With Mr. Dan. Setchell I Win Applause—A Strange Experience Comes to Me—I Know Both Fear and Ambition—The Actress is Born at Last.
My manager considered me to have a real gift of comedy, and he several times declared that my being a girl was a distinct loss to the profession of a fine low comedian.
It was in playing a broad comedy bit that my odd experience came to me. Mr. Dan. Setchell was the star. He was an extravagantly funny comedian, and the laziest man I ever saw—too lazy even properly to rehearse his most important scenes. He would sit on the prompt table—a table placed near the footlights at rehearsal, holding the manuscript, writing materials, etc., with a chair at either end, one for the star, the other for the prompter or stage manager—and with his short legs dangling he would doze a little through people's scenes, rousing himself reluctantly for his own, but instead of rising, taking his place upon the stage, and rehearsing properly, he would kick his legs back and forth, and, smiling pleasantly, would lazily repeat his lines where he was, adding: "I'll be on your right hand when I say that, Herbert. Oh, at your exit, Ellsler, you'll leave me in the centre, but when you come back you'll find me down left."
After telling James Lewis several times at what places he would find him at night, Lewis remarked, in despair: "Well, God knows where you'll find me at night!"
"Oh, never mind, old man," answered the ever-smiling, steadily kicking Setchell, "if you're there, all right; if you're not there, no matter!" which was not exactly flattering.
Of course such rehearsals led to many errors at night, but Mr. Setchell cleverly covered them up from the knowledge of the laughing audience.
It is hard to imagine that lazy, smiling presence in the midst of awful disaster, but he was one of the victims of a dreadful shipwreck while making the voyage to Australia. Bat-blind to the future, he at that time laughed and comfortably shirked his work in the day-time, and made others laugh when he did his work at night.
In one of his plays I did a small part with him—I was his wife, a former old maid of crabbed temper. I had asked Mr. Ellsler to make up my face for me as an old and ugly woman. I wore corkscrew side curls and an awful wrapper. I was a fearful object, and when Mr. Setchell first saw me he stood silent a moment, then, after rubbing his stomach hard, and grimacing, he took both my hands, exclaiming: "Oh, you hideous jewel! you positively gave me a cramp at just sight of you! Go in, little girl, for all you're worth! and do just what you please—you deserve the liberty for that make-up!"
And goodness knows I took him at his word, and did anything that came into my giddy head. Even then I possessed that curious sixth sense of the born actress, and as a doctor with the aid of his stethoscope can hear sounds of grim warning or of kindly promise, while there is but the silence to the stander-by, so an actress, with that stethoscopic sixth sense, detects even the forming emotions of her audience, feeling incipient dissatisfaction before it becomes open disapproval, or thrilling at the intense stillness that ever precedes a burst of approbation.
And that night, meeting with a tiny mishap, which seemed to amuse the audience, I seized upon it, elaborating it to its limit, and making it my own, after the manner of an experienced actor.