During the season of 1880–1881, and the two seasons following, the young actress was known as Fanny Brough--her mother’s family name. She was promoted from the chorus of _Pinafore_ to play Sir Joseph Porter, and she was, besides, Suzanne in _The Chimes of Normandy_ and a page in _The Little Duke_. The significance of this first engagement lies chiefly in the fact that the stage management of the company was in the hands of Ada Dow, a sister-in-law of Colonel Miles. This woman had been a competent though inconspicuous actress, and she was a good stage-director. In one of her charges, moreover--Fanny Brough--she had the discernment to see an actress of exceptional promise. It was to Miss Dow that Fanny Brough, renamed Julia Marlowe, was later to owe her early-won position as an actress of genuine attainments. Her experience in operetta young Fanny Brough followed by playing six weeks as little Heinrich in one of the several _Rip van Winkle_ companies that sprang into being after Joseph Jefferson’s success in the play. The Rip in this instance was Robert McWade. Then came Colonel Miles’ attempt to make a “star” of Josephine Riley, in the season of 1882–1883. In the company were Miss Dow and Fanny Brough, who now, as Balthazar in _Romeo and Juliet_, had her first Shakespearean part. She also had the formidable duty, for one of her years, of playing Maria in _Twelfth Night_.[181] During these few years the possibilities for greater things lying in the young actress must have become more and more apparent to Colonel Miles and Miss Dow. Soon after the venture with Miss Riley, Fanny Brough disappeared from the stage and was taken to New York by Miss Dow, and there put through a course of training such as few actresses ever undergo. Off the stage the young aspirant was a rather awkward, self-conscious girl, of a serious turn of mind, imaginative, and like the youthful Mary Anderson, and many another, an enthusiast in her admiration for Shakespeare. Years afterward Julia Marlowe said that she could remember no real childhood. She had gone to no children’s parties, and had had no girl friends. “The experiences which come to growing children as part of their girl life came to me only as part of my stage experience. The first long dress I wore was not as a girl, but on the stage as Myrene in _Pygmalion and Galatea_.” “At this time,” says one account, “she was a saucer-eyed, yellow skinned girl, of a melancholic temperament, high-strung, eager, restless, and unbearable to herself when unoccupied. Her chief joy was to revel in the woes of tragedy queens.” Obviously this was raw material. That the same girl a few years later stepped before the public in the large Eastern cities and, if not at once financially successful, almost at once was recognized as a well-graced, promising actress, says much not only for her native ability, but also for the quality and thoroughness of the training that took place in the interim.