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AVARICE AMONG THE AVOCADOS 69 had just begun to impress itself on the critics. Now creditors, not critics, overnight became important in their lives. They found a worthy adversary in Mrs. DeMille. The aggressive little lady converted the Pompton home into a culture school for fashionable young women. Understandably, young actresses were among the first to enroll, increasing in such numbers in a year or two that the mother pressed both Cecil and Bill into service. One of the early pupils, Evelyn Nesbit, remembered that Cecil, young though he was, solemnly tackled the mys- teries of drawing-room posture and decorum. He taught the young ladies how to walk, sit and sip tea, and even offered advice in the selection of clothes. "He had an artistic flair all right/' Miss Nesbit said, "because he could demonstrate how a young kdy could show disdain in one gesture by winding her wrap about her hips in a regal manner,'* a scene difficult to associate with the man whose thunderous roars have reduced thousands to craven silence. It provided an answer to one unusual DeMille trait. He took full charge of the original designs of all important costumes in his productions, even down to a leather thrum on an Indian loin- cloth. No designer dared proceed without first getting DeMille's initials on the sketch of the costume, male or female. "Few of the celebrated girls of New York's musical hits lost the opportunity of having a season of social training at this Pompton Lake establishment, so far had the reputation of the two young men reached into sophisticated Broadway s gossip channels," according to one observer. "A raw product could be turned out a lady, a show girl could be taught to carry herself like an aristocrat, to dine like one, and with much more gruel- ing training, she might eventually be taught to speak as one." Belasco detected a strain of real creativeness in the DeMilles and with Henry's passing he beckoned encouragingly to son Bill, in whom he had observed a flair for dramatic situation. Bill was doing some work on his own in that quiet way and