There is some difficulty as to the sequence of Lillian’s story. As we have seen, she did not go out with her mother and Dorothy that second season of “Her First False Step.” She had a part in another play—“The Child Wife,” or “At Duty’s Call,” it is not quite certain which came first. The little trouper did not know that she was making history—did not consider a time when it all might need to be arranged. She did not keep a scrapbook, and had no one to keep it for her. She probably did not think of a diary, and in any case would have been too tired to set down what, to her, was the humdrum routine of trains and towns and waits and scanty meals. Later, it was all a good deal of a blur. A few things stood out, because they were unusual, but even these did not always fall into their proper setting, as to time. There are spaces not easy to bridge, pieces difficult to fit into the picture-puzzle of the years. She remembers the tragedy of finding at the beginning of one season that she could no longer squeeze herself through the iron divisions of the station seats. She remembers that for a time she took lessons in dancing—stage dancing. Both she and her mother had realized the value of this: one able to dance could often get a better part. Sarah Bernhardt came to New York that winter, and seeking a child dancer to brighten some scene in one of her plays, went to a dancing teacher, and from his class selected Lillian.
Bernhardt was over sixty at this time, but was still the “divine Sarah, with the voice of gold.” Her engagement at the Lyric Theatre began with a very grand opening, December 15, 1905. Plenty of attractions along Broadway, just then. At Wallack’s, William Faversham, in “The Squaw Man”; David Warfield at the Bijou, in “The Music Master”; Maude Adams at the Empire, in “Peter Pan.” The little Gish girl had distinguished company in all directions for her first Broadway appearance. Perhaps that was a good omen.
Lillian’s recollection of that engagement is chiefly a mental picture of a tall and beautiful woman—Sarah—who each night in the wings, as they waited to go on, laid her hand on her head and said, tenderly, something in French—“Le petit ange aux beaux cheveux d’or,” if one may hazard a guess. Then, with another little girl, she danced. She was deeply impressed by the fact that the stage was covered with canvas, for the actors to walk on. The stages she had known were not like that—oh, not at all. And did somebody appear and carry her off, quite suddenly—kidnap her? She has that impression, but cannot be certain.