The 4th of August, 1914.--Unforgettable pictures.--The rule, and the
exception.--A personal grievance.--The American point of view.--Lionel
Mackinder.--Dyeing to die.--“Carrying on.”--The theatrical profession
in war time.--Unconquerable humour.--Death of my husband.--The
unchangeable suburb.--An old Adelphi friend.--Alma Murray.--Mr. Robert
Pateman.--A new Hamlet?--History repeats itself.--The theatre of
to-day.--The young actor and actress.--A player’s first duty.--Irving
and Terriss.--A contrast in tours.--A new field.--The film.--A great
art in its infancy.--Tom Terriss.
War! It scarcely seemed credible. That fourth day of August, 1914,
which was to be the last day in the life of the world of the old
familiar ways, and was to see the birth of a new, strange and
portentous era, was, on the surface, absurdly, tragically like other
days. The majority of people seemed numbed, dazed, and unable to grasp
the full meaning of the looming tragedy, and went dully about their
ordinary tasks. In the streets, in the shops, in the business centres
of the great cities, the same throngs moved in much the same fashion,
but, whether it was in my imagination alone or not, it seemed to me
that in those terrible days each was gazing almost furtively into his
neighbour’s eyes, and wondering, always wondering. There was a drawing
together, a feeling of a common brotherhood in the face of a common,
unknown danger, which abolished the distinction of classes and status
in the twinkling of an eye. In an instant the nation seemed to have
become one vast family. And wherever one moved, whenever one listened,
there were the voices of the newsboys crying: “War! War! War against
Germany!”
In the memories of all of us who passed through those days are
unforgettable pictures. It was all so new, so strange, and the
impressions were all so vivid. Vaguely one realized that all the
pleasant old ways had passed for ever; that an abyss had suddenly
opened at one’s feet, into the depths of which the sight could not
penetrate.
The unknown yawned suddenly in front of one, and one could only wonder,
wonder. Certain sounds of those days are indelibly recorded in my
memory. The hoarse cries of the newsboys, for example; the night-long
clanking of the troop trains, never ceasing, never pausing; the singing
of the recruits as they marched into the unknown; the indescribable,
anxious note in the murmuring voices of the crowds in public places.
And certain sights are unforgettable. The waiting throngs of quiet,
determined youths--now, as we realize only too sadly and well, the
flower and chivalry of the nation--at the hastily improvised recruiting
stations; wherever one went, one found those silent, grimly patient
throngs of boys with stern, set, unboyish faces.
In nearly every home in the land the same great scene was being enacted
as was enacted in mine. The bell rang, the door burst open, and a
nephew of eighteen, a lad who seemed but yesterday a schoolboy with
leanings towards sweets and pocket-money, rushed into my room.
“I’ve enlisted!” he cried, with the air of one who has a great load
lifted from his mind.
“But what will your father say when he hears of it?” I asked weakly.
Only yesterday, it seemed, he was a child in knickerbockers.
“What would he say if I hadn’t?” he demanded proudly.
But there were others, and the others were the exceptions that made the
rule more glorious.
On the day after war was declared I was driving down Whitehall with my
husband and a young English actor of thirty-three years of age, who,
having made a success in America, was now on a visit to England, and
seemed to take it as a personal grievance that the nation had spoilt
his holiday by declaring war on the Hun.
My husband drew his attention to the patient, waiting thousands who
filled the Horse Guards Parade.
“Of course you’re going to enlist?” he observed gruffly.
“Well, I don’t know; I’m thinking it over,” was the peevish answer.
“It’s an infernal shame--the whole beastly thing. After a lot of hard
work I came over here to have a good time, and I’m not getting it.”
And that is an actual record of a conversation I can never forget.
Within a few days the gentleman who was not getting a “good time” had
sailed for New York, and soon after was once more playing his favourite
rôle of hero at the safe distance of three thousand miles of Atlantic.
As I have said, the exceptions to the rule were so few and so glaring
that they stood out with extreme prominence, and the theatrical
club in America may be forgiven the notice which they posted in
their smoke-room: “To Englishmen! Your King and Country Need You! We
don’t!”--the more especially as America had not at that time even
faintly begun to realize the gigantic magnitude of the issue.
I think that every member of my profession has a right to be proud of
its record in the war. Very, very soon the boards were deserted by
all the young and able-bodied, and many who were neither young nor
able-bodied prevaricated and lied their way into the firing line. Poor
Lionel Mackinder, for example, who, in spite of his youthful appearance
was years above the military age, in the very early days found a hero’s
grave, and there were many like him. And I remember one actor, who is
happily still alive and who shall be nameless, whom I met sometime in
1916 in Oxford Street looking the picture of gloom. He had done nobly
in those terrible fields of Flanders, and I had heard that he had been
wounded and sent home, so my delight at seeing him was only damped by
his general air of sadness.
“What is the matter?” I asked him, when we had chatted for a moment. He
removed his uniform cap.
“Look at my hair,” he said.
“What is the matter with it,” I asked, somewhat mystified, “there seems
plenty of it.”
“Plenty of it,” he retorted peevishly. “Of course there’s plenty of
it, but it’s grey, _grey_! I didn’t expect a medical board for another
month, so I haven’t been dyeing it lately, and now they’ve suddenly
sprung a ‘board’ on me for this very afternoon--and--and the beastly
dye takes at least twenty-four hours to work. The last time they saw me
I was a bold brunette, and even then they hinted that I was a bit old
for the part!”
And when he shook hands and I wished him God-speed: “It’s a curious
world, isn’t it, when one has to dye to die?” he asked whimsically.
For the women, the over-aged, and the unfit of the profession the
noblest task seemed to be to “carry on” as best one could, and to
brighten and cheer the all too short hours of leave from the shell-torn
fields, and to lighten, so far as it was in the power of human beings
to lighten, the lives of the maimed and broken.
Yes, I am proud of my profession’s work in the dark days of Armageddon.
For, believe me, there were few of us who had not our own anxieties,
for whom the dreadful casualty lists had no terrors, but if anything
were needed to hearten us it was supplied by the bravery of the men we
tried to amuse and help to forget.
Never, for instance, shall I forget two maimed lads at a performance
of “The Rosary” for the wounded at Brighton. They were chums, I heard;
they had “joined” together, had fought side by side, had been wounded
together; each had lost an arm, one the right and the other the left.
And side by side they sat at the performance, and when they wanted to
applaud--as they did very often--one maimed boy laughingly struck his
right palm against his chum’s left.
Yet again. Into the big hall at St. Dunstan’s trooped in single file a
long line of sightless men, each with his hand lightly resting on the
shoulder of the man in front of him. Suddenly one of them lost touch,
and for a second the rear half of the procession halted. Then from the
end of the line came a mock-impatient question:
“What’s the matter, Alf? Dropped your opera glasses?”
And the sightless men roared with laughter as at some Gargantuan joke,
while the sighted folk laughed also--but there was a sob in _their_
laughter.
And it was in a London hospital that a plucky little actress of my
acquaintance who had become a volunteer nurse, received one of the
shocks of her life. She was a tender-hearted soul, full of sympathy,
but she at first failed to realize that even a badly wounded Tommy
had a strong desire to keep up appearances, therefore she had a
severe shock when an irrepressible patient, with both legs hideously
fractured, and whose splints, being longer than the poor legs, stuck
out beyond the foot of the bed, called her anxiously to his help.
“What is it?” she asked kindly.
“Nothing in particular, sister,” he replied bashfully; “on’y please
cover up these splints. The visitors ’ll think I’m a bloomin’
wheelbarrow.”
She instantly covered them up, and thereafter, seeing that she was at
heart a sympathetic soul and appreciated a man’s little vanities, he
admitted her to his confidence. Whenever I met her she had some new
story of her “wheelbarrow man,” as she used to call him to his face,
to his own vast amusement and to the mystification of the doctors and
visitors, and one of them I remember as typical of the unconquerable
humour of the poor maimed men who saved us.
There was a confirmed hospital visitor who meant dreadfully well. She
was a lady of very high rank indeed, with a very loud voice and a very
kind heart, but she would make the fatal mistake of “talking war.”
Now, not every badly wounded man, back once more in clean sheets and
civilization, cared to talk war, but war was her topic and she worked
it to death.
“And how many Germans did you kill on the ridge that day?” she asked
fatuously.
He opened his eyes wearily, and took her in at a glance.
“I dunno exactly, mum,” he whispered. “I was wounded before I’d
finished counting ’em--but they’ve stuffed my mattress with the
whiskers.”
With such a spirit among the wounded and the men on leave the task of
the theatres in “carrying on” in war time became a duty. What did the
darkened towns, the lighting and travelling difficulties, the thousand
petty discomforts matter, when the men who were really suffering,
really enduring, and whose life amid the mud and lice of the trenches
was a hell on earth, could, in their brief respite from torment, gain a
little happiness, a little forgetfulness?
So the men on leave, the anxious ones at home, and the maimed and
wounded all found hours of forgetfulness and of laughter in the
theatre. Some Spartan folk there were who blamed the profession for the
lightness, frivolity and inconsequence of the war-time productions, but
Tragedy was stalking through the land, and the greatest problem play in
history was being played on the stage of the world. Surely a few hours’
inconsequent laughter at inconsequent nothings could not be grudged to
the actors in that play?
While acting on tour at Cheltenham my husband was taken ill on the
stage. I was telegraphed for, and, travelling in a crowded troop
train, I reached the town I had not visited since I was eight years
of age, although it loomed large in our family history. At Cheltenham
my great-grandfather, my grandfather, and my mother were born, and at
Cheltenham my husband died.
And then--so does history repeat itself--I returned to London to take a
flat in West Kensington three houses away from the house in which I had
lived with my parents in those old Adelphi days, when, at the urgent
request of my poor mother, I used to stop the hansom from the theatre
at the corner of the street, and walk the few yards to the door at
night, as “the neighbours would not think it respectable for a hansom
to drive up so late at night.” Not to say that in those days it was
considered distinctly “fast” for a young woman to be seen in a hansom
at all!
But in many ways West Kensington has changed but little, and of all
London districts I know seems the least affected by the march of those
twin decorators and renovators, time and progress. The same people live
there; they look older, that is all.
Shortly after taking up my abode I entered West Kensington Station, and
the stationmaster came up to me.
“You won’t remember me, Miss Millward,” he observed, “but many’s the
time I’ve watched you from the Adelphi gallery in the old days--many’s
the time I’ve opened your carriage door for you when I was a porter at
this station and when you were off to the theatre.”
So little does West Kensington change that James Hurford has been at
that same station for thirty-eight years.
And the butcher is the same--he looks older, like the rest of us, but
he is the same, and he remembers; the newsagent is the same, the doctor
is the same--no one seems to leave West Kensington, or if they do, it
is only to return.
And it is a colony of familiar faces.
I turn a corner and I meet Alma Murray--Alma Murray, whose performance
in “The Cenci” drew letters of praise from Robert Browning; a musician
who knew Sims Reeves greets me on my doorstep; a friend of Irving’s
bows to me as I take my ticket, with the stationmaster at my side who
was porter thirty-odd years ago. And when I visit a near-by theatre
whom do I find myself next to but Mr. Robert Pateman, whom I have not
seen since the death of Mr. Terriss.
We found that we had both been attracted to the theatre that afternoon
by the desire to see Mr. Bransby Williams in “David Copperfield.”
“He is a great actor,” I observed to Mr. Pateman as the curtain fell.
“He is,” replied the stately old gentleman. “And I will tell you a
secret. He will be a wonderful Hamlet, and he has confided to me that
he means to play it.”
Secrets are so difficult to keep, are they not?
And then we talked of his dear wife, who was my friend at the
Adelphi--the Adelphi once again as I write devoted to melodrama, so
does history repeat itself--and of many, many memories, happy and sad,
including even the domestic servant problem.
“You were luckier in your maid than my wife was in hers,” he smiled,
and a long-forgotten memory once more came to mind. I had been boasting
to Mrs. Pateman of the treasure I had found in Lottie.
“Ah,” she sighed, “how I wish I had your luck, my dear. My last
experience has been too awful. She was from the country, and, as she
said she had never been to a play, I told her one evening that while we
were out she could go to the theatre at Hammersmith, which was quite
close, as our house was in Castlenau, Barnes, but to be sure to be back
before we arrived home from the West End. Of course, when we arrived
there were no signs of her, and when midnight struck, and then one,
I grew seriously alarmed, and had visions of a country girl lost in
London. I knew the play, ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin,’ was over long before the
Adelphi play, and couldn’t imagine what had kept the girl. At last I
heard a noise in the garden in front, and rushing through the hall I
opened the front door--and there she stood.
“‘What on earth does this mean?’” I asked, angrily. For a moment she
did not answer, and then I became aware of a horrible scent--gin, my
dear.
“‘Oh, mum!’ she gulped, ‘Little Eva’s dead--an’ it so upset me that I
felt quite faint!’ And then she burst into floods of maudlin tears.”
Again I look around as I write, and see history repeating itself.
As I have said, the Adelphi is once again given over to drama of the
kind which acquired the name of “Adelphi drama”; the play which set
the seal on the reputation of Mrs. Patrick Campbell (who followed me
at the Adelphi), “The Second Mrs. Tanqueray,” has added fresh laurels
to brilliant Miss Gladys Cooper; Pinero plays are once more the vogue,
and, what possesses a peculiar interest for me, Tom Terriss, the son of
the original David Kingsley is engaged on a production of “The Harbour
Lights” for the films, in which appears the niece of the original Dora.
Soon--who knows? he may be already waiting in the wings--the great
tragedian may stride upon the scene and another Irving may fill the
stage.
All the others are there--the brilliant comedians, the clever
comediennes, and I think I see a great tragic actress. And he will come
once more, the Garrick, the Kean, the Macready, the Irving of his day.
It seems the mode, in certain circles, to take a gloomy view of the
present of the theatre, and an even gloomier view of the future. But I
was ever an optimist, and as I survey the present condition of the art
I love I see little reason for pessimism.
Artistically, the war phase was a bad one, and has left its mark.
Sneer as you may at the actor-managers and the commercial managers
of pre-war days, folk such as the Bancrofts, Irving, Tree, Wyndham,
Alexander and the Frohmans loved and knew their theatre, made it
their life study, and within their limitations--and who has not
limitations?--gave of their best ungrudgingly and devotedly.
The same can scarcely be said of the host of business folk, who, during
the curious war period, looked upon the theatre as an outlet for their
superfluous capital, and regarded theatrical speculation in the light
of an agreeable flutter. Perhaps the phase was unavoidable--in a world
upheaval the arts go first to the wall--but it was a phase that did
harm, and the effects are not even yet wholly eliminated.
But as I look around I refuse to be pessimistic. I see many clever
young people, men and women, who, given fair opportunity and provided
they take to the art seriously and reverently, need fear no comparison
with the great names of the immediate past.
But I entreat them to take their work seriously. I am old-fashioned
enough to believe that it is the player’s duty to give his or her
public the best that is in his or her power, and when I look back at
the severe and constant work which was thought necessary in my day,
entirely apart from the actual performances at the theatre, I permit
myself to wonder whether the ambitious young actor or actress who
sandwiches a performance between a late lunch, or a dance tea, and a
supper dance until the small hours, is physically in a fit condition to
give that best to the public who pays.
Each of us, I am aware, must in such matters be a law to him or
herself.
Nothing delighted Irving more, for example, than to sit up to all hours
of the dawn over a cigar with a few of his intimate friends, discussing
his art and aims, but Irving was essentially a lonely man, yet a lover
of the company of the carefully chosen few. And Irving, as I have said,
was made of steel and whipcord. Mr. Terriss, on the other hand, a
fervent believer in the open air and the simple life, had his bowl of
bread-and-milk--I can see the modern fashionable young _jeune premier_
smile!--between the acts at nine o’clock every evening of his life,
and observed the early-to-bed rule as closely as it is possible for a
member of our profession to do so.
Healthy relaxation is essential alike for mind and body, and in no
profession is it more essential than in the actor’s, for the actor of
necessity lives on his nervous temperament with one great object, to
fit him to give of his very best to the public by and in whom he has
his being.
And the ambitious young man and woman of to-day is far better off in a
way than I and my contemporaries were; a vast, new and barely explored
field has been opened to them in the cinema.
For long, I confess, I was inclined to treat the film as an amusing
toy, valuable, possibly, for educational purposes, and for recording
events pictorially for the benefit of posterity, but I begin to realize
that I was wrong. It is true that in its earlier phases the film play
seemed to me to savour too much of the “penny blood” and the “penny
novelette” of my childhood’s days; but the days are already passing
when lunatics leaping from precipices, mad cowboys lassoing express
trains, and “a crime to every foot of film” seem to be the producer’s
ideal. I may be unduly optimistic, but in the film world I fancy I see
the uneducated, illiterate, commercial element retiring gradually into
the background, and a new generation of artists and of dreamers who
mean to make their dreams come true.
And in this connection I cannot do better than quote from a long letter
I received from one of the younger generation of enthusiasts in answer
to some criticisms of mine.
Tom Terriss writes:
“In the seven years that I have put in in the making of motion
pictures I have played and watched the game from every angle. I cannot
exclaim ‘Eureka!’ (which is Greek for ‘I know it all’), but this I can
say--the trouble with the cinema is formula. There are set formulas
for writing titles, for stories, formulas for entries and exits,
formulas for beginnings and endings.
There are not enough bold, creative spirits who will continually smash
all rules and formulas. In the rapid development of the mechanical
side of picture-making in America the artistic side is being lost
sight of. There are beautiful ‘effects,’ but few ideas. Story-writers,
directors, title-writers and actors are tied hand and foot by the
purely mechanical and business brains that will eventually make the
American-made picture the most perfect mechanically in the world, but
the least creative, the least intellectual and the most tiresome.
The crying need of this great art is big independent writers and epic
directors who can work untrammelled. This real wonder of the modern
world is to-day almost wholly controlled by men not to the cinema
born. It is as though Mr. Edison were to call in a barber to run his
plants or the ‘Daily Mail’ were to pick a cigar salesman for managing
editor.
During my seven years in studios I have watched the manufacture of
pictures from the day the story was bought until its production
on Broadway. I have seen the story passed on to the scenario (or
continuity) writer, who put it into 480 scenes, describing in his
script the minutest action of every character, planting the fades and
the close-ups with a complete set of titles. I have seen the script
changed by the supervising director, passed on to the director, who
shot it, scene by scene, from the manuscript; the building of each
‘set’ by the carpenters from the blue prints from the art department,
the continual re-editing and cutting of the film after twenty runs in
the raw in the projection room, the re-titling, the making of insets
(letters, documents, photographs, etc.), the making of title cards in
the laboratory, and the final run in the theatre of the studio for the
‘critics’ from the main office--who just as often pronounce the whole
thing ‘rot’ as they signify with an enigmatic shake of the head ‘It’ll
pass!’
There is only one question after these months of labour--not is the
picture ‘good’ or ‘bad,’ ‘true’ or ‘false’--but ‘will it get over?’
And the question is perfectly legitimate, for the cinema is neither
educational nor philanthropic. It is as purely a commercial enterprise
as selling soap.
There are rare and beautiful instances when artistic effect and
commercial values marry. ‘Sentimental Tommy,’ ‘The Four Horsemen of
the Apocalypse,’ ‘Experience,’ ‘Peter Ibbetson’ are instances.
Before I went into the cinema I had heard a great deal about the
‘fascination,’ the ‘magic’ of the game, and the way it ‘gets you.’
‘How to get into the cinema’ is the slogan of millions. No one was
ever told how to get out of the cinema--for no one wants to get out
having once got in. I have never met a person who voluntarily left the
cinema for another business.
But when I first entered the studio the fascination and the magic were
nowhere apparent. I couldn’t find cinema land, the modern democratic
fourth dimension. On the great stages, where sometimes ten scenes were
being shot at once, there seemed to be a series of dumb shows going
on, interrupted by the hammers of carpenters, the blare of jazz bands,
the gong of the director, or his megaphone.
A girl leaped from a castle window into a net held by stage-hands.
Tom Meighan was being knocked down in a bar-room; Wallace Reid, in a
military uniform, was bowing and scraping to a double-decked duenna;
Constance Binney was cooking ham and eggs in a garret; Elsie Ferguson
leaned out of a balcony while her stage lover sat on a fire hydrant
off scene, chewing a cheese sandwich. Bewildering, but sometimes
dismal.
But with the passing days the curious unreality of this world begins
to creep into your blood, bone and tissue. These unsubstantial and
fading scenes begin to attack and dilate your imagination. Living
with a picture from its inception to its last shot built up in me
a ‘fiction sense.’ To battle in conferences over people who never
lived and dramatic and comic situations that have no reality; to
create word pictures (titles) so that they shall fit exactly into the
place where they must go; to live day and night with the doings of
mythical beings, to make them do this and that at your will, to see
a story growing day by day into flesh and blood before you--that is
the fascination, that is the magic, comparable only to the sculptor’s
passion when he turns a block of stone into a Galatea.
And once this creational furore seizes you it can never leave you. You
may quit, you may chuck the cinema if you will, but the voice of the
director rings in your ear still.
You may have noted that men in the various departments of the cinema
never talk about anything else. I soon caught the fire. It is because
everything that happens becomes a picture. Every face you meet is
judged by camera standards. The whole planet becomes a motion-picture
studio. All events are poses. I found stories in stones, and shots in
everything.
A great many actors and actresses in the cinema portray characters
whose fictional names they do not know, and quite often they have not
even read the story of the play they are helping to film.
Motion-pictures, the eighth art, are not yet twenty years old, and yet
they are always being sneered at because they are not on a ‘higher
level.’
What art in the history of the world has progressed so fast?
Painting is one of the oldest of the arts--but not one picture in ten
thousand is worth looking at.
Literature is one of the oldest of the arts--but not one book in ten
thousand is real literature.
Music is one of the oldest of the arts--but the immortal composers do
not number twenty.
Dancing is one of the oldest of the arts--but to-day the world
‘shimmies’ and ‘jazzes.’
Architecture is one of the oldest of the arts--but the masterpieces of
architecture are few.
Sculpture is one of the oldest of the arts--but how many Rodins,
Michelangelos, and Praxiteles are there?
Play-writing is one of the oldest of the arts--but there is not one
play in fifty that is worth seeing and not one in ten thousand that
lives.
Most books, plays, music and painting are only fit for the
ashpan--after incalculable years of work on them.
What the seven arts have achieved only at long intervals in thousands
of years, the Jeremiahs demand that an art barely twenty years old
shall achieve every day!
No part in the history of humanity can compare for one moment with the
achievements of the motion-picture art in twenty years.
No art that is so essentially and necessarily democratic as
the motion-picture art has done more for the imagination, the
intelligence, the education and the entertainment of mankind.
The seven arts existed hundreds and thousands of years before they
gave birth to an Æschylus, a Moliere, a Shakespeare, a Rembrandt, a
Beethoven, a Mordkin, a Rodin, a Cervantes, an Acropolis.
And there are those who demand of the eighth art--which is an
outgrowth and a blending of all the arts--these miracles in twenty
years!
In twenty-five years, with millions behind me and a free foot, I might
conceivably put the American-made motion-picture on a level with the
highest products in the other arts.
But after seven years I am still an amateur. And the greatest men in
the business are still no more than that!”
If that is the spirit that animates the young men of to-day I have no
fear of the future.
“Look not mournfully into the past: it comes not back again. Wisely
improve the present: it is yours. Go forth to meet the shadowy future
without fear, and with a manly heart.”
THE END.
PARTS I HAVE PLAYED
I acted as an amateur with the Carlton Amateur Dramatic Club, and
made my first appearance on the professional stage at the Folly
Theatre (subsequently Toole’s), in July, 1881, as Constance in “The
Love Chase”; next went on tour with the St. James’s Company, and at
Manchester, 7th September, 1881, appeared as Mrs. Mildmay in “Still
Waters Run Deep”; subsequently played at the same theatre Mabel Meryon
in “Coralie.” At the St. James’s, 27th October, 1881, I played the
part of Mary Preston in “The Cape Mail,” this being my first original
part; at the same theatre, 29th December, 1881, I played the part
of Florence in “Cousin Dick”; and on 17th May, 1882, appeared as
Mary Sullivan in “A Quiet Rubber”; in June, 1882, went on tour with
Miss Genevieve Ward, playing Alice Verney in “Forget Me Not.” On the
strength of my success in the past I was engaged by the late Sir Henry
Irving at the Lyceum, and on 11th October, 1882, I appeared there
as Hero in “Much Ado about Nothing”; at the Lyceum also played the
following parts: Julie Lesurques in “The Lyons Mail,” Annette in “The
Bells,” Jessica in “The Merchant of Venice,” Lady Dolly Touchwood in
“The Belle’s Stratagem,” and Marie in “Louis XI.” I then accompanied
the Lyceum Company to America, where, in addition to the foregoing, I
also played Lady Anne in “King Richard III.” On the conclusion of my
engagement with Sir Henry Irving I appeared at Stetson’s Fifth Avenue
Theatre, New York, 1st September, 1885, as Pauline in “Called Back,”
subsequently touring in the same part. At Madison Square Theatre, 12th
April, 1885, I appeared as Katherine Ray in “Sealed Instructions,”
and subsequently appeared as Ada in the same play. I then returned to
London, and appeared at the Adelphi on 17th September, 1885, succeeding
Cissy Grahame as Fanny Power in “Arrah Na Pogue.” On 24th October
I played Anne Chute in “The Colleen Bawn”; 23rd December, 1885, I
appeared as Dora Vane in “The Harbour Lights” at the Adelphi, which was
the first of the series of popular melodramas at that house in which
I appeared with the late William Terriss. At the Vaudeville Theatre,
30th June, 1886, I played Hazel Kirke in the play of that name; at the
Adelphi I played in “The Bells of Haslemere,” “The Union Jack,” “The
Silver Falls,” and “The Shaughraun”; in 1889, accompanied Terriss to
America on a joint starring tour, appearing at Niblo’s Garden, 8th
October, 1889, as Julie de Noirville in “Roger la Honte” (“A Man’s
Shadow”), and 6th November, 1889, as Pauline in “The Lady of Lyons.”
I also played in “Ingomar,” “Frou-Frou,” “Othello,” and “The Marble
Heart.” I reappeared in England at the Grand Theatre, Islington, 5th
April, 1890, as Dora in “The Harbour Lights”; at Drury Lane, 12th May,
1890, I played Diane de Beaumont in “Paul Kauvar”; 6th September, 1890,
Mary Maythorne in “A Million of Money”; at the Avenue, 7th February,
1891, I played Mercédès in “Monte Cristo,” and at the Vaudeville, 18th
March, 1891, appeared as Miss Young in “Diamond Deane.” Returning to
Drury Lane, in April I played Susan Merton in “It’s Never too Late to
Mend”; in May I appeared as Jenny Boker in “Formosa,” and in June as
Gervaise in “Drink.” In September I was again at Drury Lane, playing
Marie Delaunay in “A Sailor’s Knot”; and in May, 1892, I returned to
the Lyceum to play Julie de Mortemar in “Richelieu.” I next toured
with William Terriss in costume recitals of “Romeo and Juliet,” “The
Lady of Lyons,” “The Hunchback,” and “The Taming of the Shrew.” At
Drury Lane, September, 1892, I played the part of Rose Woodmere in “The
Prodigal Daughter,” and at the Lyceum, 22nd April, 1893, appeared as
Jeannette in “The Lyons Mail.” At the Grand, Islington, 5th June, 1893,
I played Alma Dunbar in “For England”; returned to the Lyceum in June
and played Queen Eleanor in “Becket,” and in September accompanied Sir
Henry Irving and company to the United States. On my return I appeared
at the Lyceum, 5th May, 1894, as Margaret in “Faust”; in September,
1892, I returned with William Terriss to the Adelphi, and continued to
play there until his tragic death. I appeared there in the following
plays: “The Fatal Card,” “The Girl I Left Behind Me,” “The Swordsman’s
Daughter,” “One of the Best,” “Boys Together,” “Black-Eyed Susan,”
“Secret Service,” and “In the Days of the Duke.” In 1898 I went to
America, and appeared at the Empire under Charles Frohman; on 26th
December, 1898, I appeared as Euphrosine in “Phroso,” and subsequently
appeared as Lady Algernon Chetland in “Lord and Lady Algy,” Stella de
Gex in “His Excellency the Governor,” Lady Doura in “My Lady’s Lord,”
Eleanor Ainslie in “A Man and His Wife,” Lady Eastney in “Mrs. Dane’s
Defence,” and the Comptesse Zicka in “Diplomacy.” At the Garrick, New
York, 15th September, 1902, I played the Comptesse d’Autreval in
“There’s Many a Slip,” and at the Savoy, 30th March, 1903, appeared as
Helen in “The Taming of Helen.” At Madison Square, 3rd November, 1903,
I played Mrs. Tracey Auberton in “A Clean Slate”; at the Princess, 14th
March, 1904, Beatrice in “Much Ado about Nothing”; and at Proctor’s,
23rd May, 1904, in “A Queen’s Messenger.” I reappeared in London, after
nearly nine years’ absence, at the Scala Theatre (which I leased for a
time) on 10th March, 1906, as Lady Manners in “A School for Husbands.”
After a short tour with the same play I again returned to America,
and at the Hudson Theatre, 30th August, 1906, I played the part of
Mrs. Wilmore in “The Hypocrites.” During 1907 I toured in the same
play; at the Hudson Theatre, November, 1908, played Lady Mereston in
“Lady Frederick”; at the Court Theatre, Chicago, January, 1910, played
Clara Stewart in “The Girl in the Taxi,” appearing in the same part at
the Astor Theatre, New York, October, 1910. During 1911 I played in
various music-halls in “As a Man Sows,” and during 1912 in “Reaping the
Whirlwind”; reappeared in London at the Chelsea Palace, 10th February,
1913, when I played Kate Kerrigan in “In the Grey of the Dawn”;
subsequently touring in a playlet, “The Laird and the Lady.”
_Taylor Garnett Evans & Co.,
Printers,
Manchester._
Transcriber's Notes:
Italics are shown thus: _sloping_.
Variations in spelling and hyphenation are retained.
Perceived typographical errors have been changed.