always thrills me, "samite, mystic, wonderful." Almost I was
afraid to read what might follow; but I need not have hesitated, since
the statement was that "samite" was supposed to have been a delicate web
of silk and gold or silver thread. How beautiful such a combination must
have been--white silk woven with threads of silver might well become
"mystic, wonderful," when wrapped about the chill, high beauty of an
Arthur's face.

But hie and away, to armor and arms! for she would be but a poorly
equipped actress who had no knowledge of sword and buckler, of solid
armor, chain-mail, rings of metal on velvet, or of plain leather
jerkin--of scimitar, sword, broadsword, foil, dagger, dirk, stiletto,
creese.

Oh, no! don't pull your hand away if the Stage wants to lead you among
arms and armor for a little while; be patient, for by and by it will take
you up, up into the high, clear place where Shakespeare dwells, and there
you may try your wings and marvel at the pleasure of each short upward
flight, for the loving student of Shakespeare always rises--never sinks.
Your power of insight grows clearer, stronger, and as you are lifted
higher and higher on the wings of imagination, more and more widely opens
the wonderful land beneath, more and more clearly the voices of its
people reach you. You catch their words and you treasure them, and by and
by, through much loving thought, you comprehend them, after which you can
no longer be an uneducated woman, since no man's wisdom is superior to
Shakespeare's, and no one gives of his wisdom more lavishly than he.

Therefore, while a regular school-education is a thing to be thankful
for, the actress who has been denied it need not despair. If she be
willing to work, the Stage will educate her--nor will it curtly turn her
away at the end of a few years, telling her her "term" is ended. I clung
tightly to its hand for many a year, and was taken a little way through
music's halls, loitered for a time before the easel, and even made a
little rush at a foreign language to help me to the proper pronunciation
of names upon the stage; and no man, no woman all that time rose up to
call me ignorant. So I give all thanks and all honor to the profession
that not only fed and clothed me, but educated me too!




CHAPTER TWELFTH

  The Peter Richings' Engagement brings me my First Taste of
  Slander--Anent the Splendor of my Wardrobe, also my First Newspaper
  Notice.


I remember particularly that second season, because it brought to me the
first taste of slander, my first newspaper notice, and my first proposal
of marriage. The latter being, according to my belief, the natural result
of lengthening my skirts and putting up my hair--at all events, it was a
part of my education.

Of course the question of wardrobe was a most important one still. I had
done very well, so far as peasant dresses of various nationalities were
concerned; I had even acquired a page's dress of my own, but I had no
ball-dress, nothing but a plain, skimpy white muslin gown, which I had
outgrown; for I had gained surprisingly in height with the passing year.
And, lo! the report went about that Mr. Peter Richings and his daughter
Caroline were coming in a fortnight, and they would surely do their play
"Fashion," in which everyone was on in a dance; and I knew everyone would
bring out her best for that attraction, for you must know that actresses
in a stock company grade their costumes by the stars, and only bring out
the very treasures of their wardrobes on state occasions. I was in great
distress; one of my mates had a genuine silk dress, the other owned a
bunch of artificial gold grapes, horribly unbecoming, stiff things, but,
mercy, gold grapes! who cared whether they were becoming or not? Were
they not gorgeous (a lady star had given them to her)? And I would have
to drag about, heavy-footed, in a skimpy muslin!

But in the company there was a lady who had three charming little
children. She was the singing soubrette (by name Mrs. James Dickson). One
of her babies became sick, and I sometimes did small bits of shopping or
other errands for her, thus permitting her to go at once from rehearsal
to her beloved babies. Entering her room from one of these errands, I
found her much vexed and excited over the destruction of one of a set of
fine new lace curtains. The nursemaid had carelessly set it on fire. Of
course Mrs. Dickson would have to buy two more curtains to replace them;
and now, with the odd one in her hand, she started toward her trunk,
paused doubtfully, and finally said to me: "Could you use this curtain
for some small window or something, Clara?"

At her very first word a dazzling possibility presented itself to my
mind. With burning cheeks, I answered: "Oh, yes, ma'am, I--I can use it,
but not at a window, I'm afraid." Her bonnie face flashed into smiles.

"All right; take it along, then!" she cried, "and do what you like with
it. It's only been up two days, and has not a mark on it."

I fairly flew from the house. I sang, as I made my way uptown to buy
several yards of rose-pink paper cambric and a half garland of
American-made artificial roses. Then I sped home and, behind locked
doors, measured and cut and snipped, and, regardless of possible
accident, held about a gill of pins in my mouth while I hummed over my
work. All my fears were gone, they had fled before the waving white
curtain, which fortunately for me was of fine meshed net, carrying for
design unusually small garlands of roses and daisies. And when the great
night came, I appeared as one of the ball guests in a pink under-slip,
with white lace overdress, whose low waist was garlanded with wild roses.
So, happy at heart and light of foot, I danced with the rest, my pink and
white gown ballooning about me in the courtesies with as much rustle and
glow of color as though it had been silk.

But, alas! the imitation was too good a one! The pretty, cheap little
gown I was so happy over attracted the attention of a woman whose whisper
meant scandal, whose lifted brow was an innuendo, whose drooped lid was
an accusation. Like a carrion bird she fed best upon corruption. Thank
Heaven! this cruel creature, hated by the men, feared by the women, was
not an actress, but through mistaken kindness she had been made wardrobe
woman, where, as Mr. Ellsler once declared, she spent her time in ripping
up and destroying the reputation of his actors instead of making and
repairing their wardrobes.

That nothing was too small to catch her pale, cold eye is proved by the
fact that even a ballet-girl's dress received her attention. Next day,
after the play "Fashion" had been done, this woman was saying: "That
girl's mother had better be looking after her conduct, I think!"

"Why, what on earth has Clara done?" asked her listener.

"Done!" she cried, "didn't you see her flaunting herself around the stage
last night in silks and laces no honest girl could own? Where did the
money come from that paid for such finery?"

A few days later a woman who boarded in the house favored by the
mischief-maker happened to meet Mrs. Dickson, happily for me, and said,
_en passant_: "Which one of your ballet-girls is it who has taken to
dressing with so much wicked extravagance? I wonder Mrs. Ellsler don't
notice it."

Now Mrs. Dickson was Scotch, generous, and "unco" quick-tempered, and
after she had put the inquiring friend right, she visited her wrath upon
the originator of the slander in person, and verily the Scottish burr was
on her tongue, and her "r's" rolled famously while she explained the
component parts of that extravagant costume: window curtain--her
gift--and paper cambric and artificial flowers to the cost of one dollar
and seventy-five cents; "and you'll admit," she cried, "that even the
purse of a 'gude lass' can stand sic a strain as that; and what's mair,
you wicked woman, had the girl been worse dressed than the others, you
would ha' been the first to call attention to her as slovenly and
careless."

This was the first drop of scandal expressed especially for me, and I not
only found the taste bitter--very bitter--but learned that it had
wonderful powers of expansion, and that the odor it gives off is rather
pleasant in the nostrils of everyone save its object.

Mrs. Dickson, who, by the way, is still doing good work professionally,
has doubtless forgotten the entire incident, curtain and all, but she
never will forget the bonnie baby-girl she lost that summer, and she will
remember me because I loved the little one--that's a mother's way.

Mr. Peter B. Richings was that joy of the actor's heart--a character. He
had been accounted a very fine actor in his day, but he was a very old
man when I saw him, and his powers were much impaired. Six feet tall,
high-featured, Roman-nosed, elegantly dressed; a term from bygone
days--and not disrespectfully used--describes him perfectly: he was an
"old Buck!"

His immeasurable pride made him hide a stiffening of the joints under the
forced jauntiness of his step, while a trembling of the head became in
him only a sort of debonair senility at worst. Arrogant, short-tempered,
and a veritable martinet, he nevertheless possessed an unbending dignity
and a certain crabbed courtliness of manner very suggestive of the
snuff-box and ruffle period of a hundred years before.

His daughter, by adoption, was the object of his unqualified worship--no
other word can possibly express his attitude toward her. No heavenly
choir could have charmed him as she did when she sang, while her
intellectual head and marble-cold face seemed beautiful beyond compare in
his eyes. Really it was worth going far to see him walk through a
quadrille with her. His bow was a thing for young actors to dream of,
while with trembling head, held high in air, he advanced and retreated,
executing antiquated "steps" with a grace that deprived them of
comicality, while his air of arrogant superiority changed instantly to
profound homage whenever in the movement of the figures he met his
daughter.

His pronunciation of her name was as a flourish of trumpets--Car-o-line!
Each syllable distinct, the "C" given with great fulness, and the
emphasis on the first syllable when pleased, but heavily placed upon the
last when he was annoyed.

He was unconscionably vain of his likeness to Washington, and there were
few Friday nights, this being considered the fashionable evening of the
week, that he failed to present his allegorical picture of Washington
receiving the homage of the States, while Miss Richings, as _Columbia_,
sang the "Star-Spangled Banner," the States joining in the chorus.

In this tableau the circular opening in the flat, backed by a sky-drop
and with blue clouds hanging about the opening, represented heaven. And
here, at an elevation, Washington stood at the right, with _Columbia_ and
her flag on his left, while the States, represented by the ladies of the
company, stood in lines up and down the stage, quite outside of heaven.

Now a most ridiculous story anent Mr. Richings and this heaven of his was
circulating through the entire profession. Some of our company refused to
believe it, declaring it a mere spiteful skit against his well-known
exclusiveness; but that gentleman who had wished to send me for an
"Ibid," being an earnest seeker after knowledge, determined to test the
truth of the story. Therefore, after we had been carefully rehearsed in
the music and had been informed by the star that only Car-O-line and
himself were to stand back of that skylike opening, this "inquiring"
person gave one of the extra girls fifty cents to go at night before the
curtain rose and take her stand on the forbidden spot. She took the money
and followed directions exactly, and when Mr. Richings, as _Washington_,
made his pompous way to the stage, he stood a moment in speechless wrath,
and then, trembling with anger, he stamped his foot, and waving his arm,
cried: "Go a-way! Go a-way! you very presuming young person; this is
heaven, and I told you this morning that only my daughter Car-O-line and
I could possibly stand in heaven!"

It was enough; the "inquiring one" was rolling about with joy at his
work. He had taken a rise out of the old gentleman and proved the truth
of the story which had gone abroad in the land as to this claim of all
heaven for himself and his Car-O-line.

I naturally remember these stars with great clearness, since it was for a
small part in one of their plays that I received my first newspaper
notice. Imagine my incredulous joy when I was told of this journalistic
feat--unheard of before--of praising the work of a ballet-girl.
Suspecting a joke, I did not obtain a paper until late in the day, and
after I had several times been told of it. Then I ventured forth, bought
a copy of the _Herald_, and lo, before my dazzled eyes appeared my own
name. Ah, few critics, with their best efforts, have thrown as rosy a
light upon the world as did Mr. Jake Sage with his trite ten-word
statement: "Clara Morris played the small part allotted to her well."

My heart throbbed hard, I seemed to catch a glimpse, through the rosy
light, of a far-away Temple of Fame, and this notice was like a petal
blown to me from the roses that wreathed its portals. Could I ever, ever
reach them!

"Played the small part allotted to her well." "Oh," I cried aloud, "I
will try to do everything well--I will, indeed!" and then I cut the
notice out and folded it in a sheet of paper, and put both in an envelope
and pinned that fast to my pocket, that I might take it to my mother, who
was very properly impressed, and was a long time reading its few words,
and was more than a trifle misty about the eyes when she gave it back to
me. Looking at them now, the words seem rather dry and scant, but then
they had all the sweetness, life, and color of a June rose--the most
perfect thing of God's bounteous giving.




CHAPTER THIRTEENTH

  Mr. Roberts Refers to Me as "That Young Woman," to My Great Joy--I
  Issue the "Clara Code"--I Receive my First Offer of Marriage.


My mother, moved at last by my highly colored accounts of the
humiliations brought upon me by the shortness of my skirts, consented to
their lengthening, and though I knew she had meant them to stop at my
shoe-tops, I basely allowed a misunderstanding to arise with the
dress-maker, through which my new dress came home the full length of the
grown-ups, and though my conscience worried me a bit, I still snatched a
fearful joy from my stolen dignity, and many a day I walked clear up to
Superior Street that I might slowly pass the big show-windows and enjoy
the reflection therein of my long dress-skirt. Of course I could not
continue to wear my hair _a la_ pigtail, and that went up in the then
fashionable chignon.

Few circumstances in my life have given me such unalloyed satisfaction as
did my first proposal of marriage. I should, however, be more exact if I
spoke of an "attempted proposal," for it was not merely interrupted, but
was simply mangled out of all likeness to sentiment or romance. The party
of the first part in this case was Mr. Frank Murdoch, who later on became
the author of "Davy Crockett," the play that did so much toward the
making and the unmaking of the reputation of that brilliant actor, the
late Frank Mayo. He was the adoring elder brother of that successful
young Harry Murdoch who was to meet such an awful fate in the Brooklyn
Theatre fire. Neither of them, by the way, were born to the name of
Murdoch; they were the sons of James E.'s sister, and when, in spite of
his advice and warning, they decided to become actors, they added insult
to injury, as it were, by demanding of him the use of his name--their own
being a particularly unattractive one for a play-bill. He let them plead
long and hard before he yielded and allowed them to take for life the
name of Murdoch--which as a trade-mark, and quite aside from sentiment,
had a real commercial value to these young fellows who had yet to prove
their individual personal worth.

Frank was very young--indeed, our united ages would have barely reached
thirty-six. He had good height, a good figure, and an air of gentle
breeding; otherwise he was unattractive, and yet he bore a striking
resemblance to his uncle, James Murdoch, who had a fine head and most
regular features. But through some caprice of nature in the nephew those
same features received a touch of exaggeration here, or a slight twist
there, with the odd result of keeping the resemblance to the uncle
intact, while losing all his beauty. Frank had a quixotic sense of honor
and a warm and generous heart, but being extremely sensitive as to his
personal defects he was often led into bursts of temper, during which he
frequently indulged in the most childish follies. These outbreaks were
always brief, and ever followed by deep contrition, so that he was
generally regarded as a very clever, spoiled child.

Poor boy! his life was as sad as it was short. There may be few who
remember him now, but a woman never forgets the man who first pays a
compliment to her eyes, nor can I forget the first man who handed me a
chair and opened and closed doors for me, just as for any grown-up.

He joined the company in about the middle of that season in which I acted
principally as utility man. He was to play singing parts and young
lovers, and, to his amusement, I criticized his reading of one of
_Cassio's_ speeches. Our wrangle over Shakespeare made friends of us at
once. He had a veritable passion for poetry, and with me he felt free to
bring out his beautiful hobby to mount and ride and ride, with some of
the great poets up behind and me for applauding audience. When he wanted
me to know some special poem he bought it for me if he could; but if he
was short of money, he carefully copied out its every line, tied the
manuscript neatly up with ribbon, and presented the poem in that form. I
came across a copy of "Maud Muller" the other day in Frank's clear, even
handwriting. The paper was yellow, the ribbon faded. Frank is gone,
Whittier is gone, but "Maud Muller" lives on in her immortal youth and
pain.

But the morning when he first brought and offered me a chair was nothing
less than an epoch in my life. At first I regarded the act as an
aspersion on my strength--a doubt cast upon my ability to obtain a seat
for myself. Then, as I glanced frowningly into his face, I suddenly
realized that it was meant as a mark of consideration--the courtesy a man
shows a woman. A glow of satisfaction spread through my being. I hated to
rise, I was so afraid the thing might never happen to me again. I need
not have worried, however, as I was soon to receive a more impressive
proof of his consideration for my welfare.

One of the most unpleasant experiences in the life of a young actress is
her frightened lonely rush through the city streets at twelve o'clock at
night to reach her boarding-house and claim sanctuary. I doubt if even a
Una and her lion could pass unmolested through those streets dotted with
all-night "free and easys," where, by the way, nothing is free but the
poisonous air, and nothing easy but the language. At all events from my
own varied and unpleasant experiences, and from the stories of others, I
had first drawn certain deductions, then I had proceeded to establish
certain rules for the guidance and direction of any girl who was so
unfortunate as to be forced to walk abroad unattended at night. These
rules became known as "Clara's Code," and were highly approved,
especially by those girls who "couldn't think," as they declared, but
stood stock-still, "too frightened to move," when some wanderer of the
night unceremoniously addressed them.

I cannot remember all those rules now, since for these many years God has
granted me a protector, but from the few I can recall I am convinced that
their principal object was to gain plenty of leeway for the persecuted
girl's escape. No. 3 sternly forbade her ever, _ever_ to pass between two
advancing men--at night, of course, be it understood--lest they might
seize hold of and so frighten her to death. She was advised never to
permit herself to take the inside of the walk when meeting a stranger,
who might thus crowd her against the house and cut off her chance to run.
Never to pass the opening to an alley-way without placing the entire
width of the walk between her and it, and always to keep her eyes on it
as she crossed. Never to let any man pass her from behind on the outside
was insisted on, indeed she should take to the street itself first. She
was not to answer a drunken man, no matter what might be the nature of
his speech. She was not to scream--if she could help it--for fear of
public humiliation, but if the worst came and some hideous prowler of the
night passed from speech to actual attack, then she was to forget her
ladyhood and remembering only the tenderness of the male shin and her
right of self-defence, to kick like a colt till help came or she was
released.

Other portions of the code I have forgotten, but I do distinctly remember
that it wound up with the really Hoyle-like observation, "When in doubt,
take to the centre of the street."

We all know the magic power of the moonlight--have seen it transmute the
commonest ugliness into perfect beauty and change a world-worn woman into
the veriest lily-maid, but how few know the dread power exerted over man
by the street gaslight after midnight. The kindest old drake of the
farm-pond, the most pompously harmless gobbler of the buckwheat-field
becomes a vulture beneath the midnight street-light. A man who would
shoot for being called a blackguard between seven o'clock in the morning
and twelve at night, often becomes one after midnight. It is frequently
said that "words break no bones," but let a young girl pass alone through
the city streets a few nights and she will probably hear words that,
drowning her in shamed blushes, will go far toward breaking her pride, if
not her bones. Men seem to be creatures of very narrow margin--they so
narrowly escape being gods, and they so much more narrowly escape being
animals. Under the sunlight, man, made in the image of God, lifts his
face heavenward and walks erect; under the street-lamps of midnight he is
stealthy, he prowls, he is a visible destruction! You think I exaggerate
the matter? Do not; I speak from experience. And, what is more, at that
time I had not yet learned what the streets of New York could produce
after midnight.

But on the night after the chair episode, Frank Murdoch heard one of the
girls say she had used the Clara Code very successfully the night before,
when two drunken men had reeled out of an alley, who would have collided
with her had she not followed the rule and kept the whole sidewalk
between them. He stood at the door as I came down-stairs, and as soon as
I reached him he asked, sharply: "Do you go home alone of nights?"

"Yes," I answered.

"Good God!" he muttered.

After a pause I looked up at him, and met his eyes shining wet and blue
through two tears. "Oh," I hastily added, "there's nothing to be afraid
of."

"I wish I could agree with you," he answered. "Tell me," he went on,
"have you ever been annoyed by anyone?"

My eyes fell, I knew I was growing red.

"Good God!" he said again, then, suddenly, he ordered: "Give me that
bag--you'll not go through these streets alone again while I am here!
Never mind the distance. I don't see why you can't take my arm."

And thus I found myself for the first time escorted by a gentleman, and
after my hot embarrassment wore off a bit, I held my head very high and
languidly allowed my skirt to trail in the dust, and said to myself:
"This is like a real grown-up--surely they can't call me 'child' much
longer now."

The star playing with us just then was a tragedian, but he was a very
little man, whose air of alertness, even of aggressiveness, had won for
him the title of "Cocky" Roberts. He wore enormously high heels, he had
thick cork soles on the outside and thick extra soles on the inside of
all his boots and shoes. His wigs were slightly padded at their
tops--everything possible was done for a gain in height, while all the
time he was sputtering and swearing at what he called "this cursed cult
of legs!"

"Look at 'em!" he snorted--for he did snort like a horse when he was
angry, as he often was, at the theatre at least. "Look at 'em, Ellsler;
there's Murdoch, Proctor, Davenport, all gone to legs, damn 'em, and
calling themselves actors! You don't look for brains in a man's legs, do
you? No! no! it's the cranium that tells! Yes, blast 'em! Let 'em come
here and match craniums with me, that they think it smart to call
'Cocky'! They're a lot of theatrical tongs--all legs and no heads!"

And yet the poor, fuming little man, with his exaggerated strut, would
have given anything short of his life, to have added even a few inches to
his anatomy, the brevity of which was quite forgotten by the public when
he gave his really brilliant and pathetic performance of "Belphegor," one
of the earliest of the so-called "emotional" plays.

I have a very kindly remembrance of that fretful little star, because
when they were discussing the cast of a play, one of those tormenting
parts turned up that are of great importance to the piece, but of no
importance themselves. Capable actresses refuse to play them, and
incapable ones create havoc in them. This one had already been refused,
when Mr. Roberts suddenly exclaimed: "Who was it made those announcements
last night? She spoke with beautiful distinctness; let _that_ young woman
have the part, she'll do it all right."

Oh, dear Mr. Roberts! never "Cocky" to me! Oh, wise little judge! how I
did honor him for those precious words: "Let that young woman have the
part." That "_young woman_!" I could have embraced him for very
gratitude--a part _and_ the term "young woman," and since, as my old
washerwoman used to say, "it never rains but it pours," while these two
words were still making music in my ears, by some flash of intuition I
realized that I was being courted by Frank. The discovery filled me with
the utmost satisfaction. I gave no thought to him, in a sentimental way,
either then or ever; quite selfishly I thought only of my own gain in
dignity and importance, for I started out in life with the old-fashioned
idea that a man honored a woman by his courtship, and I knew naught of
the lover who "loves and rides away." Yet in a few days the curious
cat-like instinct of the unconscious coquette awakened in me, and I began
very gently to try my claws.

I wished very much to know if he were jealous, as I had been told that
real lovers were always so; and, naturally, I did not wish mine to fall
short of any of the time-honored attributes of loverdom. Therefore I, one
morning, selected for experimental use a man whose volume of speech was a
terror to all. Had he been put to the sword, he would have talked to the
swordsman till the final blow cut his speech. He was most unattractive,
too, in appearance, being one of those actors who get shaved after
rehearsal instead of before it, thus gaining a reputation for untidiness
that facts may not always justify--but he served my purpose all the
better for that.

I deliberately placed myself at his side; I was only a ballet-girl, but I
had two good ears--I was welcome. Conversation, or rather the monologue,
burst forth. Standing at the side of the stage, with rehearsal going on,
he of course spoke low. I watched for Frank's arrival. He came, I heard
his cheery "Good-morning, ladies! good-morning, gentlemen!" and then he
started toward me, but I heard nothing, saw nothing of _him_. My upraised
eyes, as wide as I possibly could make them, were fixed upon the face of
the talker. Yet, with a jump of the heart, I knew the brightness had gone
from Frank's face, the spring from his step. I smiled as sweetly as I
knew how; I seemed to hang upon the words of the untidy one, and oh! if
Frank could only have known what those words were; how I was being
assured that he, the speaker, had that very morning succeeded in stopping
a leaky hole in his shoe by melting a piece of india-rubber over and on
it, and that not a drop of water had penetrated when he had walked
through the rain-puddles; and right there, like music, there came to my
listening ear a word of four letters--a forbidden word, but one full of
consolation to the distressed male; a word beginning with "d," and for
fear that you may think it was "dear," why, I will be explicit and say
that it was "damn!" and that it was from the anger-whitened lips of
Frank, who during the morning gave not only to me, but to all lookers-on,
most convincing proof of his jealousy, and that was the beginning of my
experiments.

I did this, to see if it would make him angry. I did that, to see if it
would please him. Sometimes I scratched him with my investigating claws,
then I was sorry--truly sorry, because I was grateful always for his
gentle goodness to me, and never meant to hurt him. But he represented
the entire sex to me, and I was learning all I could, thinking, as I once
told him, that the knowledge might be useful on the stage some time, and
I wondered at the very fury my words provoked in him.

We quarrelled sometimes like spiteful children, as when I, startled into
laughter by hearing his voice break in a speech, unfortunately excused
myself by saying: "It was just like a young rooster, you know!" and he,
white with anger, cried: "You're a solid mass of rudeness, to laugh at a
misfortune; you have no breeding!"

This brought from me the rejoinder: "I know it, but you would have shown
better breeding yourself had you not told me of it!"

And then he was on his knee in the entrance, begging forgiveness, and
saying his "cursed, cracking voice made a madman of him!"

As it really did, for he often accused people of guying him if they did
but clear their own throats. And so we went on till something in his
manner--his increased efforts to find me alone at rehearsal, for as I was
without a room-mate in Columbus, I could not receive him at home, and I
truly think he would have kept silence forever rather than have urged me
to break any conventional rule of propriety--this something gave me the
idea that Frank was going to be--well--explicit, that--that--I was going
to be proposed to according to established form.

Now, though a proposal of marriage is a thing to look forward to with
desire, to look back upon with pride, it is also a thing to avoid when it
is in the immediate future, and I so successfully evaded his efforts to
find me alone, at the theatre or at some friend's house, that he was
forced at last to speak at night, while escorting me home.

I lodged in a quiet little street, opening out of the busier, more noisy
Kinsman Street. In our front yard there lived a large, greedy old tree,
which had planted its foot firmly in the very middle of the path, thus
forcing everyone to _chasse_ around it who wished to enter the house. Its
newly donned summer greenery extended far over the gate, and as the moon
shone full and fair the "set" was certainly appropriate.

We reached the gate, and I held out my hand for my bag--that small
catch-all of a bag that, in the hand of the actress, is the outward and
visible sign of her profession; but he let the bag slip to the walk and
caught my hand in his. The street was deserted. Leaning against the gate
beneath the sheltering boughs of the old tree, the midnight silence all
about us, he began to speak earnestly.

I made a frantic search through my mind for something to say presently,
when my turn would come to speak. I rejected instantly the ancient wail
of "suddenness." Frank's temper did not encourage an offer of
"sisterhood." I was just catching joyously at the idea of hiding behind
the purely imaginary opposition of my mother, when Frank's words: "Then,
too, dear heart! I could protect you, and--" were interrupted by a yowl,
so long, so piercing, it seemed to rise like a rocket of anguish into the
summer sky.

"Oh!" I thought, "that's one-eared Jim from next door, and if our Simmons
hears him--and he'd have to be dead not to hear--he will come out to
fight him!" I clenched my teeth, I dropped my eyes that Frank might not
see the threatening laughter there. I noted how much whiter his hand was
than mine, as they were clasped in the moonlight. The pause had been
long; then, very gently, he started again: "Mignonne!"

Distinctly I heard the thump of Simmons's body dropping from the
porch-roof. "Mignonne, look up! you big-eyed child, and tell me that I
may go to your mother with your promise!"

"Mi-au! Mi-au! Wow! Spit! Spit! Wow!" Four balls of fire glowed for a
moment beneath the tree, then two dark forms became one dark form, that
whirled and bounded through space, emitting awful sounds. The cats were
too much for me, I threw back my head and laughed.

My laugh was too much for Frank. His temper broke, he flung my hand away,
crying out: "Laugh, you little idiot! You're worse than the animals, for
they at least know no better! Laugh till morning, if you like!" and then
I'm sorry to say it, but he kicked my bag, the precious insignia of my
profession, and rushed down the street, leaving me standing there amid
the debris of the wrecked proposal.

Next night he frigidly presented himself to escort me home, and when I
coldly declined his company, he turned silently and left me. Truth to
tell, I did not enjoy my walk alone, through the market-place in
particular, and I planned to unbend a little the next evening; but I was
much piqued to find myself without an excuse for unbending, since on the
next evening he did not offer his company. The third night there was a
big lump in my throat, and the tears would have fallen had they not been
suddenly dried in my eyes by the sight of a familiar light-gray suit
slipping along close to the houses on the other side of the way.
Petulant, irritable, loyal-hearted boy! he had safe-guarded me both those
nights when I thought I was alone! My heart was warm with gratitude
toward him, and when I reached my gate, and passed inside, I called
across the street: "Thank you, Frank! Good-night!"

And he laughed and answered: "Good-night, Mignonne!"

And so it came about that Frank's wooing, being of the strict and stately
order, I gradually came to be Miss Morris to others beside himself. I saw
my advance in dignity, and if I did not love him I gave him profound
gratitude, and we were true friends his short and honorable life
through.




CHAPTER FOURTEENTH

Mr. Wilkes Booth comes to us, the whole Sex Loves him--Mr. Ellsler
Compares him to his Great Father--Our Grief and Horror over the Awful
Tragedy at Washington.


In glancing back over those two crowded and busy seasons one figure
stands out with such clearness and beauty that I cannot resist the
impulse to speak of him, rather than of my own inconsequential self. In
his case only (so far as my personal knowledge goes) there was nothing
derogatory to dignity or to manhood in being called beautiful, for he was
that bud of splendid promise, blasted to the core before its full
triumphant blooming--known to the world as a madman and an assassin--but
to the profession as "that unhappy boy," John Wilkes Booth.

He was so young, so bright, so gay, so kind. I could not have known him
well. Of course, too, there are two or three different people in every
man's skin, yet when we remember that stars are not generally in the
habit of showing their brightest, their best side to the company at
rehearsal, we cannot help feeling both respect and liking for the one who
does.

There are not many men who can receive a gash over the eye in a scene at
night without at least a momentary outburst of temper, but when the
combat between _Richard_ and _Richmond_ was being rehearsed, Mr. Booth
had again and again urged Mr. McCollom (that six-foot tall and handsome
leading man, who entrusted me with the care of his watch during such
encounters) to "Come on hard! Come on hot! Hot, old fellow!
Harder--faster!" He'd take the chance of a blow, if only they could make
a hot fight of it.

And Mr. McCollom, who was a cold man, at night became nervous in his
effort to act like a fiery one. He forgot he had struck the full number
of head blows, and when Booth was pantingly expecting a thrust, McCollom,
wielding his sword with both hands, brought it down with awful force fair
across Booth's forehead. A cry of horror rose, for in one moment his face
was masked in blood, one eyebrow being cut cleanly through. There came,
simultaneously, one deep groan from _Richard_, and the exclamation: "Oh,
good God! good God!" from _Richmond_, who stood shaking like a leaf and
staring at his work. Then Booth, flinging the blood from his eyes with
his left hand, said, as genially as man could speak: "That's all right,
old man! never mind me--only come on hard, for God's sake, and save the
fight!"

Which he resumed at once, and though he was perceptibly weakened, it
required the sharp order of Mr. Ellsler to "ring the first curtain bell,"
to force him to bring the fight to a close, a single blow shorter than
usual. Then there was a running to and fro, with ice and vinegar paper
and raw steak and raw oysters. When the doctor had placed a few stitches
where they were most required, he laughingly declared there was provision
enough in the room to start a restaurant. Mr. McCollom came to try to
apologize, to explain, but Booth would have none of it; he had out his
hand, crying: "Why, old fellow, you look as if _you_ had lost the blood.
Don't worry. Now if my eye had gone, that _would_ have been bad!" And so,
with light words, he tried to set the unfortunate man at ease, and though
he must have suffered much mortification as well as pain from the eye,
that in spite of all endeavors would blacken, he never made a sign.

He was, like his great elder brother, rather lacking in height, but his
head and throat, and the manner of its rising from his shoulders, were
truly beautiful. His coloring was unusual, the ivory pallor of his skin,
the inky blackness of his densely thick hair, the heavy lids of his
glowing eyes, were all Oriental, and they gave a touch of mystery to his
face when it fell into gravity; but there was generally a flash of white
teeth behind his silky mustache, and a laugh in his eyes.

One thing I shall never cease to admire him for. When a man has placed a
clean and honest name in his wife's care for life, about the most
stupidly wicked use she can make of it is as a signature to a burst of
amatory flattery, addressed to an unknown actor, who will despise her for
her trouble. Some women may shrivel as though attacked with "peach-leaf
curl" when they hear how these silly letters are sometimes passed about
and laughed at. "No gentleman would so betray a confidence!" Of course
not; but once when I made that remark to an actor, who was then flaunting
the food his vanity fed upon, he roughly answered: "And no _lady_ would
so address an unknown man. She cast away her right to respectful
consideration when she thrust that letter in the box." That was brutal;
but there are those who think like him this very day, and oh, foolish
tamperers with fire, who act like him!

Now it is scarcely an exaggeration to say the sex was in love with John
Booth, the name Wilkes being apparently unknown to his family and close
friends. At depot restaurants those fiercely unwilling maiden-slammers of
plates and shooters of coffee-cups made to him swift and gentle offerings
of hot steaks, hot biscuits, hot coffee, crowding round him like doves
about a grain basket, leaving other travellers to wait upon themselves or
go without refreshment. At the hotels, maids had been known to enter his
room and tear asunder the already made-up bed, that the "turn-over" might
be broader by a thread or two, and both pillows slant at the perfectly
correct angle. At the theatre, good heaven! as the sunflowers turn upon
their stalks to follow the beloved sun, so old or young, our faces
smiling, turned to him. Yes, old or young, for the little daughter of the
manager, who played but the _Duke of York_ in "Richard III.," came to
the theatre each day, each night of the engagement, arrayed in her best
gowns, and turned on him fervid eyes that might well have served for
_Juliet_. The manager's wife, whose sternly aggressive virtue no one
could doubt or question, with the aid of art waved and fluffed her hair,
and softened thus her too hard line of brow, and let her keen black eyes
fill with friendly sparkles for us all--yet, 'twas because of him. And
when the old woman made to threaten him with her finger, and he caught
her lifted hand, and uncovering his bonnie head, stooped and kissed it,
then came the wanton blood up in her cheek as she had been a girl again.

His letters then from flirtatious women, and, alas! girls, you may well
believe were legion. A cloud used to gather upon his face at sight of
them. I have of course no faintest idea that he lived the godly,
righteous, and sober life that is enjoined upon us all, but I do remember
with respect that this idolized man, when the letters were many and
rehearsal already on, would carefully cut off every signature and utterly
destroy them, then pile the unread letters up, and, I don't know what
their final end was, but he remarked with knit brows, as he caught me
watching him at his work one morning: "They," pointing to the pile of
mutilated letters, "they are harmless now, little one; their sting lies
in the tail!" and when a certain free and easy actor, laughingly picked
up a very elegantly written note, and said: "I can read it, can't I, now
the signature is gone?" He answered, shortly: "The woman's folly is no
excuse for our knavery--lay the letter down, please!"

I played the _Player-Queen_ to my great joy, and in the "Marble Heart" I
was one of the group of three statues in the first act. We were supposed
to represent _Lais_, _Aspasia_, and _Phryne_, and when we read the cast,
I glanced at the other girls (we were not strikingly handsome), and
remarked, gravely: "Well, it's a comfort to know that we look so like the
three beautiful Grecians."

A laugh at our backs brought us around suddenly to face Mr. Booth, who
said to me: "You satirical little wretch, how do you come to know these
Grecian ladies? Perhaps you have the advantage of them in being
all-beautiful within?"

"I wish it would strike outward, then," I answered; "you know it's always
best to have things come to the surface!"

"I know some very precious things are hidden from common sight, and I
know, too, you caught my meaning in the first place; good-night." And he
left us.

We had been told to descend to the stage at night with our white robes
hanging free and straight, that Mr. Booth himself might drape them as we
stood upon the pedestal. It really is a charming picture, that of the
statues in the first act. Against a backing of black velvet, the three
white figures, carefully posed, strongly lighted, stand out so
marble-like, that when they slowly turn their faces and point to their
chosen master, the effect is uncanny enough to chill the looker-on.

Well, with white wigs, white tights, and white robes, and half strangled
with the powder we had inhaled in our efforts to make our lips stay
white, we cautiously descended the stairs. We dared not talk, we dared
not blink our eyes, for fear of disturbing the coat of powder; we were
lifted to the pedestal and took our places as we expected to stand. Then
Mr. Booth came, such a picture in his Greek garments as made even the men
exclaim at him, and began to pose us. It happened that one of us had very
good limbs, one medium good, and the third had apparently walked on
broom-sticks. When Mr. Booth slightly raised the drapery of No. 3, his
features gave a twist as though he had suddenly tasted lemon-juice, but,
quick as a flash, he said: "I believe I'll advance you to the centre, for
the stately and wise _Aspasia_." The central figure wore her draperies
hanging straight to her feet, hence the "advance" and consequent
concealment of the unlovely limbs. It was quickly and kindly done, for
the girl was not only spared mortification, but in the word "advance"
she saw a compliment, and was happy accordingly. Then my turn came; my
arm was placed about _Aspasia_, my head bent and turned and twisted, my
right hand curved upon my breast, so that the forefinger touched my chin;
I felt I was a personified simper, but I was silent and patient until the
arrangement of my draperies began--then I squirmed anxiously.

"Take care, take care!" he cautioned, "you will sway the others if you
move!" But, in spite of the risk of my marble make-up, I faintly groaned:
"Oh, dear! must it be like that?"

Regardless of the pins in the corner of his mouth, he burst into
laughter, and taking a photograph from the bosom of his Greek shirt, he
said: "I expected a protest from you, miss, so I came prepared; don't
move your head, but just look at this."

He held the picture of a group of statuary up to me: "This is you on the
right; it's not so dreadful, now, is it?" and I cautiously murmured, that
if I wasn't any worse than that I wouldn't mind.

And so we were all satisfied and our statue scene was very successful.

Next morning I saw Mr. Booth come running out of the theatre on his way
to the telegraph office at the corner, and right in the middle of the
walk, staring about him, stood a child--a small roamer of the stony
streets, who had evidently got far enough beyond his native ward to
arouse misgivings as to his personal safety, and at the very moment he
stopped to consider matters, Mr. Booth dashed out of the stage-door and
added to his bewilderment by capsizing him completely.

"Oh, good Lord! Baby, are you hurt?" exclaimed Mr. Booth, pausing
instantly to pick up the dirty, touselled, small heap and stand it on its
bandy legs again.

"Don't cry, little chap!" and the aforesaid little chap not only ceased
to cry but gave him a damp and grimy smile, at which the actor bent
toward him quickly, but paused, took out his handkerchief, and first
carefully wiping the dirty little nose and mouth, stooped and kissed him
heartily, put some change in each freckled paw, and continued his run to
the telegraph office.

He knew of no witness to the act. To kiss a pretty, clean child under the
approving eyes of mamma might mean nothing but politeness, but surely it
required the prompting of a warm and tender heart to make a young and
thoughtless man feel for and caress such a dirty, forlorn bit of babyhood
as that.

Of his work, I suppose I was too young and too ignorant to judge
correctly, but I remember well hearing the older members of the company
express their opinions. Mr. Ellsler, who had been on terms of friendship
with the elder Booth, was delighted with the promise of his work. He
greatly admired Edwin's intellectual power, his artistic care, but
"John," he cried, "has more of the old man's power in one performance
than Edwin can show in a year. He has the fire, the dash, the touch of
_strangeness_. He often produces unstudied effects at night. I question
him, 'Did you rehearse that business to-day, John?' he answers: 'No, I
didn't rehearse it, it just came to me in the scene, and I couldn't help
doing it; but it went all right, didn't it?' Full of impulse, just now,
like a colt, his heels are in the air, nearly as often as his head, but
wait a year or two till he gets used to the harness, and quiets down a
bit, and you will see as great an actor as America can produce!"

And, by the way, speaking of Mr. Ellsler and the elder Booth, I am
reminded that I have in my possession a letter from the latter to the
former. It is written in a rather cramped hand, that carries the address
and the marks of the red wafers, as that was before the appearance of
envelopes, and it informs Mr. Ellsler that he, "Junius Brutus Booth, will
play a star engagement of one week for the sum of--" how many dollars? if
it were not unguessable, I should insist upon your guessing, but that
would not be fair, so here it is--"for the sum of three hundred
dollars," and wants to know how many and what plays he is desired to do,
that he may select his wardrobe.

Think of it--the mighty father of our Edwin asking but $300 for a week of
such acting as he could do, which, if this bright, light-hearted boy was
so much like him, must have been brilliant indeed.

One morning, going on the stage where a group were talking with John
Wilkes, I heard him say: "No! no, no! there's but one _Hamlet_ to my
mind, that's my brother Edwin. You see, between ourselves, he _is
Hamlet_, melancholy and all!"

That was an awful time when the dread news came to us. We were in
Columbus. We had been horrified by the great crime at Washington. My
room-mate and I had from our small earnings bought some black cotton, at
a tripled price, as all the black material in the city was not sufficient
to meet the demand, and as we tacked it about our one window, a man,
passing, told us the assassin had been discovered, and that he was the
actor Booth. Hattie laughed so she nearly swallowed the tack that,
girl-like, she held between her lips, and I, after a laugh, told him it
was a poor subject for a jest, and we went in. There was no store in
Columbus then where playbooks were sold, and as Mr. Ellsler had a very
large and complete stage library, he frequently lent his books to us, and
we would hurriedly copy out our lines and return the book for his own
use. On that occasion he was going to study his part first and then leave
the play with us as he passed going home. We heard his knock; I was busy
pressing a bit of stage finery. Hattie opened the door, and then I heard
her exclaiming: "Why--why--what?" I turned quickly. Mr. Ellsler was
coming slowly into the room. He is a very dark man, but he was perfectly
livid then, his lips even were blanched to the whiteness of his cheeks.
His eyes were dreadful, they were so glassy and seemed so unseeing. He
was devoted to his children, and all I could think of as likely to bring
such a look upon his face was disaster to one of them, and I cried, as I
drew a chair to him, "What is it? Oh, what has happened to them?"

He sank down, he wiped his brow, he looked almost stupidly at me, then,
very faintly, he said: "You--haven't--heard--anything?"

Like a flash Hattie's eyes and mine met; we thought of the supposed
ill-timed jest of the stranger--my lips moved wordlessly. Hattie
stammered: "A man, he lied though, said that Wilkes Booth--but he did
lie--didn't he?" and in the same faint voice Mr. Ellsler answered,
slowly: "No--no! he did not lie--it's too true!"

Down fell our heads and the waves of shame and sorrow seemed fairly to
o'erwhelm us, and while our sobs filled the little room, Mr. Ellsler rose
and laid two playbooks on the table. Then, while standing there, staring
into space, I heard his far, faint voice, saying: "So great, so good a
man destroyed, and by the hand of that unhappy boy! my God! my God!" He
wiped his brow again and slowly left the house, apparently unconscious of
our presence.

When we resumed our work--the theatre had closed because of the national
calamity--many a painted cheek showed runnels made by bitter tears, and
one old actress, with quivering lips, exclaimed: "One woe doth tread upon
another's heel, so fast they follow!" but with no thought of quoting, and
God knows the words expressed the situation perfectly.

Mrs. Ellsler, whom I never saw shed a tear for any sickness, sorrow, or
trouble of her own, shed tears for the mad boy who had suddenly become
the assassin o

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