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.