Title: A Star Danced (1945)
Author: Gertrude Lawrence (1898-1952)
* A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook *
eBook No.: 0700891.txt
Language:  English
Date first posted: July 2007
Date most recently updated: July 2007

This ebook was produced by: Dr Mark Bear Akrigg canadianebooks@gmail.com

Project Gutenberg of Australia eBooks are created from printed editions
which are in the public domain in Australia, unless a copyright notice
is included. We do NOT keep any eBooks in compliance with a particular
paper edition.

Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing this
file.

This eBook is made available at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg of Australia License which may be viewed online at
http://gutenberg.net.au/licence.html

To contact Project Gutenberg of Australia go to http://gutenberg.net.au

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Title: A Star Danced (1945)
Author: Gertrude Lawrence (1898-1952)




For Richard




1


"Lunch in London, the day after tomorrow...'

The skipper dropped the words out of one corner of his mouth
without disturbing the cigarette in the other corner. He disposed
of some three thousand miles of atmosphere as nonchalantly as you
would toss a peanut shell over your shoulder.

I blinked. But only once. After all, the past two days had been
so fantastic that this ultimate scene and conversation on the
brilliantly lighted airfield outside a city in one of the
Southern states, beside the big airliner which was to take me to
England in a scheduled thirty-six hours, seemed part and parcel
of the events that had been happening thick and fast ever since
the telephone woke me at seven o'clock one morning.

The telephone had summoned me from a dream in which Richard and I
were running, hand in hand, down our own narrow strip of Cape Cod
beach into the ocean. Sleepily, unwilling to let go of that
dream, I reached for the receiver and held it to my ear. New York
calling. At Dennis, Cape Cod, at seven o'clock of a May morning,
New York seems as far away as London or Timbuktu.

"Are you up?" the voice of my lawyer demanded crisply.

Knowing me as she does, this was purely a rhetorical question
which, I felt, did not rate an answer. She went on: "Get up!
Right away! Get yourself onto the first plane, or the first
train, into New York. I've just had word from the Air Ministry in
Washington that there is space for you on the British Airways
plane leaving at midnight tomorrow. You're on your way."

After weeks of more or less patient waiting, repeated timid,
pleading, urgent, and finally importunate requests to the
authorities who rule such matters in Washington and London, and a
rapid-fire barrage of telegrams, cables, and telephone calls, it
had happened. At last I had permission to do what I had been
wanting desperately to do for four years--go to England and do my
bit on a tour for E.N.S.A. Though no one knew just when, everyone
was aware that the invasion of Europe was imminent. More than
anything in the world I wanted the opportunity to entertain the
British and American troops who would soon be fighting in France.

Basil Dean, founder and director of E.N.S.A.--the British
equivalent of the U.S.O.--had cabled, asking me to come; but
getting a priority to make the crossing and getting a place
aboard a plane had taken a lot of wire-pulling at the American
end. Now, I was really on my way home to London which I had not
seen in six years. I would see my old friends, or at least those
who remained of that gay company after the Battle of
Britain--those who weren't fighting in Italy or the Near and Far
East, or on any one of the seven seas.

And I might see Richard.

That thought brought me out of bed and under the shower in one
swift leap. From then on the next two days were one mad rush,
winding up with the final leap to the airport.

And now here I was, ready to board the big airliner for the hop
to Newfoundland. I caught my breath, and did my best to imitate
the casual-almost-to-the-point-of-boredom air shown by all
members of all the air forces I have ever met when they are about
to take off.

I was assured of passage to Newfoundland, where we were due to
land at 9:00 A.M. the next day. Whether there would be a place
for me in the plane going on from there to Ireland remained
disturbingly uncertain. We all joked about it, standing there
beside the plane. The others were sure of their passage all the
way to England. They were officials or had diplomatic passports
and were bursting with priorities. But I had only a number-three
priority, which guaranteed me nothing much more than leave to
hitch-hike.

Ernest Hemingway was among the favored ones. I met him then for
the first time. There is something about Mr. Hemingway that makes
one think of a small boy--a rather mischievous small boy whose
pockets are full of bits of string, old rusty nails, chewing gum,
and maybe a pet toad or two. A small boy hiding behind a big,
bushy beard. He asked me, grinning:

"Suppose there is no place for you on the plane? What will you
do?"

"Stow away," I retorted, "in your beard!"

This, I found, was Hemingway's first visit to England. How
strange and sad, too, to have one's first glimpse of London in
her grim battle dress.

My first view of Newfoundland, from about five thousand feet, was
of an enormous black-and-brown land splashed with snow, like a
huge chocolate cake with white icing. All around was a calm,
oily, gray sea and, overhead, a beautiful clear, cloudless sky.
We had breakfast in the cabin of the plane before we docked. Then
we went out to breathe the fresh, salty, fishy-smelling air,
stretch our legs, and see the sights. The airport was full of
Canadian, British, and American airmen from the planes which
ferry steadily back and forth across the North Atlantic. You felt
you were getting close to the fighting front, even though several
thousand miles of ocean still stretched between Newfoundland and
Europe. Here, everyone was engaged, in one way or another, in
getting on with the war. The little town was crowded. People
spoke matter-of-factly about hopping from continent to continent.

Recalling letters from England and tales of food shortages over
there, I did some prudent shopping and emerged triumphantly with
a watch, which I had forgotten to get in New York, two pounds of
butter, and a dozen eggs. I tried to buy some lemons, which I
knew were regarded in England as extinct, but they were extinct
that day in Newfoundland also.

The local paper announced that the Germans were retreating in
Italy. Good! The invasion of Europe was believed to be very near
now. And it was reported that Roosevelt would run again. I wished
my chances of holding my seat (in the plane) were as good as his.

After lunch and the arrival of the Pan-American Clipper, bringing
more passengers bound for England, I was assured there was a
place for me on the plane leaving at one-fifteen. I told Ernest
Hemingway:

"Your beard is now safe from British invasion."

For the next eighteen hours, during eight of which I slept
soundly, we flew so high, sometimes at an altitude of eight
thousand feet, that there was nothing to see but clouds. How
strange was the knowledge that far below was the stretch of
tossing gray ocean I had crossed so many times since my first
trip to America in 1924, when I came over with the cast of
_Charlot's Revue_. Strange to think that, far below us, the
American and British navies were patrolling those same waters to
protect the convoys of transports and freighters which were
plying back and forth with men and war matériel.

Just after daylight we had our first glimpse of Ireland--lush
green fields and the heather-colored mountains of Connemara with
the morning mists curling from their crests like ostrich
feathers. Disturbingly peaceful it seemed after the warlike
atmosphere one felt in Newfoundland. Fat white sheep grazed
placidly in the fields that bordered the road by which we motored
from Limerick. Several times our car slowed down to clear the
road for the herds of young beef cattle, bound (as I hoped)
eventually for England. Every letter I had had from friends at
home had spoken wistfully of the past days of plenty. Though none
of the writers complained, you read between the lines the same
longing you see in children's faces pressed against a sweetshop
window.

We took off again late that afternoon and put down at Croydon
about seven o'clock. The skipper, who had promised me lunch in
London that day, was only five hours out on his calculation.

Flying across southern England, I wondered where Richard was and
how soon I might see him. After all, I couldn't expect the
American Navy to adjust its plans to allow one of its lieutenant
commanders to be at Croydon to meet his wife. But, being a woman,
I couldn't help wishing.

In the excitement of actually recognizing the big, familiar field
just below us, I bounced in my seat--and promptly broke two of
the precious eggs in my lap.

"My God, woman," said Hemingway, helping me clean up the mess,
"what are you going to do _now?_"

"Fortunately, I'm the same shape front and back," I told him. I
jerked my tweed skirt around so that the egg stain was behind me,
buttoned my fur coat, and assured myself, as I tripped down the
gangplank, that I was making as neat an entrance as any in my
career.

It was eight o'clock, the dinner hour, when I drove up to the
dear familiar Savoy. It was not yet dark, just the beloved
twilight, yet London's streets were strangely quiet and free of
traffic. There were great gaps in the familiar skyline and piles
of rubble along the streets we drove through. All the way over I
had been steeling myself for this, my first view of bombed
London. I knew it was going to be hard to take. There was bound
to be that wrenching struggle between the impulse to cry out and
the feeling that one simply dared not give way to one's feelings.
London is my home town. I was born there in Kennington Oval. I
grew up within the sound of Bow Bells. I spoke with a cockney
accent until I was eleven or thereabouts, when Miss Italia Conti
scolded and drilled me out of it. In London I have been by turns
poor and rich, hopeful and despondent, successful and down and
out, utterly miserable and ecstatically, dizzily happy. I belong
to London as each of us can belong to only one place on this
earth. And, in the same way, London belongs to me.

The windows of my room at the Savoy looked out over the Thames
Embankment. After a solitary dinner, as I stood there looking
down, I had my first sharp realization of what war had done to my
town. An impenetrable black curtain seemed to have fallen between
me and the city. The enveloping blackness in which the stars
seemed unreally bright and near and the unusual, wary, listening
stillness were more impressive at that moment than the
destruction wrought by the bombs. They filled me with a swift,
blinding fury against the enemy who could muffle the voice and
force of the greatest and most tolerant city in the world.
Suddenly the silence overhead was cut by the whir of flying
planes. They were our bombers starting out for targets across the
Channel. The sound carried me back to World War I, when we used
to be glad of nights such as this, when there was no moon to
guide the Zeppelins up the winding Thames to drop their death
freight on us.

On such a night...

Suddenly, as against a black-velvet backdrop, the past came back
to me, and I saw myself as a little girl, dancing on a sidewalk
in Clapham....


Clapham is not the least desirable of London's many widely
sprawled districts. Clapham is "genteel." Dwellers in other
suburban districts of London speak enviously of their better-off
cousins and in-laws who are privileged to live in Clapham, London
S.W. For them--and they include thousands of tried-and-true
Londoners--Clapham is something to aspire to.

Residents of Clapham speak of these less-favored boroughs with no
more than the faintest tinge of superiority. For if there is one
thing which every true Claphamite knows and will swear to, it is
that employment is full of uncertainties and life is a matter of
ups and downs. His attitude toward the dwellers in the East End
is that of the humble apostle; but for the grace of God, there go I.

Clapham has its own code, its own proper pride, and its own
firmly rooted conventions. For one thing, it is very bad form,
indeed, to ask questions. Of course you can't help being aware of
certain facts about your neighbors: the hours they keep, who is
in or out of work, whose husband spends more of his free time at
the corner pub than he spends with his family, and what they buy
at the butcher's and greengrocer's. Good form, however, demands a
pretense that you know none of these things. If one of your
neighbors suddenly disappears overnight, bag and baggage, you are
properly surprised about it the next morning, even though you did
hear the bailiff's voice in the hall and the stamping made by the
men from the hire-purchase company as they carried out the
furniture.

If you were brought up in Clapham, as I was, you don't have to be
informed of these nice points of etiquette. You grow up knowing
them. "Don't be nosy," Mother would say. And Dad would add: "It
doesn't pay to see everything, my girl."

Mother hadn't always lived in Clapham, and Kennington Oval was a
step down for her. Her father had been a master builder--a man of
substance in his own line, whose fortune, however, had been lost
in "gilt-edged" securities. Granny still lived in the same house
to which she had moved as a young bride, where her children were
born, and where, she stoutly affirmed, she intended, "God
willing, my dear," to die. Mother had taken the step down when
she allowed the unexplained romantic streak in her nature to make
her deaf to the dictates of her class. Following that
will-o'-the-wisp, she married for love with a blind disregard for
economic security--married, of all things, a theatrical! And a
foreigner at that. Even though he had come to England at the age
of two, he was a Dane whose professional name was Arthur
Lawrence. He sang in a deep, rich basso profundo, and with a
dramatic fervor that went down very well with audiences at
smoking concerts and in the smaller music halls. He rendered such
favorites as "Old Black Joe" and "Asleep in the Deep." His
"Drinking Song" was famous throughout Brixton and Shepherd's
Bush. Alas!

Mother had been very carefully brought up. "All the time your
father courted me we never once were out together after ten
o'clock. I'm sure I don't know what your grandfather would have
said if I had not been home and on my way to bed when the clock
struck that hour."

So much decorum must have been a great strain on my father,
accustomed as he was to the hours kept by the profession. Perhaps
something in his Danish nature responded to this strict
middle-class propriety. His family, the Klasens, were a solid,
respectable lot--and he was the only one of them with a taste for
anything so Bohemian as the stage.

Mother's family shook their heads over the future of such a
marriage, and they were quite right about it. My father liked his
glass, and an evening dedicated to bass solos gives a man a
thirst. He was--as I was to learn--one of those whose personality
was completely altered by alcohol. His gaiety, his charm, his
blond good looks disappeared. He became ugly in disposition and
demeanor. Mother left him soon after I was born. I grew up with
no memories and no knowledge of him. But I adored Dad, my
stepfather.

No wonder Granny shook her head over Mother, who just couldn't
seem to learn about men. Mother chose her two husbands for their
charm, not for their ability to provide. Father had always been
able to sing for our supper, but Dad was always promising to
provide handsomely. "Wait," he would say to us. "Just let me back
a winner...." When he did, we would celebrate with a slap-up
feast--boiled salmon, or a bird, toasted cheese, and a side dish
of prawns. And, occasionally, asparagus. The first time we had
this delicacy, I remember, Mother cut off all the green tips and
boiled the white stalks.

Gertrude Alexandra Dagmar Lawrence Klasen--little Gertie Lawrence
to you--was quite satisfied with Kennington Oval. For one thing,
the organ-grinder came there frequently and would pause and grind
out a tune on each side of the Oval, which gave the residents a
fair-sized concert. I never could resist him, nor could I learn
to be a proper child and satisfy myself with opening the window a
crack to let the music come into the room.

"Where is that child?" Mother would ask. One look from the window
was enough. There I was, following the music, holding out my
brief skirts and dancing to what I hoped was the admiration of
the neighbors.

Nobody that I know of had taught me to dance. The steps just
seemed to come to me the minute my ears caught the music. But
Mother loved "musical evenings," and my first song, learned from
a sheet of free music cut from a newspaper, went like this:

   _Oh, it ain't all honey, and it ain't all jam,
   Walking round the 'ouses with a three-wheel pram, 
   All on me lonesome, not a bit to eat, 
   Walking about on me poor old feet. 
   My old man, if I could find 'im, 
   A lesson I would give.
   Poor old me, I 'aven't got a key, 
   And I don't know where I live._
   Boom! Boom!

Whenever we had company, on a Sunday night, I would be made to
oblige with a song. "Gertie's such a funny one!" Dad would puff
out his chest, proud of my accomplishment.

"Fancy! A child her age singing songs like that!"

"Whatever will she do next? She ought to go on the stage. She's
got it in her."

That song brought me the first money I ever earned. The summer I
was six Dad must have had a streak of unusual good luck with the
horses because he took Mother and me to Bognor Regis for the bank
holiday. It was boiling hot, I remember, and the sands were
crowded. I had never been to the sea before; the bathers, the
picnic parties on the sand, the strollers along the Front
fascinated me. A concert party was entertaining, and Dad paid for
us to go in. At the close of the regular bill the "funny man"
came forward and invited anyone in the audience who cared to, to
come up on the stage and entertain the crowd. A push from Mother
and the command: "Go on now, Gertie, and sing your song," was all
the urging I needed. "_It ain't all honey, and it ain't all
jam,_" I caroled lightly, twirling on my toes with my skimpy
pink frock held out as far as it would stretch. The applause and
the cheers were gratifying, even without the large golden
sovereign which the manager presented to me after a little
speech.

I know I must have told this story to Noel Coward. No doubt I
boasted of it when we were both pupils at Miss Conti's dancing
school. The incident may have given him the idea for one of the
scenes in _Cavalcade_. In fact, when I saw the play, there was
something so familiar about that little girl doing her song and
dance on the Brighton sands, the little girl who grew up to be an
actress, that I felt a rush of tears and a choke in my throat.
She made me remember, suddenly, so many things I thought I had
forgotten.

One other thing makes that holiday at Bognor Regis stand out in
my mind. We were living in lodgings, of course. Late one Sunday
afternoon Mother told Dad to take me for a walk along the Front
while she got our supper ready. Dad and I walked about for a bit,
enjoying the crowds; then I noticed that his steps began to drag
and he began to cast longing eyes at the saloon doors from which,
now that they were open again, came the cool, sour smell of beer.
Finally, he could stand it no longer.

"Sit down on that bench, Gertie," he said. "You can have a nice
look at the sea and the people going by. Be a good girl, now, and
don't move until I come back for you."

I watched him disappear in the direction of the nearest bar. I
was not disconcerted. Obediently I sat on the bench, swinging my
legs and enjoying my freedom. Even more than the sea and the
crowd, I was interested in a stand where a sign announced
bicycles for hire. That drew me as inevitably as the saloon had
drawn Dad.

"How much does it cost to hire a bike?" I asked the attendant

"Sixpence an hour, my dear."

I felt around in my coat pocket and produced the coin. The
attendant looked at me a bit doubtfully, but the sixpence was
real enough and there in the rack was a bike just my size. He
took it out and lifted me up on the saddle.

"That will do you a fair treat," he said. "Now be sure you bring
it back in an hour." He turned away to wait on another customer.

I wheeled the machine proudly across the Front and down a street
into a crescent where the railings in front of the houses gave me
something to hold onto. I had never been on a cycle before, but I
had no doubt of my ability to ride one. I leaned it against the
railing, paying no attention to the sign which read, "Fresh
Paint," mounted it, and, holding onto the railing with one hand,
managed to pedal around the crescent. It was thrilling, like
riding a circus horse around the ring, and there was always the
possibility that the people were watching me from the windows of
the houses. I fell off several times, skinned my knee, and got
the front of my frock grubby while the side toward the railings
became ornamented with stripes of green paint, but I kept at it,
getting better with each lap. I had forgotten Dad and Mother,
even the admonition of the attendant at the bicycle stand to be
back within an hour.

It was getting dusk before Dad found me, a frantic, red-faced,
frightened Dad, who had already spent some time running up and
down the Front calling, "Gertie! Gertie!" and demanding of
everyone, "Have you seen my little girl anywhere about?"

His relief at sight of me was immediately transformed into anger
for the fright I had caused him. "Now, then, whatever have you
been up to? You'd ought to be ashamed of yourself running off
like that! Such a fright you've given me! Whatever would I have
said to your mother? She won't half give you a piece of her mind
when she sees what you've done to your frock! And it's your poor
dad will get the worst of it."

He went on, muttering and scolding, all the way back to the
bicycle stand where he paid the attendant for the over-time. And
still clutching me by the hand, as though afraid I would vanish
again, he hurried me back to our lodgings. We were nearly there
when he stopped, removed his hat, and wiped his brow. Giving me a
long look that immediately established a confidence between us,
he remarked tentatively, "I don't know. How would it be if we
were to take your mother a little gin and bitters to have with
her supper?"

I nodded approval.

"Wait here, then. And none of your vanishing acts, my girl!"

He stepped jauntily into the convenient door of a refreshment
bar. After a few minutes he emerged, wiping his mustache and
looking very much more like himself. He patted one bulging
pocket: "Your mother always did fancy a gin and bitters. Your
mother's a wonderful woman, Gertie. Don't you ever forget it!"

No, I promised myself. Somehow or other I felt that I now had two
allies against Mother's anger when she discovered the state of my
dress. Dad, I felt, would be on my side and could be counted on
to bring up the reinforcements--namely the gin and bitters--at
the psychological moment.

Dad's admiration for Mother was unbounded, and his devotion was
as great as his admiration. Whenever they had a tiff, he would
feel moved to tell me solemnly that it was all his fault. He
appreciated Mother's fine qualities, and he would lecture me on
the subject of showing the same appreciation.

"Mind you always do as your mother tells you to, my girl. Your
mother's a wonderful woman. Just you try to be like her, and you
won't go far wrong."

There was nothing sentimental about Mother, nor about her
determination to bring me up according to her standards. She saw
to it that I came straight home from school each day and that I
did the household tasks that were assigned to me. One of these
was blacking the fire grates. As Mother said, there was something
about a well-blacked grate that gave a room an air. It may be
that this helped her morale and compensated for some of the
instability of her life with Dad. Each of us has some sort of pet
fetish, something we cling to which gives us self-confidence and
power to go on. A neat, well-blacked fireplace was Mother's. If
she had blacked the grates herself, she would have missed the
satisfaction of feeling that she was bringing up her daughter in
the proper tradition. So I blacked the grates each day. And on
Saturdays I did the brass and helped in general.

It was not sentimentality but a fierce pride for herself and for
Dad that made Mother put me into ruffled frocks which were a
bother to make and to wash and iron. And what a nuisance they
were for me to keep clean! It seemed as though some mischievous
fate led me into trouble as soon as I was sent out, freshly
bathed and dressed, with strict orders to "walk around the pond
and try to act like a lady." It wasn't that I deliberately tried
to misbehave, but that life would not let me follow Mother's
command. It would hold out some other inducement to me, something
I could not refuse. Before I knew it I would be engaged in
sailing boats on the pond, getting wetter and muddier every
minute, or making friends with some stray mongrel puppy whose
playful paws had no regard for my starched ruffles.

"Why can't you be like your cousin Ruby!" Mother would scold.

My cousin was all that I was not--she was a plump, pretty, neat
child with curls hanging to her waist; my hair was lank and as
straight as a die. My cousin Ruby was always spotless and without
a wrinkle. Her nails were clean. She was the pride of the family,
and she knew it. Her father, my mother's brother, was in charge
of the Royal Stables at Buckingham Palace, which gave Ruby a
prestige. "Just look at your cousin," Mother would say. "She is
such a credit to her parents, it's a pleasure to watch her come
into a room. Here I spend hours on making you look nice and it
lasts until you're out of sight. I declare, Gertie, you've got
the very devil in you."


I think Mother always regretted losing the world in which she had
lived briefly with my father--the world of the theater. In a
slightly discolored mother-of-pearl card case she treasured a
number of visiting cards of actresses she had known in those
days. Sometimes, as a treat, she would let me play with them. I
would pull a card out of the case, read the name aloud, and she
would immediately launch into the story of how she and the owner
of the card met and where, what her specialty was, and Mother's
own opinion of how good she was at it. This parlor game gave me
my first inside information on the theatrical profession. One of
the things I learned was that Friday was "professional night" at
most of the theaters. On Friday night it was usual to admit
members of the profession free. By the time I was eight or nine,
I had learned the trick of writing neatly across the face of any
one of the cards, "Please give my little girl two seats." If
Mother was out that evening, I would take the card, call for one
of my little girl friends, and together we would take the tram to
Brixton or any near-by district where there was a theater. I
would present myself and my card at the box office. The man would
look through the wicket at me a little doubtfully, whereupon I
would put on my most innocent and pleading look. Usually someone
hanging about would say: "Oh, give the kids a couple of seats."
We would skip in and find places in the gallery.

After the show we would take the tram home, hoping desperately to
get there before our mothers found us out. Once, I remember,
either the tram was delayed or Mother came home from Granny's
earlier than usual. She found the other little girl's mother
hammering at our door.

"Your Gertie came and took my Mabel!" she cried. 

"They're not back yet."

Mother did not put off whipping me to ask too many questions.
After the punishment, she began to inquire into our evening. What
shocked her most of all was our riding to and from Brixton on the
tram.

"Did you speak to anyone?" she demanded.

"A gentleman spoke to me."

"How do you know he was a gentleman?" Mother asked suspiciously.

"Because he was wearing a gold watch and chain!" 

Strangely, this seemed to satisfy her as completely as it had
satisfied me.

The rooms on Kennington Oval marked the high tide of our
finances. We lived there only as long as luck was with Dad. Then
we moved, as we frequently did. There was a regular ritual
connected with these movings which varied only as we moved up or
down in the economic scale. If the move was occasioned by good
fortune, Mother added a piano to the furniture she ordered sent
around to the new address. There was something undeniably genteel
about a piano in the house, even if no one could play it.

If the move was in the other direction, a van drove up and men
smelling of sawdust and beer carried away the piano and the rest
of the furniture which we had on the hire-purchase plan. They
were quite impersonal about it; they gave you to understand that
their orders to take away the tables and chairs and the sideboard
with the mirror at the back came from the company. Mother was
always on her dignity with them. She refused to be commiserated
with. In her own way she contrived to imply a disdain for the
household chattels over which there was such an unaccountable
to-do. The impersonal air with which she watched the men from the
Hire Furniture Company stagger down the front steps under the
pseudo-Jacobean fumed-oak dresser was a triumph of dramatic
genius. As the rooms became emptier, you felt that Mother was
merely clearing her decks for bolder action, and that when we had
furniture again, it would be on a nobler, more elegant scale.

Meanwhile Dad would have slipped 'round the corner and entered
into negotiations with the neighborhood greengrocer whose account
had been paid up and whose friendship could therefore be relied
upon. Not until after dark, when there would be no prying eyes,
would Mother take down the window curtains and pack the few
possessions rightfully our own and which remained constant
through all the changes for better or for worse--the bedding,
though not the beds, the kitchen pots and pans, the square black
marble-and-gilt clock with the figure of Britannia resting on her
shield staring pensively at a beast which resembled a poodle more
than a lion, the pair of gaily-flowered Royal Worcester vases
which always flanked the clock above every hearth we gathered
round, and a red glass mug engraved with the date of Queen
Victoria's Jubilee.

Close on to midnight the grocer's boy would arrive with his cart.
Dad would tiptoe down the stairs with the parcels and baskets and
pile them on the cart while the boy leaned against the railing
and kept a lookout for "Nosy Parkers." In all this there was
nothing original; we were merely following a tradition long
recognized in Clapham and in other less-favored districts. This
maneuver was known in the vernacular as a "moonlight flit."
Obviously, it was a move to cheaper lodgings in another district
where we and our straitened circumstances were as yet unknown.
Also, obviously, it was without the landlord's knowledge.

There must have been families whose moonlight flits were sad and
shamefaced. Not ours. There was something daring and whimsical
about this sort of move which challenged all that was adventurous
in our three natures. Each of us responded to the challenge
differently; each in his own way.

Mother always dressed up to the nines for the occasion. She would
skewer her largest birded hat atop her puffs, twine a marabou boa
elegantly about her neck, and draw on a pair of long, worn, but
carefully mended gray gloves. Catching up her skirt with one hand
and carrying the tea-kettle
 in the other, she would sweep down the stairs with a dignity
calculated to overpower any lurking landlord.

In Dad, jauntiness rose over dignity. He would cock his bowler at
an angle, and thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat, he would
chaff the grocer's boy, making him a partner in the adventure.

At a signal from Dad the boy would push off with his cart, Dad
would gallantly offer Mother his arm, and they would follow. I
would bring up the rear of the little procession. So we moved
through Clapham's silent streets, pioneers setting forth into the
unknown to start a new home in a new and untried land. The
adventure tingled in my toes. Where the moon or a street lamp
splashed the pavement with light, my feet would begin to
dance....




2


The sun was shining when I opened my eyes on my first morning
glimpse of London. Immediately things began to happen. Phones
rang, flowers arrived, photographers snapped cameras at me, and
the press began asking how it felt to be home again after six
years "in the States."

I could tell them in one word: wonderful.

All that day and through the week that followed, lunching,
teaing, and dining with old friends, applying to the proper
bureaus for ration cards, gas mask, tin hat (quite fetching when
worn at just the right tilt), and a National Service Permit to
enter restricted areas, I was discovering and making acquaintance
with a London that was strange to me.

I thought I knew London in every possible mood--gay and handsome
and smart and ceremonious as she was during the coronation summer
of 1937--I was there for that brilliant high tide of midsummer
pomp. Officially I was "resting" while Rachel Crothers rewrote
and polished _Susan and God_. Actually, I was entertaining
myself and being entertained by the gayest season London had had
in many years and the last she was to see for a long time to
come. During those weeks, when the old city was washed and
brushed and bedecked, like a doting grandmother for the marriage
of a favorite grandson, all of us drank deep of our pleasure.
Perhaps we had a premonition of what lay just ahead. Anyway, that
London of 1937 came the closest to Edwardian London of any other
season since World War I.

Sometime before I was there playing in _Tonight at 8:30_. All
that season there was a hush over England; people spoke softly,
nobody made plans. Everyone waited for the bulletins which gave
us news of the King's condition. You felt the imminent passing of
an era. I had a small radio in my dressing room at the theater
and would turn it on between acts to pick up the news from the
B.B.C. The news, to everyone in England that year, meant one
thing--news of the King.

One night when we knew the King was very low, Douglas Fairbanks,
Jr., was in my dressing room waiting for the final curtain. When
I came off the stage and into the dressing room, the radio was
tuned in and I didn't need to ask questions. Douglas' face told
me that the last bulletin had not held out much hope. Very
quickly I changed, and Douglas and I took a taxi to Buckingham
Palace. It was impossible to get close, because the Mall and all
the wide space in front of the gates were crowded. Thousands of
Londoners and people up from the country were packed shoulder to
shoulder in a silent, motionless mass. We joined the others and
waited.

I remember seeing Claire Luce, in a bright scarlet coat, wedged
into the crowd. She was then playing in _Gay Deceivers_,
 and she had come just as she stepped off the stage, even with
her make-up on.

There was nothing one could do, but somehow there was no other
place one wanted to be at that moment. Every quarter of an hour
or so someone came out of the palace and posted a new bulletin on
the board fastened to the gates. Then the whole crowd moved
forward as one man. The two or three in a position to read the
typewritten notice passed the word back. The message rippled
through the crowd: "The King is sinking." I held on very tight to
Douglas' arm and he to mine. We were rumored as being engaged,
but just then and there personal relationships did not count for
much.

Presently a new notice was put on the board. Again that urgent
sweep forward of the crowd, like the tide pushing its way into a
cove. But this time there was no ripple or whisper. Silently
those in the front rank stepped back and removed their hats; then
from the crowd as from one man there rose a single sigh.

We were wedged too close to turn. I was squeezed between Douglas
and another very tall young man. I saw him sweep off his hat.
There were tears running down his cheeks.

"Well, I guess that's that," he said. His voice told me he was an
American.

The words wrote an end to a chapter.


The big event of my first day was getting in touch with Richard.
He phoned he could get leave and asked me to come down and meet
him at his base the next day, which was Saturday. We arranged
that I would take the nine-thirty train from Waterloo. I arrived
at the station a good half-hour beforehand only to be told the
train had been canceled in the night. As no one seemed to think
this was unusual, I got the impression that train schedules were
pretty uncertain things even though the traffic was described as
normal. I went back to the hotel and filled in time until I
should start for the next train, which was scheduled to leave at
eleven-thirty. However, I allowed myself plenty of time and took
up my stand at gate No. 10 as the station guard had instructed me
to do. There were so few people standing there I thought I was in
luck, but this optimism was immediately shattered by a voice from
the loudspeaker which announced: "Passengers waiting for the
eleven-thirty to Portsmouth will please join the queues by the
boards marked '5' and '6.'" Before these gates stretched two
apparently endless queues, one made up of servicemen--British,
American, Canadian; the other, of civilians. I added myself to
the tail of the latter queue and waited with what patience I
could muster. Slowly the procession shuffled a few steps nearer
the still-distant gate. I kept my eye on my Newfoundland watch
while my hopes of joining Richard that day evaporated. At
eleven-thirty the voice spoke again: "The eleven-thirty is now
full. The twelve forty-five has been canceled. The next train
leaves at one-thirty."

I dropped out of line and set about planning a campaign. I dashed
back to the near-by Savoy, where I changed into my American Red
Cross uniform; then I returned to Waterloo Station and elbowed my
way into the queue with the armed forces. After standing in line
an hour and a half, I found a place on the one-thirty train.

It was quite an experience, but worth it. Richard met me. After
many months of service overseas, he, apparently, was quite
philosophic about trains which do not run and, when they do,
cannot accommodate all of the passengers. We had a lovely day
together and I returned to London the next morning. I was still
wearing my Red Cross uniform and having lunch in the Savoy Grill
when who should come along but Basil Dean. He stared at me.

"What are you doing in that uniform, Gertie?"

I explained. Whereupon he commanded me to go at once and be
fitted for an E.N.S.A. uniform. Having known Basil since I was a
child when he "managed" me, I meekly obeyed.

At first there seemed to be a great deal of hush-hush about the
unit to which I was to be assigned, where we were to go,
and--most important of all--when we were to start. All I could
find out was that we were headed for an eight-weeks tour of Great
Britain, during which we would be called on to give three shows a
day, with a lot of motoring between shows.

Rehearsals were called in one of the underground cellars of Drury
Lane Theatre, which had been bombed during the blitz, but which
was still the E.N.S.A. headquarters.

At the first rehearsal I learned that ours was to be known as The
Gertrude Lawrence Unit, a tremendous honor and one which made me
feel a bit shy and self-conscious, especially as the others in
the unit had all been together since the opening of E.N.S.A. But
the ice was quickly broken over a couple of beers, and soon
everyone was talking shop as pros do when and wherever they get
together.

The only non-professional among us was Mary Barrett, whose
position in the unit was that of shepherd, manager, confidential
adviser, trouble-shooter, and bodyguard. Surely, that should give
her professional rating. Mary had been Gracie Fields'
secretary-companion when Gracie was in England, and consequently
knew the ropes. She could improvise a costume at the last minute
if the wardrobe trunks failed to turn up. With equal skill and
speed, she could contrive to cook a supper over a gas ring out of
whatever the shops or the rations offered. She had the soothing
tact of a career diplomat and the adroitness of a ward
politician. No one ever heard her grouse or complain of
weariness, lack of sleep, or even the temperament of our
performers.

We put on our first show and a big B.B.C. broadcast at a factory
in Ilford on the outskirts of London for twenty-five hundred
workers. The plant turned out radio parts for planes and was
working at full production speed. The show gave me a chance to
try out some of the songs I had brought over from America, but
while I realized that these factory workers were doing a
tremendously important job, nevertheless it was the troops I had
come over to sing to. I was impatient to start our tour of the
camps.

Meanwhile, during the week of waiting, I was discovering more
things about the British people than I had ever thought about
before.

I heard very little talk about the war. In fact, I rather got the
idea no one was expected to talk about it. Perhaps this was
because everyone--men and women--was doing some sort of war
service. Everybody had to do fire watching on the roofs. Nobody
whined about the servant problem, because there weren't any
servants to whine about. A maid might be allowed to a household
in which a certain number of persons were billeted. Otherwise
people were cooking their own meals and making a practice of
eating out whenever possible. Shopping took endless time. I saw
Londoners of every social class queuing up for hours in front of
the fish shops. The streets were full of bicycles. Everyone
cycled to and from his job. The boots that pressed the pedals
were patched on the soles, but they were well polished. This
meant that the wearer had done the polishing himself. That
below-stairs character so dear to Dickens and to the writers and
illustrators of _Punch_--I mean the British "boots"--had joined
up, or was making munitions.

People looked very fit, especially the women, most of whom were
in some sort of uniform--the WRENS, ATS, Red Cross, et cetera.
Everyone was busy all the time, but there was no rush or
excitement. No one was breathless. You felt that without
deliberate effort or any bravado everyone was carrying on the
accustomed pattern of life as consistently as possible.

London was full of American correspondents. They kept popping up
wherever you went. Allan Michie, who was commissioned to cover
the invasion for the _Reader's Digest_, Liebling of the _New
Yorker_, Hemingway on an assignment for _Collier's_, and
several others I ran into, were fuming because word had gone
around that they would not be allowed to go across with the
British forces. General Eisenhower had apparently given
permission, but some liaison officer on the staff said there was
no room for them, so they were muttering and cursing. I was a
sympathetic listener. I heard many accounts of the early days of
the Battle of Britain. For instance, there was the story that
during the early days of home-guard training the men were given
beer bottles--three apiece--filled with some kind of mild
explosive. With these homemade grenades they were expected to
knock out the German tanks as they advanced up the beaches. These
were like the famous "Molotov Cocktails."

Things were different now. Munitions in more formidable
quantities were being turned out by the war plants for the
invasion of Europe. Ernest Byfield, acting as war correspondent
for the Hearst press, told me it took ten thousand pairs of nylon
stockings to make one towrope for a glider plane, and at least a
thousand gliders are needed for an air-borne invasion. "That
should be broadcast to the black-market shoppers in America and
elsewhere."

I agreed.

"When peace comes, instead of beating swords into plowshares, I
suppose we will convert our towropes into stockings."

"And our tin hats into ash trays," I added.

We laughed about it, but, actually, we had learned the British
way of thinking, which is that, no matter how the war is going,
and in spite of the changes it imposes on everybody, the day will
inevitably come when the established, comfortable, peaceful life,
which every British person considers no more than his due, will
return.

I was made aware of this national psychology the evening I went
to dine with Daisy Neame in Eaton Square. On my way there I
passed a sign which read: "Horse Shelter." That is something I am
sure could exist only in Great Britain. I spoke of it at dinner
and was told that the regulations regarding the treatment of
animals during air raids were very strict. When the alert sounds,
horses must be unharnessed immediately from carts and led to
designated places of shelter before the driver takes cover.

Of course horses are valuable, especially during the shortage of
petrol. Somehow one also feels behind those horse shelters the
sporting instincts of the British, as well as the indomitable
humanitarianism of all those tender-hearted ladies who used to
write letters to the _Times_ regarding the treatment of animals.
It would take a lot more than the German blitz to lessen the
British sense of responsibility toward horses, dogs, cats, birds,
and even donkeys.

The war has altered some aspects of British life unbelievably.
Daisy's door was opened by her husband Lionel. Butlers have
become extinct, even in Eaton Square. Everything was as I
remembered it except for three unusual vehicles standing in the
hall. These were the two bicycles on which Lionel and Daisy pedal
to their respective war jobs. The third was the baby's pram which
Daisy told me she wheeled herself, to give the infant an airing,
when she went out to do the marketing. Another innovation in
Mayfair. The British "nannies" in their correct gray uniforms and
caps with flaring streamers have been blitzed out of London's
life.

When we went in to dinner the table looked just as lovely as
usual. The silver had the wonderful blue sheen that comes only
from frequent vigorous polishings. The damask was lustrous, and
the centerpiece of heavy-headed tulips was like a cluster of
glowing jewels. The men, of course, were in uniform. Daisy and I
wore short black dresses. Yes, it was all almost prewar. But one
thing was missing--there were no servants to wait on us.

When we had finished the first course, "Here we go," said Daisy,
rising and leading the way to the sideboard. She slid back the
shutter of a little window she had had cut in the wall between
the dining room and the service pantry. Daisy went around into
the pantry and received the plates each of us passed to her
through the window; then she handed us plates with the next
course, which we carried back to the table and proceeded to eat
with enjoyment. Daisy had cooked the food herself, and I must say
she had done a very good job.


I found a tremendous interest in America--a genuine curiosity
about what Americans thought, what they were doing, and how they
felt about the British. Everything sent from the U.S.A. had
become extraordinarily valuable and desirable. I don't suppose
that at any time since the reign of James I, when the first
British colonies were established in America, has the world
beyond the Atlantic held out such riches as it does today.

The British are rediscovering America.

Later, thinking over the things I had seen going about London, I
began to ask myself why I took this imperturbability without
surprise. Because I wasn't surprised by it at all. Somehow or
other, deep down in me, was the knowledge that of course these
people would act in exactly this way. What would have surprised
me would have been to find them changing their manner of living,
forsaking their ideals of behavior and their standards of what is
pleasant, enjoyable, and worth while; and doing this at the crack
of Herr Hitler's whip.

Inherently and instinctively I knew these things about the
British people because I had known and loved Granny. Though her
life was lived a very long stone's throw from Mayfair, Granny,
nevertheless, was a perfect personification of the British
character. She represented the backbone of the nation.


"Mark my words, Alice, the child has talent."

Whenever Granny said "mark my words," she became the family
oracle, to be heard and heeded with respect.

She spoke composedly, continuing to rock in her wheel-back
armchair with her feet resting on the brass fender rail, while
her knitting needles clicked without ceasing.

I have no way of knowing just when Granny decided that I was
destined for the theater. She and Grandfather, whom I chiefly
remember because he suffered from a disease called chalky gout,
had strongly disapproved of their daughter Alice's alliance with
the profession. Perhaps they accepted the fact that the offspring
of that unfortunate union was doomed from the moment of
conception, and could not, therefore, be held back from her dark
destiny. At any rate, I never remember Granny putting up any
objections to my frankly expressed ambition to go on the stage.

To tell the truth, she encouraged me. Whenever I stayed with her
we would play theater. The program started with me coming through
the sitting-room door to bow to her as the audience and make my
opening speech which began: "Ladies and gentlemen, I am about to
appear." I would then disappear and get dressed up for the
performance.

During those early years, when our family finances went up and
down with the nervousness of a barometer during a September
equinox, Granny represented security, stability, and assurance,

The stability was to be found in her cozy little sitting room in
Sandmere Road with its crocheted antimacassars on the chairs and
the embroidered lambrequin draped along the mantelshelf. A pair
of china Staffordshire dogs--white with red splotches--stood
guard on either side of the over-mantel mirror.

The large gilt-framed engraving hanging above the horsehair sofa,
showing Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort surrounded by their
progeny, was flanked by a similarly framed engraving of King
Edward and Queen Alexandra. All my life, since those early days
in Granny's sitting room, I have looked upon Queen Victoria as a
most extraordinary woman; one who apparently, without the aid of
hatpins or elastic, could balance a small, teetery crown on top
of her smoothly brushed head at the same time as she dandled an
obese infant on her satin-draped knee.

Granny was a mine of information concerning the Royal Family.
Their births, marriages, coronations, widowings, and deaths
provided her with constant and unlimited romance and drama. The
British Royal Family belonged to her, as if they were a very
superior family of paper dolls. Whenever I went to see Granny, I
would ask her about the different members of the Royal Family,
and she would tell me, confidentially, all the latest goings-on.
I was under the impression that Granny was very much in the know
about whatever happened at Buckingham Palace, Windsor, or
Sandringham which was summed up in the impressive words "at
Court."

A Bible and a worn black leather Book of Common Prayer were
always on the little table beside Granny's bed in her bedroom,
where everything smelled of Pears' Soap and lavender water. These
represented the second article of Granny's faith; for if article
one of her simple creed was her trust in the Crown, article two
was her unquestioned faith in the Church of England.

Granny's respect for these two institutions was founded upon her
equally categorical respect for herself and her class. So long as
she did her duty toward her King on high and toward her King here
below, she had every right to expect State and Church to do their
duty toward her. There was no subservience in Granny's attitude
toward king or bishop. She simply paid them the respect due the
dignity of their positions, and in return she expected the State
to give her security in this life, and the Church to usher her
into a seat on the right hand of the Lord in the next.

Frequently on Sunday evenings I would go to church with her,
carrying her prayerbook and finding the hymns from the numerals
put up on the hymn boards beside the chancel. Granny and I shared
the hymnbook, and our voices--hers still sweet, but a little
husky and sometimes off key, mine higher, steadier, and a
complete imitation of the boys' in the choir--would unite in the
hymns and psalms which we both enjoyed immensely.

Many of the hymns were puzzling to me, and not a few of them
seemed rather nasty with their references to sweat, wounds, and
blood. How amazing that Granny, who had very strict ideas about
what was and what was not nice, could still warble piously:

   _"There is a place where Jesus sheds 
   The oil of gladness on our heads;
   A place than all besides more sweet: 
   It is the blood-bought mercy seat."_

Religion, I thought, was certainly a very rum business. Take the
word "bloody," for instance. What made this word quite proper in
church and unforgivable in ordinary conversation?

Sometimes when Granny's rheumatism got the better of her piety,
she would send me to church as her representative. Then I would
be entrusted with the prayerbook and a sixpence for the
offertory, tucked into the palm of my white cotton glove.

When I returned, Granny would ask expectantly: "Well, my dear,
what was the sermon like? And what was the text?"

Following this lead, I would turn a chair around to form a pulpit
and proceed to deliver a digest of the vicar's remarks for her
appreciation. Of course it was necessary to dress up for this in
Grandfather's coat and one of his collars, both worn back to
front to give me a clerical look. I must say I think I did the
part of the reverend gentleman rather well, though I improved on
his gestures and dramatized his style of delivery. Keeping in
character, I would sing the hymns for Granny--not always those
which we had sung at the service, but others which were my
favorites.

After service Granny and I would have a cup of tea, and then,
feeling relaxed and ready for a bit of amusement after all this
edification, she would encourage me to sing for her songs she had
taught me: "The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo," "She's
Only a Bird in a Gilded Cage," and "Champagne Charlie Is Me
Name." For this act Grandfather's coat and collar were
readjusted, his bowler hat and walking stick were produced, and
the show was on.

Granny's frankly expressed preference was for little girls who
were plump and rosy-checked. Tall, thin, sallow children looked
half starved to her, and, therefore, she worried over my natural
gawkiness.

"The child needs fattening up, Alice. Look at her. She's all
legs."

"She's growing fast, Mother. I have to keep letting down the
hems of her dresses until there is no more stuff to let out."

Granny sniffed. "It's the Danish blood, I expect. The Danish
princes are all over six feet. And Her Majesty is extremely tall;
though a fine figure of a woman, of course."

I preened to this. "Her Majesty" meant Queen Alexandra. I felt I
had a special share in Her Majesty, who had come from Denmark, my
father's country, and after whom I had been named.

Granny's next remark, however, dashed my self-esteem. "She's
sallow too. I never did like a puny child. Some Scott's Emulsion
would do her good. Mark my words, Alice, you'd do well to get a
bottle and give her a spoonful night and morning."

"Very well, Mother. If you think so."

I loathed Scott's Emulsion, I gagged over each spoonful of the
beastly stuff; but I knew better than to rebel. I had heard
Granny's orders. So I was brought up on Scott's Emulsion to
fatten me up, camphorated oil for my constant chest colds, and
Parrish's Chemical Food, which was supposed to be a tonic. But I
was no advertisement for all or any of these remedies, and Granny
would sigh:

"Well, Gertie, I suppose you are just one of Pharaoh's lean
kine."

Out of love, she made it sound like a compliment. Not to worry
her, I submitted to Mother's habit of pinching my cheeks to make
them look rosy whenever we approached Granny's doorstep. I even
resorted to the trick of pinching my own cheeks when alone on her
doorstep, waiting for her to let me in.

The popular taste was still for buxom beauties. His Majesty King
Edward could 'ave 'is Jersey Lily; the British workingman
preferred a nice generous armful.

The winter I was ten, and at a time when our finances hit rock
bottom, Mother got herself a job in the chorus in a Christmas
production of _Babes in the Wood_ at the Brixton Theatre. The
casting director studied her pleasing curves, listened to her
voice, which was a very good soprano, and for once did not ask
her to lift her long skirts to show her legs. This was fortunate,
for though Mother had pretty ankles, the rest of her below the
waist seemed to have no relation to the part of her above the
waist. However, she had no false notions about her shape, and she
had a very practical mind.

Having signed the contract, she came home with the flesh-colored
tights supplied by the wardrobe mistress. Putting them on, she
instructed me how to pad the legs of this garment with cotton
wool to give her the much-desired and seductively rounded thighs
which she unfortunately lacked. Of course it was possible to buy
tights thus treated. These were called symmetricals. But they
were very expensive, consequently necessity drove us to make ours
at home.

Mother would stand on a chair in front of a mirror and direct me
as I poked the wads of cotton down inside the silk tights. It was
a long and tedious job, because the padding had to be sewn in
smoothly so that it would not be detected.

Though I was only ten, I understood very clearly that her job in
the chorus and the thirty shillings she was to get each week
meant bread and groceries and coal and gaslight for us at home. I
was well aware that it was up to me to make those legs satisfy
the theater patrons and the eagle eye of the manager.

That is how I learned at a still tender age that frequently a
woman's legs (and not her face) are her fortune.




3


Finally, after a week of waiting and rehearsals, our unit got its
orders to leave for Southampton.

There were eighteen of us, and we traveled in three cars--one
large bus, one van for equipment, and a car for Mary, Stanley
Kilbourn, my pianist, and me, with our driver.

Our first concert was aboard H.M.S. _Collingwood_. We had a
great crowd--about thirty-five hundred enlisted personnel, WRENS,
officers, the commodore, and his wife.

During my week of waiting in London I had been required to submit
to the official censor the songs I had brought over from America
to sing to the boys. Two of the songs were rated "not quite
suitable for the B.B.C.," but they were finally passed as O.K.
for the servicemen.

The songs I worked over and which I sang at that first concert
were "A Lovely Way to Spend an Evening," which was one of Frank
Sinatra's successes; Gertrude Niesen's song "I Wanna Get Married"
from _Follow the Girls_, and "A Guy Named Joe." I also had the
saga of an air-raid-shelter romance, entitled "'E Vanished When
the All-Clear Came." The last two numbers were written especially
for me by two American boys, Bus Davis and Jim Carhart.

The most delightful surprise of the concert aboard H.M.S.
_Collingwood_ was finding Richard seated in the front row. He
had got leave for a couple of hours. There wasn't even time
enough for him to take me back to the hotel in Portsmouth where
Mary Barrett and I had been billeted; he had to return to his
base. But even that glimpse of him was wonderful. It set me up no
end.

I had just got into bed and was feeling terribly grateful for it
after a long, hot, tiring, but exciting day.

"Good night, Mary. Have a nice, long, restful night."

"Good night," came Mary's voice from the other room, and, almost
like a punctuation to that response, the sudden shriek of the
sirens.

They were coming.

I sat up in bed in the dark and waited for the sound of the guns
which would tell us the Germans were overhead. I shivered--not, I
hoped, from fear, but from the suspense of waiting. I was under
no misapprehension as to the amount of damage the raiders had
done and could do to a town like Portsmouth. I had seen it with
my own eyes.

Presently the guns started. It was strange to sit there in bed in
the midst of my first real war experience. Between the enemy
bombs and our own guns Portsmouth was actually the front. Yet in
the street below people were calmly walking to air-raid shelters.
One man went by whistling: "I Dream of Jeanie with the Light
Brown Hair."

The "all clear" came after about an hour, and I dropped off to
sleep. The next thing I knew Mary Barrett was shaking me awake.
The guns were going like mad again. We sat and waited. Nothing
happened; so Mary curled up on the foot of my bed and we dozed
off until all at once the rocket gun on the sea front went off.
We both shot up and out of the bed, grabbed our papers, and
prepared to dash out of the hotel if the hotel people notified us
to do so. We had been told the rocket guns were not fired unless
the enemy was overhead and flying low. They are precision guns
and fire directly on the target; but, although they are very
powerful, they apparently haven't a very long range. The noise
they made was incredible; as if Jerry were dropping blockbusters.
I really thought we had been hit, and my reaction--born of
nerves--was to get the giggles!

Mary had been through it all many times over, on all the war
fronts. She said the thing to do was to stay there in the room
unless someone came and yanked us out. The only one who did turn
up was Stanley, who came running down the corridor to see if we
were all right. Stanley had been bombed out of four different
homes during the blitz, and, as he put it, he was "fed oop with
it all."

They chased Jerry out to sea about 2:30 A.M., then the "all
clear" sounded, and we went back to bed and to sleep.


Next day Richard rang up to find out how I felt about it all. Now
I could speak as a war veteran and I told him rather loftily that
it felt better than being three thousand miles away, getting the
news over the radio, and wondering where and how _he_ was.

I saw some of the night's damage that day and the next, during
which our unit covered the entire Southampton area. There was a
new and very nasty hole in the side of the building next to our
hotel.

Every noon we put on the show at a plane factory or a shipyard or
in a hangar for the workers, and at night we gave concerts at the
camps. At the Civic Theatre in Southampton we played to some
eight thousand men and women, representing all the Allied nations
and all branches of the service, and from there we went on to
give a show under canvas--and in a pouring rain--at camp C. 22
for two thousand American and British Rangers.

The whole area was feeling the suspense of approaching D-Day. No
one, of course, would, or could, say when that would be, but the
bases and the men were being "sealed." Driving home from a secret
concert at Broderick for Americans and British about to leave, we
passed thousands of "ducks" all lined up along the road to
Southampton, ready to pull out at dawn for somewhere.

At the end of the show at C. 22, our manager, Norman Adams,
called me aside and told me orders had just come through that our
unit was to return to London immediately. In fact, he said, our
show that night, which had gone particularly well, had almost
been canceled in the middle of the bill. It seems that word had
come through that the entire post was to be "sealed" and all
E.N.S.A. units would have to evacuate or be sealed in until after
D-Day for security reasons.

After swearing me to secrecy, Adams collected the whole unit and
led us all to the officers' mess for refreshments. The mess was
just a tent with a trestle table, but they put on quite a good
meal for us, and the refreshment was good old bathtub gin with
the kick of a bronco. As we laughed and joked, I wondered whether
the fellows knew that I knew this was to be their last party for
a long, long time. No mention was made of their departure, but as
they crowded around our cars and shouted and waved to us as we
drove away into the darkness back to London, I had the horrid
feeling we were deserting them.

On arriving in London we were immediately re-routed to another
coastal area. It turned out to be Brighton.

My orders came through to be ready to start on the morning of
June 5. After leaving the Savoy, we drove through the districts
of London that were home to me as a child--past Kennington Oval,
past the "Horns Hotel" where my father had sung at smoking
concerts for a guinea a night, past the Brixton Theatre where I
made my stage debut at the age of ten for the magnificent sum of
six shillings per week in that same Christmas play in which
Mother had worn her homemade symmetricals.

The manager wanted a child who could sing and dance with nine
others in a troupe, and one who could be trusted to be on time
for the show and not get into mischief. Mother promised she would
take care of all that, and I was taken on.

We children were little robin redbreasts in the forest ballet
when the "Babes" got lost in the wood. Dressed in brown tights,
very wrinkled at the knees, our skinny bodies clad in musty
feathers and with hats which had beaks in front, we covered the
two unfortunate children with artificial leaves to keep them from
the cold until they were rescued by Robin Hood and his Merry Men.
Mother was one of the Merry Men! I can remember to this day the
song which Robin Hood sang in this scene. The chorus went like
this:

   _There's a little green patch at the top of the hill, 
   Climb, boys, climb.
   And it's there we can rest at our pleasure and will 
   Climb, boys, climb.
   Though the way be dreary and your heart be weary, 
   It will all come right in time.
   There's a little green patch at the top of the hill, 
   So climb, boys, climb.

This was sung with great gusto, accompanied by the marching up
and down and suitable gestures and hearty thigh slappings of
Mother and the seven other Merry Men.

At this time Mother had a friend, who was a friend of the mother
of Ivy Shilling who played Alice when Lewis Carroll's immortal
story was dramatized for a Christmas production. I was taken to
see the play. We sat in a box, which was the first time in my
life I ever enjoyed such prominence. I watched every move, every
gesture of Alice's, and my envy of Ivy Shilling gave me no rest
until I nagged Mother into taking me to Miss Conti's dancing
school, at which she was a pupil.

Miss Italia Conti held a unique place in the world of the British
theater. She had a basement studio just off Great Portland Street
where the boys and girls she accepted as pupils practiced dance
steps, did acrobatic exercises on the horizontal bar, and were
taught elocution and the rudiments of the drama. The studio was a
big room lined with mirrors in which you could see yourself from
every angle, and at one end was a small stage with a piano.

Mother had no money to pay for dancing and singing lessons for
me. Dad had suffered a run of bad luck for months, and we had
moved to cheaper and still cheaper lodgings. My education did not
benefit by these flittings about Clapham and Brixton; whenever we
moved into a new district it usually meant my entering a new
school. It also meant finding myself one of a new group of
children, who stood off and eyed me suspiciously.

The boys and girls at Miss Conti's eyed me too. But their glances
were different. They looked at me appraisingly--not for my
clothes or where I lived, but for what I was able to do. Many of
them had been born into theatrical families. All of them aspired
to stardom.

I sang and danced for Miss Conti, and she thought me sufficiently
talented to offer to give me free lessons. On these terms I was
enrolled one afternoon a week for a six weeks' trial period. If I
showed promise, I had the opportunity of staying on as a
pupil-teacher, thereby repaying my tuition.

I am a little hazy about those weeks at Miss Conti's. It was an
entirely new world to me. I am under the impression that Noel
Coward was already a pupil there when I started. If he was not,
he came very soon after, because Noel figures largely in all my
memories of Miss Conti. Anton Dolin joined the school later to
study Shakespeare.

Noel was a thin, unusually shy boy with a slight lisp. He was
studying elocution, acting, and dancing (or should I say
deportment?) and was one of Miss Conti's star pupils. Noel's
people were in a position to give him educational advantages.
They were "comfortably situated."

Noel wasn't snobbish about this; in fact, he and I, who were
about the same age, entered at once into an alliance.

This doesn't mean that Noel wasn't occasionally condescending to
me, but this condescension sprang from a quite natural masculine
impulse to put in her place an irrepressible and very
plain-looking small girl who had the annoying faculty of getting
herself noticed. I could put up with the condescension. What I
could not have endured was to have Noel ignore me.

However, even at the age of eleven I suffered no illusions as to
what constituted the charm I had for Noel Coward. I was the proud
possessor of a bicycle, bought for me from the boy next door by a
friend of Dad's. The bicycle originally had a bar across the
middle, but Mother, ever practical, paid a man to saw this off so
a girl could ride it. However, even she could not alter the
drooping handlebars which showed it was a boy's model. Noel
pointed this out immediately:

"It's quite unsuitable for a girl."

He could not conceal from me the fact that he wanted a bicycle,
which was something his family would not permit him to have.

But Noel had a possession which I secretly coveted--a phonograph
with a large spreading horn. He also owned a stack of records. So
we made a deal. He could ride my bicycle in return for lending me
his phonograph for the same length of time. I imagine that sort
of lend-lease is as good a basis for a lifelong friendship as any
other.

Noel's records greatly increased my acquaintance with the popular
music of the day. They also brought me the beauty of "The Blue
Danube," the sweet rhythm of "Valse Triste," and the sticky
romance of the "Indian Love Lyrics."

So once a week I packed my small attaché case containing my
toe-dancing slippers, my practice clothes, soap and a towel, and
took the bus to Great Portland Street, always in the hope that
Noel would be there.

Miss Conti had undertaken to teach me to dance and to sing, at
least to the extent of fitting me to appear in one of the
Christmas plays. These are a part of the holiday season in
England, and the theater managers always went to Miss Conti for
child actors to play in them. Miss Conti found no fault either
with my leg work or my vocal efforts. But my accent, which was
pure cockney, caused her to wince. One day she led me to the
piano and, after laying a sheet of paper under the strings, she
struck a chord.

"That, my dear Gertrude," she said, "is what your voice sounds
like to me."

My quick ear recognized the similarity between the tinny
vibrations and my own accent. That was my introduction to
phonetics.

I was not good enough to appear in one of the Christmas plays.
However, I was approved for a part in a fairy play called
_Fifinella_, which was put on at the Repertory Theatre in
Liverpool. We were rehearsed in London, under Miss Conti's
careful eye, and then sent up in the care of a matron and her
husband. Estelle Winwood played the beautiful Fairy Queen, but
she made little impression on me because I had eyes only for the
Prince in his scarlet tights and doublet. This fascinating hero
was played by Eric Blore. I thought him wonderful. And obviously
no one had found it necessary to pad _his_ tights with cotton
wool.

The first time Noel and I appeared together was in a German
morality play, _Hannela_, put on at Manchester, under the
direction of Mr. Basil Dean. Noel and I played angels in white
robes, gilded wings, and sanctimonious smiles. Neither of us, as
I remember, cared for the play or for our parts in it. However,
we touched the heart of Noel's kindly uncle, for he asked
permission to take us for an afternoon's outing.

It was Christmas week, and the shops were full of entrancing
things to buy. By various ruses Noel and I enticed him to one
shopwindow after the other, artfully pointing out what each of us
would like to receive for a Christmas present. But our benefactor
was not in a generous mood that day. Not till the afternoon was
nearly over did he weaken and buy us a large box of peppermint
creams, which he made us promise to divide with the other
children in the cast.

Noel and I managed to forget this admonition and to eat most of
the sweets ourselves in the taxi on the way home. Soon I began to
feel very queer. When we went on in the heaven scene, the other
celestial beings seemed to float and bob dizzily around me. I
stole a glance at Noel. He was positively green. Presently the
audience was permitted an unexpected vision of heaven in which
two small angels were being violently sick.

I couldn't have been a total failure as an angel, because soon
after _Hannela_ I was given a job in _The Miracle_ then being
put on by Reinhardt at the Olympia. The play called for one
hundred children--fifty boys and fifty girls. As we did two shows
a day, and the children came from homes all over London, the
London County Council established a special school for us at
Olympia. We had classes in the mornings, then dinner, after which
it was time to dress and be made up for the daily matinee.
Olympia is out beyond Shepherd's Bush, a wearying, long tram ride
home after the evening performance.

It must have been that summer that Dad took Mother and me on a
Sunday excursion to Brighton. The resort was crowded with
trippers like ourselves; the bands kept up a ceaseless
accompaniment of music, and the Pierrot troupes on the sands
played to enormous business. I watched their performance with a
critical eye; after all, I was now in the profession.

On the pier, among other penny-in-the-slot machines was one
showing a gaudily painted picture of a gypsy. The machine
promised to tell your fortune for a penny. I dropped my copper
piece into the slot and waited anxiously while the machine ground
out a few bars of a popular tune; it then proceeded to stick a
tongue of pink cardboard at me. There were words printed on it. I
tore off the slip and read my penny destiny:

   _A star danced,
   And you were born._

I accepted my fate without hesitation. The gypsy meant to tell me
that I would be a dancer and someday I would be a star.

A few days later I stopped in at the printers in Clapham High
Street and ordered some cards made. I had written out what I
wished the printer to put on these bits of pasteboard:


          LITTLE GERTIE LAWRENCE
          _Child Actress and Danseuse_
          
       BRIXTON THEATRE


I had used the name Lawrence, because that was the stage name
Mother used. I was especially proud of the word "danseuse,"
which, according to the old gentleman on High Street who printed
the cards, meant "dancer" in French. Already I could see my name
in electric lights on Shaftesbury Avenue. I had never been to
that thoroughfare except on a bus, but I had heard about it and
dreamed of it as children today talk and dream about Hollywood.

I did not show the pink slip of paper with my fortune to anyone;
perhaps I was afraid it would not come true if I shared the
secret. But my professional cards were different. I scattered
them like confetti and with complete self-assurance.

The mother of "your cousin Ruby," who up to now had produced the
most promising child in the family, said to Mother: "Do you want
your child in that sort of life, Alice? I wouldn't. Not for my
Ruby."

"Your Ruby hasn't the temperament," Mother countered. "You've got
to have temperament for the stage."

"Temperament! Well, Alice, you can call it that if you like.
Myself, I'd give a plainer name to it. And when it comes to
temperament, anyone would think you'd had enough of that with
Gertie's father. If she was my child and had his blood in her
veins, I wouldn't let her near a theater. That I wouldn't."

Cousin Ruby's mother had maneuvered Mother into an impossible
situation. She could not defend my father without appearing
disloyal to Dad, or without drawing down on her the obvious
retort: "Well, if he was as good as all that, why did you ever
leave him?"

It may have been such conversations as these with my aunt which
unlocked my Mother's reticence. Up until then she had never
mentioned my father to me.

We were out shopping one day when suddenly she stopped to read a
playbill stuck up on a wall. It advertised a minstrel show.
Heading the cast as the star appeared the name: "Arthur
Lawrence."

"That's your father, Gertie," said Mother, pointing.

I stared at the name, trying to accustom myself to the idea of a
relationship between this man and me. No one had ever told me
much about my father. I could not remember having seen him or
heard of his taking the slightest interest in my existence. Dad
was all the father I had known, or needed. This strange man on
the playbill seemed suddenly to trespass on Dad's position. I
slid a questioning glance at Mother. She was still staring at the
poster. Her voice was suddenly wistful--and a little proud:
"Well, now you know. He's a fine singer. You get your talent from
him."

We went on, and no more was said about my father. I would have
liked to have gone to the theater to see him and hear him sing,
but Mother did not suggest it. I only had to look at her to
realize that the subject was closed. But the sudden discovery
that I had a father who was a success in the theater set me
thinking.

I was now nearly thirteen. For several years I had been appearing
in plays from time to time, earning a few shillings a week. The
gypsy had given assurance that my fortune lay in the theater. As
I compared Dad--dear, lovable, but unsuccessful--with my own
father, whose name appeared in big letters on the playbill, a
plan began to develop in my mind. I began to watch the bookings
of the minstrel show starring Arthur Lawrence.

For all that I might not have done anything about it except for
two things which happened simultaneously. We were undergoing one
of our periodic lean periods. These seemed to occur more
frequently and lasted longer as Dad's luck became more and more
elusive. And Mother, irked perhaps by some remark of her
sister-in-law on the proper bringing up of daughters, had become
more strict with me.

One evening several months later, when Mother and Dad were out, I
decided to carry out my plan, and I packed a few belongings in a
small straw portmanteau. I then collected all the empty bottles
and jars in the house, returned them to the grocer's, and got the
money I needed for the journey. Wearing my best coat and a large
mushroom-shaped hat, and carrying the portmanteau, I took the
tram to the theater where I knew my father was appearing. A note
left on the kitchen table for Mother and Dad told them of my
decision to join my father, and that they were not to worry.

The stage doorman looked at me suspiciously. "Now then, what do
you want, youngster?" he demanded.

"I've come to see Mr. Lawrence."

He frowned. "It's not at all likely Mr. Lawrence will see you.
He's dressing now to go on."

"I'll wait," I said, and set down the portmanteau. "It's very
important."

Perhaps something in my tone made the doorman realize that this
was no ordinary occasion. He squinted at me sharply.

"What's your name? I'll tell Mr. Lawrence you're here."

I swallowed. "Just tell him it's Gertie."

The doorman went away, slamming the door to prevent my slipping
in. For a moment I felt an impulse to turn and run. There was
still time to return to Clapham--to seize and destroy the
penciled note I had left letting Mother and Dad know my decision.
But something--my own destiny perhaps--held me there on the bench
inside the stage door. Presently I heard steps coming along the
corridor and a mutter of voices. The door opened...

A man stood there--a very tall man who leaned forward to peer
down at me in the dim, flickering light of the gas bracket in its
wire cage. He was in his shirt sleeves and collarless. One half
of his face was smeared with grease and burnt cork. Out of the
black face a pair of very blue eyes stared at me in utter
incredulity. He spoke in a deep, quiet voice:

"Who are you? What are you doing here?"

I drew my card from my pocket and handed it to him. His eyes took
in the printed words, then came back to me.

"I'm Gertie," I said. "And I've come to stay."




4


Driving down to Brighton on that June day, strangely it was the
memories of the past which were more vivid and more alive in my
mind than the scenes we drove through. That glimpse of Kennington
Oval and Brixton brought back events and persons I had not
thought of in years. For some reason or other, and I suppose only
a psychologist could explain it, this visit home to a fighting
England was like a visit to a psychoanalyst. In _Lady in the
Dark_ I had played the part of a successful businesswoman who
had been psychoanalyzed. Her dreams were reproduced on the stage
in fantastic scenes. In somewhat the same way, recollections of
"Little Gertie Lawrence--child actress and danseuse," began to
form scenes that were scarcely less fantastic than those imagined
by Moss Hart for _Lady in the Dark_.

Suddenly I smelled again the cold, dusty, tremendously exciting
smell of backstage in that Music Hall Theatre when Father, still
holding my card in one hand, reached out the other and caught me
by the wrist. He pulled me over the threshold, past the doorman,
and let the stage door slam behind us.

"Come along to my dressing room. Curtain's going up in five
minutes. I've got to finish dressing. You can wait there. I'll
talk to you later on. Sit down. And for God's sake, don't cry."

I had begun to weep from relief, fear, and the physical reaction
to the whole adventure.

In the dressing room stood a woman holding the coat Father was to
put on. He paid no attention to her, but went on rapidly blacking
the rest of his face before the mirror. After which he put on a
curly black wig and stuck it down with spirit gum.

"She's Gertie," he said out of the grotesque red mouth he had
quickly painted in the middle of the black face. "She's my kid,
Rose."

Rose did not move. She looked at me not unkindly and I stared
back at her. I was not prepared for Rose.

A callboy went along the corridor calling, "Mr. Lawrence,
please!"

Father turned from the mirror, his make-up completed, and thrust
his arms into the evening coat Rose silently held out for him. He
jerked down his waistcoat, twitched his white tie a fraction of
an inch, and was gone.

Only then Rose turned to me, standing there gripping my
portmanteau and staring. "So you're Arthur's little girl," she
said. "How old are you?"

"I'm thirteen," I said.

"You are! Well..." She looked me over appraisingly. "There's not
much of you."

Rose herself was what Granny would have called a fine figure of a
woman, which meant she had plenty of curves. She had also, I
noticed, very pretty ankles. Show girl, I thought.

Rose told me I had better sit down because we would have a long
wait. A minstrel show wasn't like a play in which the actors
frequently left the stage for long periods. Once the curtain was
up, my father would remain on stage until the end of the act.

During that wait Rose and I became acquainted. She had a kind
heart and there was no guile in her. She loved my father and said
so with a disarming frankness. She continued to tidy up the
dressing room. "We've been together six years, Arthur and me.
That's more than a lot of married couples can say. Oh, not but
what we've had our quarrels. And who hasn't, I'd like to know."

I nodded. I found myself liking Rose, who admitted me so
hospitably into the intimacy of her life. But it was clear that
she did not intend to consider me one of the family.

"You can't stay with us," she went on. "You know that, I
suppose?" (I didn't. How could I, when I had never known of the
existence of Rose until that evening?)

Then she said: "Your mother will be here to fetch you back
tonight or in the morning, and there'll be all hell to pay."

I told her I had left a note for Mother and that I couldn't go
back. But immediately Rose dashed my plans by remarking: "Of
course you can't stay on with Arthur and me. We can't travel
you."

Strangely, that possibility had not occurred to me. I began to
wish I had not left the note. Still, I thought, something might
happen to prevent Mother coming. Meanwhile, I had to win Rose
over to my side. I told her about my experience as an actress,
emphasizing the fact that Miss Conti considered I had talent. I
showed Rose my card.

She was obviously impressed.

"How nice! Danseuse looks elegant. Quite West End."

"I think so," I agreed complacently.

When Father came off stage, he found us chatting comfortably.
Perhaps this lifted a worry from his mind.

"The kid's all right, Arthur," Rose said. "She's got a lot of you
in her, I'd say." She repeated to him briefly what I had told her
about my experience in the theater. "She must be good."

Was it Rose's acceptance of me which persuaded my father to keep
me with him? I have sometimes thought so. That, and a curious
pride in the child who had followed his profession, made my
father suddenly laugh and say to me: "You can stay with us for
tonight, anyway. We'll find a place for you somewhere in our
digs. She can sleep on the sofa, can't she, Rose? We'll send a
telegram to your mother this minute and tell her you're all
right. Tomorrow we can talk things over."

Mother did not appear until the next morning. What passed between
my parents I never knew, but an arrangement was made by which I
was to remain with Father as long as I wished to do so and he
would support me. I was to write to Mother once a week and keep
her informed of my whereabouts. If anything went wrong, she was
to be immediately advised of it and was to come and take me back
to live with her.

That is how my life with Father and Rose began. I shared their
lodgings and whatever they had. Whatever I earned, when I had a
job, Father got, under our joint contract, since I was under age.

Although I missed Mother and Dad terribly, I missed Granny even
more. I often thought of her and her tidy little house. I missed
the news of the Royal Family. King Edward VII had died--his
funeral was the first state pageant I had not read about in
history books. Now all the talk was of the coronation of King
George V and Queen Mary. To me, as to millions of children
throughout the Empire, the leading personage at the forthcoming
coronation was the youthful Prince of Wales. Perhaps our
generation derived an immense amount of satisfaction from the
fact that one of us was to occupy a prominent place at the Abbey
ceremony. The newspapers and illustrated weeklies were full of
photographs of H.R.H. Prince Edward and his sister and brothers.
The princess interested me very little, but every photograph of
Prince Edward I came across I cut out and pinned to the wall of
my room. The increasing collection of photographs traveled with
me.

And we were constantly on the move, touring the Midlands,
swinging back to London to look for fresh engagements. When we
were not working, I amused myself in any way that I could. I did
the shopping for Rose and helped her keep our lodgings tidy. We
made our own clothes, trimmed our own hats. I made myself a
hobble skirt out of a remnant of tweed when I was fourteen. Rose
appreciated these efforts of mine. She was not a housekeeper, but
she was neat, and Father's untidiness was a constant annoyance to
her.

Life wasn't all beer and skittles. Not by any means. Father still
liked his glass, and though he would go several months without
drinking, invariably there came a day when he would become
short-tempered, restless, and start going out between the matinee
and the night show. Finally he would crack up. Then he became
ugly, cruel, and impossible to handle. Neither Rose nor I could
do anything with him.

I began to watch for these drinking bouts and to dread them and
the rows that went on at the theater with the manager and other
members of the company and at home with Rose. In between spells
Rose and I formed a conspiracy to keep Father in bounds. One or
the other of us kept watch over him all the time. We would try to
think up schemes for keeping him happy and entertained, but when
our cleverness failed to win over Father's craving, Rose and I
knew we were in for it. Father would go on drinking, growing more
and more sullen, more and more difficult to handle, until the
manager paid us off. Since Father and I were always on a joint
contract, this meant I lost my job when he was fired. When that
happened, he would drink himself into a state in which he was
unable to go out at all. Poor Rose then put him to bed and nursed
him until he sobered. Father would emerge from her hands
chastened, and go out to hunt a new engagement for himself and
for me. We had no agent. We could not afford an agent's
commission. It was our habit to search the "Wanted" ads in the
theatrical newspapers. Sometimes Father heard of something
through hanging around the crowds by the London Hippodrome.

We had been out of work for several weeks and were more than
usually hard up when Father landed a job to play in a touring
revival of André Messager's _The Little Michus_, a comic operetta
for which his voice was perfect. He came home to the dreary back
room in Camberwell where he and I were then living to tell me the
good news. Rose was away on tour with a concert party. That room
which was divided into two private apartments by a curtain
suspended from a sagging wire represented the ebb tide of our
fortunes.

But Father beamed over his good luck. He planked down a couple of
half crowns from the advance he had persuaded the company manager
to give him and said gaily:

"Let's have sausages for supper, Gertie. This calls for a
celebration, my girl."

I pocketed the coins and made ready to go out and do the
shopping. Meanwhile Father ran on about the company and the play.
He was to play M. Michu, the proprietor of a patisserie and the
perplexed parent of twin daughters, Marie Blanche and Blanche
Marie--the "little Michus." Immediately I pricked up my ears.

"Who will play the girls?" I demanded.

"Not a chance of it," Father smiled at me ruefully. "I spoke to
the manager about you. He was interested until he asked me your
age, and I had to tell him fifteen. Then he wouldn't hear of it.
He insists he must have someone older. It's too bad, because you
could do it, I'm sure."

I thought hard. I went to the mirror and studied what I saw
there. What could I do to myself to add three or four years to my
age?

"Are you sure he hasn't filled both parts yet?"

Father said he was. "He has one girl. She's about your height.
But she's nineteen or twenty, I'd say."

My hair was long and hung in curls to my waist. I brushed out the
ringlets and for the first time put my hair up. I rummaged in the
cupboard and brought out my one straw hat. I cut off the brim,
pinned on a bunch of cherries, and contrived a toque which could
be called anything but youthful. In my tweed hobble skirt I
looked at least eighteen.

Thus arrayed, and with Father's encouragement, I presented myself
at the manager's office and asked for the job. He tried my voice
and engaged me on a joint contract with Father, as I was still
under age, no matter how old I looked.

Father and I toured with _The Little Michus_ for many weeks.
When Rose's engagement ran out, she joined us. We were playing to
good business and it looked as though the show would have a long
run. Then Father succumbed to one of his drinking spells. Rose
and I did our best to straighten him out and to cover him up. But
as the drinking went on for days, the manager fired him.

This meant that I, too, was once more out of work.

"I'd like to keep you on, kid," the manager said regretfully.
"You're good. But you're under age, and what can I do?"

Rose took Father in hand once more and I searched the columns of
notices in _The Stage_ for a new job. This time I intended to
lie boldly about my age. Rose agreed with me it was the thing to
do. "It's no life for you, being with Arthur," she said. "He's
hopeless. I know that now. You must go on your own. You've got
something, Gertie. I think you're going to get on. You're not
pretty and you're too thin for everybody's taste, but you've got
class. You know, I wouldn't be surprised if you were up in the
West End one of these days."

"Oh, Rose. Do you really think so?"

Rose nodded solemnly. "Yes, I do. You've got something that goes
down with a certain kind of audience. High-toned. It's just that
you've got to be seen by the right people. And that takes some
doing."

"I'll land something before long," I assured her.

What I landed was a job as chorus girl and understudy in a
traveling revue--one of the first of its kind--entitled _Miss
Plaster of Paris_. I had been forced to lie about my age, but we
needed the money desperately. The man who ran the show and his
wife played the leading parts. I worked in the chorus, played
maids, and in one scene sat on a column. I was selected for this
honor because mine was the smallest posterior in the company.

All week I looked forward to Saturday night when "the ghost
walked" and we were paid. Pay night usually meant a good spree
for the manager followed by a fight with his wife in the course
of which he frequently gave her a black eye, thus paving the way
to my appearance in the leading role the following Monday. For
all this excitement and experience I received fifteen shillings a
week.

I managed very well on this sum. Three or four of us lived
together, sharing room rent and pooling our money for the
catering purse. We took turns doing the marketing each day. It
was a hard-and-fast rule that we count the potatoes before giving
them to the landlady to cook for us. She was under orders to
boil, not to mash them. This enabled us to be sure she had not
helped herself to a couple of them. Sometimes one of us would
forget to give the order, and when the vegetable dish cover was
lifted, a groan would go up:

"Oh, blast! The old bitch has mashed 'em!"

The manager had an old white bull terrier which traveled with the
show. The bulldog had appeared with his master when he played
Bill Sykes. At rehearsal one day, when we were back in London
preparing a second revue called _Miss Lamb o f Canterbury_, I
was playing with the dog when he suddenly growled and sank his
teeth into my right hand, refusing to let go.

I fainted. A doctor was sent for. I was cauterized, bandaged, and
told to go home. I was living in lodgings with Father. Rose had
finally left him, "and this time for good," she had asserted.
"Enough is enough, but too much is a little bit too much, if you
ask me. And that's what I've had with Arthur. Oh, I've walked out
on him before to teach him a lesson. And every time he's come
round within the fortnight and made all sorts of promises, and
I've listened to him and gone back. I can't say I've ever taught
him a thing except what a man like him knows already--that a
woman like me can be an awful fool. This time, though, I don't
care about teaching Arthur anything. It's myself I'm thinking
about. And high time too. Myself and you, Gertie."

"Me?"

"Yes, you. Because, don't you see if I stay on with your father
you probably will too. And what would happen then? I've been
seeing it coming for the last year. You and I would be working
and keeping him. The way it is, if Arthur wants to eat and drink,
he's got to work. And that means he'll keep sober more or less.
Without him, you've got no one but yourself to think about. This
is your chance to get ahead."

There was something in what Rose said. I thought it over and
decided I should stand on my own. Father had been out of work for
some time, but that morning he had told me he had a chance to go
to South Africa. This seemed too good to be true. On the way home
a thought struck me: if he knows what has happened to my hand he
may refuse to go so far away. "He must go. He must," I kept
saying all the way home.

Father was there when I arrived. He was tremendously excited. He
had only to sign his contract next day and he would leave in a
week.

"You will be all right, won't you, Gertie?" he said eagerly. "You
are getting on fine, and this will be a great chance for me to
earn some decent money and see a bit of the world. South Africa
is a great country. A man can start life over again out there."

I assured him I was at the top of my form, and kept my bandaged
hand behind me, saying nothing of the intense pain. When he
finally noticed the bandage I explained I had cut my hand on a
broken glass at rehearsal. Father never knew the truth about my
injury, which took a long time to heal and left a scar which is
still visible. He went off to South Africa and I managed to keep
working. He was gone about a year. He came home well and bronzed
and self-assured. When I met him at the boat, he introduced me to
an enormous, handsome man with whom he had made friends during his
trip. This was Victor McLaglen.

Unfortunately South Africa had not made Father's fortune or
changed his habits. But something had changed in me during the
months he was away. I had learned to stand alone, and by managing
to keep on tour I never lived with Father again. He retired to
Brighton, did an occasional show or a concert, and later on I was
able to help him until his death.

In between jobs I lived at the "Cats' Home" in London so that I
could make the rounds of the theatrical managers' offices. This
was a tall, gaunt house in Charlotte Street which called itself
The Theatrical Girls' Boarding House. Here, for ten shillings a
week, you could luxuriate in a cubicle by yourself. For five
shillings you shared a room with another girl. For half a crown
you could have a cot in a dormitory. I never reached the
ten-shilling private-cubicle stage.

There was a great feeling of camaraderie at the Cats' Home. We
girls loaned each other tram fares and clothes to look our best
when seeking a job. There was a sewing room where we made our own
clothes, and the stars of the London theaters used to send their
discarded gowns to us to be raffled off at sixpence a ticket. I
remember winning a pink net evening gown with a harem skirt and
ornamented with beads. This I sent to Mother as a gift. She wrote
saying it was beautiful and she was going to put it in a raffle!
That pink net confection may still be going the rounds.


These and other memories filled the long, beautiful drive across
Surrey and over the Sussex Downs, which I remembered so well from
the days when I used to drive this way to Brighton to visit
Pamela at her school, Roedean.

Odd to think of Pamela, my daughter, having any connection with
the little girl who ran away to seek her fortune on the stage.
The decade which separated that little girl from Pamela's mother
was crowded with experiences. Four of those years were filled
with World War I, toward the close of which Pamela was born. Long
before I had the responsibility of a child I had entered upon
another responsibility--one which had remained unfulfilled until
I made this trip to England to entertain the Tommies and the G.I.
Joes who were pledged to defend the way of life I want Pamela and
all other children to have. I shall come to the story of that
responsibility and how I entered upon it a little later.

All the gay Regency recklessness was gone from Brighton. Barbed
wire prevented access to the sea front. The old, well-tanned
houses, which always used to remind me of Indian colonels basking
in the sun, with their backs to the protecting downs, showed
plenty of battle scars. But there was still the old, steady,
carrying-on spirit at the Old Ship Hotel where our unit was
billeted. In the old days, when I came to Brighton, I had a suite
at the Albion or the Metropole, but these places had been taken
over by the services, and only the Old Ship remained for
civilians. I was grateful for my billet there--a single bedroom
without a bath.

It was June 5 when we arrived in Brighton, and we did a show that
night at Tilgate Camp, outside Crawley, in a Nissen hut.

The air in the hut, which was packed with soldiers, wedged
shoulder to shoulder, seemed to quiver with anticipation. It was
bound to be very soon now, almost any hour, that the United
Nations would launch their long-prepared-for blow at the
continent. The quivering you felt was like that of a boxer who
draws back a second before lashing out with both fists at his
opponent.

"Oh, it's a lovely way to spend an evening," I sang to the rows
upon rows of faces that, from the stage, looked like spume on a
khaki-colored sea. Silly words, and ironic under the
circumstances. These words were on my lips, but while I sang them
my heart was speaking those marvelous lines from _King Henry V_:

   _Now entertain conjecture of a time
   When creeping murmur and the poring dark 
   Fills the wide vessel of the universe.
   From camp to camp through the foul womb of night 
   The hum of either army stilly sounds, 
   That the fix'd sentinels almost receive 
   The secret whispers of each other's watch: 
   Fire answers fire, and through their paly flames 
   Each battle sees the other's umber'd face; 
   Steed threatens steed, in high and boastful neighs 
   Piercing the night's dull ear; and from the tents 
   The armourers, accomplishing the knights, 
   With busy hammers closing rivets up, 
   Give dreadful note of preparation..._

A country cock crowed, though it was not yet "the third hour of
drowsy morning," when we tumbled out of the cars, before the door
of the Old Ship, and stumbled up the stairs to bed.


How odd to begin a day so momentous as June 6, 1944, with tea and
toast. A warm breeze which smelled like the wind which blows
across the sand dunes at Dennis lifted my bedroom curtains and
set me longing to go out for a bathe. Brighton was very quiet
except for the recurrent waves of planes flying high
overhead--that monotonous accompaniment to life in wartime
England. The newspaper brought the news that Rome had been ours
since the day before. All dwellers in the continental coast towns
had been warned by the army commander in chief to evacuate their
homes at once. A headline announced that His Majesty would speak
on the air that night.

Were we on the eve of the invasion at last?

I went downstairs with my hands full of letters for the post. It
was the old hall porter, in his green baize apron, who told me
that D-Day was at last a reality. Our forces had set sail for the
coast of Normandy at 5:00 A.M. That tremor I had felt the night
before was not imagined. I had caught the "dreadful note of
preparation."

Mary Barrett and I walked out into the sunshine and along the
Front. The people we met were very quiet and looked a little
grim, conscious of what must be taking place only forty-four
miles across the Channel. Whenever a bevy of planes passed
overhead, pointing toward France, all eyes were lifted to them
and, I dare say, all hearts. I know mine was. I wanted
desperately to speak to Richard, but I was told all civilian
telephone calls were canceled. I knew he must be in the midst of
the busiest day for the Navy.

On the evening of D-Day our unit was scheduled to do a show on
the pier at Worthing. The spirits of the men in the audience ran
high, and no wonder, with good news coming in that our invading
army had made an advance of ten miles into France within a few
hours of landing. Worthing is only a few miles east of Bognor,
where I had my first glimpse of the sea and where I earned my
first sovereign. The Victorian poets had a fancy for writing odes
to places "revisited." This tour of the south coast was full of
such places for me.

The next day, Wednesday, the War Department unsealed a camp for
us, and we motored out toward Lewes to Camp Tanner. The men had
rigged up an old barn to serve as a crude theater. When we
arrived there, we found the troops in the process of moving out
for France. Hundreds had already left. From what one could learn,
the invasion was going so well--"going according to plan" as
Churchill announced to the Empire--and the advance into France
was so swift more men could be dispatched immediately.

The troops about to leave were already lined up when we arrived.
They carried all their equipment and were wearing their Mae
Wests. A groan went through the ranks because they thought they
would miss our show.

So we unloaded fast, and the colonel (his name was Bury, and the
outfit was called "Bury's Bashers") let them into the barn
theater where we did our show for them. I sang my songs and then
stood out in the farmyard waving to them as they drove out,
headed for France.

It was all like part of a film. There I stood in the middle of
that once-peaceful farmyard, in the brilliant sunshine, tears
streaming down my face, waving good-by to those men--knowing I
was the last woman to sing them a song for many a weary while.

When the trucks had pulled out, we returned to the barn and did
our show again for the men who were still waiting for orders.
Halfway through the bill we had to stop while the troops were
summoned to muster outside. Again I went out, and kissed them and
waved good-by. Again we struck up "Auld Lang Syne." Above the
rumbling of the lorries rose the sound of men's voices singing
the song which I had just taught them.

By this time Mary Barrett and I were both reduced to pulp. But
the show had to go on; so, with a lumpy throat and an ache in my
heart, I went back to the barn and we did a third show.

There was no one to know that what I was doing there that
afternoon--and what I was to do for many days at many other camps
throughout England--was the long-overdue payment of a debt. Bury's
Bashers and the other boys I sang to could not know what I owed
to half a dozen British Tommies of World War I who, before they
went out to fight in Flanders, gave Gertrude Lawrence her chance
to become a star.




5


Though I was now entirely on my own, without obligation to
Father, I did not go back to Clapham. What held me back from
doing this was bravado. I had left them and Granny to further my
career as an actress. I was still a long way from achieving that
goal and, therefore, I felt hesitant about going back to the
family. Above all, I had no desire to have the virtues of Cousin
Ruby dinned into my ears. Someday, I promised myself, I'll be
doing so well I can afford to go back.

I was determined to make good, and deep inside myself was the
unshaken conviction that I would be a success someday. I was
quite willing to work for that success and to make sacrifices to
attain it. I did work, not forgetting Miss Conti's teaching, and
striving all the time to do better. Many of the girls I met in
the companies in which I played, or at the Cats' Home, admitted,
frankly, that they were content just to be good enough to get by.
They, apparently, did not have that insistent, not-to-be-ignored
inner drive which forced me to practice constantly and to learn
more and always more about the theater.

I cannot take any credit to myself for this determination to
succeed, for it was inherent in my nature. I did have to battle
through periods of despair and frustration. But I am by nature
hopeful. I do not understand defeat. My own psychology in those
years before I was seventeen was quite simple: I believed,
unquestionably, that I was destined to be an actress. The fortune
which the penny-in-the-slot machine on the pier at Brighton had
given me seemed to me to state this quite unequivocally. I saw no
reason to doubt the gypsy's prophecy. It might be. this
season--or the next--that I would emerge from the obscurity of
the chorus of a musical which played the provinces and the
cheaper suburbs of London. But emerge I would. Meanwhile it was
up to me to make myself as good as I could be. Each performance
was a fresh challenge.

One night after the show in Swindon there was a knock on the
chorus's dressing-room door. The callboy handed me a card which
read LEE WHITE AND CLAY SMITH, LONDON AND NEW YORK. I went out
and found an American couple on vacation from their London
season. They were visiting Swindon to see the cathedral and had
dropped in at our show.

They took me out to supper at their hotel and we talked.

"You're good," Lee said to me seriously. "You don't belong in a
show like this. You've got something. Clay and I are going to
keep our eyes on you." She made me promise to keep them informed
of what towns we played, and let them know whenever I changed
shows. "You never can tell," she finished; "we may learn of
something. And, when we do, you'll hear from us."

I rather doubted the validity of this promise, but from time to
time I would send them a picture post card to the address Lee
gave me.

Nearly a year later, while I was playing in Yarmouth, I received
a telegram. It was signed _Lee White and Clay Smith_, and it
said tersely that they had recommended me for a job in a revue
which André Charlot was staging in London. _Can you come at
once?_ the wire ended.

I was all for dashing to the station and leaping aboard the first
London Express, but the other girls, to whom I had shown the
wire, held me back.

"How do you know this is a genuine offer?" they demanded.
"Suppose you leave the show here and go flying up to London only
to find the manager has signed someone else? There you'll be--out
of a job and without a bean."

These suggestions sobered me. "What'll I do? I can't afford to
throw over a chance like this, can I? It's for London!"

The girls agreed wholeheartedly that this was not to be thought
of. We put our heads together and concocted a return message:
_Does your wire constitute a contract?_ I ran down to the
station and sent it off; then I went back to the theater to dress
for that night's show, trying desperately to keep my mind on my
cues and not on the extravagant fancies that kept popping up when
I thought of London.

When I came off stage after the final curtain, the stage doorman
handed me a telegram. I ripped it open. With the other girls
crowding around, peering over my shoulder, I read:


   YES, IF YOU CAN COME AT ONCE, THIS TELEGRAM
   CONSTITUTES A CONTRACT. CLAY SMITH.


Luckily, I had no contract, but if I was to leave I had to do so
without the management getting wind of it. Back in our lodgings,
my roommate, Madge, and I took stock of our resources. It was a
Tuesday night--four days to payday. What money I had plus all
that she could afford to lend me wouldn't pay for a third-class
ticket to London. Neither of us owned anything of value that we
could pawn. We looked at each other, and for the first time in my
life I felt desperate. Here was my chance--a chance for a
contract at a London theater, and for the lack of a few shillings
I couldn't seize it. Madge said slowly:

"I've got a friend in camp here. I'll get word to him. If he has
any money, he'll help us. And, if he hasn't, he'll know how to
raise it."

We didn't sleep much that night. I lay tense, staring into the
dark. Somehow, by some means or other, I must get the money for
that ticket to London. Next morning I was packed and ready to
take off when Madge went out to meet her boy friend. She came
back in a short time, bringing him with her. He was a little,
bright-faced lad from Bristol. Before he enlisted, he'd been a
joiner's apprentice. Now he was drilling with a regiment of
gunners, getting ready to go over to Flanders. Madge showed him
the wire and drew a vivid picture of the importance of this
chance which had come my way. Bristol looked me over with a
speculative eye, as if I were a horse on which someone was
advising him to place his money. I tried to look as promising as
possible. If only he would think me worth betting on. Presently
he nodded. He had, he informed us, eight shillings, which he was
prepared to risk on me. My face fell. Even with his eight
shillings added to our resources, the ticket to London was a long
way off. Madge explained this to him.

"That's all right," said Bristol complacently. "I've a couple of
mates who might be willing to take a flier."

We arranged to meet him and his friends at the railway station
within an hour. Madge and I were standing by the ticket office
when five British Tommies, with Bristol in the lead, bore down on
us.

"There she is," said he, pointing at me. The other five looked me
over. Five heads nodded approbation.

Out of the uniform pockets came half crowns and shillings which
the Tommies handed over to Madge, my self-constituted financial
manager. She counted the money. "Hurray! Enough for a ticket, and
fifteen shillings over to see you through your first week in
London," she said triumphantly.

While she bought my ticket, I turned to Bristol and his five
mates. "Thank you, boys. You'll get your money back. And you
won't be sorry you've done this for me. I promise."

"Oh, that's all right," one of the Tommies replied gallantly.
"It's always a pleasure to help a lady."

"I mean it," I said earnestly. "I won't forget what you've done
for me today. Not ever! And when I'm playing at His Majesty's
Theatre in the Haymarket, it'll be because you boys helped me get
there."

The six Tommies saw me off on the London Express. I hung out of
the window and waved to them, and they all waved back to me.

"Best of luck, Gertie! Mind now, don't let us down."




6


The little revue in which Lee White and Clay Smith found a place
for me was one of the first of a long run of such shows staged by
André Charlot. The revue in which I made my first appearance bore
the innocuous title, _Some_. This was followed in turn by
_Cheep_, _Tabs_, and _Buzz-Buzz_. I did a toe dance and a duet
with Clay Smith, and was also in the chorus. Charlot gave me a
three-year contract at three pounds ten shillings a week the
first year, four pounds ten shillings the second, and six pounds
ten shillings the third. I was made.

The pattern of all these wartime revues was simplicity itself.
They were staged with a minimum of scenery and a maximum of
taste, and they were cast with star names. Charlot's revues
caught on immediately with the British public. Each of them had a
long run, and when it closed, it was almost immediately succeeded
by another, cut to the same successful pattern.

The masculine part of those revue audiences was almost entirely
in khaki. The girls with the young lieutenants in the Gunners and
Sappers wore gay evening frocks. The men themselves were home on
leave from the Western Front, and were desperately in need of
getting the sights and sounds of the battle fronts along the
Somme out of their systems. They wanted terribly to forget. They
dined and danced and went on to the play and then on to supper
clubs, where they danced again and drank, cramming their hours of
leave with all the gaiety they could seize. It was up to us in
_Charlot's Revue_ to offer these men gaiety. It was up to us to
bring laughs to boys whose youthful faces were set in grim lines
and whose eyes never quite lost the wounded look even when their
lips smiled. It was up to us to delude them into believing--if
only for one split second--that death and destruction and terror
and dirt and pain were unreal.

The boys adored Charlot's revues. You would look out into the
house and see a boy sitting in the same seat night after night.
You would smile at him across the footlights, establishing a
comradeship. Then one night, when you looked, there would be
another boy in khaki or navy blue sitting in that seat. The other
had gone back, where and to what you didn't know and didn't want
to guess. Sometimes, after months, suddenly there he would be
again, waiting for you to make him laugh. When he turned up like
that, you felt better yourself and you'd think: "He's all right.
He's come through this time." It never occurred to you, nor did
it matter at all, that you didn't even know his name.

The London of June 1944 in which I had found myself on arriving
from America bore not the slightest resemblance to the London I
remembered during the years 1915 to 1918. The audiences one saw
at the West End theaters in the summer of 1944 were predominantly
in uniform, but there was a noticeable lack of girls in evening
dress, and there was a striking absence of the hectic
let-us-dance-and-be-merry-for-tomorrow-we-die gaiety, which was
the undercurrent of the life I remembered during World War I. The
Londoners of 1944 were quieter and more matter of fact, even
about their pleasures. They laughed at the jokes and the songs
and the comedy skits in the shows, but you felt no desperation in
their amusement. You felt that, not for one minute, though they
laughed, did they forget the immediacy of war and the menace to
all that the British people hold dear. One felt--at least I
did--that between 1917 and 1944 the British people had lost their
youth and regained their wisdom.


Bea Lillie was one of the stars of _Some_, and I was required
to understudy her as well as appear in the chorus. Bea and I
quickly became friends and partners in practical jokes which both
of us adored to play on others in the cast.

I remember the night in 1917 when America entered the war. Lee
and Clay had sat up all the night before writing a song
especially for the occasion, and had rehearsed it all day. The
time came for Clay to step out onto the stage and announce the
new song. This done, the front tabs were drawn, leaving room
downstage for Lee to sing in a spotlight. Bea and I and the rest
of the company were standing back of the drop curtains to hear
the new song. It was a march entitled "America Answers the Call."

As Lee sang, suddenly Bea started to march madly back and forth
back of the curtain just behind Lee. I joined her. The cast began
to laugh, and the more they laughed the more exaggerated our
marching became. Our arms waved until they moved the curtains.
Finally Clay came down upon us.

"My God," he whispered fiercely at Bea, "where do you think you
are?"

"The Ritz," she replied with her own inimitable gesture of the
right hand, and with that distinctive lift of the voice at the
end of the line.

There was a rehearsal call the next day. Although Bea and I lived
at opposite ends of London, by sheer coincidence we both arrived
late. We were both fired.

The star and her understudy went out to lunch together. I knew
Charlot would want to take Bea back, but I was worried about
myself. I had gone too far, and I had seriously offended Lee and
Clay, who had done so much for me.

Bea and I returned humbly to the theater and I sat in the
wardrobe mistress's room waiting to be sent for. Bea was
forgiven, and I was lectured severely and then--at Lee White's
urgent request--given another trial.

Anyone would think I would have learned something by this
experience, but apparently I did not. I was soon up to mischief
again.

In one of the revues Lee sang a song, "Have You Seen the Ducks Go
By?" At the end of the verse a row of obviously artificial ducks
appeared on a wall at the back of the stage and moved across it
in time to the music. The effect was made by us girls walking
behind the wall, with only our duck-like hats showing. That
number was a hopeless temptation to me. I couldn't help making my
duck frisk about and behave as no properly drilled duck would
ever do. Nor could I resist popping my head up over the wall in
the wrong place, winking at the audience, and laughing when they
laughed at me. Naturally Lee did not like this in the least. But
Bea Lillie adored it and would join in with the chorus and pop
her head up--minus the duck headdress. Sometimes she wore a man's
straw hat and a false mustache. The audience would howl with
laughter, but it upset Lee. Finally Clay stopped speaking to me.

I suppose a psychologist could find a reason for the
irrepressible impulse to play pranks which obsessed me for
several seasons after I got started on the London stage. They
were the kind of pranks that usually only school children think
are funny--fake telegrams, keyholes stuffed with soap, coat
sleeves sewed up at the cuffs so that the victim found it
impossible to make a quick change of costume. If it seems strange
that I should have taken such liberties after I had been at pains
to get an opportunity in a London production, I can only explain
these idiosyncrasies of mine on the ground that I must have been
making up for those years when I had been working at a time when
most children my age were playing games. Perhaps it was just
something I had to get out of my system. Perhaps, too, it was the
not abnormal reaction of a girl who suddenly found herself made
much of for the first time in her life. On looking back it seems
to me extraordinary the patience which André Charlot
 had with me during those seasons. I must have been an
unmitigated nuisance--to him and to all the other members of the
company. What I needed was to have someone tick me off.
Ultimately, André Charlot did just that.

During the run of _Some_ I kept more or less within bounds. I
was still the least important member of the cast. I had every
intention of pleasing Mr. Charlot so that he would give me a
place in his next revue. I was determined not to go back to
touring companies.

I had repaid the loan to Bristol and his mates, who had gone off
to Flanders and from whom I received occasional field post
cards--the kind supplied to the soldiers--with such messages as:
"I am well." "I am ill." "All the best. "Write soon."

It may seem strange that I did not go out to Clapham to find
Mother and Dad and let them know that I was now playing in
London. What held me back from this was my own ambition. Whenever
I was tempted to go back to Mother, Dad, and Granny, it seemed as
though something in me would whisper: "Don't go yet. You're not
somebody yet. Wait till you're somebody."

I entertained myself imagining the home-coming scene. I would
make a royal progress through Clapham in an open taxi. When I
arrived at Mother's door there would be a flurry of excitement
among the neighbors and Gertrude Lawrence, now the star of the
London stage, would descend from her chariot to receive the
congratulations of everybody.

Does this seem trivial and selfish? I do not attempt to justify
it, or any of the other impulses which made me think such
thoughts or do the things I did. Most of us, I believe, have or
do still indulge in some such fantasy as this which compensates
for a lot of hard knocks and heartaches. Very few among us are
noble, or even mature, in all parts of our nature at the same
time.

So, though I daydreamed about it, I did not go back to Mother.
Mother, however, discovered me. One evening when I arrived at the
theater, to make up for the show, a woman was standing just
inside the stage door. The doorman whispered she was waiting for
me. It was Mother. We stood there in the drafty little passage,
with people coming and going and pushing past us, and stared at
each other. Suddenly all the years that had passed since the
afternoon when I had suddenly conceived the plan of running away
and throwing in my lot with my own father were swept away. I was
once more a little girl who had done something she knew her
mother would not approve of and who had been caught and was now
wondering what was going to happen to her.

Actually, nothing happened. To my surprise, Mother took me in her
arms. To my question how she had found me, she replied that she
had been passing along the street when the air-raid warning
sounded. She had taken cover in a hotel next to our theater, and
when the all clear came she had stopped out of curiosity to see
what was on at the theater. She had noticed the name "Gertie
Lawrence" among the small-part people.

My dream of impressing the family was shattered, but at least I
had got my mother back, and I realized then how much I had missed
her. Granny, grown much older and quite feeble now, took
particular personal pride in my having a part in a successful
West End production. Though she never said so, I think Granny
felt secretly responsible for having started me on my career.


As I went from revue to revue, in each show I was given more to
do. This, of course, brought more prestige and, on my part, more
self-assurance. I still played pranks, and the more I played, the
more daring I became. Not unnaturally, André Charlot got a little
fed up with me. He said so more than once in no unvarnished
terms.

While I was playing in _Buzz-Buzz_, I came down with a bad
attack of lumbago. The doctor ordered me to bed. I was laid up
for the better part of a week. When Saturday night came, I was
feeling much better than I had felt for several days. The doctor
said I would be able to go back to work on Monday. That evening
Ivor Novello rang me up. He'd heard I had lumbago, and he wanted
to know how I was getting on.

"I'm better," I said. "In fact, I'm working again Monday."

"Wonderful, darling," came Ivor's voice over the wire. 

"Ethel Baird is opening tonight in her new show, _Summer Time_.
Bobbie Andrews and I have got a box. A lot of us are going. Why
not come along, too, darling?"

"How can I?" I said.

"But you're much better, darling," Ivor suggested. "My dear girl,
do ask the doctor to let you come."

I began to get the idea. "Of course I could ring up my doctor and
ask him what he thinks," I wavered.

"Wonderful," Ivor approved. "He's sure to say it would do you no
end of good to get out of that stuffy room and have a bit of
fun."

"I'll see what he says," I promised. "I'll ring up and ask him if
he thinks it would hurt me to go."

The doctor gave, as his opinion, that I would be no worse if I
went to the opening, provided I came straight home and went
directly to bed. "No staying out dancing all night," he
commanded.

"Oh, I wouldn't think of it," I said hastily.

I promptly rang up Ivor and told him to come around and fetch me.

The opening was a very smart one; everybody was there. It was
wonderful sitting in the sta