"I was thinking," he answered slowly, "how strange it is that I should
have made the reputation I have as an actor, with nothing to help
me--with no equipment. My legs, my voice--everything has been against
me. For an actor who can't walk, can't talk, and has no face to speak
of, I've done pretty well."
And I, looking at that splendid head, those wonderful hands, the whole
strange beauty of him, thought, "Ah, you little know!"
PORTIA
1875
The brilliant story of the Bancroft management of the old Prince of
Wales's Theater was more familiar twenty years back than it is now. I
think that few of the youngest playgoers who point out, on the first
nights of important productions, a remarkably striking figure of a man
with erect carriage, white hair, and flashing dark eyes--a man whose
eye-glass, manners, and clothes all suggest Thackeray and Major
Pendennis, in spite of his success in keeping abreast of everything
modern--few playgoers, I say, who point this man out as Sir Squire
Bancroft could give any adequate account of what he did for the English
theater in the 'seventies. Nor do the public who see an elegant little
lady starting for a drive from a certain house in Berkeley Square
realize that this is Marie Wilton, afterward Mrs.
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