| | 1 | Author: | Phillips, David Graham, 1867-1911 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise, Volume II  | | | | Published: | 1996 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | SUSAN'S impulse was toward the stage. It had become a definite ambition with her,
the stronger because Spenser's jealousy and suspicion had forced her to keep it
a secret, to pretend to herself that she had no thought but going on
indefinitely as his obedient and devoted mistress. The hardiest and best growths
are the growths inward—where they have sun and air from without. She
had been at the theater several times every week, and had studied the
performances at a point of view very different from that of the audience. It was
there to be amused; she was there to learn. Spenser and such of his friends as
he would let meet her talked plays and acting most of the time. He had forbidden
her to have women friends. "Men don't demoralize women; women demoralize each
other," was one of his axioms. But such women as she had a bowing acquaintance
with were all on the stage—in comic operas or musical farces. She was
much alone; that meant many hours every day which could not but be spent by a
mind like hers in reading and in thinking. Only those who have observed the
difference aloneness makes in mental development, where there is a good mind,
can appreciate how rapidly, how broadly, Susan expanded. She read plays more
than any other kind of literature.
She did not read them casually but was always
thinking how they would act. She was soon making in imagination stage scenes out
of dramatic chapters in novels as she read. More and more clearly the characters
of play and novel took shape and substance before the eyes of her fancy. But the
stage was clearly out of the question. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
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