Life and Lillian Gish. Paine Albert Bigelow

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      They had begun too early to be either awkward, or frightened, after the first one or two performances. The people beyond the footlights did not bother them at all. They scarcely knew they were there. Lillian, later:

      “I had very little consciousness of the audience, in those days. When they applauded or laughed, I hardly noticed it. I remember wondering what they were laughing about. To become an actress, one cannot begin too soon.”

      X

      DOROTHY’S TREE

      Again that summer Mary Gish had a taffy and popcorn stand at Fort George. Probably not after that, though each summer found her busy. Alert, handsome, familiar with business, she never failed of employment. Lillian remembers that there were summers when she took a clerkship, and let the little girls go to their aunt, in Massillon, for the cleaner life there, and for schooling—a summer term. A teacher in Massillon recalls having Lillian in the Fourth Grade—year uncertain. Also, that she “never had a lovelier or sweeter pupil; wonderful in art, but could not get mathematics.” Poor Lillian! to her, as to another little girl a hundred years earlier—little Marjorie Fleming—“seven times six was an invention of the devil, and nine times eight more than human nature could bear.”

      That she could write quite as well as the average child of her age is shown by a small pencilled note to Mell Faris, manager of the “False Step” Company when the little family had been together. She had been out a season “on her own” since then, and was with Dorothy, now, at Aunt Emily’s “having a fine time, playing in the yard. I do wish we could get into a ‘conpany’ with you next season.” But the spelling is for the most part perfect.

      Another teacher remembers having her in the Seventh Grade, in 1907, so it appears that in spite of recurring theatrical seasons, she made progress. In the summer of 1907 she was not yet eleven years old. I do not know whether that is the right age in Massillon for the Seventh Grade, or not. The wonder is that she was able to maintain any grade, under the circumstances.

      Dorothy was better off. Lillian had her mother but the one time; Dorothy, during five straight seasons: the one just ended; another “False Step” season, and three seasons with Fisk O’Hara, the Irish singing comedian, a happy soul, who gave her a broken heart, among other things, for she forgot the heroic Don, and fell in love with him. He promised to wait for her, and then, one day, in an absent-minded moment, married his leading lady.

      Mrs. Gish kept her part during the second season of the “False Step” Company, and had something in each of the Fisk O’Hara plays. The company was a very good one, made good towns and played in good theatres. The papers paid a good deal of attention to Dorothy. Her dimpled face looked out from dramatic columns; the little scrapbook which her mother kept for her contains notices of the “dainty child actress, who risks her life nightly in a lions’ den,” or “ably supported Fisk O’Hara in ‘Dion O’Dare.’” False Fisk O’Hara! We hope he has been properly punished for not waiting for her.

      It was during the second season in “Her First False Step” that Dorothy had her Christmas Tree. In the last act of the play, there was a Christmas scene—no tree, but Dorothy, looking into the wings, had to pretend to see one. In his book, “To Youth,” John V. A. Weaver,1 gives this incident in verse better than anyone could hope to do it in prose. Here is the latter half of it:

      It was a season or two later, when they were with the Fisk O’Hara Company, that Dorothy woke one night in a hotel in Toledo, to find her mother very ill indeed, with high fever and delirium. The day before, she had complained of a cold, and Dorothy had bought her a bottle of some mixture, chiefly persuaded by the picture on the label. Apparently it had not helped. The frightened child crept down the hall to summon help.

      Mrs. Gish had intermittent fever, and Dorothy next day had to leave her and go on with the company. There was nobody to take her part. She was only too kindly treated, but during the days before her mother joined them, she was a sadly worried little girl.

      Once—and this has to do with another Christmas—the Fisk O’Hara Company laid off in New Orleans, and went one night to see “The Lion and the Mouse,” at the theatre they would occupy the following week. On the way out, Dorothy noticed a purse in one of the back rows. She took it to the box office, to the manager, who knew them. He said: “If nobody calls for it, it will be yours.”

      Nobody did call for it, and the next week he gave it to her. It contained $21.00, a sum which they could have used very handily, but instead they went out and spent it on a gold watch to send to Lillian, for Christmas.

      XI

      “SUPPORTING BERNHARDT”

      There is some difficulty as to the sequence of Lillian’s story. As we have seen, she did not go out with her mother and Dorothy that second season of “Her First False Step.” She had a part in another play—“The Child Wife,” or “At Duty’s Call,” it is not quite certain which came first. The little trouper did not know that she was making history—did not consider a time when it all might need to be arranged. She did not keep a scrapbook, and had no one to keep it for her. She probably did not think of a diary, and in any case would have been too tired to set down what, to her, was the humdrum routine of trains and towns and waits and scanty meals. Later, it was all a good deal of a blur. A few things stood out, because they were unusual, but even these did not always fall into their proper setting, as to time. There are spaces not easy to bridge, pieces difficult to fit into the picture-puzzle of the years. She remembers the tragedy of finding at the beginning of one season СКАЧАТЬ