Actorviews (1923)

Miss Barrymore and the Wits NCE upon a time, when she was very, very young, I had a real Interview with Ethel Barrymore — full of dates and Drama and ambitions and impressions and favorite literature and I don’t know what not. And I never knew low stuffy and podgy and interview-y it was till a year later Miss Barrymore had an Interview with me and wrote her revenge complete. That was when they wore skirts to the floor and puff sleeves. Now, when every two or three or five years brings us together, we just sit over a cup of tea and a cigaret (and even my pipe, in the grace of her hospitality) and look at each other in friendly appraisal, and say how thinner and lovelier she’s grown, and how prematurely grey my grey head continues to get, and — well, now we don’t interview. I forgave her when she clutched (I must say clutched) one letter from the afternoon mail and tore (nothing less) open its envelope and read it with — I vow with a blush of pleasure. “Ah, Ethel, they still write!” I said. “It’s the first I’ve had from him. Listen : ‘ . and please send me $3. . . . Yours very truly, Sam.’ ” And Sam’s mother passed the precious paper to me. I don’t know just how, but presently we were talking about Sam’s maternal grandfather, who was the