The Story of My Life | Page 8

slit
in the canvas to watch Mrs. Kean as Hermione!
Devoted to her art, conscientious to a degree in mastering the spirit and
details of her part, Mrs. Kean also possessed the personality and force
to chain the attention and indelibly imprint her rendering of a part on
the imagination. When I think of the costume in which she played
Hermione, it seems marvelous to me that she could have produced the
impression that she did. This seems to contradict what I have said about
the magnificence of the production. But not at all! The designs of the
dresses were purely classic; but then, as now, actors and actresses
seemed unable to keep their own period and their own individuality out
of the clothes directly they got them on their backs. In some cases the
original design was quite swamped. No matter what the character that
Mrs. Kean was assuming, she always used to wear her hair drawn flat
over her forehead and twisted tight round her ears in a kind of circular
sweep--such as the old writing-masters used to make when they
attempted an extra grand flourish. And then the amount of petticoats
she wore! Even as Hermione she was always bunched out by layer
upon layer of petticoats, in defiance of the fact that classical parts
should not be dressed in a superfluity of raiment. But if the petticoats
were full of starch, the voice was full of pathos--and the dignity,
simplicity, and womanliness of Mrs. Charles Kean's Hermione could
not have been marred by a far more grotesque costume.
There is something, I suppose, in a woman's nature which always

makes her remember how she was dressed at any specially eventful
moment of her life, and I can see myself, as though it were yesterday,
in the little red-and-silver dress I wore as Mamilius. Mrs. Grieve, the
dresser--"Peter Grieve-us," as we children called her--had pulled me
into my very pink tights (they were by no means tight but very baggy,
according to the pictures of me), and my mother had arranged my hair
in sausage curls on each side of my head in even more perfect order
and regularity than usual. Besides my clothes, I had a beautiful
"property" to be proud of. This was a go-cart, which had been made in
the theater by Mr. Bradshaw, and was an exact copy of a child's toy as
depicted on a Greek vase. It was my duty to drag this little cart about
the stage, and on the first night, when Mr. Kean as Leontes told me to
"go play," I obeyed his instructions with such vigor that I tripped over
the handle and came down on my back! A titter ran through the house,
and I felt that my career as an actress was ruined forever. Even now I
remember how bitterly I wept, and how deeply humiliated I felt. But
the little incident, so mortifying to me, did not spoil my first
appearance altogether. The Times of May 1, 1856, was kind enough to
call me "vivacious and precocious," and "a worthy relative of my sister
Kate," and my parents were pleased (although they would not show it
too much), and Mrs. Kean gave me a pat on the back. Father and Kate
were both in the cast, too, I ought to have said, and the Queen, Prince
Albert, and the Princess Royal were all in a box on the first night.
To act for the first time in Shakespeare, in a theater where my sister had
already done something for our name, and before royalty, was surely a
good beginning.
From April 28, 1856, I played Mamilius every night for one hundred
and two nights. I was never ill, and my understudy, Clara Denvil, a
very handsome, dark child with flaming eyes, though quite ready and
longing to play my part, never had the chance.
I had now taken the first step, but I had taken it without any notion of
what I was doing. I was innocent of all art, and while I loved the actual
doing of my part, I hated the labor that led up to it. But the time was
soon to come when I was to be fired by a passion for work. Meanwhile

I was unconsciously learning a number of lessons which were to be
most useful to me in my subsequent career.
TRAINING IN SHAKESPEARE
1856-1859
From April 1856 until 1859 I acted constantly at the Princess's Theater
with the Keans, spending the summer holidays in acting at Ryde. My
whole life was the theater, and naturally all my early memories are
connected with it. At breakfast father would begin the day's "coaching."
Often I had to lay down my fork and say my lines. He would conduct
these extra