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.