Salvini’s relations with his son were charming, though it sounded a bit odd to hear the stalwart young man calling him “papa.”  Alessandro had dark eyes and black hair, so naturally admired the opposite colouring, and I never heard him speak of his father’s English second wife without some reference to her fairness.  It would be “my blond mamma,” “my little fair mamma,” “my father’s pretty English wife,” or “before my little blond mamma died.”  He felt the “mamma” and “papa” jarred on American ears, and often corrected himself; but when Signor Salvini himself once told me a story of his father, he referred to him constantly as “my papa,” just as he does in this book of his that makes him seem so egotistical and so determined to find at all costs the vulnerable spot, the weak joint in the armour, of all other actors.

Certainly he could not have been an egotist in the bosom of his family.  A friend in London went to call upon his young wife, his “white lily.”  She was showing the house to her visitor, when, pausing suddenly before a large portrait of her famous husband, she became silent, her uplifted eyes filled, her lips smiled tremulously, she gave a little gasp, and whispered, “Oh, he’s almost like God to me!”

The friend, startled, even shocked, was about to reprove her, but a glance into the innocent face showed no sacrilege had been meant, only she had never been honoured, protected, happy, before—­and some women worship where they love.  Could an egotist win and keep such affection and gratitude as that?

Among those who complain of his opinionated book I am amused to find one who fairly exhausted himself in praise, not to say flattery, of this same Salvini.  It is very diverting to the mere looker-on, when the world first proclaims some man a god, bowing down and worshipping him, and then anathematizes him if he ventures to proclaim his own godship.  I have my quarrel with the book, I confess it.  I am sorry he does not show how he did his tremendous work, show the nature of those sacrifices he made.  How one would enjoy a word-picture of the place where he obtained his humble meals in those earliest days of struggle; who shared them, and in what spirit they were discussed, grave or gay!  Italian life is apt to be picturesque, and these minor circumstances mean much when one tries to get at the daily life of a man.  But Salvini has given us merely splendid results, without showing us how he obtained them.  Yet what a lesson the telling would have been for some of our indolent actors!  Why, even at the zenith of his career, Salvini attended personally to duties most actors leave to their dressers.  He used to be in his dressing-room hours before the overture was on, and in an ancient gown he would polish his armour, his precious weapons or ornaments, arrange his wigs, examine every article of dress he would require that night, and consequently he never had mishaps.  He used to say:  “The man there?  Oh, yes, he can pack and lock and strap and check, but only an actor can understand the care of these artistic things.  What I do myself is well done; this work is part of my profession; there is no shame in doing it.  And all the time I work, I think—­I think of the part—­till I have all forgot—­all but just that part’s self.”