“Thank you, Mrs. Glyn,” the other would falter, “but you see So-and-So is already cast for that part.”
“Oh, what a shame!” would rejoin the author. “But surely you’ll take the second part—in my play?”
Torn between pleasure at this avidity of interest and the pang inflicted upon any handsome actor by the supposition that he could possibly appear in a secondary rôle, the Adonis of the hour would then probably retreat to some lonely grotto where he could meditate upon the embarrassment of great beauty.
In one of the most amazing encounters of beauty and the author, the late Wallace Reid was cast for the leading part. Friends of Reid report that one day while he was coming off the set he was hailed by Mrs. Glyn.
“My dear boy”—thus she is said to have greeted him—“you’re really very wonderful to look at. And, besides, you know you have—It.”
“It?” Reid murmured confusedly, wondering perhaps what his press-agents and admirers could possible have overlooked. “What do you mean, Mrs. Glyn?”
“Oh, that is my word. It!” she repeated in that contralto voice which soughs through Mrs. Glyn like the lonely wind through the pine-trees. “Don’t you see, that one syllable expresses everything—all the difference there is between people. You either have It or you haven’t.”
Reid was still considering himself in this new light of special privilege when he noticed that the writer’s brows were puckered.
“Yes,” he heard her reflect after a moment of such pained scrutiny, “you have It—but, ah, my dear boy—your boots and your hair! If I could only send you to my London bootmaker and have some one wise cut your hair!”
Although I do not vouch for the authenticity of this tale, I do say Mrs. Glyn’s part in it is thoroughly consistent with several other incidents of which I have first-hand knowledge. Does she really mean such things or does she say them for effect? I myself believe that she plans her personality quite as carefully as she does her stories. When, for instance, arrayed in the most superb evening attire and accompanied by the handsomest man she has been able to find in the assemblage, Mrs. Glyn sweeps slowly through a ball-room; when she murmurs soulfully, “Orange, orange, how I love it! Often I sit in a room by myself and think orange. I fill my whole soul with its beautiful, warm rays—I drink them down into my heart—ah, orange!”—then she is showing her supreme ability, not only as the writer who can tell a popular tale, but as the writer who knows how to get herself constantly before the popular mind. I once said of her that she was a great showman, and when she heard my comment she was exceedingly gratified.