When Julia was a child of twelve this actress was a boisterous, fat old woman of more than sixty, but of great vitality, who loved food more than anything else in the world.
She had a great, ringing laugh, like a man’s, and she talked in a deep, loud voice.
It was she who gave Julia her first lessons. She taught her all the arts that she had herself learnt at the Conservatoire and she talked to her of Reichenberg who had played ingenues till she was seventy, of Sarah Bernhardt and her golden voice, of Mounet-Sully and his majesty, and of Coquelin the greatest actor of them all.
She recited to her the great tirades of Corneille and Racine as she had learnt to say them at the Francaise and taught her to say them in the same way.
It was charming to hear Julia in her childish voice recite those languorous, passionate speeches of Phedre, emphasizing the beat of the Alexandrines and mouthing her words in that manner which is so artificial and yet so wonderfully dramatic.
Jane Taitbout must always have been a very stagy actress, but she taught Julia to articulate with extreme distinctness, she taught her how to walk and how to hold herself, she taught her not to be afraid of her own voice, and she made deliberate that wonderful sense of timing which Julia had by instinct and which afterwards was one of her greatest gifts.
‘Never pause unless you have a reason for it,’ she thundered, banging with her clenched fist on the table at which she sat, ‘but when you pause, pause as long as you can.’
When Julia was sixteen and went to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in Gower Street she knew already much that they could teach her there.
She had to get rid of a certain number of tricks that were out of date and she had to acquire a more conversational style.
But she won every prize that was open to her, and when she was finished with the school her good French got her almost immediately a small part in London as a French maid.
It looked for a while as though her knowledge of French would specialize her in parts needing a foreign accent, for after this she was engaged to play an Austrian waitress.
It was two years later that Jimmie Langton discovered her.
She was on tour in a melodrama that had been successful in London; in the part of an Italian adventuress, whose machinations were eventually exposed, she was trying somewhat inadequately to represent a woman of forty.
Since the heroine, a blonde person of mature years, was playing a young girl, the performance lacked verisimilitude.
Jimmie was taking a short holiday which he spent in going every night to the theatre in one town after another.
At the end of the piece he went round to see Julia.
He was well enough known in the theatrical world for her to be flattered by the compliments he paid her, and when he asked her to lunch with him next day she accepted.
They had no sooner sat down to table than he went straight to the point.
‘I never slept a wink all night for thinking of you,’ he said.
‘This is very sudden.
Is your proposal honourable or dishonourable?’
He took no notice of the flippant rejoinder.
‘I’ve been at this game for twenty-five years.
I’ve been a call-boy, a stage-hand, a stage-manager, an actor, a publicity man, damn it, I’ve even been a critic.
I’ve lived in the theatre since I was a kid just out of a board school, and what I don’t know about acting isn’t worth knowing.
I think you’re a genius.’
‘It’s sweet of you to say so.’
‘Shut up.
Leave me to do the talking.
You’ve got everything.
You’re the right height, you’ve got a good figure, you’ve got an indiarubber face.’
‘Flattering, aren’t you?’
‘That’s just what I am.
That’s the face an actress wants.
The face that can look anything, even beautiful, the face that can show every thought that passes through the mind.
That’s the face Duse’s got.
Last night even though you weren’t really thinking about what you were doing every now and then the words you were saying wrote themselves on your face.’
‘It’s such a rotten part.
How could I give it my attention?
Did you hear the things I had to say?’
‘Actors are rotten, not parts.
You’ve got a wonderful voice, the voice that can wring an audience’s heart, I don’t know about your comedy, I’m prepared to risk that.’
‘What d’you mean by that?’
‘Your timing is almost perfect.
That couldn’t have been taught, you must have that by nature.
That’s the far, far better way.
Now let’s come down to brass tacks.
I’ve been making inquiries about you.
It appears you speak French like a Frenchwoman and so they give you broken English parts.
That’s not going to lead you anywhere, you know.’