WOULDN’T STAY CURED.
Jane Wheatley Celebrated Her Recovery from First Attack of Stage Fever By Falling Victim to a Second.
Although stock company work, with two performances a day and a weekly change of bill, is an awful grind, it is also about the only way nowadays in which the young player can obtain the necessary experience to give him or her that versatility which broadens ability.
Take, for instance, the six weeks last spring when Jane Wheatley filled an engagement in Providence as leading woman of the Albee stock company, at Keith’s. During that period she was Muriel in “The Second in Command,” an English comedy; Lucy in “The Dictator,” an American farce; Katherine in “If I Were King,” a romantic drama; Phyllis in the Goodwin-Elliott play, “When We Were Twenty-One”; Marcelle in “The Gay Parisians,” a lively farce from the French; and Mary of Magdala in the Scriptural play, “The Holy City.”
Of her work in the last-named part, a local critic wrote: “She carried the rôle through from the moment of awakening from the scarlet bondage with a spirit of reverence that was much more than mere acting, and had applause been permitted she would have carried off all honors.”
Spent Allowance for Theater Tickets.
Miss Wheatley is a young woman who went on the stage from pure love of it, starting In 1898 with a very lowly part In “The Christian.” She was with Viola Allen for three seasons, and subsequently she played prominent parts with Sadie Martinot. She followed Grace Filkins as Lady Airish, in the support of Alice Fischer, in “The School for Husbands.” The account she has furnished The Scrap Book of her start in the profession is so very entertainingly written that I am giving it herewith in her own words:
“While studying in Boston some years ago, every penny of my allowance went for theater tickets, and the Hollis Street Theater was my favorite haunt. My chum was an enthusiast on the subject, if ever there was one, and I made a very good second. We had our respective favorites, and mine was Miss Viola Allen. I always had hoped to meet her, and even thought she might advise me or help me to a position on the stage. But how to arrange a meeting?
“My chum (Kate) and I talked it over, and finally decided upon a plan of action.
“Kate had gone to a boarding-school, somewhere in Canada, and had heard much from the teachers about Miss Allen, who had been a former student there. One of the teachers even suggested giving Kate a letter to Miss Allen. These facts were all we had to introduce us, but I remember that I was the timid one and Kate the fearless.
“After the matinée one day we summoned up courage and went to the stage entrance, sent in our cards, and, with beating hearts, waited. Miss Allen was then leading woman with the Empire stock company.
“In a few minutes a maid came out to us, and with cold politeness inquired what we wanted.
Aid from Viola Allen.
“‘We wished to see Miss Allen,’ was our answer.
“I know now what a piece of effrontery it was on our part, for when an actress has played a long part, and has only a short time before she has to play it again, she is ready for only one thing, and that is rest. However, Miss Allen was then, just as she always has been, kind, and invited us to come another day—which we did; and this time we were successful, for she saw us, and I remember how happy it made me.
“I remember the conversation, too; for she spoke of what was uppermost in our minds—our ambitions. So encouraging was the interview with this dear lady that when I finished my studies in Boston I wrote to her, saying that I meant to start my professional career in the autumn, and ‘would she help me?’
“She did. In reply to my letter, she said there were no parts in her play, ‘The Christian,’ except those requiring experience, but that some characters would speak in chorus, and I would be welcome to such a part.
“I remember an illustration made frequently by Dr. Emerson at the Emerson College. He pointed out to us that on the stage we were like parts of a mosaic—alone we were nothing, but as a part of the whole, each one in his place very necessary to the whole. I did not then realize how very small was to be my part of the mosaic—its proportions were exaggerated in my mind, and I had visions of myself in a dainty or artistic costume, entering with two or three other young ladles, and speaking in chorus, something as do the four daughters in ‘The Gay Parisians.’
“I also remember Miss Allen’s apologetic remark about the salary. ‘The money is nothing,’ she said.
“As for that part of it—money—it had never entered my mind. The happiness of having the opportunity was enough; and to think of being paid, actually paid, for simply doing what I loved to do! It was all very beautiful.
Appalled by Reality.
“To skip rehearsals, which, needless to say, were a source of great enjoyment, as it was all so new to me, the opening night in Albany came, and there my troubles began.
“The ‘characters speaking in chorus’ formed a mob, and extra supernumeraries were engaged for the night in Albany. It was a wild enough mob; my pride suffered, and my toes, too, for both were trodden upon. The damp cellar dressing-room with its many occupants, and the harsh, severe directions of the stage manager—it was all so different from what I had expected.
“In the course of the evening I found a lonely corner in the despised cellar and wept long and bitterly. Was this the way to Fame? Could I bridge these humiliations and discomforts? The goal seemed very far off, and I remember repeating to myself:
“‘I’m cured! I’m cured!’
“However, I went on to Washington with the company. There I tried another day of it, but conditions grew worse instead of better. During the afternoon of the second day in Washington I packed my bag, walked to the station, bought a ticket for New York, said nothing to any one of my resolution, but wired my father to meet me, and got on the train, bound for home.
Moth Again Seeks Flame.
“And oh, how glad I was to see my father, and he to see me! And how glad he was that I was ‘cured’ of my desire to be an actress!
“Well, to make a long story short, I remained ‘cured’ only a short time—two weeks, I think it was.
“A nice letter from Miss Allen, saying that she would keep my understudy for me, enticed me to return when the company played in New York. I refused to give up again, although those first tears were not the only ones I had cause to shed during that long season.
“My reward came, however, for before the close of the theater year the girl whose rôle I understudied left the cast, and they gave me her part for the rest of the season. Miss Allen helped me herself to do justice to it—even to rehearsing me after matinée, when she must have been very tired.
“And it was in my beloved Boston, where I had first met her, that I played my first part, and in her company, only the theater was the old Boston Museum, not the Hollis Street.”