Life and Lillian Gish. Paine Albert Bigelow
have ordered an automobile, seven passenger—45 horsepower, but it won’t be here until March. Oh, I wish you would hear her talk about all the trips we are going to take. She knows all about you, Nell. She couldn’t help but know if she is around me very long.
XIV
A CONVENT SCHOOL. TYPHOID
Lillian never got to ride in Mert’s 45 horsepower car. Almost immediately she found herself shut safely in a convent school across the river—The Ursuline Academy—not for anything she had done, or was likely to do, but because this plan seemed to offer special advantages. Her mother lived in a tiny room, near the store. It was in no sense a home, and working as she did, twelve or fourteen hours a day, she could give a daughter very little care. A public school would mean that Lillian’s free hours would have to be spent in the store, on the street, or with her aunt across the river. No place for play, no place for study. The Ursuline Academy provided board and tuition for twenty dollars a month, and was thought to be very good.
Lillian was not at first greatly interested in the convent idea, especially when she learned she could leave it but once a month. It was just another kind of those dreaded “Institutions.”
She changed her mind about all that, later. It seemed to her that at last she had reached a place of peace and rest. No troubles, no dangers, any more. She was a natural religieuse, and found a vast and nameless comfort behind the high walls and closed windows. The place might have been in the midst of the Sahara, for all that could be seen of the outer world.
The convent régime was not especially severe. Only the early rising was hard. They rose at 5:30, and had breakfast by candlelight—mild coffee and thick slices of bread. At ten came a between-luncheon, bread and jam; a hearty luncheon at noon, with bread and jam again at four; then supper, so they really ate five times a day. There was plenty of work: lessons, piano practice, French … but one could walk in the little garden, and there was a tennis court, and trees. And something more: to Nell she wrote:
We are going to have a play and an opera, and what do you think, they wanted me to play Kate’s father in “The Taming of the Shrew.” Can you imagine me taking that part and singing in a real low voice? But I told them I could not, and so they are going to give me a part in the play.
They knew nothing of her stage life—an episode always carefully suppressed. Baggage labels were scraped off when they left New York. The stage door was slammed to. But she could not disguise her technical knowledge—not altogether. They gave her Bianca in the opera, and a leading part in the play, as soon as they saw her rehearse.
Lillian confessed later that her ambition at this time was to be either an actress or a nun—or a librarian. She had a passion for reading, and thought as a librarian she could gratify it. To Nell, she wrote: “I am not going out for a month and will have to write all my letters on the sligh,”—which was a sin, though spelling it in that way seems to modify it a good deal—“and carry them in my stocking until mother comes and mails them.” Oh, dear, and in a convent, where she thought she would like to remain forever, and become a sister, like Mother Evaristo, whom she loved very much indeed! To another sister, teacher of elocution and dramatics, she confided her wish to take the veil, and was advised against it—advised to go on the stage—which led to penance, on the part of the sister, a dear soul.
Each Sunday her mother came to see her, with news of the outside world, and once a month, with the others, she was allowed to pass the gates—a privilege she valued less and less. She might so easily have become a nun; and in the tragic “White Sister,” made fourteen years later, we have seen just what sort of a nun she would have become. That picture was really a pendant of her earlier experience, which she never remembered but with a peculiar affection, and a sense of peace. During the eight or nine months she was with them, the sisters made no attempt to influence her religious views, but they were always tenderly kind to her, and always later felt that she belonged to them.
School ended … Dorothy came from Massillon. They lived with their St. Louis aunt, boarders, going each day across the river, to help. A narrow hall ran along one side of the shop, dividing it from a “Biograph” moving-picture place. They did not know the word Biograph. They thought it the name of a man—probably a rather kindly man, for his doorkeeper let them cross the hall and enter by a side door, free. They did it often, when trade was dull, and found the pictures good fun, though of course they would never act in anything like that—no real actresses would. When they grew up, they might go back on the stage, but never into the movies. And the Weaver who sits at the Loom of Circumstance smiled faintly, it may be, observing from his pattern that in exactly two years these young scorners were to be making pictures for that same “Mr. Biograph.”
There came a day when Lillian felt barely able to creep out of bed in the morning; when at the shop she could hardly hold up her head, or lift her feet. She had to drive herself to keep going. She knew that she was ill—but said nothing; her mother was too busy to bother with a sick child. Finally, one day when she crept home with Dorothy, to her aunt’s, she could go no further. She fell across the bed, unable to undress, even to take off her shoes. A doctor came. It was typhoid fever.
Disordered days … black, fantastic nights, a fire of unquenchable thirst … a river at which one lay down and drank and drank … and then the river ran dry … she was burning up, but this was torture … not a river but a tub—a bathtub of cool water. Oh, quiet and sleep … an awakening to a possession of terrible hunger—a feeble pleading for food … just a little....
Dorothy, unable to resist, brought her something from her own luncheon … but, then the fever again … relapse … semi-recovery … relapse again. Surely she could never live through this.
Somehow the frail constitution stood the test. Dorothy, permitted one day to enter the room, found Lillian with a wish-bone in her hand. Struck with terror, Dorothy started toward her, to take it away. But the patient, a staring little ghost, all eyes, put it to her lips. If Dorothy came closer, she would eat something, and surely die. Each time Dorothy started toward the bed, the bone went to Lillian’s lips. She hurried out to tell the others about it—and was told that Lillian was better—much better, this time—the wish-bone was just a bone—nothing on it, not a thing.
The convalescent noticed that her mother was with her a great deal, and vaguely wondered how she could be away from the store. One day they told her. The store was not there any more. Fire from the Biograph place had destroyed the building. There had been no insurance. Mary Gish was once more starting at the bottom. Worse. She had not enough to pay all the expense of Lillian’s illness. Somehow she was able to get the children to Massillon. Through connections she secured a place as manager of a confectionery-and-catering establishment—in Springfield, where she had begun; good enough salary,—long, long hours. The children were to remain at Massillon, with Aunt Emily, and go to school. Blessed Aunt Emily!
XV
SHAWNEE
But now from Shawnee, Oklahoma, came a letter from an uncle, Grant Gish, saying that his brother, James Gish, was in a sanitarium, in broken health. Lillian decided to go to him. This was near the end of October, 1910, when she had just turned fourteen. She went quite alone. To Nell, on arrival, she wrote:
My dear little sister:
I arrived safe yesterday morning and went to the hotel and slept until about ten o’clock & then I came right out here, and they are awfully nice to me, but Oh! dear how I wish I were home with you and we were reading “John Halifax”! I hope we will soon be able to finish that together....
I didn’t want to come, dear, but I thought it was my duty. It’s awfully hard to do your duty sometimes, and you know that I met with opposition on all sides but I have done what I think was right and I am glad that I did it....
With love love love
from Lillian.
201 N. Park St.
Shawnee, Okla.
How lightly she treats her arrival in Shawnee—not to distress Nell, or those who would inquire. It was really very different. Shawnee, twenty years ago,