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A ctorviews
tell me how well I looked. As though idiocy became me!
Tactfully Mr. Sothern chatted the while. He had been talking so much we had lost sight of the time, he said. It never was safe to let a man talk about himself — he did not say about herself.
Even critics were nicely disposed in the tactful flow of Mr. Sothern’s words — which are hard to quote because they were so effortless and yet so charmingly arrayed. Himself a delightful writer, he talks as a good writer would like to — talk : his ornaments sharpen the point and season the occasional humor. He was saying (I’ll try to say for him) :
“Critics are, we’ve come to know, the public — a concentrated public. In the end they are about right — in the end they represent the public. And we’ve got to take their blows in good faith, just as we take their caresses. But especially the blows. I come of an acting family, and I know that it’s been ever so. I’ve seen my father come away from the newspapers — pummeled. But he always went back for more. It was his idea, I think, as I am certain that it’s mine, that we actors are like prize fighters in that much depends on how much punishment we can take.”
“Tell me, Sothern,” I said, taking advantage of the flood tide of his good nature, “who has been your severest critic?”
Miss Marlowe laughed a silvery scale. No, it was more liquid — she fluted it. Mr. Sothern answered with perfect gravity :
“My fiercest, most merciless, critic is my wife — although she operates with the kindness of a surgeon. When I want to find out how bad I am she sits alone in the theater while I go out alone on the stage and show my interpretation to her. Then I hear her say