He always put the theater first. He
lived in it, he died in it. He had none of what I may call my
_bourgeois_ qualities--the love of being in love, the love of a home,
the dislike of solitude. I have always thought it hard to find my
inferiors. He was sure of his high place. He was far simpler than I in
some ways. He would talk, for instance, in such an ingenuous way to
painters and musicians that I blushed for him. But I know now that my
blush was far more unworthy than his freedom from all pretentiousness in
matters of art.
_He never pretended._ One of his biographers has said that he posed as
being a French scholar. Such a thing, and all things like it, were
impossible to his nature. If it were necessary in one of his plays to
say a few French words, he took infinite pains to learn them and said
them beautifully.
Henry once told me that in the early part of his career, before I knew
him, he had been hooted because of his thin legs. The first service I
did him was to tell him they were beautiful, and to make him give up
padding them.
"What do you want with fat, podgy, prize-fighter legs!" I expostulated.
Praise to some people at certain stages of their career is more
developing than blame. I admired the very things in Henry for which
other people criticized him.
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