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MY ACTOR-HUSBAND

NEW YORK THE MACAULAY COMPANY 1913

To PROFESSOR CHARLES T. COPELAND Of Harvard University

FOREWORD--A RETROSPECT

In presenting this autobiography to the public, the author feels it incumbent upon herself to impress upon her readers the fidelity and strict adherence to the truth, relative to the conditions which surround the player. In no instance has there been either exaggeration or a resort to imaginative creation. It is a true story with all the ugliness of truth unsoftened and unembellished. Nor is the situation presented an exceptional one. One has but to follow the career of the average actor to be convinced that the dramatic profession is not only inconsistent with but wholly hostile to the institution of marriage. Managers and actors alike know and admit this to be the truth--amongst themselves. What they say in print is, of course, merely so much self-exploitation. The success of any branch of "the show-business" is dependent on the bureau of publicity.

To one intimately acquainted with the life, the effusions of certain actors' wives, which from time to time appear in magazines for women, are ironically humourous. They are to be put down as the babbling of the newly-weds or the hunger for seeing their names in print. To hear the wife of a star declare that she always goes to the theatre and sits in the wings to watch her husband act is to presage the glaring head-lines of a divorce in the not-far-distant future. If it be not now, yet it will come, for those players who go through life with but one, even two marriages to their credit are the great exception to the rule. The actor's life precludes domesticity and without domestic life there can be no successful marriages.

It has been said that art bears no relation to morals: as well might it be declared that the blood bears no relation to health. Art must forever be imbued with the spirit of its delineator.

The moral status of the stage may not be a whit worse than that of half a dozen other professions. It is possible, but hardly probable. The very exigencies of the player's life make for a laxity and freedom from restraint. And in no other profession are the lives of the individual members so intimately concerned. The popular contention that a good woman can and will be good under any and all circumstances is a fallacy. The influence of environment is incomputable. I believe that my little friend Leila was fundamentally a good girl: in any other walk of life she would have remained a good girl. I believe that fundamentally my husband was a good man: in any other environment he would have been a good husband. The fantastic, unreal and over-stimulated atmosphere which the player breathes is not conducive to a sane and well-balanced life.

And if, in a ruthless rending aside of the tinselled illusions which enthrall the stage-struck girl, I have rendered a service, my own suffering will not have been in vain.

It was our first separation. All day I had fought back the tears while I helped Will pack his "Taylor" trunk. Neither of us spoke; once in every little while Will would stop in the act of folding a garment, and smile at me in approval. Then his arm would steal around my shoulders and he would pat me tenderly.... I would turn away, pretending to busy myself with other things, but in reality to hide the freshet of tears his silent expression of sympathy had undammed.... Will had signed with a star to play Shakespearean r?pertoire. The question of wardrobe was a source of worry, until I volunteered my services; I was a good needlewoman, and, from the sketches Will made, I was able to qualify as a full-fledged costumier. For days I had pegged away, refurbishing the old and making new ones, and sometimes Will would lend a hand and run the machine over the thick seams.... I once read that the women of the Commune wove the initials of those they hated into their knitting; well, I sewed the seams of Will's dresses thick with love, and hope, and ambition ... and dampened them with tears.... Then when the expressman came for the trunk ... it seemed as if they were taking away a coffin....

Not until that night, after we had gone to bed, and I felt Will's deep, rhythmical breathing beneath my head, which lay pressed against his breast, only then did I give way to my grief. I crept to the other side of the bed and turned my face to the wall--I shook with convulsive sobs.

Now and then Will would half waken, and would reach out and dreamily pat my face and smooth back my hair, as one soothes a sorrowing child. At such times I would hold my breath, and wait until he was again quiet....

Every incident of our short married life passed in review before my burning eyes. We had closed our season late in April, and had come back to New York with less than seventy-five dollars between us. But what we lacked in money was more than balanced by our enthusiasm and illusion--the illusion of two young persons very much in love with each other. I had been in New York only once before, and the thought of living in the great city, of becoming an integral part of it, made me thrill with excitement. Will and I stood on the front of the ferry-boat and watched the panorama; he pointed out the various tall buildings with an air of familiarity. When we passed close to a great ocean liner, which was being swung into her dock by two fussy little tug-boats, even Will got excited. He told me which was "fore," and "aft," and named various other parts of the boat which I didn't understand. When we had taken our last look, he tucked my hand under his arm and told me that one day he and I should take a trip abroad....

Owing to the shortage in our money supply, we had decided to go to a theatrical boarding house. Will was depending on his father to send him an allowance throughout the summer, and while it would be sufficient for his needs, now that he was married--well, we should have a chance to test the saying that two can live as cheaply as one. Our marriage had been a secret one--besides the "star" and one or two members of the company, we had taken no one into our confidence. Will's family--his father, a sister and brother--his mother having died about the time I came into his life--all were intolerant of the stage and its people. Though I was not yet a "really truly" actress, the fact that Will had met me "in the profession" would have prejudiced them against me; added to this was the fact that Will, himself a tyro, taking a wife at the very threshold of his career would not be looked at through our love-coloured glasses. The effect my marriage might have upon my own relatives never troubled me; my father and mother belonged to that great class of incompetent parenthood which brings children into the world without any actual love for them. Never questioning their fitness for child-rearing, they divine no greater responsibility than providing bodily necessities and a more or less superficial education. When, at the restless age of sixteen, I announced my determination to become an actress, there was some surface opposition, but no effort was made to enquire into my fitness for the dramatic profession, or the fitness of the dramatic profession as a career for any innocent and unprotected young girl. I had been highly successful as an amateur, and, as it was not necessary that I earn my own living, the stage appeared to their insapient minds an interesting playground for a dilettante daughter....

One week in a theatrical boarding-house was all we could endure. I wonder why it is that the rank and file of the theatrical profession are at such pains to impress one another with their importance. The flippant familiarity with which they referred to "Charley" or "Dan" Frohman; the coarse criticism of their fellow-actors, which Will called "knocking"; their easy disregard of the conventions, especially between the sexes; a bombastic retailing of their own exploits, as "how I jumped on and saved the show, with only one rehearsal"; talking "shop" to the exclusion of every other subject in the world. I overheard one of the actresses at the next table say we were "very up-stage," which Will interpreted as "not sociable, and having too good an opinion of one's self." Neither of us was happy in our new surroundings, and I felt a sense of relief when Will suggested that we look for a furnished flat. I did not mean to be critical of my husband's profession--I endeavored to agree with him that every profession has its undesirables.

We spent days in climbing narrow stairs to look at dark, closet-like apertures with no ventilation; even the strength-sapping humidity of the streets seemed fresh in comparison. At last, we found something less undesirable than the others. The building was new, and the apartment in the rear gave upon a row of private houses with small yards; there were flowers and a few trees--little oases in a desert of brick and mortar. The janitor told us there were three rooms: the bedroom was an alcove affair, divided from the parlor by pea-green porti?res; the kitchen beyond was as large as the pantry in our house at home; and the furnishings--! The whole outfit might have been removed from a Seventh Avenue show-window, where they advertise "Complete furnished apartment for .99." The near-gold-leaf chairs were so frail that one was afraid to sit upon them. The general atmosphere of the parlor reminded me of the stage-settings one comes across in one-night-stand theatres. However, the vistas of the trees and flowers decided the momentous question. We paid a month's rent, then and there; it made a terrible hole in our last and only fifty-dollar bill, but neither of us worried much about it. For the next week the "show-business" was relegated to the background. We played "house" like two children; we arranged and rearranged the furniture, and Will made a comfortable divan from two packing cases. We went out to market on Ninth Avenue and Will carried the basket on his arm. Then we tried our hand at cooking; Will carried off the honours for coffee--and hard-boiled eggs. I washed and Will dried the dishes--I can see him now, with an apron tied high under his arm, declaiming Shakespeare, and juggling with the landlord's dishes.

Our greatest problem was the lack of bathing facilities. We solved it by bathing in the wash-tubs; to be sure it was a bit hazardous standing on a sloping bottom, in danger of falling out of the kitchen window if one leaned too much to the right, or of toppling over to the floor if veering a bit too much to the left. But it was a bath, and, as Will said, preferable to the communal affair in the boarding house.

The summer passed all too quickly. Those were happy, happy days.... Sometimes the money market was tight--very tight; especially when Will's father was careless about sending Will's allowance. I cried bitterly the first time Will went to a pawn-shop; it seemed so humiliating to have him do it. Will laughed, and said he regarded it as so much experience. Several times a week we donned our best clothes and made the rounds of the theatrical employment agencies. Will had had several offers during the summer, but we wanted a joint engagement; we had promised each other, when we married, that nothing should cause us to be separated. Will and I felt that to the enforced separation of married persons--the husband in one company, the wife in another--was due the great number of divorces in the theatrical profession. Our "star," when apprised of our marriage, had followed his good wishes and congratulations with a heart to heart talk with Will.

When Will retailed all this to me, it sounded very big and very dreadful--and also very vague. Any danger from separation seemed in the far, distant future.... We agreed that a man and wife who permitted themselves to become estranged because of temporary separations knew nothing of real love--such love as ours, at any rate.... And now, with the summer going on apace and no joint engagement in sight, the fear assumed a tangible shape, the dread of separation hung over me like a pall. Will tried to reassure me by saying it was still early, and that we would hold out.... I believed what he said with a child-like faith. Indeed, I am not so sure that in these days I did not worship Will with the same idolatry that I offered up to the Virgin Mary.... The whole world had merged into one being--my husband. My love for my husband was the absorbing passion of my life. Never happy in my home--my father had married a second wife--all the pent-up tenderness and passionate love found an outlet in my marriage. I sometimes wondered what had become of my ambition: this, too, had centred upon him. To be sure I meant to succeed as an actress, but I now thought of success only in the light of an assistance to him. It was already settled between us that I should be his leading lady, once he became a star. There should be no separations in our life....

The weeks flew by ... the summer waned. Will became less reassuring--he took on a worried look. I began to awaken of mornings with a sickening, intangible apprehension. After a while I stopped going to the agencies. It seemed so futile. And then, one day, late in the summer, when the theatres along Broadway had begun to remove the signboards from their entrances--it came. I knew something had happened when Will opened the door. Instead of kissing me at once, as was his habit, he passed on to the bedroom without looking at me, saying, "Hello, Girlie." There was always something infinitely tender in the way he said these words, but to-day there was a new note in his voice. It took a long time to put away his hat and cane; then he came out and kissed me.

I was peeling potatoes. He drew up a chair so that our knees met; then he laid a hand on each shoulder and his fingers gripped me. We looked into each other's eyes.... After a while I managed to say, "Well, dear?" ... and when he replied his voice seemed far away. I had the sense of returning consciousness after a blow.... I suppose I was a little dazed....

Neither of us referred to the subject again that day; neither did we try to make believe at being cheerful. We understood each other's silence ... and respected it. Outside the rain poured. Will stood at the window looking out, but I am sure he did not see the rain....

All these details passed before my mind like moving-pictures. When at last I fell asleep, it was to dream the incongruous, disjointed stuff of which the actor's dreams are made; the sense of being late for a cue, or hearing the cue spoken, to realize that one is but half-dressed, or, again, to rush upon the scene only to find the lines obliterated from one's memory.... When I awoke, I heard Will in the kitchen; there was the smell of boiling coffee. For a moment there was no consciousness of my "douleureuse," then memory swept me like an engulfing wave. I cried aloud; then Will took me in his strong arms and kissed my swollen eyes, oh, so tenderly....

To recall the moments preceding and following Will's departure causes--even at this late day--a tightening around the heart. There were some red roses in a cheap glass vase on the mantle; Will had bought them from a street vendor that morning when he went out for the papers. He had pinned one in my dark hair.... After many false starts, and bidding me, "Cheer up--it won't be for long," he closed the door after him.... It was our first separation.

The red roses had withered; their crisp petals lay scattered over the mantel and about the floor. Stooping to gather them, I was seized with a giddiness; it dawned on me that I had not eaten for--I did not know how long. I went into the kitchen; the table lay as we had left it that morning at breakfast. There was his chair and the morning paper. I didn't cry--I felt only a heaviness, a numbness. Mechanically I set about to put the house in order; I realized that I must get myself in hand if only to please Will. I even managed a laugh at my own stupidity when, after neatly folding and placing my kitchen apron upon a shelf in the dish-cupboard, I hung the sugar bowl on a peg where the apron should have gone, and was drenched with a shower of sugar for my pains.

For several days I lived on milk, which the janitor sent up on the dumb-waiter. I could not muster sufficient courage to go out to market. The sunlight mocked me--I resented the happy laughter of the family across the hall. The postman's ring, several days later, put new life into me. I knew the letter was from Will. I caught the postman almost before he stopped ringing, and, carrying the letter to my room, gave myself up to devouring it.

It was filled with interesting gossip about his opening, and gave humourous little side-lights of the star and personnel of the company. He bade me cheer up and not take our separation too seriously; he promised to write every day, and asked that I do likewise. I marked this precious epistle with a large "1" in blue pencil and tucked it away with the rose-leaves. Then I sat down to write--I wrote reams. It is wondrous the many modes of expressing "I love you." To distil those many pages, written in the thin, slanting hand of my girlhood, would be to extract the very essence of my life's romance--or, shall I say, tragedy.

I lived for the postman's ring. Sundays were the hardest to bear; there was no mail delivery. The weeks dragged on at snail's pace. Finally, loneliness and isolation drove me to a state of desperation, which, in turn, gave me the necessary courage to visit the agencies. Will was reluctant to have me take an engagement alone; he made me promise that I would not take such a step without first consulting him. Indeed, had he but known it, the thought of again travelling alone in a theatrical company was distasteful to me; naturally sensitive and of a retiring disposition, my first season in the dramatic profession had left some unpleasant memories. It was difficult to accustom myself to enter an hotel lobby alone, or, if in company with other members of the organization, to hear our party referred to as the "troupe." The ubiquitous drummer lounging at the hotel desk regarded us with brazen audacity, and made audible comments. Then, to enter a dining-room unattended, either to be corralled at a table with the other members of the company, or, if seated elsewhere, to be further subjected to the advances of a "travelling salesman." Again, when walking to the theatre or to the railroad station, to see the town-folk turn curiously, regarding the players with a condescending smile, which curled the corners of the mouth downward as they whispered, "Show people." In larger cities these marks of opprobrium are less pronounced, but, nevertheless, exist. I resented this attitude towards the theatrical profession until I became better acquainted with it. There be those who mistake liberty for license, and seemingly the freedom from restraint and the lack of conventionality, which the life affords, appear to be one of the chief attractions for adopting it.

However, it was expedient that I should work. I dangled before my willing eyes the reward of the future--that time when my husband and I should play together. I even planned that we should be an example to others in our devotion and high moral purpose; and so, by reducing expense of maintaining two establishments--the flat in New York and Will's living on the road--we should be better equipped to hold out for a joint engagement for the following season.

One morning, while waiting in the office of an agent to whom Will had introduced me, I was drawn into conversation with an actress whose photographs adorned the walls of the room. There was an air of importance about her, quite distinct from that of the other women who were waiting; these women wore an abject expression. They had relaxed the mechanical expression of "bien ?tre" as the weariness of waiting wore upon them; in spite of the make-up--more or less skilfully applied--their faces were drawn and strained. Their clothes, too, told of the attempt to keep up appearances. I felt a sympathy and fellowship for these unemployed; I wondered whether they too, were, by the force of circumstances, separated from their loved ones.

Miss Burton, the lady of some importance, broke my train of thought by precipitately asking me to "come and have a cup of tea." She assured me she would not let me miss "old Tom"--calling the agent by the familiar diminutive--and that having sent for her he was bound to wait. "It makes all the difference in the world whether they send for you, or whether you go to them for an engagement," she told me, with a sententious nod of her head. She was so bright and vivacious, and so wholly un-selfconscious that, for a moment, I was drawn out of my dreamy loneliness.

We went to a near-by hotel. "You take what you like," she said, summoning the waiter. "Beer for mine!"

I took tea.

While we sipped our respective beverages she told me about herself. She was a well-known com?dienne--"'soubrettes' they called them in the old days," she volunteered. She had been with "Charley" Frohman off and on for years, and expected to go back to him.

"I've been in his bad books," she went on. "I had a good thing, and I didn't know it. When I think how I got in wrong all on account of those two big stiffs--!" My inability to follow her was probably expressed in my face, for she immediately rattled on: "You see, it was like this. When Jack and I were married we were in the same Company. He was what they call the 'Acting Manager,' travelled on the road and represented the New York office--understand? Well, the next year we didn't get an engagement together; he went off on the road and I created a part in a New York production. It was simply--hell! We used to make the most God-forsaken jumps, just to be together over Sunday. Why, once I can remember I rode all night in the caboose of a freight train to some little dump of a town where Jack's Company had played on Saturday night. Can you beat it? Oh, I tell you, I had it bad." And Miss Burton buried her feeling and her face in the stein of beer. After a pause she continued: "Well, the same devilish luck followed us the next season; we couldn't dig up an engagement together for love or money--and we slipped a nice little roll to several of the agents, too. It just seemed as if managers were dead set against having a man and wife in the same company. Some of 'em acknowledge it right out loud, if you please! They claim a man and wife in the same company make trouble; either they want to share the same dressing-room, or the husband kicks if his wife gets the worst of it in the dressing-room line. Or, if the husband happens to be a manager, there's the temptation to favour his wife, and somebody else kicks up a row. Oh, they've got excuses enough, whether they're justifiable or not. Anyway, that's the kind of bunk you're up against when you marry in the profession.... Where was I?... Oh Well, after two seasons of separation, it dawned on me that Jacky wasn't so keen about making long jumps to see wifey; pretty soon I began to hear gossip--he was carrying some fairy's grip in the company he was with. Then I began to watch him ... I caught him with the goods all right.... Exit, hastily, Jacky!" and, with an expressive wave of her hands to indicate his departure, Miss Burton called for another stein.

I fear I appeared a perfect idiot in the voluble little lady's eyes. I could not muster a comment of any description. Miss Burton, however, did not notice my omission, for she raced on with the same energy of expression.

"That blow pretty nearly killed Mother, I can tell you. I was in love with Jack all right.... It broke me all up to have him throw me down for a second-rate soubrette like that. I wish you could have seen it--one of these 'I'm so temperamental' kind of dopes. She threw him down as soon as she'd used him for what he was worth.... I took to the booze. Whew! I did go it hard for a while! That's what queered me with C. F.... Then, what d'ye think I did?" Miss Burton leaned forward to better impress me with the importance of her revelation: "I tried it a second time.... This one was an actor: one of those handsome, shaving-soap advertisement kind of faces--beautiful teeth, and workin' the smile overtime to show 'em!... Black curly hair, high brow, chesty--you know--the real thing in heavy men.... Mash notes, society ladies making goo-goo eyes at him, and forgetting to invite me to those little impromptu suppers. Ha!... don't ask me! It was worse than the first.... No, ma'am, matrimony and the stage don't mix. They ought to nail over every stage door this warning: 'All ye who enter here, leave matrimony outside.' Yes, I know what you are going to say--that there are happy marriages among stage folks, and you'll name some of the shining examples. The domestic felicity of Mr. Great Star and his wife makes up well in print. But, wait awhile.... Have you finished with your tea? Let's step in the ladies' room--I'm dying for a smoke."

On our way back to the office, Miss Burton asked me about myself. When I spoke of Will, she turned sharply and looked at me with a hurt expression.

"Why, you poor kid! Why didn't you tell me you were married? Now, don't you let anything I said worry you a bit. Everybody is apt to draw general conclusions from personal experiences. There's always the exception to prove the rule. Besides...." She slipped her arm through mine and gave me a reassuring pressure.

The agent received her in his private office, and when she came out she was in high spirits. Calling me to her, she put me on a friendly footing with the agent, who promised to keep me in mind. I thanked her for her kindly interest, and went home.

Desolate as the little flat was, I found strange comfort within its protecting walls. The power of Will's personality had impregnated the place, and I felt its soothing influence. I devoted the evening to writing to my husband a long letter, but, strangely enough, I did not repeat the conversation I had had with Miss Burton. That night I prayed that he and I might be the exception to prove the rule....

The next day I visited another agency. The presiding genius was a corpulent person, with cold blue eyes which cowed at the first glance. She stood behind the rail which divided the office from the waiting applicants with an air of a magistrate dispensing justice not altogether tempered with mercy. There was something insolent in the way she shut off the opening speeches of the applicants with, "No, nothing for you to-day; nothing doing, Mr. Blank." Then, as a highly scented and berouged person entered, clanking the gold baubles of her chatelaine as she swished by, the majoress-domo swung open the gate and greeted her with, "Come right in, dearie; I've been waiting for you." They disappeared into the sanctum sanctorum.

The little wizened lady who sat next to me snorted with impatience: "Humph! I suppose that means another half hour!" She fell to gossiping with a man whose very face suggested his "line of business"--that of Irish comedian. It was impossible not to overhear their conversation. The gorgeous creature who had been received with such open arms was a pet of the establishment, because of her generous and regular "retaining fees." She had been a more or less prominent society woman from Chicago; after a sensational divorce, she turned to the stage for the proper outlet for her superabundant "temperament." Willing to work for a salary upon which no self-supporting woman could exist, and able to dress her parts "handsomely," she found no difficulty in securing an engagement. The "retaining fees" no doubt facilitated her progress.

When, at last, the lady agent returned from her conference, I timidly made known my wants. Perhaps I looked like a "non-retainer," as the comedian dubbed them, for the corpulent person looked me over suspiciously.

"Had any experience?" she broke in.

"One season," I responded.

"Well, you might leave your address," she snapped, and directed me to an assistant.

I went back to Miss Burton's friend. Mr. Tom was an Englishman, with the manners of a gentleman to commend him if nothing else. He greeted me pleasantly and asked me to wait. My heart bounded in anticipation. Presently he handed me a letter. I recognized the address upon the envelope as that of a prominent manager. I was told to go to his office, present the letter and return to report the outcome to the agent. I rushed off with my mind in a whirl. Already I was outlining a telegram to Will, telling him of my engagement. I began to plan how I should remake my last season's dresses to avoid the expense of a new wardrobe. Only once before had I gone direct to a manager for an engagement. I look back upon the incident I am about to relate with amusement at my own expense. To anybody and everybody who is interested in the stage the name of Charles Frohman was and still remains a kind of magic. When it was determined that the stage was to be my avocation--I use the word advisedly, since I had never been taught to look upon any profession in the light of a vocation--I came direct to New York with the purpose of calling upon Mr. Frohman, and placing my talent at his command. I remember I dressed myself carefully. I even powdered my face heavily, to give the ear-marks of intimate acquaintance with the make-up box. When I entered the office in the Empire Theatre Building, the office boy was engaged in pasting newspaper clippings in a scrap-book. A pretty, pert girl was type-writing at the other end of the room. The office boy looked up enquiringly. I took my courage in both hands.

"Is Mr. Frohman in?" I enquired.

"Mr. Frohman?" I ventured.

"Mr. Frohman is not in," he responded with a bland smile.

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