Dorothea Baird (1875-1933)
Dorothea Baird (1875-1933)
(The Sydney Morning Herald [NSW, Australia] - 28th June, 1911)
MISS DOROTHEA BAIRD
A tall, graceful figure, bright friendly smile, and clear grey eyes looking straight at you - that is your first impression of Miss Dorothea Baird. The clear eyes have a rare searching quality, and, without being in the least hard or piercing, they seem to look right into you. They are the fearless, searching eyes of a child, and you are glad indeed that you have nothing to hide from their open gaze. Then you look at the lips below, parting softly in the kindest and friendliest of smiles, and you know that even if the eyes did see something you would rather keep hidden, the owner of that sympathetic smile would never judge harshly or by the mere outward signs.
And because of this sweet womanliness in her appearance you are not surprised to find yourself in a very few minutes far away from stageland, and talking earnestly about schools for mothers and the problems of the poor. You know that it is just what you expected when Miss Baird - or should it not be Mrs. Irving, for it is the woman, not the actress, who is talking? - when Mrs. Irving tells you that she is deeply and practically interested in the St. Pancras School for Mothers - a name made very familiar to us a couple of years ago when it stood as a model for the Alice Rawson School for Mothers. These schools are firmly established now in most big British towns, and there are several in London itself; but St. Pancras is the one best known to us in Sydney, and it is the one which absorbs Mrs. Irving's interest. "I do not do much committee work, for I am not very good at organising." she says: "but I visit the mothers in their own homes a great deal, and try to help them in a practical way. I find that teaching them to cook is one of the very best ways of helping tbem. The majority of the women have no idea of any cooking utensil but the frying-pan, and when one sees the piece of steak fried to a tough, leathery block, and the teapot stewing on the hob to get all the good out of it, and knows that this is the meal for a nursing mother, one does not wonder that the poor babies are starved.
(Ironwood News Record [Ironwood, Michigan, USA], 5th October, 1895)
LONDON'S TRILBY
Miss Baird is Said to Satisfy the Most Exacting Critics
Miss Dorothea Baird, who is to take the role of Du Maurier's heroine at the London Haymarket next winter, brings to it a personality that is wonderfully in keeping with the picture of Trilby as we are all familiar with it. She is tall and fair, as the accompanying illustration shows. Her eyes have a merry look, that, however, hints of an easy change to "wistful and sweet," while the contour of her face, the expression of her mouth, and the generous pose of the figure are all in harmony with our ideal of the fascinating goddess of the Quartier Latin. Miss Baird is a sister of Mrs. E. T. Cooke, wife of the editor of The Westminster Gazette. Another of her sisters is a noted Oxford wit and is the wife of A. L. Smith, fellow and tutor of Baliol. Although very young, Miss Baird has been long enough on the stage to win recognition in Shakespearean parts, her Rosalind being especially mentioned.
"I take a real pleasure in teaching those women to cook, for I am very fond of the work myself, and I flatter myself that it is one thing I can do really well. Before I was married I had a year's training at a cooking-school, and for a long time aftenwards I always prepared our after-the-theatre suppers myself. Last summer when we were in the country I did the whole cooking for the family for three months, so that we need not be bothered with a cook."
Mrs. Irving has a delightful country home in Whitstable, in Kent, and there she spends all the time she can spare from the theatre. Like so many women nowadays who work hard with their brains, she finds her garden a source of unending Joy and rest, and as she talks of her thousand rose bushes, her rows of blue delphiniums, her daffodils springing up throush the grass, and her clumps of gentians and other Alpine treasures the listener is carried away to a real picture garden. This country home has its poultry yard, too, and the owner waxes quite eloquent over her Buff Orpingtons, her Silver Wyaddottes, and her Coucous de Malinese with their rosy-pink legs. This poultry-yard is a profitable hobby, too, and keeps the London home supplied with chickens and new-laid eggs, and, no doubt, often plays a useful part in those cooking lessons to the poor.
One of the things that has fascinated Mrs. Irving most since her arrival in Australia is the gardens. She was filled with wonder in Adelaide at seeing clumps of purple violets growing beneath rose bushes in bloom. "In England we never see roses and violets in flower at the same time. But, then, anything seems possible in this wonderful climate of yours. I do not wonder that so many English eyes are turned this way, as indeed they are. In my own little Whitstable I have heard a great deal about Australia within the past year or so. Oyster-fishing is the chief industry of the village, and last year, when the oyster beds failed, dozens of men were talking about coming out to Australia. Perhaps, in the Midland counties, which are somewhat off the beaten track, the people do not know much about Australia, but all along the coast the fishermen and sailors talk of it a great deal, and every week one hears of some family or another going off to seek its fortune in the southern world.
"Of course, one also meets with an extraordinary dislike to the idea of emigration. I knew one poor family in one of the most squalid parts of London. The surroundings were as poor and hideous as one could imagine, the room in which the father, mother, and two children lived was about 10ft square, and the father, a decent man, was continually out of work. I tried to persuade them to go to Canada or Australia, but after listening to all my arguments the wife's reply was, 'Oh, but I couldn't bear to leave here.' That tiny, stuffy room in that sordid suburb meant 'home' to her, and no attraction in a new land was strong enough to draw her from it."
And no one could sympathise with that woman's feeling more than Mrs. Irving, for she is one of the women to whom home is spelt in capital letters. Sydney is not quite a strange land to her, because she has her sister here; but it is a very long way from her two children. Her boy of 14 is at college, but her little girl of seven is at the country home "taking care of, the peas and the strawberries" in her mother's absence. A pretty, merry-faced child she looks in her photographs, with a mass of hair cut straight across her forehead in a style that brings "Trilby" to the mind at once, and awakens the visitor to the fact that the whole hour has passed, and not a thing been said about Miss Dorothea Baird, the actress, beyond the fact that she designs all her own stage gowns.
But as all Sydney is going to see Miss Dorothea Baird with her husband for itself, it will, perhaps, be glad to have had a little glimpse of the Mrs Irving, the woman.