"At first your face feels tightened, and the muscles don't play easily, but after a few grimaces it comes out all right. It's a great relief to get off, however, after three hours' work."
"It must cause rather mournful forecasts when a man looks on his own face made up for the age of, say, eighty years."
"Not so bad as when he makes up for a corpse, however. I'll never forget the first glance I had at my face after it had been made up for Gaston's death scene, when playing the "Man of the Iron Mask," in '62. It positively appalled me, sir, and I lay awake all that night thinking of it, and dreamed of myself in a coffin for a month afterward."
"How is it done?"
"Well, it varies slightly. You see, such characters as Lear, Virginius, Werner, and Beverly are before the audience some time before they actually die, and therefore, their faces cannot be made very corpse-like; but Mathias in 'The Bells,' Louis XI., Gaston and Danny Mann are discovered dying when the scene opens, or are brought in dead, so that their faces can be made extreme. For the last series the face and neck should be spread with prepared pink to give it a livid hue in places. Then put a deep shading of powdered antimony under the eyebrows and well into the hollow of the eye, on the cheeks, throat and temples. This is very effective, as it gives the face that dreadfully sunken appearance as in death. The sides of the nose and even the upper lip should also be darkened, and the lips powdered blue. Then the face will look about as dead as it would three hours after a real death."
"In the make up of grotesque faces do they use false noses and chins?"
"Very rarely. Usually the method is to stick some wool on the nose with a gum and mold it in whatever shape you will; then powder and paint it as you would the natural nose for grotesque or comedy parts. Paste is put on with gum, instead of wool, sometimes. Clowns have to encase themselves fairly with whiting, and they find this trouble enough without building up noses or cheeks. Grotesque artists have to work hard with their faces as a rule, but they are often repaid by discovering neat points. Many of our best Dutch and Irish comedians owe their first lift to a lucky make-up."
THE LATE ADELAIDE NEILSON.
"I suppose there are types of the representation of different nationalities?"