"MR. JULIAN GRAY has asked me to tell him, and to tell you, Mr.
Holmcroft, how my troubles began. They began before my recollection.
They began with my birth.
"My mother (as I have heard her say) ruined her prospects, when she was
quite a young girl, by a marriage with one of her father's servants--the
groom who rode out with her. She suffered, poor creature, the usual
penalty of such conduct as hers. After a short time she and her husband
were separated--on the condition of her sacrificing to the man whom she
had married the whole of the little fortune that she possessed in her
right.
"Gaining her freedom, my mother had to gain her daily bread next. Her
family refused to take her back. She attached herself to a company of
strolling players.
"She was earning a bare living in this way, when my father accidentally
met with her. He was a man of high rank, proud of his position, and well
known in the society of that time for his many accomplishments and his
refined tastes. My mother's beauty fascinated him. He took her from the
strolling players, and surrounded her with every luxury that a woman
could desire in a house of her own.
"I don't know how long they lived together. I only know that my father,
at the time of my first recollections, had abandoned her. She had
excited his suspicions of her fidelity--suspicions which cruelly wronged
her, as she declared to her dying day. I believed her, because she was
my mother. But I cannot expect others to do as I did--I can only repeat
what she said. My father left her absolutely penniless. He never saw
her again; and he refused to go to her when she sent to him in her last
moments on earth.
"She was back again among the strolling players when I first remember
her. It was not an unhappy time for me. I was the favorite pet and
plaything of the poor actors. They taught me to sing and to dance at
an age when other children are just beginning to learn to read. At five
years old I was in what is called 'the profession,' and had made my
poor little reputation in booths at country fairs. As early as that, Mr.
Holmcroft, I had begun to live under an assumed name--the prettiest name
they could invent for me 'to look well in the bills.' It was sometimes
a hard struggle for us, in bad seasons, to keep body and soul together.
Learning to sing and dance in public often meant learning to bear hunger
and cold in private, when I was apprenticed to the stage. And yet I have
lived to look back on my days with the strolling players as the happiest
days of my life!