My Last Lover With the Blue Eyes

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVI, Issue 11, 24 December 1925, Page 16

My Last Lover With the Blue Eyes

MRS. KENDALL TELLS HOW SHE WAS “ROBBED.” ACTRESS RIVALS. “Don’t talk to me of ‘that wicked woman!’ She was mv rival and stole my blue-eyed sweetheart, and married him too. she knows she did!” Mrs. Margaret Kendal, the famous actress, scowled ferociously as she void a “Sunday .Express” representative the story of the “theft” perpetrated by Miss Lottie Venne, another famous actress, lor whom a Jubilee benefit was given on Friday. At the benefit, Mrs. Kendall made a little speech of congratulation to her sister actress, in which she laughingly accused her of stealing her sweetheart, and adding. “Lottie, you know you did, you can’t deny it!’’ The “Theft.” Alter frowning darkly, Mrs. Kendal chuckled with groat amusement. “At least, that’s my pet story, and T am going to stick to it,” she went on. “And. as it all happened ‘at least a hundred years ago,’ nobody can expect me to remember the exact details. “It all started with a photographer, and J would like to say right here and now that photographers were just as much of a plague and torture as they are now, and have been all my life! A.s you may imagine, I was really quite young a ‘hundred years ago,’ and my parents liked to have my photograph taken. “The father of Air Walter H. Fisher, the young man who afterwards married Imttie. was the Bristol photographer to whom I used to he taken. No one could deny that his son Walter was a very handsome boy, with the singing voice of an angel. “And who could blame me if we had an outrageous flirtation behind my parents’ backs? I ask any young girl, would she be sternly unrelenting if a young man coaxed her into a quiet corner, and sang love songs under his breath ? A young man with blue eyes, too?

Long Curls. “His father should really have been an artist instead of a. photographer, and painted a picture of me as Georgina in ‘Our American Cousin,’ as I was appearing then with long curls and a funny hat. “The curls, I want you to know, were all my own. I had quantities of hair in those days, of which I was immensely proud. In fact. 1 was never so insulted in my life as when a newspaper article appeared saying that Mrs. Kendal ‘has a new brown wig!’ Brown too. to add insult to injury! Aly hair was reddish alway z s. In fact, an American once called me ‘leonine’ on account of my hair, and referred to the Ted spots in my eyes when J was angry about anything. “Hiat also was a ‘hundred years ago.’ Even for the part of ‘Lady Teazle’ 1 always wore my own hair, dressing it myself and powdering the curls.

“No, 1 do not approve of bobbed or shingled hair. The Almighty gave us women our hair, and J think wo ought to .stick to it as long as we can. And 1 think it lot of the boljied heads are much sillier than the long-haired ones used to be in my day ami age!

Fickle Lovers. “I will have io admit that I never saw Walter Fisher all er I was fifteen years old, and I am afraid that we weren’t either of us too constant, and that I forgot him completely when 1 wont to the Haymarket Theatre at an early age “Years after. I heard that Lottie had married a man from Bristol named Walter bisher. I said to mxself, T'l.sher? Walter? That can be nom. other than my blue-eyed sweetheart!’ And when I met Lottie again I accused her ol basely stealing him from me. It has been my pct joke ever since, and I don’t intend to lose it. ‘Apart from that. Lottie is a very dear friend of mhie. and I always have admired her immensely.’’