Leonard Merrick

“ He must play, and the 'garden' is too diminutive for him to go far away in it. It makes me think of what Dumas père said when he paid a visit to his son's chalet in the suburbs: 'Open your dining-room window and give your garden some air!' Once or twice I have wondered whether I should work in a front room instead; but, to tell you the truth, I always come to the conclusion that I like the noise. A dramatist may suffer from worse drawbacks than a child's laughter, believe me! ”

“ It is when he leads her to an ottoman, and, standing a step or two behind her, proceeds with tender gravity to recite a catalogue of her defects. He contrasts them pathetically with the virtues that endeared her to him in the springtime of their union—and the wife, moved to tears, immediately and forever afterward becomes the girl that she used to be. The situation is pretty, it is popular—and it is quite untrue; for in real life one can not recreate a character by making a speech to it. However, I was a dramatist and more credulous than I am now, and I tried! ”

“ On one side of you there may be a fashionably dressed woman who rises to receive a jewel-case—and on the other some piteous creature who clutches at a bundle. The goods and chattels descend in consignments, and when a consignment has been distributed the interval before the next arrives threatens to be endless. ”

“ You sit in a box and you see a celebrated woman bringing the house down, and to be an actress looks to you very fine. But she has been half a life-time arriving at celebrity—there is nothing fine about the journey to it. A dramatist's wife in the box is a much more dignified figure than a dramatist's wife rehearsing a trivial part and being corrected by the stage-manager.'
"‘I did not mean trivial parts,' she said disconsolately, and I realized for the first time that she had been dreaming of a début in the principal rôle! ”

“ I always declare that she is the most domesticated of pretty women, and that her husband is the most pampered of good fellows. Playgoers who know him merely by his comedies, in which married people get on so badly together up to the fourth act, might be surprised to see inside his villa.
Only when he and I were lounging in the study afterwards—my hostess was in the little garden, pretending to be a horse—I said to him, as the boy's shouts came up to us through the open window: "Isn't the child disturbing out there when you're busy?" ”

“ Her struggles in Paris with a typewriter! She had been forced to pawn it every time she lost a situation; but, every time she saved enough to recapture it, she felt prosperous again. Her own machine meant 'luxuries.' With her own machine she could afford a plant to put in her attic window, and a rosebud for her breast.
"She loved flowers, and she wore them often, tucked in her bodice. After the Magasins du Louvre closed, the clerk used to hurry off to meet the little typist on her way home. ”