Life on the Stage: My Personal Experiences and Recollections

by Clara Morris

The people who have known happiness without the alloying if or but are few and far between. "Yes, of course we are happy—but," "I should be perfectly and completely happy—if," you hear people saying every day; and so in my case, having been admitted into fellowship with the men and women of the company, who were a gracious and charming crowd, and receiving hearty approval each night from the great Public, by whose favor I and mine existed, I was grateful and would have been quite happy—but for a brand-new difficulty that suddenly loomed up, large, and wide, and solid before me.

Never in my life had I been in a play of a longer run than one week. Imagine, then, my misery when I found this play, that was already old to me at the end of the first week, was likely to go on for a long time to come. It was not mere ennui over the repetition of the same lines, night after night, that troubled me, it was something far more serious. I had made my hit with the public by moving the people's feelings to the point of tears; but to do that I had first to move my own heart, for, try as I would, no amount of careful acting had the desired effect. I had to shed tears or they would not. Now that is not an easy thing to do to order, in cold blood. While the play is new one's nerves are strained almost to the breaking point—one is over-sensitive and the feelings are easily moved; then the pathetic words I am speaking touch my heart, tears rush to my eyes, tears are heard in my voice, and other hearts respond swiftly; but when you have calmed down, when you have repeated the lines so often that they no longer mean anything to you, what are you to do then?

Really and truly there were days when I was nearly out of my mind with terror lest I should not be able to cry that night; for those tears of mine had a commercial value as well as an artistic, and Mr. Daly was swift to reproach me if the handkerchief display in front was not as great as usual. This sounds absurd perhaps to a reader, but heaven knows it was tragic enough to me. I used to agonize all day over the question of tears for the night, and I have seen the time when even my own imaginary tomb failed to move me.

One night, when my eyes were dry as bones, and my voice as hard as stone, and Mr. Daly was glaring whitely at me from the entrance, I had suddenly a sort of vision of that dethroned actress whom, back in Cleveland, I had seen uncrowned. I saw her quivering face, her stricken eyes, and a sudden rush of tears blinded me. Later, Mr. Daly said: "What a tricky little wretch you are. I thought you were going to throw that scene away, without a single tear to-night. I suppose you were doing it to aggravate me, though?"

Goodness knows I was grateful enough myself for the tears when they did come, and I got an idea from that experience that has served me all the years since. Everything else—love, hate, dignity, passion, vulgarity, delicacy, duplicity, all, everything can be assumed to order; but, for myself, tears are not mechanical, they will not come at will. The heart must be moved, and if the part has lost its power then I must turn to some outside incident that has power. It may be from a book, it may be from real life—no matter, if only its recalling starts tears to weary eyes.

Thus in "Alixe" it was not for my lost lover I oftenest wept such racing tears, but for poor old Tennessee's partner as he buried his worthless dead, with his honest old heart breaking before your eyes. While in "Camille" many and many a night her tears fell fast over the memory of a certain mother's face as she told me of the moment when, returning from the burial of her only child, the first snowflakes began to whirl through the still, cold air, and she went mad with the anguish of leaving the little tender body there in the cold and dark, and flung herself from the moving carriage and ran, screaming, back to the small rough pile of earth to shelter it with her own living body.

So there is my receipt for sudden tears. I being—thank heaven—a cheerful body, and given to frequent laughter, may laugh in peace up to the last moment, if I have only stowed away some heart-breaking incident that I can recall at the proper moment. It seems like taking a mean advantage of a tender heart, I know—what Bret Harte would call "playing it low down" on it; but what else could I do? I leave it to you. What could you do to make yourself cry seven times a week, for nine or ten months a year?

Then there was another great change in the new life. I was used to rehearsing every day, and, lo! when once a play was on here, there followed weeks, perhaps months, when there were no rehearsals. Mercy! I could never afford to waste all that time; but what could I do? "One and two and three and," I could not afford; but, oh, if I could take some French lessons, what a help they would be to me in the proper pronunciation of names upon the stage. But I did not want lessons from some ignorant person, or someone who had a strange dialect. I have all my life had such a horror of unlearning things. I knew a real French teacher would charge me a real "for-true" price, and my heart was doubtful—but see how fate was good to me. There was in Tenth Street a little daughter of a well-known French professor—he taught in a certain college. The daughter was eager to teach. The father said: "Who will trust so young a girl to instruct them? If you only had a first and second pupil, you would be self-supporting. French teachers are in great demand, but where shall you find that first pupil—tell me that, ma fille. No matter how small your charge, the question will be, where have you taught? No one will wish to be the first pupil."

But, fine old French gentleman as he was, he was mistaken nevertheless, for I was willing, nay, eager, to be that first pupil, and she found my name of so much value to her in obtaining a full class that she became absolutely savage in her fell determination to make me speak her beloved language correctly. In spite of her eighteen years she looked full fourteen, and her dignity was a fearful thing to contemplate, until she had a chocolate-cream in one cheek and a dimple in the other, then somehow the dignity broke in the middle and the lesson progressed through much laughter.

She was not beautiful, but pretty and charming to such an extent that, within the year, she became Madame, carried her own chocolates, and was absolutely vicious over irregular verbs. Dear little woman—I remember her gratefully, and also remember that, later on, I paid just six times as much per lesson to an elaborate person, well-rouged, who taught me nothing, lest she might offend me in the act. I know this to be true, because one day I deliberately mispronounced and let tenses run wild, to see if she would have the honesty or courage to correct me; but she looked a trifle surprised, rearranged her bangles, and let it all pass. I then resigned my position as pupil, that she might give her very questionable assistance as teacher to some other scholar, shorter of temper, and more sensitive to rebuke or correction than I was.