The Story of My Life | Page 4

I have never been able to arbitrate in the matter,
my statement that my mother had always said that the house was "on
the right-hand side, coming from the market-place," being apparently
of no use. I have heard lately that one of the birthplaces has retired
from the competition, and that the haberdasher has the field to himself.
I am glad, for the sake of those friends of mine who have bought his
handkerchiefs and ties as souvenirs. There is, however, nothing very
attractive about the house itself. It is better built than a house of the
same size would be built now, and it has a certain old-fashioned
respectability, but that is the end of its praises. Coventry itself makes
up for the deficiency. It is a delightful town, and it was a happy chance
that made me a native of Warwickshire, Shakespeare's own county.
Sarah Kemble married Mr. Siddons at Coventry too--another happy
omen.
I have acted twice in my native town in old days, but never in recent

years. In 1904 I planned to act there again, but unfortunately I was
taken ill at Cambridge, and the doctors would not allow me to go to
Coventry. The morning my company left Cambridge without me, I was
very miserable. It is always hateful to disappoint the public, and on this
occasion I was compelled to break faith where I most wished to keep it.
I heard afterwards from my daughter (who played some of my parts
instead of me) that many of the Coventry people thought I had never
meant to come at all. If this should meet their eyes, I hope they will
believe that this was not so. My ambition to play at Coventry again
shall be realized yet.[1]
[Footnote 1: Since I wrote this, I have again visited my native
town--this time to receive its civic congratulations on the occasion of
my jubilee, and as recently as March of the present year I acted at the
new Empire Theater.]
At one time nothing seemed more unlikely than that I should be able to
act in another Warwickshire town, a town whose name is known all
over the world. But time and chance and my own great wish succeeded
in bringing about my appearance at Stratford-on-Avon.
I can well imagine that the children of some strolling players used to
have a hard time of it, but my mother was not one to shirk her duties.
She worked hard at her profession and yet found it possible not to drag
up her children, to live or die as it happened, but to bring them up to be
healthy, happy, and wise--theater-wise, at any rate. When her babies
were too small to be left at the lodgings (which she and my father took
in each town they visited as near to the theater as possible), she would
bundle us up in a shawl and put us to sleep in her dressing-room. So it
was, that long before I spoke in a theater, I slept in one.
Later on, when we were older and mother could leave us at home, there
was a fire one night at our lodgings, and she rushed out of the theater
and up the street in an agony of terror. She got us out of the house all
right, took us to the theater, and went on with the next act as if nothing
had happened. Such fortitude is commoner in our profession, I think,
than in any other. We "go on with the next act" whatever happens, and
if we know our business, no one in the audience will ever guess that

anything is wrong--that since the curtain last went down some dear
friend has died, or our children in the theatrical lodgings up the street
have run the risk of being burnt to death.
My mother had eleven children altogether, but only nine survived their
infancy, and of these nine, my eldest brother, Ben, and my sister
Florence have since died. My sister Kate, who left the stage at an age
when most of the young women of the present day take to it for the first
time, and made an enduring reputation in a few brilliant years, was the
eldest of the family. Then came a sister, who died, and I was the third.
After us came Ben, George, Marion, Flossie, Charles, Tom, and Fred.
Six out of the nine have been on the stage, but only Marion, Fred, and I
are there still.
Two or three members of this large family, at the most, were in
existence when I first entered a theater in a professional capacity, so I
will leave them all alone for the present. I had better confess at once
that I don't remember this great event, and my