A good deal has been left out through want of skill in selection. Some things have been included which perhaps it would have been wiser to omit.
I have tried my best to tell "all things faithfully," and it is possible that I have given offense where offense was not dreamed of; that some people will think that I should not have said this, while others, approving of "this," will be quite certain that I ought not to have said "that."
"One said it thundered ... another that an angel spake."
It's the point of view, for I have "set down naught in malice."
During my struggles with my refractory, fragmentary, and unsatisfactory memories, I have realized that life itself is a point of view: is, to put it more clearly, imagination.
So if any one said to me at this point in my story: "And is this, then, what you call your life?" I should not resent the question one little bit.
"We have heard," continues my imaginary and disappointed interlocutor, "a great deal about your life in the theater. You have told us of plays and parts and rehearsals, of actors good and bad, of critics and of playwrights, of success and failure, but after all, your whole life has not been lived in the theater. Have you nothing to tell us about your different homes, your family life, your social diversions, your friends and acquaintances? During your life there have been great changes in manners and customs; political parties have altered; a great Queen has died; your country has been engaged in two or three serious wars. Did all these things make no impression on you? Can you tell us nothing of your life in the world?"
And I have to answer that I have lived very little in the world. After all, the life of an actress belongs to the theater as the life of a soldier belongs to the army, the life of a politician to the State, and the life of a woman of fashion to society.
Certainly I have had many friends outside the theater, but I have had very little time to see them.
I have had many homes, but I have had very little time to live in them!