Ten American Girls From History Part 21

Some one standing near him volunteered: "Her name is Clara Morris, or Morrissey or Morrison, or something like that." At once he had written down _Morris_--dropping the last syllable from her rightful name. So when Mr. Ellsler asked, "Don't you know your name?" it was the moment to have set the matter straight, but the young person was far too shy.

She made no reply, but signed up and received two weeks' salary as Clara Morris, by which name she was known ever afterward.

In her story of life on the stage, she says, "After having gratefully accepted my two weeks' earnings, Mr. Ellsler asked me why I had not come the week before. I told him I preferred to wait because it would seem so much more if I got both weeks' salary all at one time. He nodded gravely, and said, 'It was rather a large sum to have in hand at one time,' and though I was very sensitive to ridicule, I did not suspect him of making fun of me. Then he said:

"'You are a very intelligent little girl, and when you went on alone and unrehea.r.s.ed the other night, you proved you had both adaptability and courage. I'd like to keep you in the theater. Will you come and be a regular member of the company for the season that begins in September next?'

"I think it must have been my ears that stopped my ever-widening smile, while I made answer that I must ask my mother first.

"'To be sure,' said he, 'to be sure! Well, suppose you ask her then, and let me know whether you can or not.'"

She says, "Looking back and speaking calmly, I must admit that I do not now believe Mr. Ellsler's financial future depended entirely upon the yes or no of my mother and myself; but that I was on an errand of life or death every one must have thought who saw me tearing through the streets on that ninety-in-the-shade day.... One man ran out hatless and coatless and looked anxiously up the street in the direction from which I came. A big boy on the corner yelled after me: 'Sa-ay, sis, where's the fire?' But, you see they did not know that I was carrying home my first real earnings, that I was clutching six damp one-dollar bills in the hands that had been so empty all my life!

"I had meant to take off my hat and smooth my hair, and with a proper little speech approach my mother, and then hand her the money. But alas! as I rushed into the house I came upon her unexpectedly, for, fearing dinner was going to be late, she was hurrying things by sh.e.l.ling a great basket of peas as she sat by the dining-room window.

At sight of her tired face all my nicely planned speech disappeared. I flung my arm about her neck, dropped the bills on top of the empty pods and cried:

"'Oh, mother, that's mine and it's all yours!'

"She kissed me, but to my grieved amazement put the money back into my hand and said, 'No, you have earned this money yourself--you are to do with it exactly as you please.'"

And that was why, the next morning, a much-excited and very rich young person took a journey to the stores, and as a result bought a lavender-flowered muslin dress which, when paid for, had made quite a large hole in the six dollars. By her expression and manner she plainly showed how proud and happy she was to be buying a dress for the mother who for thirteen years had been doing and buying for two.

"Undoubtedly," says Miss Morris, "had there been a fire just then I would have risked my life to save that flowered muslin gown."

Up to that time, the only world Clara Morris had known had been narrow and sordid, and lay chill under the shadow of poverty.... Now, standing humbly at the knee of Shakespeare, she began to learn something of another world--fairy-like in fascination, marvelous in reality. A world of sunny days and jeweled nights, of splendid palaces, caves, of horrors, forests of mystery, and meadows of smiling candor. All people, too, with such soldiers, statesmen, lovers, clowns, such women of splendid honor, fierce ambition, thistle-down lightness, as makes the heart beat fast to think of.

That was the era of Shakesperian performances, and out of twenty-eight stars who played with the support of Mr. Ellsler's company, eighteen acted in the famous cla.s.sic plays. All stars played a week's engagement, some two, so at least half of the season of forty-two weeks was given over to Shakespeare's plays, and every actor and actress had his lines at their tongues' tips, while there were endless discussions about the best rendering of famous pa.s.sages.

"I well remember," says Miss Morris, "my first step into theatrical controversy. 'Macbeth' was being rehea.r.s.ed, and the star had just exclaimed: 'Hang out our banners on the outward walls!' That was enough--argument was on. It grew animated. Some were for: 'Hang out our banners! On the outward walls the cry is still, they come!' while one or two were with the star's reading.

"I stood listening, and looking on, and fairly sizzling with hot desire to speak, but dared not take the liberty. Presently an actor, noticing my eagerness, laughingly said:

"'Well, what is it, Clara? You'll have a fit if you don't ease your mind with speech.'

"'Oh, Uncle d.i.c.k,' I answered, my words fairly tripping over one another in my haste, 'I have a picture home, I cut out of a paper; it's a picture of a great castle with towers and moats and things, and on the outer walls are men with spears and s.h.i.+elds, and they seem to be looking for the enemy, and, Uncle d.i.c.k, the _banner_ is floating over the high tower! So, don't you think it ought to be read: "Hang out our banners! On the outward walls"--the outward wall, you know, is where the lookouts are standing--"the cry is still, they come!"'

"A general laugh followed my excited explanation, but Uncle d.i.c.k patted me on the shoulder and said:

"'Good girl, you stick to your picture--it's right, and so are you.

Many people read that line that way, but you have worked it out for yourself, and that's a good plan to follow.'

"And," says Miss Morris, "I swelled and swelled, it seemed to me, I was so proud of the gentle old man's approval. But that same night I came woefully to grief. I had been one of the crowd of 'witches.'

Later, being off duty, I was, as usual, planted in the entrance, watching the acting of the grown-ups and grown-greats. Lady Macbeth was giving the sleep-walking scene, in a way that jarred upon my feelings. I could not have told why, but it did. I believed myself alone, and when the memory-haunted woman roared out:

"'Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much _blood_ in him?' I remarked, under my breath. 'Did you expect to find ink in him?'

"A sharp 'ahem' right at my shoulder told me I had been overheard, and I turned to face--oh, horror! the stage-manager. He glared angrily at me and demanded my ideas on the speech, which in sheer desperation at last I gave, saying:

"'I thought Lady Macbeth was amazed at the _quant.i.ty_ of blood that flowed from the body of such an old man--for when you get old, you know, sir, you don't have so much blood as you used to, and I only thought that, as the "sleeping men were laced, and the knives smeared and her hands bathed with it," she might perhaps have whispered, "Yet who would have thought the old man to have so _much_ blood in him?"' I didn't mean an impertinence. Down fell the tears, for I could not talk and hold them back at the same time.

"He looked at me in dead silence for a few moments, then he said: 'Humph!' and walked away, while I rushed to the dressing-room and cried and cried, and vowed that never, never again would I talk to myself--in the theater, at all events.

"Only a short time afterward I had a proud moment when I was allowed to go on as the longest witch in the caldron scene in 'Macbeth.'

Perhaps I might have come to grief over it had I not overheard the leading man say: 'That child will never speak those lines in the world!' And the leading man was six feet tall and handsome, and I was thirteen and a half years old, and to be called a child!

"I was in a secret rage, and I went over and over my lines at all hours, under all circ.u.mstances, so that nothing should be able to frighten me at night. And then, with my pasteboard crown and white sheet and petticoat, I boiled up in the caldron and gave my lines well enough for the manager to say low:

"'Good! Good!' and the leading man next night asked me to take care of his watch and chain during his combat scene, and," says Miss Morris, "my pride of bearing was unseemly, and the other girls loved me not at all, for, you see, they, too, knew he was six feet tall and handsome."

The theatrical company of which Clara Morris had become a member was what was called by the profession, a "family theater," in which the best parts are apt to be absorbed by the manager and his family, while all the poor ones are placed with strict justice where they belong. At that time, outside of the star who was being supported, men and women were engaged each for a special line of business, to which "line"

they were strictly kept. However much the "family theater" was disliked by her comrades in the profession, it was indeed an ideal place for a young girl to begin her stage life in. The manager, Mr.

Ellsler, was an excellent character actor; his wife, Mrs. Ellsler, was his leading woman--his daughter, Effie, though not out of school at that time, acted whenever there was a very good part that suited her.

Other members of the company were mostly related in some way, and so it came about that there was not even the "pink flush of a flirtation over the first season," in fact, says Miss Morris, "during all the years I served in that old theater, no real scandal ever smirched it."

She adds: "I can never be grateful enough for having come under the influence of the dear woman who watched over me that first season, Mrs. Bradshaw, the mother of Blanche, one of the most devoted actresses I ever saw, and a good woman besides. From her I learned that because one is an actress it is not necessary to be a slattern.

She used to say:

"'You know at night the hour of morning rehearsal--then get up fifteen minutes earlier, and leave your room in order. Everything an actress does is commented on, and as she is more or less an object of suspicion, her conduct should be even more correct than that of other women.' She also repeated again and again, 'Study your lines--speak them just as they are written. Don't just gather the idea of a speech, and then use your own words--that's an infamous habit. The author knew what he wanted you to say. If he says, "My lord, the carriage waits,"

don't you go on and say, "My lord, the carriage is waiting!"'"

These and many other pieces of valuable advice were stored up in Clara Morris's mind, and she made such good use of them that they bore rich fruit in later years.

There was great consternation for mother and daughter, on a certain day when Clara brought home the startling news that the company was to be transferred to Columbus, Ohio, for the remainder of the season.

It was a great event in the young actress's life, as it meant leaving her mother and standing alone. But as she confesses: "I felt every now and then my grief and fright pierced through and through with a delicious thrill of importance; I was going to be just like a grown-up, and would decide for myself what I should wear. I might even, if I chose to become so reckless, wear my Sunday hat to a rehearsal, and when my cheap little trunk came, with C. M. on the end, showing it was my very own, I stooped down and hugged it." But she adds with honesty, "Later, when my mother, with a sad face, separated my garments from her own, I burst into sobs of utter forlornness."

The salary of the ballet corps was now raised to $5 a week, and all set to work to try to solve the riddle of how a girl was to pay her board bill, her basket bill, her was.h.i.+ng bill, and all the small expenses of the theater--powder, paint, soap, hair-pins, etc.--to say nothing of shoes and clothing, out of her earnings. Clara Morris and the Bradshaws solved the problem in the only possible way by rooming together in a large top-floor room, where they lived with a comparative degree of comfort, and with less loneliness for Clara than she could have felt elsewhere.

During that first season she learned to manage her affairs and to take care of herself and her small belongings, without admonition from any one. At the same time she was learning much of the technique of the profession, and was deeply interested as she began to understand how illusions are produced. She declares that one of the proofs that she was meant to be an actress was her enjoyment of the mechanism of stage effects.

"I was always on hand when a storm had to be worked," she says, "and would grind away with a will at a crank that, turning against a tight band of silk, made the sound of a tremendously shrieking wind. And no one sitting in front of the house, looking at a white-robed woman ascending to heaven, apparently floating upward through the blue clouds, enjoyed the spectacle more than I enjoyed looking at the ascent from the rear, where I could see the tiny iron support for her feet, the rod at her back with the belt holding her securely about the waist, and the men hoisting her through the air, with a painted, sometimes moving sky behind her.

"This reminds me," says Miss Morris, "that Mrs. Bradshaw had several times to go to heaven (dramatically speaking), and as her figure and weight made the support useless, she always went to heaven on the entire gallery, as it is called, a long platform the whole width of the stage, which is raised and lowered by windla.s.s. The enormous affair would be cleaned and hung about with nice white clouds, and then Mrs. Bradshaw, draped in long white robes, with hands meekly crossed upon her breast and eyes piously uplifted, would rise heavenward, slowly, as so heavy an angel should. But alas! There was one drawback to this otherwise perfect ascension. Never, so long as the theater stood, could that windla.s.s be made to work silently. It always moved up or down to a succession of screaks, unoilable, blood-curdling, that were intensified by Mrs. Bradshaw's weight, so that she ascended to the blue tarletan heaven accompanied by such chugs and long-drawn yowlings as suggested a trip to the infernal regions. Her face remained calm and unmoved, but now and then an agonized moan escaped her, lest even the orchestra's effort to cover up the support's protesting cries should prove useless. Poor woman, when she had been lowered again to _terra firma_ and stepped off, the whole paint frame would give a kind of joyous upward spring. She noticed it, and one evening looked back and said; 'Oh, you're not one bit more glad than I am, you screaking wretch!'"

Having successfully existed through the Columbus season, in the spring the company was again in Cleveland, playing for a few weeks before disbanding for that horror of all theatrical persons--the summer vacation.

As her mother was in a position, and could not be with Clara, the young actress spent the sweltering months in a cheap boarding-house, where a kindly landlady was willing to let her board bill run over until the fall, when salaries should begin again. Clara never forgot that kindness, for she was in real need of rest after her first season of continuous work. Although her bright eyes, clear skin, and round face gave an impression of perfect health, yet she was far from strong, owing partly to the privations of her earlier life and to a slight injury to her back in babyhood. Because of this, she was facing a life of hard work handicapped by that most cruel of torments, a spinal trouble, which an endless number of different treatments failed to cure.

Vacation ended, to her unspeakable joy she began work again as a member of the ballet corps, and during that season and the next her ability to play a part at short notice came to be such an accepted fact that more than once she was called on for work outside of her regular "line," to the envy of the other girls, who began to talk of "Clara's luck." "But," says Clara, "there was no luck about it. My small success can be explained in two words--extra work." While the others were content if they could repeat a part perfectly to themselves in their rooms, that was only the beginning of work to their more determined companion. "I would repeat those lines," said Miss Morris, "until, had the very roof blown off the theater at night, I should not have missed one." And so it was that the youngest member of the ballet corps came to be looked on as a general-utility person, who could be called on at a moment's notice to play the part of queen or clown, boy or elderly woman, as was required.

Mr. Ellsler considered that the young girl had a real gift for comedy, and when Mr. Dan Setch.e.l.l, the comedian, played with the company, she was given a small part, which she played with such keen perception of the points where a "hit" could be made, that at last the audience broke into a storm of laughter and applause. Mr. Setch.e.l.l had another speech, but the applause was so insistent that he knew it would be an anti-climax and signaled the prompter to ring down the curtain. But Clara Morris knew that he ought to speak, and was much frightened by the effect of her business, which had so captured the fancy of the audience, for she knew that the applause belonged to the star as a matter of professional etiquette. She stood trembling like a leaf, until the comedian came and patted her kindly on the shoulder, saying:

"Don't be frightened, my girl--that applause was for you. You won't be fined or scolded--you've made a hit, that's all!"

But even the pleasant words did not soothe the tempest of emotion surging in the young girl's heart. She says:

"I went to my room, I sat down with my head in my hands. Great drops of sweat came out on my temples. My hands were icy cold, my mouth was dry--that applause rang in my ears. A cold terror seized on me--a terror of what? Ah, a tender mouth was bitted and bridled at last! The reins were in the hands of the public, and it would drive me, where?"

As she sat there, in her hideous make-up, in a state of despair and panic, she suddenly broke into shrill laughter. Two women came in, and one said; "Why, what on earth's the matter? Have they blown you up for your didoes to-night? What need you care. You pleased the audience."

The other said, quietly: "Just get a gla.s.s of water for her; she has a touch of hysteria. I wonder who caused it?" No person had caused it.

Clara Morris was merely waking from a sound sleep, unconsciously visioning that woman of the dim future who was to conquer the public in her portrayal of great elemental human emotion.