If a girl waits until she
is eighteen before going on the stage, she has a good chance of being
thrown into the company of women who do not dream of respecting her.
If she enters a provincial travelling company, she has constant
discomfort and constant danger; some of her companions are certain to
be coarse--and a brutal actor whose professional vanity prevents him
from understanding his own brutality is among the most horrible of
living creatures. After a lady has made her mark as an actress, she
can secure admirable lodging at good hotels; but a poor girl with a
pound per week must put up with such squalor as only actors can
fittingly describe. Amid all this the girl is left to take care of
herself--observe that point. A little child is taken care of; whereas
the adolescent or adult must fight her way through a grimy and
repulsive environment as best she can. There is not a man in the world
who would dare to introduce himself informally to any lady who is
employed under Mr. W.S. Gilbert's superintendence; but what can we say
about the thousands who travel from town to town unguided save by the
curt directions of the stage manager? Let it be understood that when I
speak of the theatre I have not in mind the beautiful refined places
in central London where cultured people in the audience are
entertained by cultured people on the stage; I am thinking grimly of
the squalor, the degradation, the wretched hand-to-mouth existence of
poor souls who work in the casual companies that spend the better part
of their existence in railway carriages.
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