"LIFE IS BRIEF—ART IS LONG"
Perhaps no actor of modern times had greater dramatic talents inborn than Richard Mansfield, yet here is the story of how Richard Mansfield[6] worked, toiled, starved and suffered in achieving success in his art:
His friends crowded St. George's Hall for his first appearance. It was observed, as he uttered the few lines of the Beadle, that he was excessively nervous. When, later in the evening, he sat down at the piano and struck a preliminary chord, he fainted dead away.
[6] From "Richard Mansfield," by Paul Wilstach. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York.
Mr. Reed relieved him of his position at once. In
discharging him, he said: 'You are the most nervous man I have ever seen,' It was not all nervousness, however. Mansfield had not eaten for three days. He had fainted from hunger.
"Mansfield was now on evil days, indeed. He moved into obscure quarters and fought the hard fight. It was years before he would speak of these experiences. In fact, he rarely ruminated on the past in the confidences of either conversation or correspondence. Memory troubled him little and by the universal quotation it withheld its pleasures. He dwelt in the present, with his eyes and hopes on the future. It was always the future with him. No pleasure or attainment brought complete satisfaction. He looked to the past only in relation to the future; for experience, for example, for what to avoid.
"Once, when at the meridian of his fame, he was asked to lecture before the faculty and students of the University of Chicago. For his subject he chose, 'On Going on the Stage.' That he might exploit to those before him the reality of the actor's struggle, he lifted for the first time a corner of that veil of mystery which hung between his public and his past, and told of these early London days:
"For years I went home to my little room, if, fortunately, I had one,' he said, 'and perhaps a tallow dip was stuck in the neck of a bottle, and I was fortunate if I had something to cook for myself over a fire, if I had a fire. That was my life. When night came I wandered about the streets of London, and if I had a penny I invested it in a baked potato from the baked-potato man on the corner. I would put these hot potatoes in my pockets, and after I had warmed my hands, I would swallow the potato. That is the truth.'
"At length, his wardrobe became so reduced that attendance at any but the most informal entertainments became out of the question, and finally he had to give up these. Soon he was inking the seams of his coat, and wandered about shunning friends, for fear they would learn to what a condition he was reduced.