Life and Lillian Gish. Paine Albert Bigelow

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СКАЧАТЬ she and her mother had realized the value of this: one able to dance could often get a better part. Sarah Bernhardt came to New York that winter, and seeking a child dancer to brighten some scene in one of her plays, went to a dancing teacher, and from his class selected Lillian.

      Bernhardt was over sixty at this time, but was still the “divine Sarah, with the voice of gold.” Her engagement at the Lyric Theatre began with a very grand opening, December 15, 1905. Plenty of attractions along Broadway, just then. At Wallack’s, William Faversham, in “The Squaw Man”; David Warfield at the Bijou, in “The Music Master”; Maude Adams at the Empire, in “Peter Pan.” The little Gish girl had distinguished company in all directions for her first Broadway appearance. Perhaps that was a good omen.

      Lillian’s recollection of that engagement is chiefly a mental picture of a tall and beautiful woman—Sarah—who each night in the wings, as they waited to go on, laid her hand on her head and said, tenderly, something in French—“Le petit ange aux beaux cheveux d’or,” if one may hazard a guess. Then, with another little girl, she danced. She was deeply impressed by the fact that the stage was covered with canvas, for the actors to walk on. The stages she had known were not like that—oh, not at all. And did somebody appear and carry her off, quite suddenly—kidnap her? She has that impression, but cannot be certain.

      Long afterwards, when she herself had become famous, Madame Bernhardt sent her affectionate messages.

      Lillian’s memory was never very good as to events and surroundings. She memorized her parts easily enough, and her lessons, because she worked very hard at any task. At the beginning of each season came a period of rehearsing—with many new “sides” (pages) to be learned, if the play was a new one. Absorbing things, these. Other matters—the daily round, the people she met, the details of an environment—interfered little with the cadences of her thoughts, left but a drifting impression on that fairy mind of hers. While still a child, she had seen too much, and too many—of everything. And it had all been just a pursuit of sleep and desirable food, and a longing for the shelter of a mother’s arms. That last, especially—when one was not well … nights … days, too … oh, yes, and the ache of homesickness … is it any wonder that more and more her face took on that wistful look that one day would be regarded almost as its chief charm?

      There were happier things—even another Christmas Tree, quite a big one! In Detroit, the stage entrance of the theatre where “At Duty’s Call” was playing, opened on an alley, and just across was a store where automobile parts were sold. The men who owned it went to the play, and took enough interest in the “child star” to go to the manager and offer to have a tree for her, in their back room. All the company was invited, and came. Such a beautiful tree, with so many nice things on it! A grateful little girl was quite overcome; especially by a handsome sled which the company had bought for her. Everybody said that it must go with her, on the road. And they saw to it that it did. Always, after that, when there was snow—even if only just a little snow—they pulled her to the station on it, after the performance.

      XII

      MASSILLON DAYS

      Seasons changed … the years went on. From the train window, Lillian saw the snow come, then go, leaving only lines along the hedgerows, or white tracks across the watery meadows to show which way winter had passed. Then flowers, bits of blue and white and yellow … after that, summer, and New York, or maybe Massillon.

      Lillian realized that she was growing tall … too tall, almost, for the parts she was playing. She supposed that presently she would have to give up the stage, and go to school regularly, or at least until she was old enough for the more grown-up parts. Perhaps that would be in New York … more likely in Massillon. She hoped it would be Massillon. She liked it there, at Aunt Emily’s place, which they called “the farm,” (though it was not really that,) especially when Dorothy was there, too. They helped Aunt Emily with her housekeeping, and when that was done, they could run in the fields, not far away. Buster, the dog, ran with them, and insisted on following Dorothy, like Mary’s lamb, to a little school she went to, and nearly broke up the classes. The teacher was like Mary’s, too. She turned Buster out, and when he “lingered near,” threatened to do terrible things to him.

      There was an old bicycle at Massillon, a rusty old thing without tires, but it would go. It was too big, of course, but Lillian had got it out of the woodshed and lowered the seat, and had been able to get on it, and fall, and get on and fall again, and by and by to get on and stay there. She had really learned to ride it—that was something.

      Almost anything was likely to happen at “the farm”—mostly pleasant things, but not always. There was an insane asylum in Massillon, and when one of the inmates escaped, which happened every little while, the asylum whistle blew, and timid people locked their doors. Aunt Emily at such times sent her nieces to the attic, or cellar. They did not like those places, and were not afraid, anyhow. They were more afraid of a cow that had chased them from a back field.

      Lillian reflected that once she had been really quite wicked: A black thundercloud was rising in the west, just as she was starting to see her friend, Marion Benedict, down the street. Lillian never minded lightning, but her aunt was terribly afraid of it and begged her not to go and leave her.

      “But I told Marion I would come!”

      “But you can go later—afterwards.”

      “But I want to go now.”

      “Oh, dear, I believe you love Marion Benedict better than you do me.”

      “Yes, I do.”

      How awful to have said such a thing to dear Aunt Emily, who was so shocked that never in the world would she forget it! Perhaps it had been the lightning in the air.

      Once, a cousin had come to see them—a second cousin, named Leonard Hall, about her own age. Their mother was there, and had dressed them up for the occasion—white dresses, their hair loose, with big pink bows; they had been almost as nice as dolls. She had thought her boy cousin quite nice, too, for a boy—and boy cousins were so scarce. She had hoped he would play with them … but he would hardly even look at them—edged away, and then ran, almost as if something were after him … and didn’t come back any more. She wondered why. They had on all their prettiest things, and Dorothy at least had been a perfect picture.

      Lillian reflected on these matters as she rode along, or looked from a hotel window. If she went to Massillon this summer, would she see her cousin again? And Buster, and Marion Benedict? Would she stay there, now, and go to school, or go back to the road for another season? She thought dreamily of these and other things. She did not trouble much, about the future, or the past—then, or later. She followed a kind of magic path, that opened before, and closed behind her as she passed along.

      There came a season when the theatrical business was poor. The road companies, especially, suffered. Their profits became more than ever precarious. Motion picture shows were cutting into their business. One-night-stand theatres were being converted into “picture palaces,” and “nickelodeons,” that offered pretty good entertainment at ridiculously low prices, and had very light “overhead.” The combinations, the smaller ones, with their salaries and railroad fares, could not compete. Lillian went out with quite a pretentious company, and a play which was “sure to get to New York and make a hit on Broadway.” It did not get much further than Washington, where it opened. At Baltimore, or Richmond, it came to grief. The company had trouble getting home. At a later time, Lillian wrote: “When we were ambitious and went into better productions, the plays seemed to fail.” But this was due rather to the new conditions in the amusement world, than because of the plays themselves. The “movies” had filed a claim on the melodrama. One could scorn them, as many did in the beginning, but the handwriting was on the wall.

      Mary СКАЧАТЬ