Exits and Entrances

And so at Christmas I began to play “The Spirit of Home” in The Cricket on the Hearth at Toole’s Theatre, which was a small place, mostly underground, beside the Charing Cross Hospital. I was very happy; it was all new and exciting, and everyone was very kind to me. Kate Phillips, who played “Dot”, had been ill, and her dressing-room—the dressing-room provided for the leading lady—was underground; she couldn’t stand it, and, as mine was on the roof—or as nearly on the roof as possible—she came up to dress with me. It was in Kate Phillips’s (and my) dressing-room that I first saw Winifred Emery, who came on to Toole’s for tea from the Vaudeville. She was perfectly beautiful, with most lovely hands, and oh, so attractive!
In those days, after a matinée, there were only two things to do—either stay in the theatre or go out and walk about in the streets. Your rooms were generally a long way from the theatre, which meant ’bus riding (and every penny had to be considered), and there were no girls’ clubs then. No Three Arts Club, Theatrical Girls’ Club, no A.B.C.’s, no Lyons, nothing of that kind, so you stayed in the theatre.
Another person who was in the cast was George Shelton, the same George Shelton who was in Peter Pan this year—1922—when Jill made her first appearance. I can see no difference in him; after all these years he looks, and is, just the same. The children who went to see Peter Pan—so Mr. Lyn Harding assured us—“found Smee lovable”, as I found him so many years ago. Only then he wasn’t playing Smee!
The run ended, and I was engaged to play in a first piece by Justin Huntly Macarthy, called The Red Rag. I have no very clear recollection of the part, except that I played the girl who made love to a man “over the garden wall,” standing on a flowerpot. It was in this play, The Red Rag, that Decima asked, after noting that only the “top half” of the gentleman appeared over the wall, “As his legs don’t show, does he have to wear trousers? Because, if he doesn’t, it must be such a very cheap costume.” I had a new dress for the part, which is not really so impressive as it sounds, for in those days “Nun’s veiling” (thanks be to Heaven!) was 6½d. a yard, and, as in The Cricket on the Hearth I had been clad in white Nun’s veiling, so now for The Red Rag I wore a blue dress of the same useful material. Of course, I made both of them myself.
However, this play marked a “point in my career”—I began to have “notices” in the Press. The Punchcritic of that date said: “If names signify anything, there is a young lady who is likely to remain on the stage a very long time—‘Quoth the Raven, Eva Moore’.” She has, too—a very long time. The People said he should keep his “critical eye on me, in fact both his critical eyes.”
At the end of the spring season, Mr. Toole asked me to go on tour for the summer and autumn, to play “leading lady”—this was a real leap up the ladder—appearing in fifteen plays. I was to receive £3 a week. I accepted (of course I accepted!), and took with me twenty-three dresses. I remember the number, because in order to buy the necessary materials I had to borrow £10 from my brother.
By this time the attitude of my father had changed; he no longer regarded me as “lost”, and no longer looked upon the Stage as the last step in an immoral life; he was, I think, rather proud of what I had done. So far had he relented that, when my sister Jessie decided that she too would go on the Stage, there was no opposition. She left home without any dramatic scenes, and went into the chorus of Dorothy, where she understudied Marie Tempest and Ben Davis’s sister-in-law, Florence Terry, afterwards playing the latter’s part.