"How did I make my start?" she repeated in answer to my question. "Well, I rather think it was because I balked at the idea of being known as a 'school marm.' I'll tell you about it. Although both my father and mother were on the stage, I didn't care for the life in the least. In fact, in my small young mind, I set up to being a very grand lady.
"'An actress? No, indeed,' I told myself. 'Something much better than that for me.' I was interested in young children and became a kindergarten teacher in San Francisco, where my mother was playing with L.R. Stockwell. But it was my very success with the youngsters that brought about the close of my career as a teacher. If I could do so well in the kindergarten, the committee argued, I was worth promoting, so one day they came to me with the announcement that I had been advanced to the charge of a grade in the primary department.
To Teach or Not to Teach.
"I suppose I should have felt duly honored, but I didn't. I sat down and began to look ahead, through the vista of years to come. A teacher, a schoolmistress! That somehow didn't agree with the ideas of the grand lady my fancy had conjured up. And, at that psychological moment mother came home with a proposition from Mr. Stockwell.
"It seemed that they were to give him a benefit, and he suggested to her, by way of novelty in the bill, that I should appear in a one-act play. Coming as it did just as I was wavering in my mind about my prospects in the teaching business, the idea caught me, and I said: 'Yes, I'd like to do it.'
"The play was 'The Picture,' by Brander Matthews, and I was the only woman in it, with the gamut of all the passions to run in the portrayal of the part. But I was too young and inexperienced to be frightened at the notion. I went on, and got through, and with the smell of the footlights possessing me I became thoroughly set upon a New York appearance."
After her experience with the Stockwell forces, Miss Bates secured an opening with the Frawley stock as utility woman at twenty dollars a week, which led to the realization of her hopes in the way of a chance on Broadway. And this came in the shape of an engagement with no less famous a company than Augustin Daly's. She made her début in February, 1899, but lasted only two nights.
Too Good for Daly's.
"The resignation of Blanche Bates from Augustin Daly's theatrical company will give a good many persons the chance to say 'I told you so,' the dramatic critic of the New York Sun observed at the time. "A short career for Miss Bates on that stage was predicted on the opening night of 'The Great Ruby; or, The Kiss of Blood.'
"She was called before the curtain four times after her best scene, and the applause was enthusiastic and genuine. That would have been enough to base the belief on. But there was a second and bigger reason, said the prophets, why her stay would be brief.