STORYETTES OF THE STAGE.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXIV, Issue 173, 22 July 1903, Page 1 (Supplement)

STORYETTES OF THE STAGE.

The two hardest stage folk to get interviews from are Sarah Bernhardt and Rich aid Mansfield. After eighteen visiting cards had been sent up to Bernhardt's room within eight days, I scribbled on the nineteenth: "Please see me this time —or send back by bearer the eighteen visiting cards that have preceded this one." Then I was ushered into Bernhardt's room. Sue was playing with a rose during the ten minutes' talk, and appeared to be half-bored and half-amused. She lay back in a big armchair and never changed her position once. For a woman supposed to be all nerves she was all repose. We talked in hybrid —here and there a French word grafted on to English—or vice versa. The room was in semi-dark-ness. The particular thing she said that impressed me most was when she was asked which, in her estimation, was the greater, tragedy or comedy. "Tragedy," came the answer in a flash. "A clown can make the rustic laugh, but it needs intellectual strength and heart knowledge to make him cry." Sir Henry Irving likes to interview you while you're interviewing , him. He is simplicity itself in dresa, speech and bearing. The last time I met him ,wae in a railroad train on the way to Princeton, whither the distinguished actor was bound to deliver a lecture on "Bacon." "What's going to be the future of your country?" he asked. "Twenty years ago I went along what is now the Biver Drive in New York. I saw nothing but shanties and goats, and clothes hanging out to dry. Now I see magnificent palacee. It's like a page from • the 'Arabian Nights/ is , this wonderful \ / You ask him a question and he'll ponder over it before answering. Then out pops a question, or a series of them to you: "How old is Pierpont Morgan? I hear that most of your labouring men own their own homes. Is that true? What is the wage of the average newspaper man? How rcany years do you think will elapse before America absorbs England?" He impresses you as a man who never would talk for talk's sake—one who never poses—one to whom life is a serious problem. Yet there's a twinkle in his restless eye, and a smile perpetually, hovers around his serious mouth. Olga Nethersole seems to exude languor— as if s he hadn't quite" finished her sleep, or else was lacking in physical strength. Her face is pale and listless. "What little strength I have," she said with a smile one evening after the performance, "is neryous strength. This week I shall have played seven different roles, and I prefer that to a whole week devoted to one character only. That tires me more than Anything else—it'a seven times more wearing on me than playing seven different roles." —Charles Bloomingdale, "The American Interviewer." ■ ,