'And she is indeed a most perplexing mixture. Do what I will I cannot
harmonise all my different impressions of her. Let me begin again. Why is
it that her acting is so poor? I never saw a more dramatic personality!
Everything that she says or does is said or done with a warmth, a force,
a vivacity that make her smallest gesture and her lightest tone impress
themselves upon you. I felt this very strongly two or three times after
the play on Friday night. In her talk with Forbes, for instance, whom she
has altogether in her toils, and whom she plays with as though he were
the gray-headed Merlin and she an innocent Vivien, weaving harmless
spells about him. And then, from this mocking war of words and looks,
this gay camaraderie, in which there was not a scrap of coquetry or
self-consciousness, she would pass into a sudden outburst of anger as to
the impertinence of English rich people--the impertinence of rich
millionaires who have tried once or twice to "order" her for their
evening parties as they would order their ices, or the impertinence of
the young "swell about town" who thinks she has nothing to do behind the
scenes but receive his visits and provide him with entertainment. And, as
the quick impetuous words came rushing out, you felt that here for once
was a woman speaking her real mind to you, and that with a flashing eye
and curving lip, an inborn grace and energy which made every word
memorable. If she would but look like that or speak like that on the
stage! But there, of course, is the rub. The whole difficulty of art
consists in losing your own personality, so to speak, and finding it
again transformed, and it is a difficulty which Miss Bretherton has never
even understood.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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