Life and Lillian Gish. Paine Albert Bigelow
Dolores regarded her very solemnly.
“Very well,” she said, “the next time you pick out the seam of your dress, you will have to wear the little trousers to the hotel.”
Dorothy didn’t believe her. A grown person couldn’t do a thing like that to a child—especially Aunt Dolores, who loved her so.
She did, though. Dorothy picked out the hem again, and that night when the play ended, the little trousers were not taken off. She wept, but it was of no use. Auntie Dolores hardened her heart. Dorothy set out for the hotel in the hated trousers. Her little coat nearly concealed them, and she scrooched as much as possible, but the disgrace was there—she could not forget it. It was a terrible punishment, but effective. Dorothy did not pick out the seam again.
One more correction she remembered in after years. The Company had reached Cleveland, where Miss Lorne had relatives. They stayed with them, and somebody made a pudding—a wonderful pudding, with raisins on the top. It was set out on the back porch, to cool. Dorothy, playing out there, found it interesting. Then fascinating. Then she picked off a raisin. Then all the raisins. Then Auntie Dolores came out and asked for an explanation.
Dorothy shook her head: She had seen some blackbirds about the yard … perhaps they had picked off the raisins. “Perhaps,” agreed Aunt Dolores. There was a raisin in the ruffle of Dorothy’s little dress. Perhaps the blackbirds had left it there.
Aunt Dolores took Dorothy on her knee and explained in good, Catholic fashion what happened to little girls who did such things, and then told stories about it. Presently reduced to a freshet of tears, Dorothy confessed. She was forgiven; but Auntie Dolores found it necessary to wash out her mouth, with soap.
Dorothy as a “baby star” had been a success. It is true that her attention sometimes wandered during a rather long speech, when she was supposed to be listening, and Miss Warren devised a plan, something with a jelly-bean in it, plainly visible to Dorothy, who knew if she looked at it steadily, it would be slipped to her when the speech ended. Also, there had been a night that she went to sleep, when she was supposed only to be dead, and rolled off the narrow, improvised couch, nearly breaking up the performance.
Dorothy’s first season closed rather late, when Lillian was already with her mother, in New York. A telegram came that Dorothy, in care of the Pullman conductor, was on her way to them. Mrs. Gish, anxious at the thought of the little girl traveling alone, wild to see her, was at the station long before train time. With Lillian she waited … then at last the train was there, and looking down the platform, they saw Dorothy—not walking in charge of the conductor, but riding high on the shoulder of a very large man, one of a delegation of Elks, who had been captured by the child actress with sunlit, red-gold hair. They had heaped riches upon her—her arms were full. A moment later, and her mother and Lillian had her in their embrace.
“Oh, Dorothy,” said Lillian, “I’m a vegetarian!”
“That’s nothing,” said Dorothy, “I’m a Roman Catholic!”
VII
MARY PICKFORD IN THE SCENE
At the apartment, Dorothy found her family considerably increased. A very nice lady was there, also two girls, somewhat older than herself, named Gladys and Lottie, and a boy about her own age, named Jack, who fell in love with her at sight. Their names were Smith, some day to become Pickford, which is a later story.
It had come about in this wise: Lillian’s Aunt Alice Niles had severed her engagement with the “Convict Stripes” Company, and had written to say that she would leave it at Buffalo, and come to New York. The season was not ended, but Mrs. Gish, not wishing to leave Lillian with a stranger, wired Miss Niles to bring her in. The manager of the company, remembering that young Gladys Smith had played the part in Toronto, where the play had been called “The Little Red Schoolhouse,” promptly arranged to have Gladys join the company in Buffalo. Mrs. Smith decided to bring all the children to Buffalo, and after getting Gladys established, to keep on with the other two, to New York.
The meeting between the two little girls, destined to become world stars, was neither formal nor memorable. More than twenty years later, in an article in Photoplay, Mary Pickford wrote:
Neither of us, I am sure, remembers our first meeting. We were too young to be impressed by the event. I do recall a fleeting glimpse of Lillian when I went to Buffalo from Toronto to take the part of little Mabel Payne that she had been playing in Hal Reid’s famous old melodrama, “The Little Red Schoolhouse.” Lillian was just leaving the theatre as I came in, and we waved. She could not stop to talk, because she was being whisked away to catch a train for New York.
Lillian and Mary! How little either of them guessed, that day, that within no more than a dozen years, the names and faces of those little yellow-haired, waving girls would be familiar, and beloved, in the world’s far corners.
Alice Niles and Lillian rode with Mrs. Smith and Lottie and Jack to New York. Lillian’s mother, at the train to meet her, took them all to her apartment, established Mrs. Smith and her children there for as long as they would stay—a kindness which Mrs. Smith, a stranger in New York, never forgot. Mrs. Gish, by this time quite a professional, also introduced her to theatrical agencies, with a view to future engagements. In a word, they joined forces. And thus began an association which was to last many years, and become historic in the theatrical world.
Whether Lillian went out again that season may only be surmised. At some time in the days of her beginning, she had a “Little Willie” part in another “East Lynne” Company—Mabel Pennock’s, and long preserved the little trousers she wore. It was a brief engagement, and she had no clear picture of it, later. She seems to remember that, like Dorothy, she went to sleep one night and rolled off the little bench during Madame Vine’s long scene, but this is most likely a confusion. Lillian would be too conscientious and well-trained to do a thing like that, even in her sleep.
The end of the dramatic season found two mothers, four girls and a boy in the Gish flat, a combination that at times could produce something resembling a riot. They were a happy family. They went in for two things: peace, and economy. Lillian’s influence had much to do with the former—her unearthly beauty and gentleness. Mrs. Smith told her children that she looked “like an angel dropped out of Heaven,” and with the old Irish superstition that the good die young, they expected any moment to see a long arm reach out of the sky and take her home. Gladys, especially, refused to be left entirely alone with her, fearing it might happen at such a time. Certainly she was not always melancholy. Life was a serious matter—from the beginning, apparently, she had known that; also, that Heaven was indeed a desirable place to go to—to wake up in, some morning, quite soon. Yet she enjoyed the company of the others, especially when they went on little excursions. Once at least, they all went to the theatre. Mary, in her article, tells of this:
What fun we youngsters had! Never will I forget the day we went to the American Theatre on Eighth Avenue near 42nd Street. At that time, the American was one of the important legitimate theatres. Now it is a picture house, I think. A Shakesperian play was on; I cannot recall its name, but it seems to me that it was “King Lear.” At any rate, it was very heavy and tragic, and we all sat in a row, looking very important and pretending to understand every word. I remember how I went up to the manager in a very sober and dignified manner, and presented my card, saying: “Do you recognize the profession?” There we were, five of us—Lillian, Dorothy, Lottie, Jack and I—and to the manager we must have looked very much like the family of the old Mother Goose lady who lived in the shoe. He smiled amusedly, and assured us that he most certainly did recognize the profession, adding: “Have you got ten cents apiece for the Actors’ Fund?”
This threw us into a near panic, for a hasty survey of our resources disclosed that among all of us we had only eight pennies and one had a hole in it. The manager, however, finally relented and passed us in, telling us that we could give him the money for the Actors’ Fund some other time. What a task it was to pay that debt! For weeks and weeks, it seemed, we were running to that box office every time we had saved a few pennies.
The combined housekeeping made for economy, and here, too, Gladys Smith was a leader and a force. Even the mothers