My Autobiography

Occasionally she obtained work nursing, but such employment was rare and of short duration. Nevertheless, she was resourceful: having made her own theatrical costumes, she was expert with her needle and able to earn a few shillings dressmaking for members of the church. But it was barely enough to support the three of us. Because of Father’s drinking, his theatrical engagements became irregular, as did his payments of ten shillings a week.
Mother had now sold most of her belongings. The last thing to go was her trunk of theatrical costumes. These things she clung to in the hope that she might recover her voice and return to the stage. Occasionally, she would delve into the trunk to find something, and we would see a spangled costume or a wig and would ask her to put them on. I remember her donning a judge’s cap and gown and singing in her weak voice one of her old song successes that she had written herself. The song had a bouncy two-four tempo and went as follows:
I’m a lady judge,
And a good judge too.
Judging cases fairly –
They are so very rarely –
I mean to teach the lawyers
A thing or two,
And show them just exactly
What the girls can do…
With amazing ease she would then break into a graceful dance and forget her dressmaking and regale us with her other song successes and perform the dances that went with them until she was breathless and exhausted. Then she would reminisce and show us some of her old playbills. One read:
ENGAGEMENT EXTRAORDINARY
Of the dainty and talented
Lily Harley,
Serio-comedienne, impersonator and dancer.
She would perform before us, not with only her own vaudeville material, but with imitations of other actresses she had seen in the so-called legitimate theatre.
When narrating a play, she would act the various parts: for instance, in The Sign of the Cross, Mercia with divine light in her eyes going into the arena to be fed to the lions. She would imitate the high pontifical voice of Wilson Barrett proclaiming in five-inch elevated shoes – for he was a little man: ‘What this Christianity is I know not. But this I do know, that if it made such women as Mercia, Rome, nay, the whole world would be all the purer for it!’… which she acted with a suspicion of humour, but not without an appreciation of Barrett’s talent.
Her instinct was unfailing in recognizing those that had genuine talent. Whether it was the actress Ellen Terry, or Joe Elvin of the music hall, she would explain their art. She knew technique instinctively and talked of theatre as only one who loved it could.
She would tell anecdotes and act them out, recounting, for instance, an episode in the life of the Emperor Napoleon: tiptoeing in his library to reach for a book and being intercepted by Marshal Ney (Mother playing both characters, but always with humour): ‘Sire, allow me to get it for you. I am higher.’ And Napoleon with an indignant scowl saying: ‘Higher? Taller!’
She would enact Nell Gwyn, vividly describing her leaning over the palace stairs holding her baby, threatening Charles II: ‘Give this child a name, or I’ll dash it to the ground!’ And King Charles hastily concurring: ‘All right! The Duke of St Albans.’
I remember an evening in our one room in the basement at Oakley Street. I lay in bed recovering from a fever. Sydney had gone out to night school and Mother and I were alone. It was late afternoon, and she sat with her back to the window reading, acting and explaining in her inimitable way the New Testament and Christ’s love and pity for the poor and for little children. Perhaps her emotion was due to my illness, but she gave the most luminous and appealing interpretation of Christ that I have ever heard or seen. She spoke of his tolerant understanding; of the woman who had sinned and was to be stoned by the mob, and of his words to them: ‘He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.’
She read into the dusk, stopping only to light the lamp, then told of the faith that Jesus inspired in the sick, that they had only to touch the hem of his garment to be healed.
She told of the hate and jealousy of the High Priests and Pharisees, and described Jesus and his arrest and his calm dignity before Pontius Pilate, who, washing his hands, said (this she acted out histrionically): ‘I find no fault with this man.’ She told how they stripped and scourged him and, placing a crown of thorns on his head, mocked and spat at him, saying: ‘Hail, King of the Jews!’
As she continued tears welled up in her eyes. She told of Simon helping to carry Christ’s cross and the appealing look of gratitude Jesus gave him; she told of the repentant thief, dying with him on a cross and asking forgiveness, and of Jesus saying: ‘Today shalt thou be with me in Paradise.’ And from the cross looking down at his mother, saying: ‘Woman, behold thy son.’ And in his last dying agony crying out: ‘My God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ And we both wept.
‘Don’t you see,’ said Mother, ‘how human he was; like all of us, he too suffered doubt.’
Mother had so carried me away that I wanted to die that very night and meet Jesus. But Mother was not so enthusiastic. ‘Jesus wants you to live first and fulfil your destiny here,’ she said. In that dark room in the basement at Oakley Street, Mother illuminated to me the kindliest light this world has ever known, which has endowed literature and the theatre with their greatest and richest themes: love, pity and humanity.
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Living as we did in the lower strata, it was very easy to fall into the habit of not caring about our diction. But Mother always stood outside her environment and kept an alert ear on the way we talked, correcting our