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EARLY MEMORIES
by Topsy Sinden
'One of my earliest appearances on the stage was in the character of a little dev – demon. This was in Drury Lane pantomime. But alas! child though I was at the time, I fear that already I had all too successfully filled a similar role in private life. As they say in musical comedy, "cluster round, and I will tell you all about it."
'I preparation for a party I was going to, my best "bib and tucker" were put out to air on the nursery fender, and I happened to be temporarily left alone in the room. It may be that I feared my clothes would not be sufficiently aired in time for the party, or it may just have been "original sin." I do not know. Indeed, my mother declares that I cannot possibly remember the adventure I am trying to relate, but have come to imagine that I do from hearing it so often spoken about. However, be it self-deception or not, I do seem most clearly to remember that I took my best pinafore and endeavoured to accelerate the airing process by holding it to, or rather in, the fire.
'Naturally it caught fire, and as this appeared to me to be one of those things of which the less seen the better, I popped the burning garment into the wardrobe. Five or ten minutes later, when my nurse returned, the wardrobe was blazing merrily, whilst I, with a premonition of events to come, had placed myself in the corner especially reserved for penitential purposes. I will only add that the house was burnt to the ground, and that my dear father, whose recent death has thrown a deep shadow over my life, was not insured against fire for a penny.
'However, despite this and other infantile misdeeds, I do not think I was really a bad child. Certainly I was high-spirited to a degree, and had I had less wise and loving parents, I might have turned out an anything but desirable character. But my parents did not make the mistake so many fathers and mothers fall into of attempting to break, or at least to curb, a naturally high and sensitive spirit. They sought rather to guide it imperceptibly, and so gentle, so skilful was the touch that I never knew I had a bit in my mouth at all.
'Dancing seemed to be born in me, although I cannot trace any Terpsichorean history in the family. One of my aunts, is it true, was a beautiful dancer, but only as an amateur, whilst I cannot boast of any closer association with the stage in general than that conferred by a distant connection with the once famous Ducrot [sic] of Astley's Circus.
'Nevertheless, I danced from the first, and my mother declares that as a baby when my father played the violin, as he was fond of doing, I used to dance in her arms. This may be only one of those maternal exaggerations into which the most truthful of women will fall, but I do remember that as soon as I had any sort of control over my small limbs my great delight was to dance, and caper, and pirouette to the strains of my father's violin. And everybody used to say I had "it" in me.
'I was three, or perhaps four, years old when I made my first appearance in public – as a charitable entertainment at St. James's Hall. My little dance was a success, and everybody again saying I had "it" in me, I was placed under the tuition of M. Leprez, the well-known Italian dancing master. With him I remained a year, by the end of which I was something of an acrobat, and then on the advice of Sir Augustus Harris [of Drury Lane Theatre] I was apprenticed to Madame Katti Lanner. My apprenticeship was for six years, but, as a matter of fact, I spent nearly nine under her care, and very happy years they were too.
'I have often laughed over the wondrous stories told in the press of how ballet dancers are trained as children. According to some of these "inspired" writers children in training for the ballet are subjected to horrible tortures – the bones of their feet are broken, the muscles of their legs are stretched on specially-devised racks, and their little lives are one long drawn-out agony of unremitting and brutal torture. All this, so we are told, in order to endow them with some supernatural agility and pliability of limb and feet.
'Could anything be wide of the truth? Yet I know there are quite intelligent people who believe that the child dancer's legs and feet are subjected to more or less surgical operations.
'I can only say that nothing so utterly mad and foolish is ever attempted by any reputable teacher, and that the whole art of training a child to dance lies in the gradual, systematic, and most careful development of its limbs and muscles, which are never at any time subjected to what engineers call a "breaking strain." Certainly I had to work hard during these years of apprenticeship. I had four hours' daily practice at least three times a week, and to this day I practice every morning of my life. But I thoroughly enjoyed my training a child. For not only was it conducted on the most careful and humane lines, but I loved and always shall love dancing for its own sake. It is my profession, but it is none the less the joy of my heart.
'And then if practice ever became wearisome, there was the change and excitement of the engagements I began to fulfil from a very early age.
'My actual début was in Drury Lane pantomime, and as a pineapple. At first I was in the back row before very long, and then came the memorable night when I had my first part.
'It was not a very great part, but I was a part. I was a cat, or perhaps I should say a kitten, and I, or rather Sir Augustus Harris, dressed the part very realistically. Not only had I a cat's mask, but underneath my frock I wore a cat's skin, which seems to me now as going almost as far as the tragedian who blacked himself all over the play Othello.
'And this part about which I am talking so much. Well, I had to kill a rat on the stage and deposit its corpse on a cat's-meat-barrow. Thus baldly stated, it may seem, as a part, a little lacking in light and shade. But to me it was Juliet, Desdemona, and Lady Macbeth rolled into one. With what fiendish glee I pounced upon the rat, with what ferocity I shook its quivering corpse, with what righteous pride I carried its body to the sepulchre, and how I thrilled with rapture when my little act got me a round of applause.
'And what an ineffable moment was that when Sir Augustus Harris patted me on the head and said that I "would do." I loved him passionately from that moment, and took an early opportunity of presenting him with my photograph (in my feline costume) which he promised for ever to wear next his heart. Years afterwards I met Sir Augustus Harris again, this time at Covent Garden. He wanted to engage me to dance in Grand Opera – which, by the way, I did, appearing in Carmen and other pieces – and scarcely had I entered his office when he asked whether I remembered giving him my photograph as a little girl. It struck me as a wonderful example of his truly wonderful memory.
'Outside Drury lane my first engagement was in a revival of Pepita at Toole's Theatre. Three other little girls and I were engaged to act as coyphées to a première danseuse whose name has escaped a treacherous memory. Our dance was a success, and I gratefully remember that the Sportsman singled me out for special attention. Not by name, for we were not identified on the programme, but as "a little girl in blue," and again the Sportsman said that I had "it" in me.
'However, I mustn't weary you by repeating that phrase, and I will only say that the Sportsman's kindly appreciation did me a lot of good professionally, and was followed by engagements all over the country.
'One I easily remember. I was dancing, being now twelve years old, at the Princess's Theatre, Liverpool, then under the management of Captain Wombwell; and, in connection with some charity or other, her organised a foot-race between all the little girls engaged at the theatres in Liverpool, Manchester, and surrounding towns. First of all, each theatre held a competition of its own to determine its two representatives; and, in the case of the Princess's, I won so easily that when the great day and the final event came I was put back eight yards. Nevertheless, I won again, and to this day one of my greatest treasures is the gold metal presented to me by Lewis Peake, Esq.
'Then I recollect arriving at Perth with my mother. Here, perhaps, I may say that, despite my dancing and constant touring, my home life was always carefully kept up. My parents were always with me, and I could not have grown up more of a "home bird" if I had never had anything to do with the stage.
'Well, we arrived at Perth, I in all the glory of a new cloak my mother had bought me, of the little Red Riding Hood pattern now so popular with children – or at least with their parents.
'But it was an uncommon garment then – at all events in Perth – and such was the interest and curiosity excited by my appearance amongst the "natives" that we were literally mobbed and had to take refuge in a shop.
'However, if engagements were plentiful it was by no means a case of all work and no play in those days. There were holidays, delightful holidays, and I particularly remember one such time spent with a grandmother in Oxfordshire. She was a very strict old lady, and I fear I was often a sore trial to her.
'One day I incurred her displeasure by chasing a tom-tit over her pet flower-beds, and was ordered to remain in my little room at the top of the house for three whole days. This was a terrible infliction, for, above all, I loved the open air. There was a tiny window in my room, and beneath it was the windlass of an old well. The top of the windlass was not very far below my prison, also there was a convenient branch of a tree, and before long, thanks to my acrobatic training, I was astride the windlass and thence safely to the ground, where I "went to ground" up a tree.
'I successfully repeated the manoeuvre on the second and third days of my imprisonment, but on the last occasion I was in such a hurry that I did not notice that the lid of the well, which was usually kept covered in, had been removed, and I was on top of the windlass before I saw the gulf beneath. Fortunately the wheel was cogged up, and the catch held, and equally fortunately I did not lose my head when, as ill-luck would have it, I head my grandmother calling "Topsy, Topsy," having made up her mind to forgive me. "Topsy, Topsy" – I was christened Harriet Augusta, but have been "Topsy" since infancy – I could hear her calling, and discovery was imminent. I looked down into the depths below, and up to the heights above, and then – though to this day I don't know how I did it – I got back into my attic, and came downstairs with the most innocent face imaginable.
'I suppose the turning point in my career came when I was engaged by Mr. George Edwardes for the Gaiety Theatre. Yet I remember I was not altogether pleased with this engagement. At other theatres I had been a solo-dancer, here, although I had one dance to myself, I was primarily engaged as one of the pas de quatre. However, I soon realised that the Gaiety meant a distinct advance in my profession; and here I think I may break off, repeating that to dance is the greatest joy of my life, and that I wish for nothing better than to dance for ever and a day.'
(Mainly About People, London, 31 August 1907, pp.237a-237b)
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