Leonard Merrick

“ It wasn't that I feared their finding it out—as I tell you, they weren't playgoers, and their home was a good way off besides—it was the heartlessness of the thing that frightened me. To make myself up as her father? To speak the bland, hypocritical lines of the part in her father's voice, to mimic him, to turn him into ridicule to amuse a crowd. ”

“ She was afraid—not of me, but that her father wouldn't consent. They had no violent prejudice against the theatre, but she had never been to one in her life; for her to marry an actor seemed an impossible thing. ”

“ Simon Tibbits' in poor Pulteney's Touch and Go. Some things a man doesn't forget, and I remember how I felt when I settled for the part better than I remember yesterday. You see it was my first London engagement, and I had been trying to get one in London for sixteen years. Sixteen years I had been on the road—and seen the amateurs with money sauntering on to the West End stage from their Varsity Club!
"My agent had told me to try my luck at the office over the theatre, one morning in July, and when I went in, there was nobody there but a young man who I guessed must be Pulteney. ”

“ I sat tense, watching the faces. Not a sign on them! You've heard of the American rustic who got so exasperated standing up in a crowded car, that at last he shouted, 'Say! ain't none o' you people got homes?' That was how I felt."
Bagot's imitation of the rustic was very good, and we signified our appreciation in the usual way. When the laugh was over someone told the waiter we were thirsty, and the story-teller filled his pipe.
"Well," he resumed, puffing, "to cut a long journey short, we reached Rickmansworth without my having had a glimpse of my gentleman. ”

“ I rehearsed so the first day, and for three or four days, and presently I began to notice that the Management was a bit unhappy, and that Pulteney nearly twisted his moustache out during my scenes. If an author has written a bad part, trust him to blame the actor! ”

“ It was from Marion. A friend had brought her up to see me, and she was in the theatre. I was stunned, I thought I was going to fall. You know—every man in this room knows—that for an actor to remodel his performance at the last minute would be a miracle. ”