Page:Once a Clown, Always a Clown.djvu/136

ONCE A CLOWN, ALWAYS A CLOWN might have struck such a pose, but she would not have acted upon it. There is a bit of charlatanism in every trade, and the pose has been a common one at times among women of the stage.

I saw Miss Olga Nethersole give a fine and craftily contrived performance of "The Second Mrs. Tanqueray" in Chicago once. Mrs. Tanqueray kills herself. Once in the spectator's seat I, actorlike, am almost as ingenuous and impressionable as a school girl. I go to see a play to be amused, to be stirred, not as a visiting mechanic studying the machinery, and I was so moved by the tragedy I had watched that, despite my professional training, I hesitated to accept the invitation of Louis Nethersole, her brother and manager, to go backstage and meet the star. Instinctively I thought of myself as intruding on death. But I went, and found her, of course, as self-possessed as if she had been playing a George M. Cohan heroine.

Later in the week the Chicago Press Club gave Miss Nethersole a luncheon. I was a guest, and being asked to speak, took my text from my experience at seeing her in front of and behind the curtain and its bearing on a fundamental of acting. When I had sat down a