My correspondent also asks me a question which I shall answer very
briefly, but which it is as well should be answered; She writes, "Are
there many temptations for a girl on the stage, and need she
necessarily fall into them?" Of course there are such temptations on
the stage, as there must be in any calling in which men and women are
brought into contact on a footing of equality; perhaps these
temptations are somewhat intensified in the theatre. At the same
time, I would venture to say from my own experience of that branch of
theatrical business with which I have been connected--and in such
matters one can only speak from personal experience--that any woman
yielding to these temptations has only herself to blame, that any
well-brought-up, sensible girl will, and can, avoid them altogether,
and that I should not make these temptations a ground for dissuading
any young woman in whom I might be interested from joining our
calling. To say, as a writer once said, that it was impossible for a
girl to succeed on the stage without impaired morals, is a statement
as untrue as to say that no man can succeed as a lawyer unless he be a
rogue, a doctor unless he be a quack, a parson unless be be a
hypocrite.
To all who intend to become actors and actresses, my first word of
advice would be--Respect this calling you have chosen to pursue. You
will often in your experience hear it, see it in print, slighted and
contemned. There are many reasons for this. Religious prejudice,
fostered by the traditions of a by no means obsolete Puritanism, is
one; the envy of those who, forgetting the disadvantages, the
difficulties, the uncertainty of the actor's life, see only the glare
of popular adulation, the glitter of the comparatively large salaries
paid to a few of us--such unreasoning envy as this is another; and the
want of sympathy of some writers with the art itself, who, unable to
pray with Goethe and Voltaire, remain to scoff with Jeremy Collier, is
a third. There are causes from without that will always keep alive a
certain measure of hostility towards the player. As long as the
public, in Hazlitt's words, feel more respect for John Kemble in a
plain coat than the Lord Chancellor on the Woolsack, so long will this
public regard for the actor provoke the resentment of those whose
achievements in art appeal less immediately, less strikingly, to their
audience. But if they would only pause to consider, surely they might
lay to their souls the unction that the immediate reward of the actor
in his lifetime is merely nature's compensation to him for the
comparative oblivion of his achievements when he has ceased to be.
Imagine for one moment Shakespeare and Garrick contemplating at the
present moment from the heights the spectacle of their fame. Who
would grudge the actor the few years of fervid admiration he was
privileged to enjoy, some one hundred and fifty years ago, as compared
with the centuries of living glory that have fallen to the great poet?
Sometimes you may hear your calling sneered at by those who pursue it.
There are few professions that are not similarly girded at by some of
their own members, either from disappointment or some ingrained
discontent. When you hear such detraction, fix your thoughts not on
the paltry accidents of your art, such as the use of cosmetics and
other little infirmities of its practice, things that are obvious
marks for the cheap sneer, but look rather to what that art is capable
of in its highest forms, to what is the essence of the actor's
achievement, what he can do and has done to win the genuine admiration
and respect of those whose admiration and respect have been worth the
having.