My Actor-Husband.
by Anonymous.
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.
Every community has its stage-struck girls. Year after year the Academies of Divine Art turn out graduates like so many clothes-pins.
Neither aspirant nor parent appears to question her fitness for the career to which she aspires. Both are ignorant of the conditions which confront the tyro or they have a wholly erroneous idea of theatrical life--ideas culled from the articles which appear from time to time in the magazines over the signature of a prominent actress. The average reader has no way of knowing that these articles are not written by the actress herself, but by a needy scribbler to whom she grants permission to use her name, for the free advertising she will get in return. "My Beginnings," "Advice to Stage-Struck Girls Who Plan to Go on the Stage,"
etc., are alluring head-lines. The subject matter is a mass of glittering and trite generalities. Of the real conditions, the pitfalls, the drawbacks to be met, the outsider hears nothing. And when once in a decade a scribe dares to express himself truthfully concerning the moral atmosphere in the theatrical profession--(vide Mr. Clement Scott)--the air is rent with expostulations, denials and protestations from the members of "the profession." Interviews and letters pack the enterprising press. Many of those who protest the loudest have the least to lose.
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.
CHAPTER I
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 repertoire. 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 portieres; 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 $49.99." 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.
"It's all right, my boy," he said, "don't blame you a bit. She's a charming girl, and you're in love with her. If it were any other business but the show-business, I'd say you're a lucky dog, but--I'm going to be frank with you--a man or a woman in the theatrical business has no right to marry. It's all very lovely so long as you're together, but you can't _be_ together. The chances are against it--you may be lucky enough to get a joint engagement one season, but the next season you're off on the road, while she's playing in New York or in another part of the country. And what does this separation lead to in the end?
You're a human being; you crave society, companionship; gradually you become weaned away and the inevitable happens. It's propinquity and home ties which make marriage a success; the life of an actor precludes domesticity. The very exigencies of his profession are not only inconsistent with, but hostile to, the institution of marriage."
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....
"Well, dear, I've signed with----" (he named a boy-Hamlet, well known throughout the middle west), "the salary is good and I'll play the King in Hamlet, Buckingham in Richard, and, if we do the Merchant, I'll be cast for Gratiano.... The best thing about it is the possibility of coming into New York for a run. The star wants to play Hamlet on Broadway, and I've been told he's got good backing.... So, little girl.... it may not be for so long after all...."
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.
CHAPTER II
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 etre" 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!"