who was the nephew of women's rights activist and author Mary Wollstonecraft and first cousin of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, who wrote the horror classic Frankenstein. As a boy, Herbert's mother gave him the nickname Bart because she feared he would be known as Bertie,"a name then in vogue that she disliked. His family, friends and personal acquaintances continued to call him Bart for the rest of his life. He was also periodically referred to by his nickname in the press. While introduced by his given name, he was usually addressed as Bart on the radio. His parents gave him the middle name Brough (pronounced ) after his godfather, comedic Shakespearean actor Lionel Brough. As a child, Marshall was brought up by his three maternal aunts while his parents toured in theatrical productions. During school vacations, however, they took him with them. These early experiences initially gave him a negative view of the theatre: I used to tour the provinces in England with my mother and father, you know, when I was a small lad. And I was often tired and cold, there seemed to me to be so much heartache and poverty and disappointment that the glamour and applause and tinsel of the theatre escaped me, quite...No, I had no reason to love the theatre...I spent most of my time trying to forget those tired faces which the footlights served only to illumine, mockingly. Early acting career Marshall graduated from St. Mary's College in Old Harlow, Essex and worked for a time as an accounting clerk. After being sacked for the slow speed of his calculations, he took a job as an assistant business manager of a theatre troupe run by a friend of his father's. He later had a series of different backstage jobs at various theatres and acting companies. When a troupe he worked for reformed, he was laid off. He then tried his hand at acting. In a 1935 interview, he claimed that he only became an actor out of necessity because he did not know how to do anything else. To another reporter, he recollected how he had initially vowed never to go on the stage. Marshall had a long and varied stage career, appearing with such notables as Sir Nigel Playfair, Sir Gerald du Maurier, Noël Coward, Gertrude Lawrence, Edna Best (his second wife), Cathleen Nesbitt, Mabel Terry-Lewis, Marie Löhr, Madge Titheradge and Edmund Gwenn