Clara Morris

“ There were few stars with whom I took greater pleasure in acting than with Mr. Lawrence Barrett. I sometimes wonder if even now this profession really knows what great reason it has to be proud of him. He was a man respected by all, admired by many, and if loved but by few, theirs was a love so profound and so tender it amply sufficed.
We are a censorious people, and just as our greatest virtue is generosity in giving, so our greatest fault is the eagerness with which we seek out the mote in our neighbor's eye, without feeling the slightest desire for the removal of the beam in our own eye. ”

“ I answered.
"Ah!" he cried, "you don't guess well, Miss Morris, but you've the heart of a good comrade, and now I'm sure you will do as I ask you, and play Alixe for me?"
I sprang to my feet with a bound. "Alixe?" I cried. "I to play that child? oh, impossible! No—no! I should be absurd! I—I—I know too much—oh, you understand what I mean! She is a little convent-bred bit of innocence—a veritable baby of sixteen years! Dear Mr. Daly don't you see, I should ruin the play?"
He answered, rather coldly: "You are not given to ruining plays. The part does not amount to much. Good heavens! ”

“ 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?" ”

“ He was wonderfully versatile, but though versatility is a requisite for any really good actor, yet for some mysterious reason it never meets with great success outside of a foreign theatre. The American public demands specialists—one man to devote himself solely to tragedy, another to romantic drama and duels, another to dress-suit satire. One woman to tears, another to laughter, and woe betide the star who, able to act both comedy and tragedy, ventures to do so; there will be no packed house to bear witness to the appreciation felt for such skill and variety of talent. ”

“ We were in evening dress and were formed in a crescent-like line from box to box, as the heavy red curtains parted revealing us, and Mr. Daly was very proud of his family of manly-looking men and gracious women, and the audience greeted the assembled company heartily. But that was nothing to the welcome given as each favorite actor or actress stepped forward to speak—and I was happy, happy, happy! when I found myself counted in as one of them, with the welcome to the beautiful Davenport, Jewett, Dietz, to the ever-favored Mrs. Gilbert, no longer, no heartier than my own! ”

“ 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. ”

“ That the homely, tender-hearted "Father Abraham," rare combination of courage, justice, and humanity, died at an actor's hand will be a grief, a horror, and a shame to the profession forever—yet I cannot believe that John Wilkes Booth was "the leader of a band of bloody conspirators!"
Who shall draw a line and say: here genius ends and madness begins? There was that touch of "strangeness." In Edwin Booth it was a profound melancholy; in John it was an exaggeration of spirit, almost a wildness. There was the natural vanity of the actor, too, who craves a dramatic situation in real life. ”

“ So in this scar I was not going exactly to copy that riven throat, but, with slender rolls of cotton, covered and held by gold-beaters' skin, I was going to create dull white welts with angry red spaces painted between—with strong sticking-plaster attached to my eyelid, I was going to draw it from its natural position. Oh, I should have a rare scar! yet that poor woman might herself see it without suspecting she had given me the idea.
Oh, what a time of misery it was, the preparation of that play! Poor Mr. Daly—and poor, poor Miss Morris!
You see everything hung upon the mad-scene. ”

“ Act it, in cold blood, there, in the gray, lifeless daylight? with a circle of grinning, sardonic faces, ready to be vastly amused over my efforts? He might better have asked me to deliver a polished address in beautiful, pellucid Greek, to compose at command a charming little rondeau in sparkling French, or a prayer in sonorous Latin—they would have been easier for me to do, than to gibber, to laugh, to screech, to whisper, whimper, rave, to crouch, crawl, stride, fall to order in street-clothes, and always with those fiendish "guyers" ready to assist in my undoing. Yet, poor Mr. Daly, too! ”

“ 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!" ”

“ John E. Owens. He was considered a wealthy man, and was at the height of his popularity as a comedian. He was odd, even his marriage seemed an expression of eccentricity, and one felt as if one had received a dash of cold water in the face when the hot-tempered, peppery, and decidedly worldly Mr. Owens presented the little orthodox Quakeress, with a countenance of gentle severity, as his wife.
She wore the costume of her people, too, and watched him above her knitting-needles with folded lips and condemning eye as he strutted and fumed and convulsed his audience. ”

“ Poor "Rose of May," whose sweetness comes to us across the ages! As the garden-spider's air-spun silken thread is cast from bough to twig across the path, so her fragile thread of life looped itself from father to lover, to brother, to queen, and all the web was threaded thick with maiden's tears, made opalescent by rosy love, green hope, and violet despair. But each one she clung to raised a hand to brush the fragile thing aside, and so destroyed it utterly. Yet that tangled wreck of beauty, sweetness, and "a young maid's wits," remains one of the world's dearest possessions—the fair Ophelia! ”

“ He had grown coldly indifferent to the call of the public, but Mr. Barrett believed that under this ash of lassitude there still glowed the clear fire of genius, and when they went forth to try their great experiment, Mr. Booth found himself respected, honored, guarded as any woman might have been. He was asked no questions about scene or scenery, about play or percentage—his privacy and peace were ever of the first consideration. Mr. Barrett was his agent, manager, stage-manager, friend, co-worker, and dramatic guardian angel—all he asked of him in return was to act. ”

“ Oh, yes, one often feels dislike or liking for the creature one is trying to represent. Just at first I said to myself, here is a modern Ophelia, but I was soon convinced that the innocence of Alixe was far more perfect than had been that of Shakespeare's weakling, who, through the training of court life, the warnings of a shrewd brother, and the admonitions of a tricky father, had learned many things—was ductile in stronger hands and could play a part; could lead a lover on to speech, without giving slightest hint of the hateful watching eyes she knew were upon him. ”

“ His silvery tail provided hundreds of horse-hair rings—and his habit of gathering very small people up by their back breadths and carrying them a little way before dropping them, only filled the air with wild shrieks of laughter. In the theatre he walked sedately about before rehearsal began, and though we knew his attentions were entirely selfish, he was so urbane, so complaisant in his manner of going through us, that we could not resist his advances, and each day and night we packed our pockets and our muffs with such provender as women seldom carry about in their clothes. ”

“ Daly's peculiar test of public feeling showed the presence of disappointment. Like many other managers, he often placed men here and there to listen to the comments made by his patrons, but his quickest, surest way of judging the effect a new play was making, was by watching and listening at the very moment of the curtain's fall. If the people instantly turned to one another in eager speech, and a bee-like hum of conversation arose, he nodded his head with pleased satisfaction—he knew they were saying, "How lovely!" ”

“ Daly's angry one as he pitched me on to the stage to acknowledge a compliment I did not want, great as it was. Most often I saw the faces of the lovely women of the company. What a galaxy of beauty they made! The stately Newton, the already full-blown, buxom Davenport, the tall, slender, deer-eyed Dietz, the oriental Volmer, the auburn-haired Claxton, the blond Norwood! There were just two women in that company who were not beauties—Mrs. Gilbert and Miss Morris; even they were wholesome, pleasant women, who did not frighten horses by any means, but still if you speak of beauty—why, next! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Ellen and Charles were like a pair of old, old love-birds—a little dull of eye, nor quite perfect in the preening of their somewhat rumpled plumage, but billing and cooing with all the persistency and satisfaction of their first caging. Their appearance upon the street provoked amusement—sometimes even excitement. I often saw drivers of drays and wagons pull up their horses and stop in the crowded street to stare at them as they made their way toward the theatre. Mrs. Kean lived inside of the most astounding hoop woman ever carried. ”

“ He would willingly throw away an entire scene—that is, destroy the illusion of the audience—in order to secure a hearty laugh from some actor or actress whom he knew not to be easily moved to laughter; and what was more astonishing still, if an actress in playing a scene with him fell from tittering into helpless laughter and failed to speak her lines, he made no angry protest, but regarded the situation with dancing eyes and delighted smiles, seeming to accept the breakdown as proof positive that he was irresistible as a fun-maker. ”