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From under my Hat
Since I missed high school, and Dad's wanderlust was appeased for the moment, I made up my mind to have some real instruction in music. We didn't own a piano, but a neighbor let me practice on hers. Her parlor was bitter cold in winter. In our town the parlor was the stage for three activities— sparking, weddings, and funerals— and no heat was wasted on it in between. But though the cold threw the piano out of tune and my fingers were blue sticks of ice, I slaved until I learned to read music. I didn't work up a bowing acquaintance with Debussy, but got way beyond "Chopsticks."
I badgered my father to let me go to the Carter Conservatory of Music in Pittsburgh. He gave in when I was so aggressive and unpleasant that all he could think of was, "We'll have peace around here when she's gone." So he loosened up on the purse strings and I was off.
The Carters had a daughter, Hattie. We struck up a bosom friendship. She was going on the stage too. "Since you intend to be an actress, why don't you run away and come with me?" she said. The idea appealed to me but, though I had guts, I had to work up to it step by step.
Pretty soon I was learning more in Pittsburgh about the theater than about music. I spent every quarter I could lay my hands on for a seat in the gallery. I saw some wonderful plays.
In my spare time I walked past the beautiful homes of the steel magnates, gaped through the front windows of the Duquesne Club, and dreamed about what they were like inside. More than a quarter of a century later I found out.
Before I left home I was allowed to go to New York only once, to visit my Uncle Sam— not the one that collects taxes— who lived near Central Park. He was a missionary and ran the Sunshine Mission down on the Bowery, where the dregs of society slunk away into dark corners to hide their misery. A very different place from the beautiful Bowery in 1858 when De Wolf Hopper was born there. Uncle Sam used to visit us in Altoona occasionally and told wonderful stories about his work. But someone was always saying, "Elda, time for you to go to bed!" just when he was getting to the most exciting part about rescuing the bums from a life of sin and degradation.
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