After a few weeks at the Colosseum, we began our little tour. It was a very merry, happy time. We traveled a company of five, although only two of us were acting. There were my father and mother, Kate and myself, and Mr. [Sydney Naylor], who played the very important part of orchestra. With a few exceptions we made the journeys in a carriage. Once we tramped from Bristol to Exeter. Oh, those delightful journeys on the open road! I tasted the joys of the strolling player's existence, without its miseries. I saw the country for the first time.... When they asked me what I was thinking of as we drove along, I remember answering: "Only that I should like to run wild in a wood for ever!" At night we stayed in beautiful little inns which were ever so much more cheap and comfortable than the hotels of to-day. In some of the places we were asked out to tea and dinner and very much fêted. An odd little troupe we were! Father was what we will call for courtesy's sake "Stage Manager," but in reality he set the stage himself, and did the work which generally falls to the lot of the stage manager and an army of carpenters combined. My mother used to coach us up in our parts, dress us, make us go to sleep part of the day so that we might look "fresh" at night, and look after us generally. Mr. Naylor, who was not very much more than a boy, though to my childish eyes his years were quite venerable, besides discoursing eloquent music in the evenings, during the progress of the "Drawing-room Entertainment," would amuse us—me most especially—by being very entertaining himself during our journeys from place to place. How he made us laugh about—well, mostly about nothing at all.
We traveled in this way for nearly two years, visiting a new place every day, and making, I think, about ten to fifteen pounds a performance. Our little pieces were very pretty, but very slight, too; and I can only suppose that the people thought that "never anything can be amiss when simpleness and duty tender it," for they received our entertainment very well. The time had come when my little brothers had to be sent to school, and our earnings came in useful.
When the tour came to an end in 1861, I went to London with my father to find an engagement, while Kate joined the stock company at [Bristol]. We still gave the "Drawing-room Entertainment" at [Ryde] in the summer, and it still drew large audiences.
In London my name was put on an agent's books in the usual way, and presently he sent me to [Madame Albina de Rhona], who had not long taken over the management of the [Royal Soho Theater] and changed its name to the Royalty. The improvement did not stop at the new play. French workmen had swept and garnished the dusty, dingy place and transformed it into a theater as dainty and pretty as Madame de Rhona herself. Dancing was Madame's strong point, but she had been very successful as an actress too, first in Paris and Petersburg, and then in London at the St. James's and Drury Lane. What made her go into management on her own account I don't know. I suppose she was ambitious, and rich enough for the enterprise.
At this time I was "in standing water," as Malvolio says of Viola when she is dressed as a boy. I was neither child nor woman—a long-legged girl of about thirteen, still in short skirts, and feeling that I ought to have long ones. However, when I set out with father to see Madam de Rhona, I was very smart. I borrowed Kate's new bonnet—pink silk trimmed with black lace—and thought I looked nice in it. So did father, for he said on the way to the theater that pink was my color. In fact, I am sure it was the bonnet that made Madame de Rhona engage me on the spot!
She was the first Frenchwoman I had ever met, and I was tremendously interested in her. Her neat and expressive ways made me feel very "small," or rather big and clumsy, even at the first interview. A quick-tempered, bright, energetic little woman, she nearly frightened me out of my wits at the first rehearsal by dancing round me on the stage in a perfect frenzy of anger at what she was pleased to call my stupidity. Then something I did suddenly pleased her, and she overwhelmed me with compliments and praise. After a time these became the order of the day, and she soon won my youthful affections. "Gross flattery," as a friend of mine says, "is good enough for me!" Madame de Rhona was, moreover, very kind-hearted and generous. To her generosity I owed the first piece of jewelery I ever possessed—a pretty little brooch, which, with characteristic carelessness, I promptly lost! Besides being flattered by her praise and grateful for her kindness, I was filled with great admiration for her. She was a wee thing—like a toy, and her dancing was really exquisite. When I watched the way she moved her hands and feet, despair entered my soul. It was all so precise, so "express and admirable." Her limbs were so dainty and graceful—mine so big and unmanageable! "How long and gaunt I am," I used to say to myself, "and what a pattern of prim prettiness she is!" I was so much ashamed of my large hands, during this time at the Royalty, that I kept them tucked up under my arms! This subjected me to unmerciful criticism from [Madame Albina] at rehearsals.
"Take down your hands," she would call out. "Mon Dieu! It is like an ugly young poulet going to roost!"
In spite of this, I did not lose my elegant habit for many years! I was only broken of it at last by a friend saying that he supposed I had very ugly hands, as I never showed them! That did it! Out came the hands to prove that they were not so very ugly, after all! Vanity often succeeds where remonstrance fails.
The greenroom at the Royalty was a very pretty little place, and Madame Albina sometimes had supper-parties there after the play. One night I could not resist the pangs of curiosity, and I peeped through the keyhole to see what was going on! I chose a lucky moment! One of Madame's admirers was drinking champagne out of her slipper! It was even worth the box on the ear that mother gave me when she caught me. She had been looking all over the theater for me, to take me home.
My first part at the Royalty was Clementine in ["Attar Gull."] Of the play, adapted from a story by [Eugene Sue], I have a very hazy recollection, but I know that I had one very effective scene in it. Clementine, an ordinary fair-haired ingenue in white muslin, has a great horror of snakes, and, in order to cure her of her disgust, some one suggests that a dead snake should be put in her room, and she be taught how harmless the thing is for which she had such an aversion. An Indian servant, who, for some reason or other, has a deadly hatred for the whole family, substitutes a live reptile. Clementine appears at the window with the venomous creature coiled round her neck, screaming with wild terror. The spectators on the stage think that the snake is dead, and that she is only screaming from "nerves," but in reality she is being slowly strangled. I began screaming in a frantic, heartrending manner, and continued screaming, each cry surpassing the last in intensity and agony. At rehearsal I could not get these screams right for a long time. Madame de Rhona grew more and more impatient and at last flew at me like a wild-cat and shook me. I cried, just as I had done when I could not get Prince Arthur's terror right, and then the wild, agonized scream that Madame de Rhona wanted came to me. I reproduced it and enlarged it in effect. On the first night the audience applauded the screaming more than anything in the play. Madame de Rhona assured me that I had made a sensation, kissed me and said I was a genius! How sweet and pleasant her flattering words sounded in my young and inexperienced ears I need hardly say.