Life on the Stage Part 1

Life on the Stage.

by Clara Morris.

CHAPTER FIRST

I am Born.

If this simple tale is to be told at all, it may as well begin at the beginning and in the good old-fashioned and best of all ways--thus: Once upon a time in the Canadian city of Toronto, on the 17th of March, the sun rose bright and clear--which was a most surprising thing for the sun to do on St. Patrick's Day, but while the people were yet wondering over it the sunlight disappeared, clouds of dull gray spread themselves evenly over the sky, and then the snow fell--fell fast and furious, quickly whitening the streets and house-tops, softly lining every hollow, and was piling little cushions on top of all the hitching-posts, when the flakes grew larger, wetter, farther apart, and after a little hesitation turned to rain--a sort of walk-trot-gallop rain, which wound up with one vivid flash of lightning and a clap of thunder that fairly shook the city.

Now the Irish, being a brave people and semi-amphibious, pay no heed to wet weather. Usually all the Hibernians residing in a city divide themselves into two bodies on St. Patrick's Day, the ones who parade and the ones who follow the parade; but on this occasion they divided themselves into three bodies--the men who paraded, the men and women who followed the parade, and the Orangemen who made things pleasant for both parties.

As the out-of-time, out-of-tune band turned into a quiet cross-street to lead its following green-bannered host to a broader one, the first brick was thrown--probably by a woman, as it hit no one, but metaphorically it knocked the chip off of the shoulder of every child of Erin. Down fell the banners, up went the fists! Orange and Green were at each other tooth and nail! Hats from prehistoric ages side by side with modern beavers scarcely fifty years old received the hurled brick-bat and went down together!

The band reached the broad avenue alone, and looked back to see the short street a-sway with struggling men, while women holding their bedraggled petticoats up, their bonnets hanging down their backs by green ribbon ties, hovered about the edges of the crowd, making predatory dashes now and then to scratch a face or rescue some precious hat from the melee, meanwhile inciting the men to madness by their fierce cries--and in a quiet house, in the very midst of this riot--just before the constabulary charged the crowd--I was born. I don't know, of course, whether I was really intended from the first for that house, or whether the stork became so frightened at the row in the street that he just dropped me from sheer inability to carry me any farther--anyway, I came to a house where trouble and poverty had preceded me, and, worse than both these put together--treachery.

Still, I accepted the situation with indifference. That the cupboard barely escaped absolute emptiness gave me no anxiety, as I had no teeth anyway. As a gentleman with a medicine-case in his hand was leaving the house he paused a moment for the slavey to finish washing away a pool of blood from the bottom step--and then there came that startling clap of thunder. Brand new as I was to this world and its ways, I entered my protest at once with such force and evident wrath that the doctor down-stairs exclaimed: "Our young lady has temper as well as a good pair of lungs!" and went on his way laughing.

And so on that St. Patrick's Day of sunshine, snow, and rain, of riot and bloodshed, in trouble and poverty--I was born.

CHAPTER SECOND

Beginning Early, I Learn Love, Fear, and Hunger--I Become Acquainted with Letters, and Alas! I Lose One of my Two Illusions.

Of the Days of St. Patrick that followed, not one found me in the city of my birth--indeed, six months completed my period of existence in the Dominion, and I have known it no more.

Some may think it strange that I mention these early years at all, but the reason for such mention will appear later on. Looking back at them, they seem to divide themselves into groups of four years each. During the first four, my time was princ.i.p.ally spent in growing and learning to keep out of people's way. I acquired some other knowledge, too, and little child as I was, I knew fear long before I knew the thing that frightened me. I knew that love for my mother which was to become the pa.s.sion of my life, and I also knew hunger. But the fear was harder to endure than the hunger--it was so vague, yet so all-encompa.s.sing.

We had to flit so often--suddenly, noiselessly. Often I was gently roused from my sleep at night and hastily dressed--sometimes simply wrapped up without being dressed, and carried through the dark to some other place of refuge, from--what? When I went out into the main business streets I had a tormenting barege veil over my face that would not let me see half the pretty things in the shop windows, and I was quick to notice that no other little girl had a veil on. Next I remarked that if a strange lady spoke to me my mother seemed pleased--but if a man noticed me she was not pleased, and once when a big man took me by the hand and led me to a candy store for some candy she was as white as could be and so angry she frightened me, and she promised me a severe punishment if I ever, ever went one step with a strange man again. And so my fear began to take the form of a man, of a big, smiling man--for my mother always asked, when I reported that a stranger had spoken to me, if he was big and smiling.

I had known the sensation of hunger long before I knew the word that expressed it, and I often pressed my hands over my small empty stomach, and cried and pulled at my mother's dress skirt. If there was anything at all to give I received it, but sometimes there was absolutely nothing but a drink of water to offer, which checked the gnawing for a moment or two, and at those times there was a tightening of my mother's trembling lips, and a straight up and down wrinkle between her brows, that I grew to know, and when I saw that look on her face I could not ask for anything more than "a dwink, please."

As an ill.u.s.tration of her almost savage pride and honesty: I one day saw a woman in front of the house buying some potatoes. I knew that potatoes cooked were very comforting to empty stomachs. One or two of them fell to the street during the measuring and I picked one up, and, fairly wild with delight, I scrambled up the stairs with it. But my mother was angry through and through.

"Who gave it to you?" she demanded.

I explained with a trembling voice: "I des' founded it on the very ground--and I'se so hungry!"

But hungry or not hungry, I had to take the potato back: "Nothing in the world could be taken without asking--that was stealing--and she was the only person in the world I had a right to ask anything of!"

It was a bitter lesson, and was rendered more so by the fact that when I carried the tear-bathed potato back to the street and laid it down, neither the woman who bought nor the man who sold was in sight--and, dear Heaven! I could almost have eaten it raw.

But I was learning obedience and self-respect; more than that, I was already acquiring one of the necessary qualities for an actress--the power of close observation.

The next four years (the second group) were the hardest to endure of them all. True, I now had sufficient food and warmth, since my mother had given up sewing for shops--which kept us nearly always hungry--and had found other occupations. But the great object of both our lives was to be together, and there are few people who are willing to employ a woman who has with her a child. And if her services are accepted, even at a reduced salary, it is necessary for that child to be as far as possible neither seen nor heard. Therefore until I was old enough to be admitted into a public school I never knew another child--I never played with any living creature save a remarkable cat, that seemed to have claws all over her, and in my fixed determination to trace her purr and find out where it came from, she buried those claws to the very last one in my fat, investigating little hands.

Meantime my "fear" had a.s.sumed the shape and substance of a man, a man who bore a name that should have been loved and honored above all others, for this "bogey" of my baby days--this nightmare and dread--was my own father. When my mother had discovered his treachery--which had not hesitated to boldly face the very altar--she took her child and fled from him, a.s.suming her mother's maiden name as a disguise. But go where she would, he followed and made scenes. Finally, understanding that she was not to be won back by sophistries, he offered to leave her in peace if she would give the child to him. And when that offer was indignantly rejected, he pleasantly informed her that he would make life a curse to her until she gave me up, and that by fair means or by foul he would surely obtain possession of me. Once he did kidnap me, but my mother had found friends by that time, and their pursuit was so swift and unexpected that he had to abandon me.

So, he who should have been the defender and support of my mother--whose arms should have been our shelter from the world--the big, smiling French-Canadian father--became instead our terror and our dread.

Therefore when my mother served in varying capacities in other people's homes, and I had to efface myself as nearly as possible, I dared not even go out to walk a little, so great was my mother's fear.

It seems odd, but in spite of my far-reaching memory, I cannot remember when I learned to read. I can recall but one tiny incident relating to the subject of learning. I stood upon a chair and while my hair was brushed and braided I spelled my words, and I had my ears boxed--a custom considered criminal in these better days--because, having successfully spelled "elephant," I came to grief over "mouse," as, according to my judgment, m-o-w-s filled all the requirements of the case. I remember, too, that the punishment made me afraid to ask what "elephant" meant; but I received the impression that it was some sort of a public building.

However, when I was six years old I joyfully betook myself to a primary school, from which I was sent home with a note, saying that "in that department they did not go beyond the 'primer,' and as this little girl reads quite well from a 'reader,' she must have been taught well at home." We were a proud yet disappointed pair, my mother and I, that day.

An odd little incident occurred about that time. One of our hurried flights had ended at a boarding house, and my extreme quietude--unnatural in a child of health and intelligence--attracted the attention of a certain boarder, who was an actress. She was very popular with the public, and both she and her husband were well liked by the people about them. She took a fancy to me, and informing herself that my mother was poor and alone, she offered to adopt me. She stated her position, her income, and her intention of educating me thoroughly. She thought a convent school would be desirable--from ten, say to seventeen.

Perhaps my mother was tempted--she was a fanatic on the question of learning--but, oh! what a big _but_ came in just then: "but when I should have, by G.o.d's will, reached the age of seventeen, she (the actress) would place me upon the stage."

"Gracious Heaven! her child on the stage!" my mother was stricken with horror! She scarcely had strength to make her shocked refusal plain enough; and when her employer ventured to remonstrate with her, pointing out the great advantage to me, she made answer: "It would be better for her to starve trying to lead a clean and honorable life, than to be exposed to such publicity and such awful temptations!"

Poor mother! the theatre was to her imagination but a beautiful vestibule leading to a place of wickedness and general wrong-doing!

During those endless months, when I had each day to sit for hours and hours in one particular chair in a corner, well out of the way--sit so long that often when I was lifted down I could not stand at all, my limbs being numbed to absolute helplessness, I had two great days to dream of, to look forward to--Christmas and that wonderful 17th of March, when because it was my birthday all those nice gentlemen, with the funny hats and green collars, walked out behind the band. And I felt particularly well disposed toward those most amusing gentlemen who wore, according to my theory at least, their little girls' ap.r.o.ns tied about their big waists.

I did not like so well the attendant crowd, but then I could not be selfish enough to keep people from looking at "my procession" and enjoying the music that made the blood dance in my own veins, even as my feet danced on the chill pavement.

I always received an orange on that day from my mother, and almost always a book, so it was a great event in my life, and I used to get down my little hat-box and fix the laces in my best shoes days ahead of time that I might be ready to stand on some steps where I could bow and smile to the nice gentlemen who walked out in my honor. Heaven only knows how I got the idea that the procession was meant for me, but it made me very happy, and my heart was big with love and grat.i.tude for those people who took so much trouble for me.

I had but two illusions in the world--Santa Claus and "my procession"--but, alas! on my eighth birthday, when in an outburst of innocent triumph and joy I cried to a grown-up: "Ain't they good--those funny gentlemen--to come and march and play music for my birthday?" I was answered with the a.s.surance that I "was a fool--that no one knew or cared a copper about me--that it was a Saint, a dead and gone man, they marched for!"

All the dance went out of my feet, heavy tears fell fast and stood round and clear on the woolly surface of my cloak, and bending my head low to hide my disappointment, I went slowly home, where the chair seemed harder, the hours longer, and life more bare because I had lost the illusion that had brightened and glorified it.

At the present time, here in my home, there is seated in an arm-chair, a venerable doll. She is a hideous specimen of the beautiful doll of the early "fifties." She sits with her soles well turned up, facing you, her arms hanging from her shoulders in that idiotically helpless "I-give-it-up" fashion peculiar to dolls. With bulging scarlet cheeks, b.u.t.ton-hole mouth and flat, blue staring eyes she faces Time and unwinkingly looks him down. To anyone else she is stupidity personified, but to me she speaks, for she came to me on my fourth Christmas, and she is as gifted as she is ugly. Only last birthday--as I straightened out her old, old dress skirt--she asked me if I remembered how I cried, with my face in her lap, over that first loss of an illusion--and I told her quite truly that I remembered well!

CHAPTER THIRD

I Enter a New World--I Know a New Hunger and we Return to Cleveland.

The experiences of the first two of my third group of years have influenced my entire life. Still flying from my seemingly ubiquitous father, my mother after a desperate struggle gained enough money to pay for our journey to what was then called the "far West"--namely, the southwestern part of Illinois. Child-fashion, I was delighted at the prospect of a change, and happy over the belief that I was going to some place where I could be free to go and come like other children, without dreading the appearance of a big, smiling man from any deep doorway or from around the next corner. To tell the truth, that persistent, indestructible smile always seemed an insult added to the injury of his malicious and revengeful conduct.

Then, too, I experienced my first delicious thrill of imaginary terror.

In a torn and abandoned old geography I had seen a picture labelled "Prairie." The gra.s.s was as high as a man's shoulders, and stealthily emerging from it was a sort of compound animal, neither tiger nor leopard, but with points of resemblance to both. And here every day I was listening to the grown-ups talking of "prairie lands," and how far we might have to drive across the prairie after leaving the train; and I made up my mind that I would hold our umbrella all the time, and when the uncertain beast came out I'd try to stick his eyes with it, and under cover of the confusion we would undoubtedly escape.

That being settled, I could turn all my attention to preparations for the long journey. Dear me, I remember just where each big red rose came on the carpet-bag, and how sorry I was that the tiny bra.s.s lock came right in the side of one. It was a large bag and held a great deal, but was so arranged that whatever you wanted was always found at the bottom--whether it was the tooth-brush or a night-gown or a pair of rubbers. It had a sort of dividing wall of linen in its middle, and while one side held clothing, the other side was the commissary department. No buffet-cars then, travellers ran their own buffets, and though the things did not come into actual contact, there was not an article, big or little, in that bag that did not smell of pickles. And once when my mother had hastily attended to my needs in the miserable toilet-room of the car (no sleeper--just a sit-up-all-night affair), my clean stockings, white ap.r.o.n and little handkerchief all exhaled vinegar so strongly that I wrinkled up my nose, exclaiming: "I smell jes' like a pickled little girl--don't I, ma'ma?" And then, when weary and worn and dusty, we left the cars and had to drive some thirty miles, in a carriage of uncertain cla.s.s, over the open prairie--then smooth and bright and green--I wearily remarked, after a time, that it was a "pretty big lawn, but where was the prairie?" for true to my plan I had secured the umbrella, and being told that I was crossing the prairie then, I was a bitterly disappointed young person. Oh, how I longed to give way to one of those pa.s.sionate outbursts we so often see children indulge in! Oh, how I wanted to hurl aside the umbrella I had begged for, to fling my weary self down on the floor and cry, and cry! But I dared not--never in my whole life had I ventured on such an exhibition of temper or feeling--so I winked fast and held very still and swallowed hard at the disappointment, which was but the first of such a number of very bitter pills that I was yet to swallow.

But, thank G.o.d! if I was easily cast down, I was as easily cheered; and the prairie left behind, the sight of the first orchard we pa.s.sed, with the soft perfumed snow of the blossoms floating through the rosy sunset light, raised my spirits to an ecstasy of joy; and when our journey ended, at the rough farm-house, with my arm around the surly looking watch-dog, I stood and heard for the first time the mournful cry of the whippoorwill out in the star-pierced dark of the early May night, I thrilled with the unspoken consciousness that this was a new world that I was entering--a lovely, _lovely_ world, that the grown-ups called the "country"!

For the two years I knew it the charm of that backwood life never palled.