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Actorviews
And, as I say, I’m quite sure that Mr. Ditrichstein had not the remotest notion of telling me how a European duel made him into an American actor when he and his American wife and I walked from Cohan’s Grand to a cafe around the corner — where the beer is faultless (for him as likes beer), and the Danish sandwiches fit for jolly old Ibsen himself, and the favorite table not too near the bandstand.
I was telling them of the lady near whom I sat during the performance of “The King,” who had been telling another lady that Mr. Ditrichstein was just as wicked a rake off the stage as on.
They smiled at this doubtless old story. And without any great effort on his part Mr. Ditrichstein contrived to look like anybody but Don Juan when he removed his brown hat from a pate as hairless as the billiard ball of platitude.
Behold him a quiet, unfrilled man of family, taking his beer in a quiet restaurant corner with quite his own wife. Nobody stared, or should have. He might have been a doctor of medicine or the editor of The Atlantic Monthly.
Mrs. Leo is not only not a lady of the stage, but she does not look like a lady of the stage (as so many lay wives of active actors do). Her hair is white, her powder-puff put by these several years. She luxuriates in elegant middle age. She has the courage of her humor, and declares herself without stint in four languages.
Something had displeased Mrs. Leo this night. It may have been her husband. She forgot to say.
I say “forgot,” because Mrs. Leo has no secrets. The Leo Ditrichsteins have the grand manner in that they say what they think with a frankness that is subtly flattering to the listener.