Life and Lillian Gish (1932)

42 Life and Lillian Gish play-house. They did not play at "acting," like other children. They would put on long dresses, and play at "keeping house" — having a home. When it came time for the performance, they hurried, not very eagerly, to change into the costumes required for their parts. They were not unhappy. They did not reflect much whether they liked what they were doing, or not. They just did it. The parts they played were always sad — pathetic, but not more so than their lives. They did not know that, but their mother did. If one might have looked into Mary Gish's heart at this time, just what would one have found there? Chiefly, of course, devotion to her children — thought of their immediate welfare and needs. After that? Was it to equip them for the career of actresses — a life which, unless they were at the top, was hardly to be called enviable, and even at its best was one of impermanent triumphs and fitful rewards? She knew pretty well that with their special kind of beauty, which each day she saw develop — their flair for subtle phases of human portrayal — given health, they could count on at least reasonable success. Did she greatly desire that? I think not. I think she considered it, but that her real purpose was to keep her children and herself on the stage only until by close, the very closest, economy, she had saved enough to establish herself in a permanent business which would give them a home, where they could go to school and grow into normal, or what she regarded as normal, womanhood. I think the old prejudice which she had shared with her family as to the theatre, did not die easily, and that for years she felt herself more or less "beyond the pale," willing to stay there only because it