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I've been looking her up, viewing her cradle and her mother's cradle and that sort of thing. I'd have liked to have viewed her father's as well, but it's a case of cherchez l'homme." "Well?" "Well, the young lady's an emanation from sub-Cockneydom. My idea is that that kind can't stand the table and grande-dame test. I'll supply the table, with fixtures, and you're going to be the grande-dame."
It is not more difficult for a young woman to play the old-woman character or the grande-dame part than for the young man to tackle the Sir Peter Teazle or the ordinary modern old-man; nor is this the only class of work other than that of lovely heroine which lies open to the actress.
The misfortune is that few young actresses if any say to themselves deliberately that they will aim at character parts, or old-woman parts. Nearly all the old-woman and grande-dame characters are played by actresses who have been leading ladies and during some period have had the painful experience of failing, on account of their age, to get the engagements they have sought.
The woman of the Pomeranian, I said to myself, must be surely some grande-dame, a leader in that mysterious circle which I knew only by its name "society." My view of that circle in those days was tinged with the cynicism of one who knew nothing of it; and though at the boarding-house table I was prone to rail at it, secretly I had to admit that my raillery was born of envy.
He recognised Dysart, glorious in silk and powder, perfectly in his element, and doing his part with eighteenth-century elaboration; Kathleen, très grande-dame, almost too exquisitely real for counterfeit; Delancy Grandcourt, very red in the face under his mask, wig slightly awry, conscientiously behaving as nearly like a masked gentleman of the period as he knew how; his sister Naïda, sweet and gracious; Scott, masked and also spectacled, grotesque and preoccupied, casting patient glances toward the dusky solitudes that he much preferred, and from whence a distant owl fluted at intervals, inviting his investigations.
I'm not equal to this sort of thing at such short notice. The change in Aunt Julia made me feel quite dizzy. She had shed her grande-dame manner completely, and was blushing and smiling. I don't like to say such things of any aunt of mine, or I would go further and put it on record that she was giggling.
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