I can never be grateful enough for having come under the influence of the dear woman who watched over me that first season—Mrs. Bradshaw, one of the most versatile, most earnest, most devoted actresses I ever saw, and a good woman besides.
She had known sorrow, trouble, and loss. She was widowed, she had two children to support unaided, but she made moan to no one. She worked early and late; she rehearsed, studied, acted, mended, and made; for her salary absolutely forbade the services of a dress-maker. She had two gowns a year, one thick, one thin. She could not herself compute the age of her bonnets, so often were they blocked over, or dyed and retrimmed. Yet no better appearing woman ever entered a stage-door than this excessively neat, well-groomed, though plainly clad, old actress.
It is not to be denied that a great many professional women are absolutely without the sense of order. Their irregular hours, their unsettled mode of life, camping out a few days in this hotel and then in that in a measure explain it, but Mrs. Bradshaw set an example of neat orderliness that was well worth following.
"I can't see," she used to say, "why an actress should be a slattern."
Then if anyone murmured: "Early rehearsals, great haste, you know!" she would answer: "You know at night the hour of morning rehearsal—then get up fifteen minutes earlier, and leave your room in order. Everything an actress does is commented upon, and as she is more or less an object of suspicion, her conduct should be even more rigidly correct than that of other women." She had been a beauty in her youth, as her regular features still proclaimed, and though her figure had become almost Falstaffian, her graceful arm movements and the dignity of her carriage saved her from being in the slightest degree grotesque. The secret of her smiling contentment was her honest love for her work.
We had one taste in common—this experienced woman and my now fourteen-year-old self—books! books! and yet books, we read. I borrowed from my friends and she also read—she borrowed from her friends and I, too, read, and she came to speak of them, and then of her own ideas, and so I found that this woman, already on the way to age, who was so poor and hard-working, and had nothing to look forward to but work, was yet cheerfully contented, because she loved the work—yes, and honored it, and held her head high, because she was an actress with a clean reputation!
"Study your lines—speak them with exactitude, just as they are written!" she used to say to me, with a sort of passion in her voice.
"Don't just gather the idea of a speech, and then use your own words, that's an infamous habit. The author knew what he wanted you to say—for God's sake honor the poor dead writer's wishes and speak his lines exactly as he wrote them! If he says: 'My lord the carriage waits!' don't you go on and say: 'My lord the carriage is waiting!'"
I almost believe she would have fallen in a dead faint had she been prompted, and to have been late to a rehearsal would have been a shame greater than she could have borne. To this woman's example, I owe the strict business-like habits of attention to study and rehearsals that have won so much praise for me from my managers.
Had Mr. Ellsler's intention of taking his company to another city for a great part of the season been known in advance, my mother would never have given consent to my membership; but the season was three months old before we knew that we were to be transferred to Columbus, the State capital, where we were to remain, while the Legislature sat in large arm-chairs, passing bad bills, and killing good ones, for some three months or more—at least that was the ordinary citizen's opinion of the conduct of the State's wise men. It seemed to me that when a man paid his taxes he felt he had purchased the right to grumble at his representatives to his heart's content.