Life and Lillian Gish

Albert Bigelow Paine

Life and Lillian Gish

“HELENA”

“Tranquilly, Lillian Gish sits, dressed in white organdie, her ash blond hair down her back, relaxed on the window seat, looking out for hours into the depths of the California night.

“‘What are you looking at, Lillian?’ Mrs. Gish has asked for years.

“‘Nothing, Mother, just looking.’”

Allene Talmey.

“She is an extraordinarily difficult person to know, and if I hadn’t gone to live with her … and been with her through some of the most trying times of her life, I doubt whether our casual contacts at the studio would have brought me any intimate knowledge of her. There seems to be a wall of reserve between her and the outside world, and very few people ever get through that wall.

“The little things of life simply don’t worry her at all. Gales of temperament can rage around her—she remains undisturbed.... I have seen her at a time when anyone else would have been distraught with anxiety, come quietly in from the set, eat her luncheon calmly and collectedly (for first of all, Lillian believes in keeping fit for her work), then pick up some little book of philosophy and read it steadily until they sent for her.

“She refuses to believe that there are people in the world who are jealous of her and want to harm her. I remember someone once remarking that a certain person was jealous of her and hated her, and I can still see the look of utter surprise on Lillian’s face. But it never made any difference in her treatment of that person. In fact, I doubt whether she remembered it when she met her again.

“She is intensely loyal to those who have helped her along the path of success. She likes to be alone. She has an inexhaustible fund of patience, and a quiet sense of humor.”

Phyllis Moir

(secretary to Lillian, 1925-27)

PROLOGUE

(Scene: Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya”—end of second act. Lillian Gish as Helena)

First Woman in Front of Me: “They say she’s been playing over twenty-five years.”

Second Woman in Front of Me: “Goodness! How old is she?”

“The piece I read said about thirty or so....”

“Oh, began as a child; is Gish her real name?”

“I believe so; the piece said....”

“Do you like these Russian plays?”

“I like her, in anything. I loved her in ‘Broken Blossoms,’ though it nearly killed me.”

“I wonder why she left the movies.”

“Oh, lots of ’em do; the piece said....”

“Do you suppose that is all her own hair?”

“Oh, I think so; the piece said....”

PART ONE

I

A GIRL CHILD, BORN WITH A CAUL

When Lillian was six, she found herself with a company (one night stands, mostly), “trouping” through the Middle West— … the golden-haired child actress who supplied the beauty and pathos in a melodrama variously known as “The Red Schoolhouse” and “In Convict Stripes.” All of which had come about reasonably enough—as reasonably as anything is likely to happen, in a world where nothing seems at all reasonable until we begin taking it to pieces.

On an evening in October—the 14th, to be exact, 1896—in a very modest dwelling, in Springfield, Ohio, May Gish—Mary Robinson Gish (born McConnell)—waited for her first child. She was barely twenty, and it was hardly more than a year earlier that James Gish, a travelling salesman—young, handsome, winning—had found her at Urbana, and after a whirlwind wooing, had carried her off, a bride, to Springfield.

No one knew very much of Gish. From that mysterious “Dutch” region of Pennsylvania, he had drifted into Springfield, made friends easily, and found work there, with a wholesale grocery. He might be Dutch himself; “Gish” could easily have been “Gisch”; or French—a legend has it that the name had once been “Guise” or “de Guise” … all rather indefinite, today.

On the other hand, everybody in Urbana knew about pretty May McConnell, whose Grandfather Robinson had been in the State Senate; who had a President, Zachary Taylor, and a poetess, Emily Ward, somewhere in her family; whose father was a very respectable dealer in saddlery and harness, with a spirited dapple-grey horse in his big show window.

Oh, well, it is all so “accidental” … even though some of us do not believe in accidents, and talk knowingly of a Great Law … of a Weaver who sits at the Loom of Circumstance....

Still, it was natural enough that now, within a year from her marriage, pretty May Gish should be looking up from her window at the thronging stars, wondering how a baby soul could find its way among them to her tiny room.

A girl child, born with a caul … supposed to mean good fortune, even occult power. Mary Gish did not much concern herself with this superstition; she had been rather strictly raised; when she gave her daughter the name of Lillian, and added Diana—Lillian because she was so fair, and Diana because a big moon looked into her window—she thought it a happy combination and hoped well for it—no more than that.

II

LIFE AND A LITTLE GIRL

The little household did not remain in Springfield. At the time of his marriage, or soon after, James Gish gave up his position as a salesman, and opened a small confectionery. Candy-making may have been his trade; at all events, he worked at it now, sometimes leaving “Maysie,” as he called her, to tend shop while he went to nearby fairs and celebrations. Had he persevered, he might have done well enough. As it was, when Lillian was about a year old, he gave up Springfield for Dayton, to which prosperous town Father McConnell had already taken his saddlery and harness business, including the smart dapple-grey horse for the show window. Dorothy Gish, who was born in Dayton, still remembers the impressive horse in Grandfather’s window. Lillian, a fair, sedate little lass, was delighted when Dorothy arrived—fat, rosy, red-haired—full of fun and mischief, almost from the beginning.

So different, these two. Lillian had been a pensive baby—one to lie quietly, looking at nothing, as one thinking long thoughts—possibly of a pleasanter land, so recently left behind. Dorothy’s arms and legs were perpetually in action … impossible to keep the covers on her. When she could creep about, then walk, it was necessary to grab quickly for one’s possessions.

Lillian had a doll, probably a tidy rag-doll, or a very small china one, and a little rocker, which she sometimes sat in, holding her doll and singing to it. She never really cared for dolls. Ruddy-haired Dorothy was lovelier than any doll. When Lillian held her, as she did, often, they made a dainty picture: one doll rocking another.

A tragic thing happened. Lillian sat in her chair alone, one day, when a terrible object looked in the window. It was a workman, who had put on a false face, to frighten her. He succeeded. The terrified child screamed and went into spasms. Always, after that, she was subject to nightmares, from which she awoke, screaming. In later years they came during periods of prolonged rehearsal. Usually they took one of two forms: She was in a wood, at evening … the trees became sinister, drew their roots from the ground and pursued her.... Or in a field, where there were many red poppies … large ones … the California kind. They became very tall, and threatening, like the trees.... They came up and slapped her in the face.

In summer time Mrs. Gish took her little girls to visit her sister Emily, who had married and lived at Massillon, in the eastern part of the state. It was a happy place for children. There was a green dooryard, with chickens, a cat asleep on the porch, a dog—a kindly dog who would not hurt a little girl and her baby sister.

And in the house was a wonderful cupboard, where a number of interesting things were kept, including a bottle of Castoria. Lillian was not meddlesome, but she had a complex for Castoria. She would even dose herself with it surreptitiously. Her aunt put the bottle on an upper shelf, but Lillian with a chair, a high-chair if necessary, would manage to reach it. It became a kind of game. Her aunt took a Castoria bottle and secretly half filled it with cod liver oil, which certainly was not playing the game fairly. There it stood, in plain view; even a low chair would reach it. A good swallow—saints above! What an explosion, what a spitting, what a grabbing at the poor punished tongue! Lillian was naturally very honest. Castoria had been the one temptation she could not resist. Her character was now perfect.

But she did love baked beans. She could almost never get enough of them. One day—this was in Dayton—her father took her for a walk. The drinking-saloons of Dayton, like those everywhere, had swinging doors, with free lunch inside, spread at the end of the high bar. Gish pushed open a pair of these swinging doors, perched the little girl on the high counter, close to a great platter of beans. A man wearing a white apron handed her a plate and a spoon: “Help yourself,” he said. Lillian did not know what became of her father, but by and by Grandfather McConnell appeared, rather frantic, and shocked, and took her away.

One other thing she loved—ice cream—her taste for it amounted to a passion. Her father did not sell it, but there was a place just down the street that did. When in funds, Lillian haunted the ice-cream counter. But one was so liable to be bankrupt. Reflecting on these things, she had a startling idea. One did not need money to buy things! More than once in her father’s shop she had seen a customer pick up a package, and with the magic words, “Charge it, please,” walk out. Why, of course—she could do that, too. Ten minutes later she was finishing her second dish of vanilla and chocolate mixed.

“Charge it, please.”

The young man regarded the slender little vision, who had just stowed away two saucers of his stock in trade.

“You’re Mr. Gish’s little girl, aren’t you?”

“Yes, thank you,” said Lillian, who was nothing if not polite.

“Oh, all right.”

Such a nice man, to know who she was.

On the way home, she noticed a little green cap in a window—just what she had wanted.... She stood on tiptoe, to look over the counter, at the grisly man who sold things.

“I want to buy that little green cap in the window—and charge it, please.”

“Oh—why, you’re Jim Gish’s little girl, ain’t you?”

“Yes, thank you.”

He held her up to the glass, the tiny cap a green jewel on her crown of gold. And presently at home she was explaining all the wonder of her system to Mama, who also did some explaining, very gently, which put the system in a new light. Lillian was then about three.

III

ON NAT GOODWIN’S SHOULDER

In the case and circumstance of James Gish, there is an element of mystery. He had the gift of friendship, of popularity, even of prosperity … without material increase. It may be that the swinging doors were too handy to his confectionery … a spoiled child … and heredity is always to be reckoned with. It may be that he was not quite a reality … a good many of us are like that.... He closed his business in Dayton and removed his family to Baltimore, where he arranged some sort of partnership with a man named Meixner. Did he put up his experience against Meixner’s capital? Grandfather McConnell probably helped.

The firm of Gish and Meixner must have prospered, in the beginning. Mary Gish allied herself with the church of her faith, the Episcopal, in which both she and her children had been baptized. Gentle and lovely, she made friends. The children, neatly dressed, went to Sunday School. Mary Gish was one of God’s fine souls. She had a beautiful spirit, and she had exquisite taste. Whatever her circumstances—and the time was coming when they would be hard enough—she would manage, through some sacrifice, to get a scrap of dainty material, a bit of real lace, for her children’s clothing. Lillian and Dorothy were much noticed—she must not fail them. In her husband’s shop, by day and often in the evening, she nevertheless made every garment with her own hands—those tiny, marvelous hands that could draw and embroider, could put up bonbons, and gift packages, as no one else could do it—mended and laundered and ironed when the others were long abed.

The Gish children found their Sunday School an interesting place. Sometimes there were entertainments, “exhibitions” they called them, and there was an Empty Stocking Club that filled stockings for the less fortunate, at Christmas time. Lillian’s first public appearance, at one of the exhibitions, was not an entire success.

She had been chosen to speak a piece, some verses of welcome, which daily she faithfully rehearsed at home, going over them time and again, just as in later years she would prepare for her rôles. Little Dorothy, playing about the room, apparently gave slight attention, perhaps not realizing herself how the lines were being drilled into her brain.

The afternoon of the performance came, and Lillian, all white and gold, rose and spoke the lines faultlessly. There was applause, of course—and something more. Dorothy, shining like a jewel, jumped up and waved her hand to the superintendent:

“May I speak a piece, please—may I speak a piece, too?”

“Why, of course, my dear, you may; come right along.”

And Dorothy, fair and undismayed, marched to the platform, and repeated Lillian’s poem of welcome, word for word.

Poor Lillian! The audience, at first puzzled, broke into applause. Her heart was broken. She thought she had failed—recited badly. She struggled a little, and found relief in a welter of tears. Which meant grief for Dorothy, who adored Lillian—set her up as a kind of queen.

The Empty Stocking distribution was quite another matter—a real event. It was held at Ford’s Theatre, where Nat Goodwin and Maxine Elliot were playing that week, on an afternoon when there was no matinée. The big tree was set up in the center of the stage, and the stars were invited to take part. Maxine Elliot offered to fill stockings; Nat Goodwin agreed to be Santa Claus. When a particularly angelic child was needed, to perch on Nat Goodwin’s shoulder and distribute the stockings, Lillian Gish was chosen, and so made her first stage appearance—rode into the drama—on the shoulder of one of the best-known actors of the day.

Dorothy and Lillian were near enough together to be playmates. Lillian was not so good at play as Dorothy. Long afterwards she wrote:

“I envy this dear, darling Dorothy with all my heart, for she is the side of me that God left out....

“All my life I have wanted to play happily, as she does, only to find myself bad at playing. As a little girl, I was not much good at playing, and I find that, try as I will, I don’t play very convincingly today.”

They were good little girls—Lillian especially so. They had been taught to say their prayers, and would as soon have omitted their little nightgowns as their prayers. If Dorothy made a scramble of hers, while Lillian offered her petition to the last word and syllable, and overborne by some ancient melancholy prayed regularly that she might wake up in Heaven, it was only as Nature had intended them to be from the beginning.

Different as they were, then and always, they had one great interest in common: their mother. They thought her the best and most beautiful person in the world. Dorothy loved to think that she looked like her, and cried when told that Lillian “looked more like Mama” than she did.

From the beginning, almost, Lillian was inclined to be orderly, tidy. Dorothy—well, Dorothy was different. Even in that early day, when Lillian was no more than five, she carefully removed her clothes and laid them neatly together. Dorothy did not remove hers. She dropped, or flung, them off, and where they fell they remained. It was said—this was much later—that you could at any time find Dorothy by following her clothes.

By day, Lillian was inclined to sit in her little chair and reflect, while Dorothy tore about the house, escaping to the street if not watched, and perpetually had her knees bruised and scratched, from falls. She also liked to sample any food or liquids that were in handy reach, and once went on a genuine debauch. Lillian had come down with an attack of croup, her medicine being a tasty toddy, which, upon experiment, Dorothy found that she liked. Lillian was dozing, and she continued her experiment. Then she laid aside the spoon and picked up the glass. Her mother found her, staggering down the hall, “making whoopee.” Mary Gish got a whiff of her breath, and sent for the doctor. Next day Dorothy went through the tortures that go with a bandaged head, and usually come later in life.

IV

“THEATRE PEOPLE”

The world was not kind to James Gish. Perhaps those wise ones who know all about the world, and human nature, and the free-will to choose, will say that he was not kind to himself. One must admire those people; they know things with such a deadly certainty. I never in my life knew a thing so certainly as a man who once told me that I could always do the right thing, if I only wanted to. Apparently I didn’t want to.

Nor, as it seemed, did James Gish. When, after less than two years in Baltimore, he sold out to Meixner, he had very little left. Part of that little he gave to his wife; with the rest, he went to New York, where he would find employment and send remittances.

For a time the remittances came; then they dwindled, skipped, ceased. Mrs. Gish worked, but the money she earned was not enough for the little family. Meixner lent her small sums, then advised her to join her husband, advancing money for her fare and for immediate needs on arrival. Meixner appears to have been a good soul.

In New York, Mary Gish took an apartment—small, but large enough to accommodate two boarders. It faced West 39th Street, up one or two flights of stairs. She needed more furniture and bought it on installments. She also took a job—demonstrating, in a Brooklyn department store. She was twenty-five, handsome, capable, determined to make her way. Up at five, she set her house in order, got breakfast for her family and the two boarders—theatrical women, who had their luncheons outside. Leaving the children in the hands of a colored girl, she was off for the day. Back at night, she got the supper; then worked at the making and mending and laundering of the family clothing.

Gish was there, and may have been employed at times, but his help was negligible. Less than that. As she saved from her modest pay, she gave him sums, trusting soul, to pay on her furniture. But then, one day, when she came home from her job in distant Brooklyn, more distant then than now, the dealers who had sold it to her had come and taken it away. Her husband appears to have vanished about the same time. Later, she sought and obtained legal separation.

Kind-hearted, weak—James Gish was only one of thousands. That he loved his family is certain. When a year or two later, Mary Gish and little Dorothy were on a theatrical circuit, he was likely to turn up any time, appearing mysteriously in distant places. Hungry for the sight of them, he must have watched them enter and leave the theatre—perhaps went in to see the play. Sometimes he confronted them on a street in a far-off town. Always in Mary Gish’s heart was the dread that he would take one or both of her children from her. She knew he was a Freemason, and in her lack of knowledge, thought he might in some way invoke that secret agency. He seems never to have attempted anything of the sort, and if he secretly followed Lillian, she did not know it. Probably it was Mary Gish herself that he most wanted to see. Those wise ones who know all about the world will not fail to explain that he deserved his tragedy....

Night and day the Loom of Circumstance weaves its inevitable pattern. The filaments proceed from a million sources, stretching backward through eternity. Incredibly they unite, and once united the gods themselves cannot change the design.

Mary Gish’s fortunes were at low ebb. Her unfurnished room would presently be on her hands. The two actresses, who owed her money, were willing to bunk on the floor, but the theatrical season would open shortly, and what then? Such jewelry as she owned was pawned, even to the last piece—even to her wedding ring. The actresses had likewise parted with their valuables. One of them, who called herself Dolores Lorne, had taken a great fancy to little Dorothy. There came a momentous afternoon. Mary Gish, arriving from Brooklyn, was met by a startling proposal:

“I can get a good part in Rebecca Warren’s ‘East Lynne’ Company,” Dolores Lorne excitedly announced, “if I can get a child to play ‘Little Willie.’ Dorothy would do it, exactly. They will pay her fifteen dollars a week, and we’d have a week’s salary in advance. I could pay you; and I know a woman who can get a part for Lillian, too. A lovely woman, Alice Niles, in a ‘Convict Stripes’ Company.”

Mary Gish stared at her, dazed, staggered. She could not grasp it. Her little girls … going away … motherless.... Poor little Dot, hardly more than a baby … and Lillian, barely six … on the road with theatre people … what would the folks at home say?

Theatre people! She had not even dared to confess that she had them in her house. Dolores was a good soul … but little Dot … and Alice Niles—who was Alice Niles? A stranger! And Lillian, so frail … on the road … with a stranger!!! James Gish’s wife, who had borne up in the face of everything, gave way, wept as if her heart would break.

Dolores Lorne comforted her … later, Alice Niles. She believed them good women, both of them. They promised to take a mother’s care of her little girls. They painted life on the circuit as happy—just a long pleasure trip. If they forgot the broken nights on wretched trains, the scanty, stale food, the dragging weariness of delays … oh, well, they were human. Lillian and Dorothy became excited. They had never been to a theatre, except to the Christmas-tree performance in Baltimore. That had been beautiful. Especially Maxine Elliot. Now, they were going to be beautiful, like Maxine. Tearfully Mary Gish began to assemble two little wardrobes—scanty little wardrobes, of a size to go into two cheap little telescope bags.

Also, there were the rehearsals. Mary Gish taught her children their brief lines, which they rehearsed at the theatre. Lillian went at her task in her obedient, thorough way, and became a favorite. Dorothy, who perhaps had ideas of her own, was invited to repeat, and repeat, until both Mr. William Dean, the kindly manager of her company, and herself, were a trifle worn and critical. Finally, when Mr. Dean became really quite fierce, and peremptory, Dorothy, aged four, whispered, her lips trembling a little:

“Please, Mr. Dean, if you let me alone for a few minutes, I know I’ll be able to do it.”

Mrs. Gish, meantime, had a new and quite definite plan. She would herself become an actress! Very likely her people would cast her out, but never mind. Acting could not be worse than the long hours in Brooklyn. She would equip herself to be with one or both of her children. Alice Niles introduced her at a theatrical agency, and Mary Gish—determined woman that she was—was rehearsing for a small part at Proctor’s almost as soon as the two real actresses of the family had said their heartbreaking good-byes.

V

A LITTLE TROUPER

Stage children of that day took whatever name was offered them, usually the name of the woman in whose charge they traveled. Dorothy readily learned to say “Aunt Dolores” and accepted the name of Lorne. Alice Niles became “Aunt Alice” to Lillian, and she herself “Florence Niles.”

It is not certain where Dorothy’s company opened, but “In Convict Stripes,” with “Little Florence Niles, the loveliest and most gifted child actress on the American stage,” opened at Risingsun, Ohio, in a barn. Barns and upstairs halls were often used by the one-night-stand companies, though a larger town sometimes had an “opera house,” with real seats, not just boards for benches.

Risingsun was accounted a very good town of the barn-and-board-seat variety. It had a stage with side slips, and something in the nature of scenic effects. After a long night ride on the train—a night when one did not undress and go properly to bed, but slept part of the time on a seat, part of the time leaning against Aunt Alice—a journey which was not altogether a pleasure trip—the “Convict Stripes” Company arrived at Risingsun in time for a rehearsal before the performance.