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| committer | nfenwick <nfenwick@pglaf.org> | 2025-02-27 16:00:41 -0800 |
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+ <head>
+ <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8" /> + <title>
+ On the Stage-and Off, by Jerome K. Jerome
+ </title>
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of On The Stage-And Off, by Jerome K. Jerome
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
+other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
+the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
+to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
+
+
+
+Title: On The Stage-And Off
+ The Brief Career Of A Would-Be Actor
+
+Author: Jerome K. Jerome
+
+Release Date: March 12, 2015 [EBook #48475]
+Last Updated: October 8, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ON THE STAGE-AND OFF ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger from page images generously
+provided by the Internet Archive
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+ <div style="height: 8em;">
+ <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+ </div>
+ <h1>
+ ON THE STAGE-AND OFF
+ </h1>
+ <h3>
+ The Brief Career Of A Would-Be Actor
+ </h3>
+ <h2>
+ By Jerome K. Jerome
+ </h2>
+ <h5>
+ New York <br /> <br /> Henry Holt And Company <br /> <br /> 1891
+ </h5>
+ <div class="fig" style="width:65%">
+ <img src="images/titlepagem.jpg" alt="0000m " width="100%" /><br />
+ </div>
+ <h5>
+ <a href="images/titlepage.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
+ </h5>
+ <p>
+ <br /><br />
+ </p>
+ <hr />
+ <p>
+ <br /><br />
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <b>CONTENTS</b>
+ </p>
+ <p class="toc">
+ <a href="#link2H_PREF"> PREFACE. </a>
+ </p>
+ <p class="toc">
+ <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> <b>ON THE STAGE-AND OFF.</b> </a>
+ </p>
+ <p class="toc">
+ <a href="#link2HCH0001"> CHAPTER I. I Determine to Become an Actor. </a>
+ </p>
+ <p class="toc">
+ <a href="#link2HCH0002"> CHAPTER II. I Become an Actor. </a>
+ </p>
+ <p class="toc">
+ <a href="#link2HCH0003"> CHAPTER III. Through the Stage Door </a>
+ </p>
+ <p class="toc">
+ <a href="#link2HCH0004"> CHAPTER IV. Behind the Scenes. </a>
+ </p>
+ <p class="toc">
+ <a href="#link2HCH0005"> CHAPTER V. A Rehearsal. </a>
+ </p>
+ <p class="toc">
+ <a href="#link2HCH0006"> CHAPTER VI. Scenery and Supers </a>
+ </p>
+ <p class="toc">
+ <a href="#link2HCH0007"> CHAPTER VII. Dressing. </a>
+ </p>
+ <p class="toc">
+ <a href="#link2HCH0008"> CHAPTER VIII. My “First Deboo” </a>
+ </p>
+ <p class="toc">
+ <a href="#link2HCH0009"> CHAPTER IX. Birds of Prey. </a>
+ </p>
+ <p class="toc">
+ <a href="#link2HCH0010"> CHAPTER X. I Buy a Basket, and go into the
+ Provinces. </a>
+ </p>
+ <p class="toc">
+ <a href="#link2HCH0011"> CHAPTER XI. First Provincial Experiences </a>
+ </p>
+ <p class="toc">
+ <a href="#link2HCH0012"> CHAPTER XII. “Mad Mat” Takes Advantage of an
+ Opportunity. </a>
+ </p>
+ <p class="toc">
+ <a href="#link2HCH0013"> CHAPTER XIII. Lodgings and Landladies. </a>
+ </p>
+ <p class="toc">
+ <a href="#link2HCH0014"> CHAPTER XIV. With a Stock Company, </a>
+ </p>
+ <p class="toc">
+ <a href="#link2HCH0015"> CHAPTER XV. Revenge </a>
+ </p>
+ <p class="toc">
+ <a href="#link2HCH0016"> CHAPTER XVI. Views on Acting </a>
+ </p>
+ <p class="toc">
+ <a href="#link2HCH0017"> CHAPTER XVIII. My Last Appearance. </a>
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <br /><br />
+ </p>
+ <hr />
+ <p>
+ <a name="link2H_PREF" id="link2H_PREF"> </a>
+ </p>
+ <div style="height: 4em;">
+ <br /><br /><br /><br />
+ </div>
+ <h2>
+ PREFACE.
+ </h2>
+ <p>
+ In penning the following pages I have endeavored to be truthful. In
+ looking back upon the scenes through which I passed, I have sought to
+ penetrate the veil of glamour Time trails behind him as he flies, and to
+ see things exactly as they were—to see the rough road as well as the
+ smiling landscape, the briers and brambles as well as the green grass and
+ the waving trees.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Now, however, that my task is done, and duty no longer demands that memory
+ should use a telescope, the mellowing haze of distance resumes its sway,
+ and the Stage again appears the fair, enchanted ground that I once dreamt
+ it. I forget the shadows, and remember but the brightness. The hardships
+ that I suffered seem now but picturesque incidents; the worry only
+ pleasurable excitement.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I think of the Stage as of a lost friend. I like to dwell upon its virtues
+ and to ignore its faults. I wish to bury in oblivion the bad, bold
+ villains and the false-hearted knaves who played a part thereon, and to
+ think only of the gallant heroes, the virtuous maidens, and the good old
+ men.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Let the bad pass. I met far more honest, kindly faces than deceitful ones,
+ and I prefer to remember the former. Plenty of honest, kindly hands
+ grasped mine, and such are the hands that I like to grip again in thought.
+ Where the owners of those kindly hands and faces may be now I do not know.
+ Years have passed since I last saw them, and the sea of life has drifted
+ us farther and farther apart. But wherever on that sea they may be
+ battling, I call to them from here a friendly greeting. Hoping that my
+ voice may reach across the waves that roll between us, I shout to them and
+ their profession a hearty and sincere God Speed.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <br /><br />
+ </p>
+ <hr />
+ <p>
+ <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002"> </a>
+ </p>
+ <div style="height: 4em;">
+ <br /><br /><br /><br />
+ </div>
+ <h1>
+ ON THE STAGE-AND OFF.
+ </h1>
+ <p>
+ <br /><br />
+ </p>
+ <hr />
+ <p>
+ <a name="link2HCH0001" id="link2HCH0001"> </a>
+ </p>
+ <div style="height: 4em;">
+ <br /><br /><br /><br />
+ </div>
+ <h2>
+ CHAPTER I. I Determine to Become an Actor.
+ </h2>
+ <p>
+ <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0001" id="linkimage-0001"> </a>
+ </p>
+ <div class="figleft" style="width:20%;">
+ <img src="images/9011.jpg" alt="9011 " width="100%" /><br /><a
+ href="images/9011.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
+ </div>
+ <p>
+ HERE comes a time in every one’s life when he feels he was born to be an
+ actor. Something within him tells him that he is the coming man, and that
+ one day he will electrify the world. Then he burns with a desire to show
+ them how the thing’s done, and to draw a salary of three hundred a week.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ This sort of thing generally takes a man when he is about nineteen, and
+ lasts till he is nearly twenty. But he doesn’t know this at the time. He
+ thinks he has got hold of an inspiration all to himself—a kind of
+ solemn “call,” which it would be wicked to disregard; and when he finds
+ that there are obstacles in the way of his immediate appearance as Hamlet
+ at a leading West-end theater, he is blighted.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I myself caught it in the usual course. I was at the theater one evening
+ to see <i>Romeo and Juliet</i> played, when it suddenly flashed across me
+ that that was my vocation. I thought all acting was making love in tights
+ to pretty women, and I determined to devote my life to it. When I
+ communicated my heroic resolution to my friends, they reasoned with me.
+ That is, they called me a fool; and then said that they had always thought
+ me a sensible fellow, though that was the first I had ever heard of it.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ But I was not to be turned from my purpose.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I commenced operations by studying the great British dramatists. I was
+ practical enough to know that some sort of preparation was necessary, and
+ I thought that, for a beginning, I could not do better than this.
+ Accordingly, I read through every word of Shakespeare,—with notes,
+ which made it still more unintelligible,—Ben Jonson, Beaumont and
+ Fletcher, Sheridan, Goldsmith, and Lord Lytton. This brought me into a
+ state of mind bordering on insanity. Another standard dramatist, and I
+ should have gone raving mad: of that I feel sure. Thinking that a change
+ would do me good, I went in for farces and burlesques, but found them more
+ depressing than the tragedies, and the idea then began to force itself
+ upon me that, taking one consideration with another, an actor’s lot would
+ not be a happy one. Just when I was getting most despondent, however, I
+ came across a little book on the art of “making-up,” and this resuscitated
+ me.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I suppose the love of “making-up” is inherent in the human race. I
+ remember belonging, when a boy, to “The West London United Concert and
+ Entertainment Association.” We used to meet once a week for the purpose of
+ regaling our relations with original songs and concertina solos, and on
+ these occasions we regularly burnt-corked our hands and faces. There was
+ no earthly reason for doing so, and I am even inclined to think we should
+ have made our friends less unhappy if we had spared them this extra
+ attraction. None of our songs had the slightest reference to Dinah. We
+ didn’t even ask each other conundrums; while, as for the jokes, they all
+ came from the audience. And yet we daubed ourselves black with as much
+ scrupulousness as if it had been some indispensable religious rite. It
+ could only have been vanity.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Making-up” certainly assists the actor to a very great degree. At least,
+ I found it so in my case. I am naturally of mild and gentle appearance,
+ and, at that time, was particularly so. It was no earthly use my standing
+ in front of the glass and trying to rehearse the part of, say, a drunken
+ costermonger. It was perfectly impossible for me to imagine myself the
+ character. I am ashamed to have to confess it, but I looked more like a
+ young curate than a drunken costermonger, or even a sober one, and the
+ delusion could not be sustained for a moment. It was just the same when I
+ tried to turn myself into a desperate villain; there was nothing of the
+ desperate villain about me. I might, perhaps, have imagined myself going
+ for a walk on Sunday, or saying “bother it,” or even playing ha’penny nap,
+ but as for ill-treating a lovely and unprotected female, or murdering my
+ grandfather, the thing was absurd. I could not look myself in the face and
+ do it. It was outraging every law of Lavater.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ My fiercest scowl was a milk-and-watery accompaniment to my bloodthirsty
+ speeches; and, when I tried to smile sardonically, I merely looked
+ imbecile.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ But crape hair and the rouge pot changed all this. The character of Hamlet
+ stood revealed to me the moment that I put on false eyebrows, and made my
+ cheeks look hollow. With a sallow complexion, dark eyes, and long hair, I
+ <i>was</i> Romeo, and, until I washed my face, loved Juliet to the
+ exclusion of all my female cousins. Humor came quite natural when I had a
+ red nose; and, with a scrubby black beard, I felt fit for any amount of
+ crime.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ My efforts to study elocution, however, were not so successful. I have the
+ misfortune to possess a keen sense of the ludicrous, and to have a morbid
+ dread of appearing ridiculous. My extreme sensitiveness on this point
+ would have been enough to prevent my ever acting well under any
+ circumstances, and, as it was, it hampered and thwarted me at every turn:
+ not only on the stage, but even in my own room, with the door locked. I
+ was always in a state of terror lest any one should overhear me, and half
+ my time was taken up in listening on one side of the key-hole, to make
+ sure that no one was listening on the other; while the slightest creak on
+ the stairs was sufficient to make me stop short in the middle of a
+ passage, and commence whistling or humming in an affectedly careless
+ manner, in order to suggest the idea that I was only amusing myself. I
+ tried getting up early and going to Hampstead Heath, but it was no good.
+ If I could have gone to the Desert of Sahara, and assured myself, by the
+ aid of a powerful telescope, that no living creature was within twenty
+ miles of me, I might have come out strong, but not else. Any confidence I
+ might have placed in Hampstead Heath was rudely dissipated on the very
+ second morning of my visits. Buoyed up by the belief that I was far from
+ every vestige of the madding crowd, I had become quite reckless, and,
+ having just delivered, with great vigor, the oration of Antony over the
+ body of Cæsar, I was about starting on something else, when I heard a loud
+ whisper come from some furze bushes close behind me: “Ain’t it proper,
+ Liza! Joe, you run and tell ‘Melia to bring Johnny.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I did not wait for Johnny. I left that spot at the rate of six miles an
+ hour. When I got to Camden Town I looked behind me, cautiously. No crowd
+ appeared to be following me, and I felt relieved, but I did not practice
+ on Hampstead Heath again.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ After about two months of this kind of thing, I was satisfied that I had
+ learned all that could possibly be required, and that I was ready to “come
+ out.” But here the question very naturally arose, “How can I get out?” My
+ first idea was to write to one of the leading managers, tell him frankly
+ my ambition, and state my abilities in a modest but a straightforward
+ manner. To this, I argued, he would reply by requesting me to call upon
+ him, and let him see for himself what I could do. I should then go to the
+ theater at the time appointed, and send up my card. He would ask me into
+ his private room, and, after a little general conversation on the weather,
+ and the latest murder, etc., etc., he would suggest my rehearsing some
+ short scene before him or reciting one or two speeches. This I should do
+ in a way that would quite astonish him, and he would engage me on the spot
+ at a small salary. I did not expect much at first, but fancied that five
+ or six pounds per week would be near the mark. After that, the rest would
+ be easy. I should go on for some months, perhaps a year, without making
+ any marked sensation. Then my opportunity would come. A new play would be
+ produced, in which there would be some minor part, not considered of any
+ importance, but which in my hands (I had just read the history of “Lord
+ Dundreary,” and believed every word of it) would become the great thing in
+ the play, and the talk of London.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I should take the town by storm, make the fortune of my manager, and be
+ the leading actor of the day. I used to dwell on the picture of the night
+ when I should first startle the world. I could see the vast house before
+ me with its waves of wild, excited faces. I could hear their hoarse roar
+ of applause ringing in my ears. Again and again I bowed before them, and
+ again and again the cheers burst forth, and my name was shouted with
+ waving of hats and with bravos.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I did not write to a manager, though, after all. A friend who knew
+ something about the subject said he wouldn’t if he were I, and I didn’t.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I asked him what course he would advise, and he said: “Go to an agent, and
+ tell him just exactly what you want.” I went to two or three agents, and
+ told them all just exactly what I wanted, and they were equally frank, and
+ told me just exactly, what <i>they</i> wanted, which, speaking generally,
+ was five shillings booking fee, to begin with. To do them justice, though,
+ I must say that none of them appeared at all anxious to have me; neither
+ did they hold out to me much hope of making my fortune. I believe my name
+ is still down in the books of most of the agents—at least, I have
+ never been round to take it off—and I expect that among them they
+ will obtain for me a first-class engagement one of these days, when I am
+ Bishop of London, or editor of a society paper, or something of that sort.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ It was not for want of worrying that they did not do anything for me then.
+ I was forever what I called “waking them up,” a process which consisted of
+ studying the photos in the outer office for half an hour, and then being
+ requested to call again. I had regular days for performing this duty, on
+ the mornings of which I would say to myself: “Well, I must go round, and
+ wake those agents up again to-day.” When I had said this, I felt quite
+ important, and had some vague idea that I was overworking myself. If, on
+ my way, I happened to meet a friend, I greeted him with “Haven’t got a
+ minute, old man. I’m just going round to my agents,” and, scarcely
+ stopping to shake hands, would rush off, leaving him with the impression
+ that I had been telegraphed for.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ But I never succeeded in rousing them to a full sense of their
+ responsibilities, and, after a while, we began to get mutually tired of
+ one another; especially as about this time I managed to get hold of two or
+ three sham agents,—or rather, they managed to get hold of me,—who
+ were much more pleased to see me. One of these, a very promising firm
+ (though not quite so good at performing), had its offices then in
+ Leicester Square, and consisted of two partners, one of whom, however, was
+ always in the country on important business, and could never be seen. I
+ remember they got four pounds out of me, for which they undertook, in
+ writing, to obtain me a salaried London engagement before the expiration
+ of a month. Just when the time was nearly up, however, I received a long
+ and sympathetic letter from the mysterious traveling partner. This
+ hitherto rusticating individual had, it appeared, returned to town the
+ previous day, but only to discover a state of things that had shocked him
+ beyond all expression. His partner, the one to whom I had paid the four
+ pounds, besides defrauding nearly all the clients by taking money for
+ engagements which he had no possible means of obtaining, had robbed him,
+ the writer of the letter, of upward of seventy pounds, and had bolted, no
+ one knew whither. My present correspondent expressed himself deeply
+ grieved at my having been so villainously cheated, and hoped I would join
+ him in taking proceedings against his absconding partner—when found.
+ He concluded by stating that four pounds was an absurd sum to charge for
+ obtaining such an engagement as had been held out to me, and that if I
+ would give him (who really had the means of performing his promises) two
+ pounds, he would get me one in a week, or ten days at the outside. Would I
+ call and see him that evening? I did not go that evening, but I went the
+ first thing the next morning. I then found the door locked, and a notice
+ on it that all letters were to be left with the housekeeper. Coming
+ downstairs, I met a man coming up, and asked him if he knew where either
+ of the partners could be found. He said that he would give a sovereign to
+ know, and that he was the landlord. I heard of the firm again the other
+ day, and I believe it is still flourishing, though with the customary
+ monthly change as to name and address. By the by, I wonder if the agent
+ nuisance will ever be stamped out. Perhaps, now that education is
+ compulsory, the next generation of actors and managers may be able to look
+ after their own affairs, and so dispense with the interference of these
+ meddlers on commission.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <br /><br />
+ </p>
+ <hr />
+ <p>
+ <a name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002"> </a>
+ </p>
+ <div style="height: 4em;">
+ <br /><br /><br /><br />
+ </div>
+ <h2>
+ CHAPTER II. I Become an Actor.
+ </h2>
+ <p>
+ <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0002" id="linkimage-0002"> </a>
+ </p>
+ <div class="figleft" style="width:20%;">
+ <img src="images/9021.jpg" alt="9021 " width="100%" /><br /><a
+ href="images/9021.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
+ </div>
+ <p>
+ MONG the sham agents must be classed the “Professors,” or “X. Y. Z.‘s,”
+ who are always “able to place two or three” (never more than two or three:
+ it would be no use four applying) “lady and gentlemen amateurs, of tall or
+ medium stature, either dark or fair, but <i>must</i> be of good
+ appearance, at a leading West-end theater, in good parts: Salaried
+ engagement.” These gentlemen are appreciative, and very quick to discern
+ real talent. They perceived mine in a moment. They were all of them sure
+ that I should make a splendid actor, and I was just the man they wanted.
+ But they were conscientious. They scorned to hide the truth, and told me
+ of my faults without reserve. They said that I was full of promise, that I
+ had the makings of a really great actor in me, <i>but</i>—and the
+ remarkable part of it was that no two of them agreed as to that “but.” One
+ said it was my voice. All that I wanted was to train my voice; then I
+ should be perfect. Another thought my voice was a very fine one, but told
+ me that my attitudes would not do at all. When my attitudes were a little
+ more artistic, he could get me an engagement at once. A third, after
+ hearing me recite a trifle or two from <i>Macbeth</i>, clapped me on
+ shoulder, and insisted on shaking hands. There were tears almost in his
+ eyes, and he appeared quite overcome. He said:
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “My boy, you have got it in you. You are an actor! but—you want
+ chic.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I had not got the slightest notion what he meant. I said:
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “You think so.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ He was sure of it. It would be impossible for me to succeed without chic:
+ <i>with</i> chic, I should soon be famous. I determined, at any price, to
+ get chic, and I deferentially put it to him, how he thought I could obtain
+ it. He paused for a minute or so, evidently considering how it could be
+ done, while I stood anxiously awaiting the result. Suddenly a bright idea
+ seemed to strike him. He laid his hand confidentially on my arm, and in
+ the impressive voice of a man who is communicating some extraordinary
+ discovery, said: “Come to me, twice a week, Tuesdays and Fridays, say,
+ from eight to nine.” Then he drew back a few paces to see what effect it
+ had upon me.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I replied that I supposed he meant he would teach it me. He seemed struck
+ with my intelligence, and acknowledged that that was just precisely what
+ he did mean. He explained—always in the same strictly confidential
+ manner, as though he would not for the world have any one else know—that
+ he had had great experience in this particular branch of dramatic
+ education. He had letters now in his desk from well-known actors and
+ actresses, persons of the greatest eminence, acknowledging that they owed
+ their present position entirely to his teaching, and thanking him for all
+ that he had done for them. He would show me those letters, and he rose to
+ do so. But no, on second thoughts he would not; they were written in
+ confidence, and it would not be right for him to let others see them—not
+ even me, whom he felt he could trust. To do him justice, he never did show
+ those letters, either to me, or, as far as I could learn, to any one else,
+ though I subsequently came across three or four people who expressed an
+ earnest desire to see them.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ But I was slowly and painfully gaining experience, and I went away without
+ leaving the five-pound note which I—“as a man of business’”—ought
+ to have seen was an absurdly small amount, his usual charge being twenty
+ guineas; only, somehow or other, he had taken an interest in me, and felt
+ sure I should reflect credit on his teaching, and so make it up to him in
+ that way.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Another class that make a very good thing out of stage-struck asses, are
+ the “managers” (?) who have vacancies for “an amateur lady and gentleman
+ in a specially selected company.” They are men who evidently believe in
+ the literal truth of Jaques’s opinion as to all men and women being
+ players, for they put raw novices into the leading parts with a confidence
+ as to the result that is simply touching. The Thespian aspirant, who has
+ never acted out of his own back parlor, feels a little nervous, though, at
+ being cast for Banquo and Colonel Damas, to open with on the following
+ Saturday. He cannot quite make up his mind whether a mistake has been
+ made, a practical joke played upon him for the amusement of the rest of
+ the company, or whether it is that the manager is really an intelligent
+ man, who knows ability when he sees it. He does not like to speak about
+ it, lest it should be thought he was not confident of his own powers—a
+ failing of which the stage tyro is not usually guilty. Besides which, the
+ parts might be taken from him, and this he by no means desires, although,
+ at the same time, he is perfectly sure that he could play every other
+ character in the piece much better. I had only one experience of the sham
+ manager—at least, of this kind of sham manager. Unfortunately, there
+ are other kinds, as most actors know to their cost, but these I have not
+ come to yet. No, and I wish I had never gone to them, either.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ There were about half a dozen of us noodles who had answered one
+ advertisement, and we met every night for rehearsals at a certain house in
+ Newman Street. Three or four well-known professionals, who were then
+ starring in the provinces, but who would join us at the beginning of the
+ next week, were to fill the chief parts, and we were to start for
+ Gravesend immediately after their arrival. I had been engaged at a weekly
+ salary of one pound fifteen shillings, and had been cast for the parts of
+ Gilbert Featherstone in <i>Lost in London</i>, and the King in <i>Hamlet</i>.
+ Everything went smoothly; there had been no suggestion of a premium or
+ anything of that kind; and although I had, by this time, grown exceedingly
+ suspicious, I began to think that this, at all events, was not a swindle.
+ But I soon found out the trick. On the fifth night of the rehearsals, our
+ manager was particularly pleasant, and complimented me on what he called
+ my really original reading of the parts. During the pauses, he leant
+ familiarly on my shoulder, and discussed the piece with me. We had a
+ little argument about the part of the King. He differed from me, at first,
+ on one or two points, but afterward came round to my views, and admitted
+ that I was right. Then he asked me how I was going to dress the part. I
+ had thought of this, even before I had studied the words, so I was as pat
+ as could be on the subject, and we went through all the details, and
+ arranged for a very gorgeous costume, indeed. He did not try to stint me
+ in the leasts though I was once or twice afraid he might grumble at the
+ cost. But no, he seemed quite as anxious as I was that the thing should be
+ done in good style. It would be a little expensive, as he himself said,
+ but then, “you may just as well do the thing properly, while you are about
+ it,” he added, and I agreed with him. He went on to reckon up the amount.
+ He said that he could get the things very cheap—much cheaper than
+ any one else, as he had a friend in the business, who would let him have
+ them for exactly what they cost to make. I congratulated him on the fact,
+ but feeling no personal interest in the matter, began to be rather bored
+ by his impressiveness on the subject. After adding it all up, he came to
+ the conclusion that nine pounds ought to cover the lot.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “And very cheap, too,” said he; “the things will be good, and will always
+ come in useful;” and I agreed with him again, and remarked that I thought
+ they would be well worth the money; but wondering what on earth all this
+ had got to do with me.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Then he wanted to know whether I would pay the money that evening, or
+ bring it with me next time.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Me! me pay!” I exclaimed, rendered ungrammatical by surprise. “What for?”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “What for! Why, for the costume,” replied he; “you can’t play the part
+ without, and if you got the things yourself, you’d have to pay about four
+ pounds more, that’s all. If you haven’t got all the money handy,” he
+ continued soothingly, “let me have as much as you can, you know, and I’ll
+ try and get my friend to trust you for the rest.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ On subsequent inquiry among the others, I found that three of them had
+ already let him have about five pounds each, and that a fourth, intended
+ to hand him over four pounds ten the following night. I and another agreed
+ to wait and see. We did not see much, however. We never saw the well-known
+ professionals, and, after the next evening, we never saw our manager
+ again. Those who had paid saw less.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I now thought I would try hunting for myself, without the aid of agents or
+ advertisements. I might be more successful, and certainly could not be
+ less. The same friend that had recommended me not to write to the
+ managers, concurred with me in this view, and thought I could not do
+ better than drop in occasionally at “The Occidental”; and I accordingly so
+ dropped in. I suppose there is no actor who does not know “The
+ Occidental,” though it does try to hide itself down a dark court, being,
+ no doubt, of a retiring disposition, like the rest of the profession.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I found the company there genial and pleasant, and without any objection
+ to drinking at my expense. When, however, I hinted my wish to join the
+ profession, they regarded me with a look of the most profound pity, and
+ seemed really quite concerned. They shook their heads gravely, told me
+ their own experiences, and did all they could to dissuade me from my
+ intention. But I looked upon them as selfish fellows who wanted to keep
+ young talent from the stage. Even if their advice were given honestly, I
+ argued, it was no use taking any notice of it. Every one thinks his own
+ calling the worst, and if a man waited to enter a profession until those
+ already in it recommended him to, he might sit and twiddle his thumbs for
+ the rest of his life. So I paid no attention to their warning, but
+ continued in my course, and, at length, found some one to help me.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ He was a large, flabby-looking individual, who seemed to live on Scotch
+ whisky and big cigars, and was never either drunk or sober. He did not
+ smell refreshing—a fact he made all the more impressive by breathing
+ very hard, right into one’s face, while talking. He had formerly been a
+ country manager, but how he earned his livelihood now, was always a
+ mystery to me, as, although he rented a dirty little back room in a street
+ leading out of the Strand, and called it his office, he never did anything
+ there but go to sleep. He was, however, well known to the theatrical
+ frequenters of “The Occidental,”—better known than respected, as I
+ afterward learnt,—while he himself knew everybody, and it appeared
+ to me that he was just the very man I wanted. At first, he was not any
+ more enthusiastic than the others, but my mentioning that I was prepared
+ to pay a small premium in order to obtain an appearance, set him
+ pondering, and, in the end, he didn’t see why it could not be done. When I
+ stated the figure I was ready to give, he grew more hopeful still, and
+ came to the conclusion that it <i>could</i> be done. He did not even see
+ why I should not make a big name, if I only left myself entirely in his
+ hands.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “I have done the same thing for other people,” said he, “and I can for
+ you, if I like. There is ————,” he went on,
+ getting talkative all at once, “he is drawing his eighty pounds a week
+ now. Well, damn it all, sir, I made that man—made him. He’d never
+ have been anything more than a third-rate provincial actor, if it hadn’t
+ been for me. Then look at ————, at the ———,
+ I knew him when he was having twenty-two shillings a week for
+ responsibles, with old Joe Clamp, and that only when he could get it, mind
+ you. I brought him up to London, started him at the Surrey, took him on to
+ the West-end, and worked him up to what he is. And now, when he passes me
+ in his brougham, he don’t know me,” and my newfound friend heaved a sigh,
+ and took another pull to drown his grief at the ingratitude of human
+ nature.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Yes, sir,” he continued, on emerging from his glass, “I made those men,
+ and why shouldn’t I make you?”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ As I could not show any reason for his not doing so, he determined that he
+ would; although he supposed that I should turn out just the same as the
+ rest of them, and forget him, when I was at the top of the tree. But I
+ assured him most solemnly that I would not, and that I should be just as
+ pleased to see him, when I was a great man, as I was then, and I shook
+ hands warmly with him, as a token of how pleased I was to see him then;
+ for I felt really grateful to him for the favors he was going to bestow on
+ me, and I was quite vexed that he should think I might prove ungrateful,
+ and neglect him.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ When I saw him the next day, he told me he had done it. He had arranged an
+ engagement for me with a Surrey-side manager, to whom he would introduce
+ me to-morrow, when the agreement could be signed, and everything settled.
+ I was, accordingly, to be at his office for the purpose at eleven o’clock
+ the following morning—and to bring the money with me. That was his
+ parting injunction.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I did not walk back to my lodgings, I skipped back. I burst open the door,
+ and went up the stairs like a whirlwind; but I was too excited to stop
+ indoors. I went and had dinner at a first-class restaurant, the bill for
+ which considerably lessened my slender means. “Never mind,” I thought,
+ “what are a few shillings, when I shall soon be earning my hundreds of
+ pounds!” I went to the theater, but I don’t know what theater it was, or
+ what was the play, and I don’t think I knew at the time. I did notice the
+ acting a little, but only to fancy how much better I could play each part
+ myself. I wondered how I should like these particular actors and
+ actresses, when I came to know them. I thought I should rather like the
+ leading lady, and, in my imagination, sketched out the details of a most
+ desperate flirtation with her, that would send all the other actors mad
+ with jealousy. Then I went home to bed, and lay awake all night, dreaming.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I got up at seven the next morning, and hurried over my breakfast, so as
+ to be in time for the appointment at eleven. I think I looked at my watch
+ (I wonder where that watch is now!) at least every other minute. I got
+ down to the Strand a little before ten, and wandered up and down a small
+ portion of it, frightened to go a stone’s throw from the office, and yet
+ dreading to go too near it. I bought a new pair of gloves. I remember they
+ were salmon color, and one of them split as I was trying to get it on, so
+ I carried it crumpled up in my hand, and wore the other one. When it got
+ within twenty minutes of the time, I turned into the street where the
+ office was, and loitered about there, with an uncomfortable feeling, that
+ every one living in it knew what I had come about, and was covertly
+ watching me from behind blinds and curtains. It seemed as though eleven
+ o’clock never would come, but Big Ben tolled it out at last, and I walked
+ up the door, trying to look as if I had just strolled!
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ When I reached the office, no one was there, and the door was locked. My
+ heart sank within me. Had the whole thing been a cruel hoax? Was it to be
+ another disappointment? Had the manager been murdered? Had the theater
+ been burned down? Why were they not here? Something extraordinary must
+ have happened to make them late on such an important occasion as this. I
+ spent half an hour of intense suspense and then they arrived. They hoped
+ they had not kept me waiting, and I replied, “Oh no, not at all,” and
+ murmured something about having only just come myself.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ As soon as we all three were inside the little office, I was introduced to
+ the manager, who turned out to be an actor I had often seen on the boards,
+ but who did not look a bit like himself, though he would have done very
+ well for his own son; he was so much shorter and younger than he ought to
+ have been. The clean-shaven face gives actors such a youthful appearance.
+ It was difficult to believe, at first, that the sedate-looking boys I used
+ to meet at rehearsal, were middle-aged men with families, some of them.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Altogether, my future manager did not realize my expectations of him. He
+ was not dressed with that reckless disregard for expense that I had looked
+ for in a man of his position. To tell the truth, he presented a very seedy
+ figure, indeed. I put it down, however, to that contempt for outward
+ appearance, so often manifested by men of great wealth, and called to mind
+ stories of millionaires who had gone about almost in rags; and I
+ remembered, too, how I had once seen the mother of one of our leading
+ burlesque actresses, and how I had been surprised at her extreme dinginess—the
+ mother’s.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ They had the agreements all ready, and the manager and I signed in each
+ other’s presence, and exchanged. Then I handed him a ten-pound bank note,
+ and he gave me a receipt for it. Everything was strictly formal. The
+ agreement, especially, was very plain and precise, and there could be no
+ mistake about it. It arranged for me to give my services for the first
+ month gratis, and after that I was to receive a <i>salary according to
+ ability</i>. This seemed to me very fair, indeed. If anything, it was,
+ perhaps, a little reckless on his part, and might press heavily upon him.
+ He told me candidly, however, that he did not think I should be worth more
+ than thirty shillings a week to him for the first two or three months
+ though, of course, it would depend upon myself entirely, and he should be
+ only too pleased if it, proved otherwise. I held a different opinion on
+ the subject, but did not mention it, thinking it would be better to wait
+ and let time prove it. So I merely said I wished for nothing but what was
+ fair and just, and it appearing that this was exactly what he wanted me to
+ have, we parted on the best of terms; but not before all particulars had
+ been arranged. He was going to open for the summer season in three weeks’
+ time, and the rehearsals were to commence about a fortnight before. For
+ the next week, therefore, I was nothing; after that, I was an Actor!!! *
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ * My friends deny this. They say I never became an actor. I say I did, and
+ I think I ought to know.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <br /><br />
+ </p>
+ <hr />
+ <p>
+ <a name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003"> </a>
+ </p>
+ <div style="height: 4em;">
+ <br /><br /><br /><br />
+ </div>
+ <h2>
+ CHAPTER III. Through the Stage Door
+ </h2>
+ <p>
+ <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0003" id="linkimage-0003"> </a>
+ </p>
+ <div class="figleft" style="width:20%;">
+ <img src="images/9035.jpg" alt="9035 " width="100%" /><br /><a
+ href="images/9035.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
+ </div>
+ <p>
+ T was not until about a week before the opening night, that I received a
+ summons to attend at the theater. Eleven o’clock was the time appointed
+ for “the company to assemble on the stage,” and, accordingly, at a few
+ minutes before that hour, I stood in front of the stage-door.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ It was a dingy-looking place, up a back street, with a barber’s shop on
+ one side, and a coal shed on the other. A glorious spring sunshine made it
+ look, by contrast, still more uninviting, and I likened it to the entrance
+ to the enchanted palace in the fairy tales, where the gloomier the portal
+ through which the prince passes, the more gorgeous the halls beyond. This
+ was before I had seen the inside.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ But it wouldn’t do for me to stop there meditating. It was already two
+ minutes past eleven and the rest of the company would be waiting for me.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I laid my hand upon the latch, and——
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ A moment, please. Before I throw open that door and let daylight in upon
+ the little world behind, let me offer a word or two of preparatory
+ explanation.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The theatrical world is a big world. From one of the leading London
+ theaters to a traveling booth (I intend no slighting allusion to our
+ talented American cousin) is a wide stretch, and embraces a great variety.
+ My experience was confined to three or four of these varieties, and by no
+ means extended to the whole. My short career was passed among the minor
+ London theaters, and second and third rate traveling companies; and it is
+ of these, and these only, that I shall speak. But of these—of what
+ came under my actual observation, that is—I shall speak freely,
+ endeavoring to record things exactly as I found them—nothing
+ extenuating, nor setting down aught in malice. It may be that, in the
+ course of my comments, I shall think it necessary to make a few more or
+ less sensible and original remarks; to tell actors and actresses what they
+ ought to do, and what they ought not to do; to explain to managers how
+ they ought to manage their own business; and to give good advice generally
+ all round. Therefore, at the outset, I wish to be clearly understood that,
+ when so doing, I have in mind only that part of the theatrical world with
+ which I am acquainted. As regards such theaters as, for example, the
+ Lyceum or the St. James’s, they are managed quite as well, perhaps, as I
+ could manage them myself, and I have no fault to find with them. Even if I
+ had, I should not do so here, for in these reminiscences I intend to talk
+ only about what I understand—an eccentric resolution for an author,
+ I admit; but no matter, I like to be original now and then. With this
+ understanding, we will push back the door and enter.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I found a wheezy little old man inside, boxed up behind a glass partition,
+ toasting a bloater before a small fire. On that morning, I felt kindly
+ disposed toward all living things, and I therefore spoke kindly, even to
+ this poor old buffer. I said:
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Good-morning. It’s a fine day.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ He said, “Shut the door, can’t yer; or else get outside.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Acting on this suggestion, I shut the door, and then stood leaning against
+ it, while he finished toasting the bloater. When I saw that this operation
+ was completed I had another try at him. I remarked that my name was
+ ————. Of course, I had assumed a stage name. They
+ all do it. Heaven only knows why; I am sure <i>they</i> don’t. While in
+ the profession, I met a young fellow whose real name happened to be the
+ very one that I had assumed, while he had taken my real name for his
+ assumed one. We were both happy and contented enough, until we met; but
+ afterward we took a sadder view of life, with all its shams and vanities.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ As the mere announcement of my name had no visible effect upon the
+ stage-door keeper—for such I found him to be—I fired my last
+ shot, and told him I was an actor. It roused him. It electrified him to
+ such a degree, that he took his gaze off the bloater, and looked at me.
+ Having feasted his eyes upon me to his full satisfaction, he said, “Down
+ the yard,” and returned to what, I suppose, was his breakfast; there being
+ a dismal, just-got-up sort of look about him.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Gathering from this that there was a yard somewhere in the neighborhood,
+ and that, when I had found it, I was to go down it, I started off to look
+ for it. I discovered it at last, quite unexpectedly, by the process of
+ stumbling over a friendly cat, and bursting open a door with my head. The
+ moment I got into it, I was surrounded by at least half a dozen of the
+ feline species. They looked hungry, and welcomed me with enthusiasm, under
+ an absurd idea that I was the cat’s meat man, whom I did not resemble in
+ the least. Cats are kept at theaters to keep away the rats, but sometimes
+ the cats themselves become so numerous as to be rather more of a nuisance
+ than the rats, and then it is necessary to keep some one to keep away the
+ cats. They take a great interest in the drama, these cats. They always
+ make a point of coming on in the middle of the most pathetic scenes, when
+ they take the center of the stage, and proceed to go through one or other
+ of their decidedly peculiar toilet exercises.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Going down the yard, as directed, and groping my way through a dark
+ passage at the end, I found myself in a vast, gloomy vault, full of hollow
+ echoes, and strange, shapeless shadows; at least, that is what it seemed
+ to me.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I cannot say, now, what notions I had previously formed of “behind the
+ scenes.” They were dispelled so rudely and suddenly, that all trace of
+ them is lost. I know they were formed; partly by Dower Wilson’s charming
+ sketches, where fairy damsels (in the costume of their country) lean
+ gracefully against the back of the landscapes, with their pretty legs
+ crossed; partly by the descriptions of friends who said they had been
+ there; and partly from my own imagination—a vivid one. The reality,
+ however, exceeded my wildest expectations. I could never have dreamt of
+ anything so utterly dismal, as an empty theater by daylight, or rather
+ day-darkness. No, not even after a supper of beefsteaks and porter.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ At first, I could see nothing; but, after a while, I got used to the
+ dimness, and was able to look about me. The decorations of the place (such
+ as they were—such as might be expected in a theater where the stalls
+ were three shillings, and the gallery fourpence) were shrouded in dirty
+ white cloths. The music stools and stands in the orchestra, together with
+ the big drum, and the violoncello in a green baize case, were all in a
+ heap in the corner, as if they had had a performance on their own account
+ during the night, and had ended up by getting drunk. This idea was further
+ suggested by the appearance of the gallery bar, which could be seen from
+ the stage, though it looked about half a mile off, and which was crowded
+ with empty bottles and dirty pewter pots and glasses. Shabby, patched
+ scenery—a mere unintelligible daub, seen close to—was littered
+ all round me; propped up against the great wooden beams which supported
+ the flies, or against the side walls; piled up at the back, in what was
+ called the “scene dock”; lying down flat at my feet; or hanging suspended
+ over my head. In the center of the stage was a rickety table, and on the
+ table was a candle, stuck in a ginger-beer bottle. A solitary sunbeam,
+ having sneaked in through some odd crevice, threw a band of light across
+ the gloom, and showed up the dust, of which the place seemed full. A
+ woman, with a noisy cold in her head, was sweeping out the pit; and some
+ unseen animal, which I judged to be a small boy, by the noise it made, was
+ performing a shrill whistle somewhere in the region of the dress circle.
+ The roar from the streets sounded dull and muffled, but the banging of a
+ door, or the falling of a chair within the building, made such a noise,
+ that the spiders ran into their holes for fright.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <br /><br />
+ </p>
+ <hr />
+ <p>
+ <a name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004"> </a>
+ </p>
+ <div style="height: 4em;">
+ <br /><br /><br /><br />
+ </div>
+ <h2>
+ CHAPTER IV. Behind the Scenes.
+ </h2>
+ <p>
+ <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0004" id="linkimage-0004"> </a>
+ </p>
+ <div class="figleft" style="width:20%;">
+ <img src="images/9041.jpg" alt="9041 " width="100%" /><br /><a
+ href="images/9041.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
+ </div>
+ <p>
+ HAD the stage all to myself for about half an hour. It is the etiquette of
+ the theater for every one to be late. You estimate the position of an
+ actor, by the time he is late for rehearsal. If he (I don’t say a word
+ about ladies: they are always an hour late for everything, bless ‘em) is
+ twenty minutes behind, he is most likely mere utility. If a man keeps
+ everybody waiting an hour and a half, you may put him down as a star.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I occupied the time pleasantly enough in wandering about, and finding out
+ all I could. I climbed up a shaky wooden staircase to the “flies,” and
+ looked down upon the stage from a height of fifty feet. I scrambled about
+ up there amidst ladders, and small platforms, and ropes, and pulleys, and
+ windlasses, and gas pipes, and empty gas bags, and beer cans, and
+ darkness, and dust. Then, up another ladder, leading higher still, and
+ along a narrow plank, crossing from one side of the stage to the other,
+ over a perfect hanging forest of scenery.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Clambering round behind, I came to the scene-painting room. It was a long,
+ narrow sort of loft, forty feet above the stage. One side of it was of
+ canvas—part of an enormous sheet, which passed right through it, in
+ at the top and out at the bottom. This sheet of canvas, on which a scene
+ was being painted, was suspended from the roof of the theater by means of
+ pulleys, so that the whole could be raised or lowered at pleasure, and
+ every portion of it brought within reach of the scene-painter, without his
+ moving.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ If I have not explained myself clearly, try this: Take your wife’s best
+ traveling trunk (choosing a time when she is not at home), wrench the
+ cover off, and then hold the box up against the window blind, in such a
+ position that the blind is where the cover would have been. There you have
+ it. The box is the scene-painter’s room—the blind, the scene.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ There was plenty of light and color (the latter in buckets) in the room,
+ but very little else. A long, deal table, crowded with brushes and paint
+ pots, ran nearly the whole length of it. The scene-painter’s palette, a
+ marble slab about six feet square, lay on the floor, and, near it, one of
+ the brushes with which the sky had been laid on. This brush was the size
+ of an ordinary carpet broom. Noting these things, I left the studio, and
+ descended.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ A little lower down was the wardrobe room.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ There was not much in it though. Dresses are borrowed as they are wanted,
+ now, from the costumiers round Covent Garden and Drury Lane; everything
+ being found for so much a week. Years ago, I believe, each theater used to
+ make, and keep, its own costumes. Even now, a few old-fashioned provincial
+ houses have a substantial wardrobe attached to them, but these are the
+ exceptions, and, as a rule, little, if any thing, is kept in stock. Here,
+ there were a few pairs of very loose and baggy-looking tights, half a
+ dozen rusty tin helmets, a heap of buff shoes in a corner—half of
+ them right, half left, sort ‘em as you want ‘em—some natty
+ waistcoats—red and blue, with a dash of yellow; the sort of thing
+ stage Yorkshiremen wear when they come to London, black cloaks for any one
+ who might wish to dissemble, and an assortment of spangled things. These
+ were the principal items, all of which had seen their best days.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Between the yard and the stage was a very big room, containing so
+ heterogeneous a collection of articles that at first I fancied it must be
+ a cooperative store in connection with the theater. It was, however, only
+ the property room, the things therein being properties; or, more commonly,
+ “props,” so called, I believe, because they help to support the drama. I
+ will give you some of the contents of the room haphazard as I recollect
+ them. There was a goodly number of tin cups, painted black up to within
+ half an inch of the rim, so as to give them the appearance of being always
+ full. It is from these vessels that the happy peasantry carouses, and the
+ comic army get helplessly fuddled. There is a universality about them.
+ They are the one touch of (stage) nature which makes the whole world kin.
+ They are used alike by the Esquimaux and the Hottenot. The Roman soldiery
+ appear never to have drunk out of anything else: while, without them, the
+ French Revolution would lose its chief characteristic. Besides these
+ common cups, there were gold and silver ones, used only for banquets, and
+ high-class suicides. There were bottles, and glasses, and jugs, and
+ decanters. From these aids to debauchery, it was pleasant to turn to a
+ cozy-looking tea service on a tray with a white table cloth: there was a
+ soothing suggestion of muffins and domestic bliss about it. There was
+ plenty of furniture, a couple of tables, a bedstead, a dresser, a sofa,
+ chairs—half dozen of them, high-backed ones, for “hall in the old
+ Grange,” etc.; they were made by fixing pasteboard backs on to ordinary
+ cane chairs. The result was that they were top heavy, and went over at the
+ slightest touch; so that picking them up, and trying to make them stand,
+ formed the chief business of the scenes in which they were used.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I remember the first time our light comedy attempted to sit down on one of
+ these chairs.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ It was on the opening night. He had just said something funny, and, having
+ said it, sat down, crossed his legs, and threw himself back, with all that
+ easy, negligent grace so peculiarly his own. Legs were the only things
+ that could be seen for the next few minutes.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Other “props” were, a throne, gorgeous in gilt paper and glazed calico; a
+ fire-grate, stuffed with red tinfoil; a mirror, made with silver paper; a
+ bunch of jailer’s keys; handcuffs; leg irons; flat irons; rifles; brooms;
+ bayonets; picks and crowbars for the virtuously infuriated populace; clay
+ pipes; daggers made of wood; stage broadswords—there is no need to
+ describe these, everybody knows them, they are like nothing else on earth;
+ battle axes; candlesticks; a pound or two of short dips; a crown, set with
+ diamonds and rubies each as big as a duck’s egg; a cradle—empty, an
+ affecting sight; carpets, kettles, and pots; a stretcher; a chariot; a
+ bunch of carrots; a costermonger’s barrow; banners; a leg of mutton, and a
+ baby. Everything, in short, that could possibly be wanted, either in a
+ palace or a garret, a farmyard or a battle-field.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Still wandering about, I came across a hole in the floor at the side of
+ the stage, and groped my way down a ladder to the region beneath, where
+ the fairies come from, and the demons go to. It was perfectly dark, and I
+ could see nothing. It smelt very moldy, and seemed to be full of cunning
+ contrivances for barking your shins. After bumping myself about a good
+ deal there, I was glad to find my way out again, deferring all further
+ investigations to some future period, with a candle.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ On emerging, I saw that the company had at last begun to arrive. A tall,
+ solemn-looking man was pacing the stage, and him I greeted. He was the
+ stage manager, and so of course rather surly. I don’t know why stage
+ managers are always surly, but they are.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ In the course of the next few minutes, there trotted in a demure-looking
+ little man, who turned out to be our “first low comedy,” and very good low
+ comedy he was, too, though, from his wooden expression, you might have
+ thought him as destitute of humor as the librettist of a comic opera. Then
+ followed the heavy man, talking in a very gruff voice to a good-looking
+ young fellow with him, who played the juveniles when our manager didn’t
+ take them himself. Then, after a short interval, a lady—an old
+ queer-looking little lady, who walked with a stick, and complained of
+ rheumatism, and who, as soon as she reached the stage, plumped herself
+ down on the thick end of a mossy bank, from which nothing would induce her
+ to rise until she got up to go home. She was our “old woman.” She did the
+ doting mothers and the comic old maids. She had played everything in her
+ time, and could play anything still. She would have taken Juliet, or
+ Juliet’s nurse, whichever you liked, and have done both of them well. She
+ would have been ten minutes making up for Juliet, and then, sitting in the
+ middle of the pit, you would have put her down for twenty.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The next to appear was a gentleman (“walking”) in a fur-trimmed overcoat,
+ patent-leather boots and white gaiters and lavender kid gloves. He carried
+ a silver-headed cane in his hand, a glass in his left eye, a cigar in his
+ mouth (put out as soon as he got to the stage, of course), and a small
+ nosegay in his button-hole. His salary I subsequently discovered to be
+ thirty shillings a week. After him came two ladies (not with any designs
+ upon the young man: merely in the order of time). One of them was thin and
+ pale, with a careworn look underneath the rouge, just as if she were some
+ poor, hard-working woman, with a large family and small means, instead of
+ an actress. The other was fat, fair, and—forty, if she was a day.
+ She was gloriously “got up,” both as regards complexion and dress. I can’t
+ describe the latter, because I never can tell what any woman has got on. I
+ only know she conveyed an impression to my mind of being stuck out all
+ round, and thrown out in front, and puffed out at the back, and towering
+ up at the top, and trailing away behind, and all to such a degree, that
+ she looked four times her natural size. As everybody was very glad indeed
+ to see her and welcomed her with what seemed to be irrepressible joy, even
+ the stage manager being civil, I naturally concluded that she was the
+ embodiment of all the virtues known to human kind. The whispered remarks
+ that I overheard, however, did not quite support this view, and I was at a
+ loss to reconcile matters, until I learned that she was the manager’s
+ wife. She was the leading lady, and the characters she particularly
+ affected, and in which she was affected, were the girlish heroines, and
+ the children who die young and go to heaven.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The rest of the company was made up of a couple of very old men, and a
+ middle-aged stout one, two rather pretty girls, evidently possessed of an
+ inexhaustible fund of humor, for they kept each other giggling all the
+ morning; and the manager himself, who arrived last, and was less
+ interested in the proceedings than any one else. No one took the slightest
+ notice of me, though I purposely stood about in conspicuous positions, and
+ I felt like the new boy at school.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ When everybody had arrived, the rickety table was brought down to the
+ front, and a bell rung; whereupon a small boy suddenly appeared for the
+ first time, and was given the “parts” to distribute. It was a manuscript
+ play, though well known to the company, nearly all of whom had played in
+ it plenty of times before. All the parts were torn and greasy except one,
+ which was prominently clean. When the boy came to that one he seemed
+ puzzled, not knowing to whom it belonged; so he stood in the center of the
+ stage and bawled out the name on it; and as it was my name, and I had to
+ claim the part, I was at once lifted out of my obscurity, and placed in an
+ opposite extreme hardly more comfortable.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <br /><br />
+ </p>
+ <hr />
+ <p>
+ <a name="link2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005"> </a>
+ </p>
+ <div style="height: 4em;">
+ <br /><br /><br /><br />
+ </div>
+ <h2>
+ CHAPTER V. A Rehearsal.
+ </h2>
+ <p>
+ <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0005" id="linkimage-0005"> </a>
+ </p>
+ <div class="figleft" style="width:20%;">
+ <img src="images/9050.jpg" alt="9050 " width="100%" /><br /><a
+ href="images/9050.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
+ </div>
+ <p>
+ HURRIEDLY unfolded the paper, to see what kind of a part I had got. I was
+ anxious to begin studying it immediately. I had to form my conception of
+ the character, learn the words and business, and get up gesture and
+ expression all in one week. No time was therefore to be lost. I give the
+ part in extenso:
+ </p>
+ <h3>
+ JOE JUNKS.
+ </h3>
+ <p>
+ Act I., scene I.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ ———— comes home.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ It’s a rough night.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ ————- if he does.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Ay. Ay.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ ——— stand back.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ (<i>Together</i>) ‘Tis he!
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <i>Fall down as scene closes in.</i>
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Act IV., scene 2.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <i>On with rioters.</i>
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I was of a sanguine disposition at that time, but I didn’t exactly see how
+ I was going to make much of a sensation with <i>that</i>. It seemed to me
+ that my talents were being thrown away. An ordinary actor would have done
+ for a part like that. However, if they chose to waste me, it was more
+ their misfortune than mine. I would say nothing, but do the best I could
+ with the thing, and throw as much feeling into the character as it would
+ hold. In truth, I ought to have been very proud of the part, for I found
+ out later on that it had been written especially for me by my manager. Our
+ low comedy, who knew the whole piece by heart, told me this. Then he
+ added, musingly: “A very good idea, too, of the boss’s. I always said the
+ first act wanted strengthening.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ At last, everybody having been supplied with his or her part, and the
+ leader of the band having arrived, the rehearsal really commenced. The
+ play was one of the regular old-fashioned melodramas, and the orchestra
+ had all its work cut out to keep up with it. Nearly all the performers had
+ a bar of music to bring them on each time, and another to take them off; a
+ bar when they sat down, and a bar when they got up again; while it took a
+ small overture to get them across the stage. As for the leading lady,
+ every mortal thing she did or said, from remarking that the snow was cold,
+ in the first act, to fancying she saw her mother and then dying, in the
+ last, was preceded by a regular concert. I firmly believe that if, while
+ on the stage, she had shown signs of wanting to sneeze, the band would at
+ once have struck up quick music. I began to think, after a while, that it
+ must be an opera, and to be afraid that I should have to sing my part.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The first scene was between the old landlord of an old inn, some village
+ gossips, and the villain of the piece. The stage manager (who played the
+ villain—naturally) stood in the center of the stage, from which the
+ rest of the company had retired, and, from there, with the manuscript in
+ his hand, he directed the proceedings.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Now then, gentlemen,” cried he, “first scene, please. Hallett, landlord,
+ Bilikins, and Junks” (I was Junks), “up stage, right. I shall be here”
+ (walking across and stamping his foot on the spot intended), “sitting at
+ table. All discovered at rise of curtain.” “You” (turning and speaking to
+ me, about whom he had evidently been instructed), “you, Mr. L., will be
+ sitting at the end, smoking a pipe. Take up your cues sharply, and mind
+ you, speak up or nobody will hear you: this is a big house. What are you
+ going to give us for an overture, Mr. P.?” (I call the leader of the band
+ Mr. P.). “Can you give us something old English, just before we ring up?
+ Thanks, do—has a good effect. Now then, please, we will begin. Very
+ piano all through this scene, Mr. P., until near the end. I’ll tell you
+ where, when we come to it.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Then, reading from our parts, we commenced. The speeches, with the
+ exception of the very short ones, were not given at full length. The last
+ two or three words, forming the cues, were clearly spoken, but the rest
+ was, as a rule, mumbled through, skipped altogether, or else represented
+ by a droning “er, er, er,” interspersed with occasional disjointed
+ phrases. A scene of any length, between only two or three of the
+ characters,—and there were many such,—was cut out entirely,
+ and gone through apart by the people concerned. Thus, while the main
+ rehearsal was proceeding in the center of the stage, a minor one was
+ generally going on at the same time in some quiet corner—two men
+ fighting a duel with walking sticks; a father denouncing his son, and
+ turning him out of doors; or, some dashing young gallant, in a big check
+ ulster, making love to some sweet young damsel, whose little boy, aged
+ seven, was sitting on her lap.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I waited eagerly for my cue, not knowing when it was coming, and, in my
+ anxiety, made two or three false starts. I was put out of any doubt about
+ it, when the time really did come, by a friendly nod from the gentleman
+ who represented the landlord, and thereupon I made my observation as to
+ the dreadful state of the weather in a loud, clear, and distinct voice, as
+ it seemed to me.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ As, however, nobody appeared to have heard me, and as they were evidently
+ waiting for me, I repeated the information in a louder, clearer, and more
+ distinct voice, if possible; after which the stage manager spoke and said:
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Now then, Mr. L., come along, let’s have it.” I explained to him that he
+ had already had it, and he then replied, “Oh, that will never do at all.
+ You must speak up more than that. Why, even <i>we</i> couldn’t hear you on
+ the stage. Bawl it out. Remember this is a large place; you’re not playing
+ in a back drawing-room now.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I thought it was impossible for me to speak louder than I had, without
+ doing myself some serious injury, and I began to pity the gallery boys.
+ Any one never having attempted to speak in a large public building would
+ hardly imagine how weak and insignificant the ordinary conversational
+ tones are, even at their loudest. To make your voice “carry,” you have to
+ <i>throw</i> it out, instead of letting it crawl out when you open your
+ mouth. The art is easily acquired, and, by it, you are able to make your
+ very whispers heard.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I was cautioned to look to this, and then we went on. The close of the
+ scene was a bustling one, and the stage manager explained it thus: “You”
+ (the landlord) “put the lantern close to my face, when you say ‘’Tis he!’
+ I spring up, throwing down the table” (a stamp here, to emphasize this).
+ “I knock you down. You two try to seize me; I break from you, and throw
+ you down, and cross center” (doing so). “I gain door, open it, and stand
+ there, pointing revolver. You all cower down.” We were squatting on our
+ toes, as an acknowledgment of having been all bowled over like a set of
+ nine-pins—or rather four-pins in our case—and we now further
+ bobbed our heads, to show that we did cower.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Picture,” says the stage manager approvingly, as drop falls. “Hurried
+ music all through that, Mr. P. Mind you all keep well up the stage” (“up”
+ the stage means toward the back, and “down” the stage, consequently,
+ implies near the footlights), “so as to let the drop come down. What front
+ drops have you got? Have you got an interior? We want a cottage interior.”
+ This latter was spoken to a stage carpenter, who was dragging some flats
+ about. Do not be shocked, gentle-reader; a stage flat is a piece of
+ scenery. No other kind of flat is ever seen on the stage.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “I dunno,” answered the man. “Where’s Jim? Jim!”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ It appeared that Jim had just stepped outside for a minute. He came back
+ at that point, however, wiping his mouth, and greatly indignant at hearing
+ the sound of his own name.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “All right, all right,” was his wrathful comment, as he came up the yard;
+ “don’t sing it; he ain’t dead. What the devil’s the matter? Is the ‘ouse
+ a-fire? <i>You</i> never go out, do yer!”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Jim was the head carpenter, and was a sulky and disagreeable man, even for
+ a stage carpenter. When he wasn’t “just stepped outside for a minute,” he
+ was quarreling inside, so that instead of anybody’s objecting to his
+ frequent temporary retirements, his absence was rather welcomed. He, in
+ common with all stage carpenters, held actors and actresses in the
+ greatest contempt, as people who were always in the way, and without whom
+ the play would get on much better. The chief charm about him, however, was
+ his dense stupidity. This trait was always brought into particular
+ prominence whenever the question of arranging scenery was under
+ discussion.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Fresh scenery is a very great rarity at the minor theaters. When anything
+ very special is produced, and an unusually long run is expected, say, of a
+ month or six weeks, one or two scenes may, perhaps, be specially painted,
+ but, as a rule, reliance is placed upon the scenery, the gradual growth of
+ years, already in stock, which, with a little alteration, and a good deal
+ of make-shift, generally does duty for the “entirely new and elaborate
+ scenery” so minutely described in the posters. Of course, under these
+ circumstances, slight inconsistencies must be put up with. Nobody objects
+ to a library drop representing “‘tween decks of the <i>Sarah Jane</i>,” or
+ to a back parlor being called a banqueting hall This is to be expected.
+ Our stage manager was not a narrow minded man on the subject of
+ accessories. He would have said nothing about such things as these. He
+ himself had, on the occasion of one of his benefits, played <i>Hamlet</i>
+ with nothing but one “interior” and “a garden,” and he had been a member
+ of a fit-up company that traveled with a complete Shakesperian <i>répertoire</i>
+ and four set scenes; so that he was not likely to be too exacting. But
+ even <i>he</i> used to be staggered at Jim’s ideas of mounting. Jim’s
+ notion of a “distant view of Hampstead Heath by moonlight,” was either a
+ tropical island, or the back of an old transformation scene; and for any
+ place in London—no matter what, whether Whitechapel or St. James’s
+ Park—he invariably suggested a highly realistic representation of
+ Waterloo Bridge in a snow-storm.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ In the present instance, on being asked for the cottage interior, he let
+ down a log cabin, with a couple of bowie knifes and revolvers artistically
+ arranged over the fire-place; anticipating any doubt upon the subject of
+ suitableness by an assurance that there you were, and you couldn’t do
+ better than that. The objection, that a log cabin with bowie knives and
+ revolvers over the fire-place, though it was doubtless a common enough
+ object in the Australian bush or the backwoods of America, was never, by
+ any chance, found in England, and that the cottage to be represented was
+ supposed to be within a few miles of London, he considered as too
+ frivolous to need comment, and passed it over in silent contempt. Further
+ argument had the effect of raising up Jim’s stock authority, a certain
+ former lessee, who had been dead these fifteen years; and about whom
+ nobody else but Jim seemed to have the faintest recollection. It appeared
+ that this gentleman had always used the log cabin scene for English
+ cottages, and Jim guessed that <i>he</i> (the defunct lessee) knew what he
+ was about, even if he (Jim) was a fool. The latter of Jim’s suppositions
+ had never been disputed, and it was a little too late then to discuss the
+ former. All I can say is, that if Jim’s Mr. Harris—as this
+ mysterious manager was generally dubbed—really did mount his
+ productions in the manner affirmed, their effect must have been novel in
+ the extreme.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Nothing could induce Jim to show anything else that morning, although the
+ manager reminded him of a cottage scene having been expressly painted for
+ the last lessee. Jim didn’t know where it was. Besides, one of the ropes
+ was broken, and it couldn’t be got at then; after which little brush with
+ the enemy, he walked away and took up a row with the gas man at the very
+ point where he had dropped it twenty minutes before.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Scenery and props were not being used at this, the first rehearsal, the
+ chief object of which was merely to arrange music, entrances and exits,
+ and general business; but of course it was desirable to know as soon as
+ possible what scenery was available, and whether it required any altering
+ or repairing.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ In the second scene the leading lady made her first appearance, an event
+ which called forth all the energies of the orchestra. It would not do for
+ her to burst upon the audience all at once. Great and sudden joy is
+ dangerous. They must be gradually prepared for it. Care was exercised that
+ the crisis should be well led up to, and that she should appear exactly at
+ the right moment. When all was satisfactorily settled, the cue was
+ announced to her by the stage manager. He said it was “Pom-pom—pom-pom—pom-pom—pom—Pom—POM.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “That’s your cue, my dear.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ On the stage, everybody calls the actresses “My dear.” You soon pick it
+ up, especially in the case of the young and pretty ones.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Where do I come on from?” asked the leading lady.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “I can’t say, my dear, until I’ve seen the drop. There’ll most likely be a
+ door in it, and then you can come on from the back.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Entrances from the back, it may be remarked, are the favorite ones.
+ Indeed, some artistes will never come on from anywhere else. Of course,
+ you make a much better impression on an audience, as regards first
+ appearance, by facing them on your entrance and walking straight down
+ toward them, than by coming on sideways and then turning round. Entrances
+ from the back, however, are sometimes carried to excess, and a whole scene
+ is rendered unnatural and absurd, merely to gratify personal vanity.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I will finish what I have to say about this rehearsal by giving a verbatim
+ report of a small part of it; viz., the fourth scene of the first act. The
+ actual scene is this:
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ STAGE MANAGER, <i>standing </i>CENTER <i>with his back to the footlights.
+ Close behind him, perched in a high chair, the</i> LEADER OF THE BAND <i>solus,
+ representing the orchestra with a fiddle. Two or three groups of artists,
+ chatting at the wings. THE HEAVY MAN facing up and down at the back,
+ conning his part in an undertone, and occasionally stopping to suit the
+ action to the word. LOW COMEDY AND WALKING GENT., going through scene by
+ themselves in L. 3. E. SINGING CHAMBERMAID, flirting with JUVENILES (only
+ one of them), R. 2. E. PROPERTY MAN, behind, making a veal and ham pie out
+ of an old piece of canvas and a handful of shavings. COUPLE OF CARPENTERS,
+ in white jackets, hovering about with hammers in their hands and mischief
+ in their eyes, evidently on the look-out for an excuse to make a noise.
+ CALL BOY all over the place, and always in the way—except when
+ wanted.</i>
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ OUR FIRST OLD MAN (<i>standing R. C., and reading part by the aid of a large
+ pair of specs</i>). “‘Er-er—wind howls—er-er-er—night as
+ this, fifteen years ago—er—sweet child—er-r-r—stolen
+ away—er-r-r—baby prattle—er-ears—er-r—shall
+ I never hear her voice again?”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <i>He looks up, and finding that nobody makes any sign of caring a hang
+ whether he does or not, he repeats the question louder.</i>
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ STAGE MANAGER (<i>severely, as if this was a question that really must be
+ answered</i>). “’ Shall I never hear her voice again?’ Oh! that’s a music
+ cue, Mr. P. Have you got it down? Miss ————”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ (<i>stage name of the manager’s wife</i>) “sings a song there, without.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ MR. P. “No, I’ll put it down now. What is it—’ hear her voice
+ again?’” (<i>Writes on some loose slips of paper, lying before him on the
+ stage.</i>)
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Have you the music?”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ STAGE MAN. “Oh, anything dismal does. No matter what, so long as it gives
+ ‘em the hump. What will you have, my dear?” MANAGER’S WIFE (<i>who has
+ just finished a social bottle of Bass with another lady</i>). “Oh, the old
+ thing, you know. ‘Home, sweet home.’” JUVENILES (<i>in a whisper to</i>
+ LOW COM.). “Is <i>she</i> going to <i>sing?</i>”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ LOW COM. “Yes, always does it.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ JUVENILES. “Oh, my——!”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ MAN. WIFE <i>and</i> THE FIDDLE <i>do first verse of “Home, sweet home.”</i>
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ FIRST OLD MAN. “‘Ah, that voice—er-er—echo of old memories—er-er-er—houseless
+ wanderer-dry herself’” (<i>crossing and opening an imaginary door</i>).
+ “Poor child—er-er-er—I’m an old man—er—my wife’s
+ out—return and—er—the homeless orphan.’”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ MAN. WIFE. “Will there be any lime-light on here?”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ FIRST OLD WOMAN (<i>sotto voce</i>). “Oh, let her have some lime-light.
+ She wants to let her back hair down.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ STAGE MAN. “Certainly, my dear. There’ll be a fire-place in this corner,
+ and red lime-light from it.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ MAN. WIFE. “Oh, all right; I only wanted to know. Now, what was it—‘homeless
+ orphan.’ Oh, that’s my long speech, you know: ‘Is this a dream that I have
+ dreamt before—played here when a child.’”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ FIRST O. M. “‘Sweet child—your face recalls strange memories of
+ er-er-er—been just your age.’”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ STAGE MAN. (<i>interrupting</i>). “Slow music throughout.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ FIRST O. M. (<i>continuing</i>). “‘Never from that night—er—golden—I
+ can’t believe she’s dead.’”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <i>Scrape from the fiddle, followed by bar, to bring on</i> FIRST OLD
+ WOMAN.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ FIRST O. W. (<i>without moving from her seat, and coming straight to the
+ cue with a suddenness which startles everybody)</i>. “‘Fold you to my
+ breast.’”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ MAN. WIFE. “’ Mother! ‘—Got the rheumatism again?”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ FIRST O. W. “Got it <i>again</i>! It’s never gone yet, drat it—’ My
+ child!’”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <i>Powerful scrape from the fiddle.</i>
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ FIRST O. M. “Where am I?”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ STAGE MAN. “Left, down stage.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ MAN. WIFE. “We embrace, left center. Knock heard.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ STAGE MAN. (<i>crossing center</i>). “That’s me. * Keep it up: it’s a
+ picture. You and Mrs. ———— there, embracing, and
+ the old boy down in the corner, when I open the door.—Rain and wind
+ for this scene, mind.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ * That was the way he treated Lindley Murray. We were inexpressibly
+ grieved and shocked—all of us—but what were we to do?
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ HOVERING CARPENTER (<i>at top of his voice</i>). “Jim! wind and rain for
+ last scene of first act.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <i>Husky but indignant voice from the flics expressing an earliest desire
+ that every one should go to the devil.</i>
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ STAGE MAN. (<i>who always rehearsed his speeches at full length, and in a
+ tone of voice as if he were reciting the multiplication table</i>). “‘I am
+ pursued. My life is at stake. Hide me from these bloodhounds who are on my
+ track. Hark! they are here. Thank Heaven, they are past. I am safe. Ha,
+ who is this we have here? ‘Sdeath, I am in luck to-night. Sir Henry will
+ thank me, when I bring his strayed lamb back to him. Come with me, my
+ little runaway,’ Nay, resist not, or ‘twill be the worse for all.’ I catch
+ hold of you. We struggle. ‘Come, I say, with me. Come, I say!”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ FIRST O. W. “* Die together!”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <i>Scrape from the fiddle.</i>
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ STAGE MAN. (<i>loudly, after waiting a minute</i>). “‘Die together.’”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ FIRST O. M. “I beg pardon. I didn’t hear.” (<i>Fumbles with his part, and
+ loses his place.</i>)
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ MAN. WIFE. “He really ought to use an ear-trumpet.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ FIRST O. M. Er-r-r—Heaven will give me strength—er—can
+ strike a blow!” (<i>Shakes his stick at</i> STAGE MANAGER.)
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <i>Tremendous hammering suddenly begun at back, eliciting forcible
+ expressions of disapproval from all the members of the company, with the
+ exception of the FIRST OLD MAN, who doesn’t hear it, and goes on calmly
+ with the rehearsal all by himself.</i>
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ STAGE MAN. (<i>in a rage</i>). “Stop that noise! Stop that noise, I say!”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <i>Noise continues.</i>
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ JIM (<i>eager for the fray</i>). “How can we do our work without noise, I
+ should like to know?”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ STAGE MAN. (<i>crossly</i>). “Can’t you do it at some other time?”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ JIM (<i>angrily</i>). “No, we can’t do it at some other time! Do you think
+ we’re here all night?”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ STAGE MAN. (<i>mildly</i>). “But, my dear fellow, how can we go on with
+ the rehearsal?”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ JIM (<i>in a rage</i>), “<i>I</i> don’t know anything about you and your
+ rehearsal! That’s not my business, is it? I do my own work; I don’t do
+ other people’s work! I don’t want to be told how to do my work!” (<i>Pours
+ forth a flood of impassioned eloquence for the next ten minutes, during
+ which time the hammering is also continued. Complete collapse of STAGE
+ MANAGER, and suspension of rehearsal. Subsequent dryness on the part of
+ JIM.</i>)
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ MAN. WIFE (<i>when rehearsal is at last resumed</i>). “Just try back that
+ last bit, will you, for positions?”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <i>The last two or three movements gone over again.</i> Then:
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ STAGE MAN. “We all three struggle toward door. Stand back, old man! I do
+ not wish to harm thee!—I push you aside. ‘Back, or it will be
+ murder!’—This must be well worked up. ‘Who dares to stay me?’ (<i>to
+ LOW COMEDY</i>). “There’ll be a bar to bring you on. You know the
+ business.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ LOW COM. (<i>coming forward</i>). “’ Shure and I will.’”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <i>Scrape from fiddle.</i>
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ STAGE MAN. “Well then there’s our struggle.” (<i>STAGE MANAGER and LOW
+ COMEDY take hold of each other’s shoulders, and turn round</i>). “I’ll
+ have the book in the left-hand side.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ LOW COM. “‘Ah, begorra, shure he’s clane gone; but, be jabers, I’ve got
+ this ‘” (<i>holding up an imaginary pocket-book</i>), “‘and it’s worth a
+ precious deal more than he is.’”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ STAGE MAN. “End of first act.—Tommy, go and fetch me half a pint of
+ stout.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <br /><br />
+ </p>
+ <hr />
+ <p>
+ <a name="link2HCH0006" id="link2HCH0006"> </a>
+ </p>
+ <div style="height: 4em;">
+ <br /><br /><br /><br />
+ </div>
+ <h2>
+ CHAPTER VI. Scenery and Supers
+ </h2>
+ <p>
+ <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0006" id="linkimage-0006"> </a>
+ </p>
+ <div class="figleft" style="width:20%;">
+ <img src="images/9067.jpg" alt="9067 " width="100%" /><br /><a
+ href="images/9067.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
+ </div>
+ <p>
+ E had five rehearsals for this play.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “What the dickens do they want with with so many?” was the indignant
+ comment of the First Old Woman. “Why, they’ll rehearse it more times than
+ they’ll play it.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I thought five a ridiculously small number at the time, especially when I
+ remembered my amateur days, and the thirty or so rehearsals, nearly all
+ full-dressed ones, required for a short farce; but there came a time when
+ I looked upon two as betokening extraordinary anxiety about a production.
+ In the provinces, I have known a three-act comedy put on without any
+ rehearsal at all, and with half the people not even knowing the patter.
+ “Business” was arranged in whispered consultations, while the play was
+ proceeding, and when things got into a more than usually glorious muddle,
+ one or other of the characters would come off the stage and have a look at
+ the book. As for the prompter, after vainly struggling to keep them to one
+ act at a time, and to dissuade the hero from making love to the wrong
+ girl, he came to the conclusion that he was only in the way, and so went
+ and had a quiet pipe at the stage-door, and refrained from worrying
+ himself further.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The rehearsals got more ship-shape as we went on. At the fourth every one
+ was supposed to be “letter perfect,” and “parts” were tabooed. On this
+ occasion, the piece was played straight through with nothing omitted, and
+ the orchestra (two fiddles, a bass-viol, cornet, and drum) appeared in
+ full force. For the last rehearsal, props and scenery were called. We had
+ an exciting time with Jim, over the scenery, as might be expected. He had
+ a row with everybody, and enjoyed himself immensely.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I saw our scene painter then for the first time. He was a jolly little
+ fellow, and as full of cheery contrivance as a Mark Tapley. No
+ difficulties seemed to daunt him. If a court of justice were wanted for
+ the following night, and the nearest thing he had to it were a bar parlor,
+ he was not in the least dismayed. He would have the bar parlor down; paint
+ in a bit here; paint out a bit there; touch up a bit somewhere else—there
+ was your court of justice! Half an hour was quite long enough for him to
+ turn a hay-field into a church-yard, or a prison into a bedroom.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ There was only one want, in the present case, that he didn’t supply, and
+ that was cottages. All the virtuous people in the play lived in cottages.
+ I never saw such a run on cottages. There were plenty of other residences
+ to which they would have been welcome—halls, palaces, and dungeons
+ the saloon cabin of a P. and O. steamer, drawingroom of No. 200 Belgrave
+ Square (a really magnificent apartment this, with a clock on the
+ mantelpiece). But no, they would all of them live in cottages. It would
+ not pay to alter three or four different scenes, and turn them all into
+ cottages, especially as they might, likely enough, be wanted for something
+ else in a week’s time; so our one cottage interior had to accommodate
+ about four distinct families. To keep up appearances, however, it was
+ called by a different name on each occasion. With a round table and a
+ candle, it was a widow’s cottage. With two candles and a gun, it was a
+ blacksmith’s house. A square table instead of a round one—“Daddy
+ Soloman’s home on the road to London. ‘Home, sweet home.’” Put a spade in
+ the corner, and hang a coat behind the door, and you had the old mill on
+ the Yorkshire moors.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ It was all no use though. The audience, on the opening night, greeted its
+ second appearance with cries of kindly recognition, and at once entered
+ into the Humor of the thing. A Surrey-side Saturday-night audience are
+ generally inclined to be cheerful, and, if the fun on the stage doesn’t
+ satisfy them, they rely on their own resources. After one or two more
+ appearances, the cottage became an established favorite with the gallery.
+ So much so, indeed, that when two scenes passed without it being let down,
+ there were many and anxious inquiries after it, and an earnest hope
+ expressed that nothing serious had happened to it. Its reappearance in the
+ next act (as something entirely new) was greeted with a round of applause,
+ and a triumphant demand to know, “Who said it was lost?”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ It was not until the last rehearsal that the supers were brought into play—or
+ work, as they would have called it. These supers were drawn from two
+ distinct sources. About half of them were soldiers, engaged to represent
+ the military force of the drama, while the other half, who were to be
+ desperate rioters, had been selected from among the gentry of the New Cut
+ neighborhood.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The soldiers, who came under the command of their sergeant, were by far
+ the best thing in the play. They gave an air of reality to all the scenes
+ in which they appeared. They <i>were</i> soldiers, and went about their
+ business on the stage with the same calm precision that they would have
+ displayed in the drill yard, and with as much seriousness as if they had
+ been in actual earnest. When the order was given to “fix bayonets and
+ charge,” they did so with such grim determination, that there was no
+ necessity at all to direct the stage mob to “feign fear and rush off L. I.
+ E.” They went as one man, in a hurry. There was no trouble, either, about
+ rehearsing the soldiers—no cursing and swearing required, which, in
+ itself, was an immense saving of time. The stage manager told the sergeant
+ what was wanted. That gruff-voiced officer passed the order on to his men
+ (first translating it into his own unintelligible lingo), and the thing
+ was done.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ To represent soldiers on the stage, real soldiers should, without doubt,
+ be employed, but it is no good attempting to use them for anything else.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ They are soldier-like in everything they do. You may dress them up in what
+ you choose, and call them what you will, but they will never be anything
+ else but soldiers. On one occasion, our manager tried them as a rabble.
+ They were carefully instructed how to behave. They were told how to rush
+ wildly on with a fierce, tumultuous yell; how to crowd together at the
+ back of the stage, and, standing there, surging backward and forward like
+ an angry sea, brandish their weapons, and scowl menacingly upon the
+ opposing myrmidons of the law, until, at length, their sullen murmurs
+ deepening into a roar of savage hate, they would break upon the wall of
+ steel before them, and sweep it from their path, as pent-up waters,
+ bursting their bonds, bear down some puny barrier.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ That was the theory of the thing. That is how a stage mob <i>ought</i> to
+ behave itself. How it really does behave itself is pretty generally known.
+ It comes in with a jog-trot, every member of it prodding the man in front
+ of him in the small of his back. It spreads itself out in a line across
+ the stage, and grins. When the signal is given for the rush, each man—still
+ grinning—walks up to the soldier nearest to him, and lays hold of
+ that warrior’s gun. The two men then proceed to heave the murderous weapon
+ slowly up and down, as if it were a pump handle. This they continue to do
+ with steady perseverance, until the soldier, apparently from a fit of
+ apoplexy—for there is no outward and visible cause whatever to
+ account for it—suddenly collapses, when the conquering rioter takes
+ the gun away from him, and entangles himself in it.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ This is funny enough, but our soldiers made it funnier still. One might
+ just as well have tried to get a modern House of Commons to represent a
+ disorderly rabble. They simply couldn’t do it. They went on in single file
+ at the double quick, formed themselves into a hollow square in the center
+ of the stage, and then gave three distinct cheers, taking time from the
+ sergeant. That was their notion of a rabble.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The other set, the regular bob (sometimes eighteenpence) a night “sups,”
+ were of a very different character. Professional supers, taken as a class,
+ are the most utterly dismal specimens of humanity to be met with in this
+ world. Compared with them, “sandwich-men” are dashing and rollicky. Ours
+ were no exception to the rule. They hung about in a little group by
+ themselves, and looked like a picture of dejected dinginess, that their
+ mere presence had a depressing effect upon everybody else. Strange that
+ men can’t be gay and light-hearted on an income of six shillings a week,
+ but so it is.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ One of them I must exclude from this description—a certain harmless
+ idiot, who went by the title of “Mad Mat,” though he himself always gave
+ his name as “Mr. Matthew Alexander St. George Clement.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ This poor fellow had been a super for a good many years, but there had
+ evidently been a time when he had played a very different part in life.
+ “Gentleman” was stamped very plainly upon his thin face, and where he was
+ not crazy he showed thought and education. Rumor said that he had started
+ life as a young actor, full of promise and talent, but what had set him
+ mad nobody knew. The ladies naturally attributed it to love, it being a
+ fixed tenet among the fair sex that everything that happens to mankind,
+ from finding themselves in bed with their boots on to having the water cut
+ off, is all owing to that tender passion. On the other hand, the
+ uncharitable—generally a majority—suggested drink. But nobody
+ did anything more than conjecture: nobody really knew. The link between
+ the prologue and the play was lost. Mat himself was under the firm
+ conviction that he was a great actor who was only kept from appearing in
+ the leading <i>rôles</i> by professional jealousy. But a time would come,
+ and then he would show us what he could do. Romeo was his great ambition.
+ One of these days he meant to act that character. He had been studying it
+ for years, he once whispered to me in confidence, and when he appeared in
+ it, he knew he should make a sensation.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Strange to say, his madness did not interfere at all with his superial
+ duties. While on the stage he was docile enough, and did just as he saw
+ the other supers do. It was only off the stage that he put on his
+ comically pathetic dignity; then, if the super-master attempted to tell
+ him what to do he would make a ceremonious bow, and observe, with some
+ hauteur, that Mr. St. George Clement was not accustomed to be instructed
+ how to act his part. He never mixed with the other supers, but would stand
+ apart, talking low to himself, and seeming to see something a long way
+ off. He was the butt of the whole theater, and his half-timid,
+ half-pompous ways afforded us a good deal of merriment; but sometimes
+ there was such a sad look in Mat’s white face, that it made one’s heart
+ ache more than one’s sides.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ His strange figure and vague history haunted my thoughts in a most
+ uncomfortable manner. I used to think of the time when those poor vacant
+ eyes looked out upon the world, full of hope and ambition, and then I
+ wondered if <i>I</i> should ever become a harmless idiot, who thought
+ himself a great actor.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <br /><br />
+ </p>
+ <hr />
+ <p>
+ <a name="link2HCH0007" id="link2HCH0007"> </a>
+ </p>
+ <div style="height: 4em;">
+ <br /><br /><br /><br />
+ </div>
+ <h2>
+ CHAPTER VII. Dressing.
+ </h2>
+ <p>
+ <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0007" id="linkimage-0007"> </a>
+ </p>
+ <div class="figleft" style="width:20%;">
+ <img src="images/9076.jpg" alt="9076 " width="100%" /><br /><a
+ href="images/9076.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
+ </div>
+ <p>
+ E had no dress rehearsal. In the whole course of my professional life, I
+ remember but one dress rehearsal. That was for a pantomime in the
+ provinces. Only half the costumes arrived in time for it. I myself
+ appeared in a steel breast-plate and helmet, and a pair of check trousers;
+ and I have a recollection of seeing somebody else—the King of the
+ Cannibal Islands, I think—going about in spangled tights and a frock
+ coat. There was a want of finish, as one might say, about the affair.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Old stagers, of course, can manage all right without them, but the novice
+ finds it a little awkward to jump from plain dress rehearsals to the
+ performance itself. He has been making love to a pale-faced, middle-aged
+ lady, dressed in black grenadine and a sealskin jacket, and he is quite
+ lost when smiled upon by a high-complexioned, girlish young thing, in blue
+ stockings and short skirts. He finds defying stout, good-tempered Mr.
+ Jones a very different thing to bullying a beetle-browed savage, of
+ appearance something between Bill Sykes and a Roman gladiator, and whose
+ acquaintance he then makes for the first time. Besides, he is not at all
+ sure that he has got hold of the right man.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I, in my innocence, so fully expected at least one dress rehearsal, that,
+ when time went on, and there were no signs of any such thing, I mooted the
+ question myself, so that there should be no chance of its being
+ accidentally overlooked. The mere idea, however, was scouted. It was
+ looked upon as the dream of a romantic visionary.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Don’t talk about dress rehearsals, my boy,” was the reply; “think
+ yourself lucky if you get your dress all right by the night.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The “my boy,” I may remark, by no means implied that the speaker thought
+ me at all youthful. Indeed, seeing that I was eighteen at the time, he
+ hardly could, you know. Every actor is “my boy,” just, as before
+ mentioned, every actress is “my dear.” At first I was rather offended; but
+ when I heard gray-headed stars, and respectable married heads, addressed
+ in the same familiar and unceremonious manner, my dignity recovered
+ itself. It is well our dignity is not as brittle as Humpty Dumpty. How
+ very undignified we should all become, before we had been long in this
+ world.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ As a matter of fact, nobody—at all events, none of the men, with the
+ exception of Chequers—seemed to care in the slightest about what
+ they should wear. “Chequers” was the name we had given to our walking
+ gentleman, as a delicate allusion to the pattern of his overcoat. I think
+ I have already described the leading features in this young man’s
+ private-life apparel. He went in a good deal for dress, and always came
+ out strong. His present ambition was to wear his new ulster in the piece,
+ and this he did, though, seeing that the action of the play was supposed
+ to take place a century ago, it was hardly consistent with historical
+ accuracy. But then historical accuracy was not a strong point with our
+ company, who went more on the principle of what you happened to have by
+ you. At the better class of London theater, everything is now provided by
+ the management, and the actor has only to put on what is given him. But
+ with the theaters and companies into which I went, things were very
+ different; costumes being generally left to each person’s individual
+ discretion. For ordinary modern dress parts, we had to use our own things
+ entirely, and in all cases we were expected to find ourselves in hosiery
+ and boot leather, by which I mean such things as tights and stockings, and
+ the boots and shoes of every period and people; the rest of the costume
+ was provided for us—at all events in London.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ In the provinces, where every article necessary for either a classical
+ tragedy or a pantomime has often to be found by the actor himself, I have
+ seen some very remarkable wardrobe effects. A costume play, under these
+ circumstances, rivaled a fancy dress ball in variety. It was considered
+ nothing out of the way for a father, belonging to the time of George III,
+ to have a son who, evidently from his dress, flourished in the reign of
+ Charles II. As for the supers, when there were any, they were attired in
+ the first thing that came to hand, and always wore their own boots.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Picturesqueness was the great thing. Even now, and at some of the big
+ London houses, this often does duty for congruity and common sense. The
+ tendency to regard all female foreigners as Italian peasant girls, and to
+ suppose that all agricultural laborers wear red waistcoats embroidered
+ with yellow, still lingers on the stage.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Even where costumes were provided, the leading actors, and those who had
+ well-stocked wardrobes of their own, generally preferred to dress the part
+ themselves, and there was nobody who did not supplement the costumier’s
+ ideas to some greater or less extent.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I am speaking only of the men. Actresses nearly always find their own
+ dresses. There is no need of a very varied wardrobe in their case, for in
+ spite of all the talk about female fashions, a woman’s dress is much the
+ same now as in the time of the Mrs. Noahs—at least, so it seems to
+ me, judging from my own ark. The dress that Miss Eastlake wore in the <i>Silver
+ King</i> would, I am sure, do all right for Ophelia; and what difference
+ is there between Queen Elizabeth and Mrs. Bouncer? None whatever, except
+ about the collar and the sleeves; and anybody can alter a pair of sleeves
+ and make a ruff. Why do actresses have so many dresses? As far as mere
+ shape is concerned, one would do for everything, with a few slight
+ alterations. You just tack on a tuck or a furbelow, or take in a flounce,
+ and there you are.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Maybe I’m wrong, though.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ We were told to look in at the costumier’s some time during the week, for
+ him to take our measurement, and those of us who were inexperienced in
+ theatrical costumiers did so, and came away with a hopeful idea that we
+ were going to be sent clothes that would nearly fit us. The majority,
+ however, did not go through this farce, but quietly took what they found
+ in their dressing-rooms on the opening night, and squeezed themselves
+ into, or padded themselves out to it, as the necessity happened to be.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The dressing-rooms (two rows of wooden sheds, divided by a narrow passage)
+ were situated over the property-room, and were reached by means of a
+ flight of steps, which everybody ascended and descended very gingerly
+ indeed, feeling sure each time that the whole concern would come down
+ before they got to the other end. These apartments had been carefully
+ prepared for our reception. The extra big holes in the partitions had been
+ bunged up with brown paper, and the whitewash had been laid on everywhere
+ with a lavishness that betokened utter disregard of the expense; though
+ as, before a week was over, nearly the whole of it had been transferred to
+ our clothes, this was rather a waste, so far as the management was
+ concerned. It was even reported that one of the rooms had been swept out,
+ but I never saw any signs of such a thing having been done myself either
+ then or at any other time, and am inclined to look upon the statement
+ merely in the light of a feeler, thrown out for the purpose of getting at
+ the views of the charwoman. If so, however, it was a failure. She said
+ nothing on hearing it, but looked offended, and evidently considered it a
+ subject that should not have been mentioned to a lady.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ One or two of the doors still hung upon their hinges, and could, with a
+ little maneuvering, be opened or shut; but in most cases they had been
+ wrenched off, and stood propped up against their own posts, like drunken
+ revelers taken home by the cabmen. The only means therefore of getting in
+ or out of the rooms was by lifting them bodily away. It was a pretty sight
+ to watch some stout, short-winded actor, staggering about the place with
+ one of these great doors in his arms, trying to make it stand up. After a
+ series of fearful efforts, he would get it wedged firmly across the
+ passage, and, at that exact moment, some one would be sure to come rushing
+ upstairs in a desperate hurry to get to his room. He could not, of course,
+ pass while the wretched door was in that position, so, with a view of
+ expediting matters, he would lay hold of the other side of it, and begin
+ tugging. The first man, not being able to see what was going on, and
+ thinking larks were being played with him, would plunge about more wildly
+ than ever, and jam the door down on the other fellow’s toes. Then they
+ would both grapple madly with it, one on each side, bump each other’s head
+ with it, crush each other with it against the sides of the passage, and
+ end by all three going down in a heap together, the door uppermost.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The furniture provided, simple though it was, had evidently been selected
+ with a thoughtful desire that everything should be in keeping: it
+ consisted of a few broken chairs. The supply of toilet requisites in hand,
+ too, seemed to be rather limited, but great care and ingenuity had been
+ displayed in their distribution. There not being enough basins and jugs to
+ go all around, these had been divided. Some rooms had a jug but no basin,
+ while others had a basin but no jug, either circumstance being a capital
+ excuse for leaving them without any water. Where there was neither basin
+ nor jug, you could safely reckon on a soap-dish. We were supplied with
+ towels, the allowance being one a fortnight—a small thin one with a
+ big hole in the middle—among six, but we brought our own soap: at
+ least some of us did, and the others, without a moment’s hesitation,
+ appropriated it. One of the rooms was better appointed than the others,
+ being able to boast a washstand, made out of an old cane chair that had
+ lost its back and one of its legs. This article of luxury was the cause of
+ a good deal of bitterness at first among the occupants of the less-favored
+ apartments, but its tendency toward sudden and unexpected collapse soon
+ lessened this feeling of envy. Even its owners ceased to take any pride in
+ it after a while, and it was eventually kicked to pieces in a fit of
+ frenzy by Juveniles; it having been the cause, as far as we could gather
+ from his disjointed blasphemy, of his being compelled to play all the rest
+ of that evening in sopping wet tights.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ A blear-eyed individual used to hang about these rooms of a night. He
+ called himself a dresser, though, for all the dressing he ever did, he
+ might just as well have been a kitchen one. He got a dressing himself once
+ for upsetting a pot of paint over Jim’s supper; but that was the only one
+ he ever, to my knowledge, assisted at. However, he came in handy to go out
+ for sheep’s head and porter.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ But although the dressing-rooms surprised me somewhat, they did not
+ disappoint me. I had built no expectations upon them. I had conjured up no
+ airy visions concerning them. Mine eyes had not hungered to gaze upon
+ their imagined glories. No, the dressing-rooms I bore up under; it was the
+ green room that crushed me. It was about the green room that my brightest
+ hopes had been centered. It was there that I was to flirt with Beauty, and
+ converse with Intellect. I had pictured a brilliantly lighted and spacious
+ apartment with a polished oak floor, strewn with costly rugs; gilded
+ walls, hung with choicest gems of art; and a lofty, painted ceiling. There
+ would be luxurious easy-chairs and couches, upon which to rest ourselves
+ between our artistic labors; a piano, from which fairy fingers would draw
+ forth rapturous strains, while I turned over the music; and carved
+ cabinets, filled with old china, and other rare and precious knickknacks.
+ Heavy curtains, over the door, would deaden the outside din to a droning
+ murmur, which would mingle pleasantly with the low hum of cheerful
+ conversation within; whilst the flickering firelight, flashing upon the
+ Spanish mahogany furniture, and glittering reflected in the many mirrors
+ round the room, would throw a touch of homeliness over what might
+ otherwise have been the almost too dazzling splendor of the place.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ There was no green room. There never had been a green room, I never saw a
+ green room, except in a play, though I was always on the lookout for it. I
+ met an old actor once who had actually been in one, and I used to get him
+ to come and tell me all about it. But even his recollections were tinged
+ with a certain vagueness. He was not quite sure whether it had been at
+ Liverpool or at Newcastle that he had come across it, and at other times
+ he thought it must have been at Exeter. But wherever it was, the theater
+ had been burnt down a good many years ago—about that he was
+ positive.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ On one occasion, I went specially to a big London theater where, I was
+ assured, there really was one, and it cost me four-and-sevenpence in
+ drinks. I found the green room all right, but they said I had better not
+ go in, because it was chock full of properties, and I might break
+ something in the dark.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The truth is that where a green room was originally provided, it has been
+ taken by the star or the manager, as his or her private room, and the rest
+ of the company, are left to spend their off time either in their own
+ dressing-rooms, where they are always in each other’s way, or at the
+ wings, where they catch cold, and are hustled by the scene-shifters.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <br /><br />
+ </p>
+ <hr />
+ <p>
+ <a name="link2HCH0008" id="link2HCH0008"> </a>
+ </p>
+ <div style="height: 4em;">
+ <br /><br /><br /><br />
+ </div>
+ <h2>
+ CHAPTER VIII. My “First Deboo”
+ </h2>
+ <p>
+ <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0008" id="linkimage-0008"> </a>
+ </p>
+ <div class="figleft" style="width:20%;">
+ <img src="images/9086.jpg" alt="9086 " width="100%" /><br /><a
+ href="images/9086.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
+ </div>
+ <p>
+ N Saturday came the opening night, and with it my first appearance before
+ the British public—my “first deboo” as our perruquier called it. In
+ thinking about it beforehand, I had been very much afraid lest I should be
+ nervous; but strange to say, I never experienced stage-fright at any time.
+ I say strange, because, at that period of my life at all events, I was—as
+ true greatness generally is—of a modest and retiring disposition. In
+ my very early youth, I believe, I was not so. I am told that in my frock
+ and pinafore days, I used to stand upon the table, and recite poetry, to
+ the intense gratification of my elderly relatives (ah, the old folks knew
+ how to enjoy themselves, when I was a boy!); and an old nurse of mine
+ always insisted that on one occasion I collected half a crown in an
+ omnibus by my spirited rendering of “Baa, baa, black sheep.” I have no
+ recollection of this performance myself though, and, if it really did take
+ place, where’s the money? This part of the question has never, to my mind,
+ been satisfactorily cleared up.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ But however self-possessed I may have been at eight, I was anything but so
+ at eighteen. Even now, I would not act to a drawing-room full of people
+ for a thousand pounds—supposing the company considered the effort
+ worth that sum. But before a public audience, I was all right, and
+ entirely free from that shyness about which, in private life, my lady
+ friends so bitterly complain. I could not see the people for one thing—at
+ all events, not those beyond the third row of stalls. The blaze of light
+ surrounding one on the stage, and the dimness of the rest of the house,
+ give the audience a shadowy and ghost-like appearance, and make it
+ impossible to see more than a general mass of white faces. As I never
+ noticed the “hundreds upon hundreds of glaring eyes,” they did not trouble
+ me, and I let ‘em glare. The most withering glance in the world won’t
+ crush a blind man.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ If I had been nervous on the first night, I think I should have had a good
+ excuse for it, knowing, as I did, that a select party of my most
+ particular friends, including a few medical students and clergymen’s sons,
+ were somewhere in the theater; having come down, in a body with the
+ intention of giving me a fair start, as they said. They had insisted on coming. I
+ had begged them not to trouble themselves on my account, but they wouldn’t
+ hear of it. They said it would be such a comfort to me to know that they
+ were there. That was their thoughtful kindness. It touched me.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I said: “Look here, you know, if you fellows are going to play the fool,
+ I’ll chuck the whole blessed thing up.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ They said they were not going to play the fool they were coming to see me.
+ I raised no further objections.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ But I checkmated them. I lied to those confiding young men with such an
+ air of simple truthfulness, that they believed me, though they had known
+ me for years. Even now, after all this time, I feel a glow of pride when I
+ think how consummately I deceived them. They knew nothing of the theaters
+ or actors over the water so I just gave them the name of our first old
+ man, and told them that that was the name I had taken. I exaggerated the
+ effect of making-up, and impressed upon them the idea that I should be so
+ changed that they would never believe it was I; and I requested them
+ especially to note my assumed voice. I did not say what character I was
+ going to play, but I let slip a word now and then implying that my mind
+ was running on gray hairs and long-lost children, and I bought a stick
+ exactly similar to the one the poor old gentleman was going to use in the
+ part, and let it lie about.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ So far as I was concerned, the plan was a glorious success, but the effect
+ upon the old man was remarkable. He was too deaf to hear exactly what was
+ going on, but he gathered enough to be aware that he was the object of a
+ certain amount of attention, and that he was evidently giving great
+ satisfaction to a portion of the audience; which latter circumstance
+ apparently surprised him. The dear fellows gave him a splendid reception
+ when he first appeared. They applauded everything he said or did
+ throughout the play, and called for him after every act. They encored his
+ defiance of the villain, and, when he came on without his hat in a snow
+ scene, they all pulled out their pocket handkerchiefs and sobbed aloud. At
+ the end they sent a message round to tell him to hurry up, as they were
+ waiting for him at the stage door, an announcement that had the effect of
+ sending him out by the front way in wonderfully quick time.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ On the whole, that first night passed off pretty well. First nights are
+ trying times at all theaters. The state of excitement behind the scenes is
+ at fever heat, and the stage manager and the head carpenter become
+ positively dangerous. In sensation pieces, where the author plays second
+ fiddle to the scene-shifter, this, of course, is especially the case.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Now—as all modern playgoers know—there are never any hitches
+ or delays on first nights. At all events, not at any of the West-end
+ houses, where everything is always a “triumph of stage management!” But in
+ my time, hitches on first nights were the rule rather than the exception,
+ and when a scene was got through without any special mishap, we felt we
+ were entitled to shake hands with one another. I remember one first night
+ at a London theater where the sensation was to be the fall of a house,
+ crushing the villain (<i>literally</i>) at the end of the fourth act.
+ Great expectations were entertained about this “effect.” It was
+ confidently calculated that the collapse of this building would bring down
+ the house, and so no doubt it would have done, if, owing to a mistake in
+ the cues, the curtain had not come down first. The house fell beautifully,
+ the dummy villain was killed on the spot, and the heroine saved in the
+ nick of time by the hero (who, in these plays, is always just round the
+ corner), but the audience only wondered what all the noise was about, and
+ why no one had struck an attitude at the end of the act.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ But however flat things fell in front, the sensation behind was undoubted.
+ When the excitement had partially subsided, there was an energetic inquiry
+ for the man who had let down the curtain, but it appeared that he had left
+ without stopping even to put on his hat. This did not transpire at the
+ time, however, and, for half an hour afterward, the manager was observed
+ to be wandering about with a crowbar, apparently looking for some one.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The premature rise of curtains is attended with still more ludicrous
+ results. On one occasion, I call to mind, the “rag” went up unexpectedly,
+ and discovered the following scene:
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The king of the country, sitting by the side of his dying son. He is
+ drinking beer out of a bottle. His wig and beard lie beside him on the
+ floor.—The dying son, touching herself up by the aid of a
+ powder-puff and a hand-glass.—The chief priest of the country
+ (myself) eating a Bath bun, while a friendly super buttons him up the
+ back.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Another time I recollect was at a very small provincial theater. There was
+ only one dressing-room in the whole place, and that the ladies had of
+ course. We men had to dress on the stage itself. You can imagine the rest—the
+ yell, the confusion; the wild stampede; the stage looking like the south
+ bank of the Serpentine after 8 P. M.; the rapid descent of the curtain;
+ the enthusiastic delight of the audience. It was the greatest success we
+ had during our stay.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I have a strong opinion, however, that this latter catastrophe was not due
+ so much to accident as to a certain mean villain among the company, whose
+ name, in consideration of his family, I refrain from mentioning.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <br /><br />
+ </p>
+ <hr />
+ <p>
+ <a name="link2HCH0009" id="link2HCH0009"> </a>
+ </p>
+ <div style="height: 4em;">
+ <br /><br /><br /><br />
+ </div>
+ <h2>
+ CHAPTER IX. Birds of Prey.
+ </h2>
+ <p>
+ <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0009" id="linkimage-0009"> </a>
+ </p>
+ <div class="figleft" style="width:20%;">
+ <img src="images/9092.jpg" alt="9092 " width="100%" /><br /><a
+ href="images/9092.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
+ </div>
+ <p>
+ REMAINED in London with my first manager during the whole summer season,
+ which lasted about nine months, and I think that, altogether, it was the
+ happiest period of my stage career. The company was a thoroughly agreeable
+ one. It was a genial, jovial company—a “Here you are, my boy; just
+ in time for a pull” sort of company—a “Hail fellow well met” with
+ everybody else sort of company. Among players, there are none of those
+ caste distinctions such as put an insurmountable barrier between the man
+ who sells coal by the ton and the man who sells it by the hundredweight.
+ “The Profession” is a Republic. Lead and Utility walk about arm-in-arm,
+ and the Star and the Singing Chambermaid drink out of the same pewter. We
+ were all as friendly and sociable together as brothers and sisters—perhaps
+ even more so—and the evening spent in those bare dressing-rooms was
+ the pleasantest part of the day. There was never a dull moment, but always
+ plenty of bustle and fun, plenty of anecdotes, plenty of good stories—ah,
+ they could tell ‘em!—plenty of flirting, and talking, and joking,
+ and laughing.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ What jolly little suppers they were, too, brought in smoking hot from the
+ cook-shop over the way, and in the middle of which we had to be constantly
+ rushing off with our mouths full to rescue some unfortunate female who was
+ always getting into trouble, or to murder an uncle; and how wide we had to
+ open our lips, when eating, lest we should rub the carmine off! How
+ delicious a quart of six ale was after a row with the police, or a
+ struggle with the man who had carried off the girl! How enjoyable a smoke
+ when you had to hide your pipe in your boot each time you heard a
+ footstep, because smoking was strictly prohibited!
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I was not so contented at first as I might have been. I expected about
+ three pounds a week salary after giving my one month gratis, and I did not
+ get it. My agreement, it may be remembered, stipulated that I should
+ receive a “salary according to ability” at the end of that time, but the
+ manager said he did not think there would ever be enough money in the
+ house to pay me at that scale, and suggested nine shillings a week
+ instead, generously giving me the option of either taking it or leaving
+ it. I took it.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I took it because I saw plainly enough that if I didn’t I should get
+ nothing, that he could find twenty other young fellows as good as I to
+ come without any salary at all, and that the agreement was not worth the
+ paper it was written on. I was wroth at the time, but, seeing that the
+ nine shillings was soon raised to twelve, and afterward to fifteen and
+ eighteen, I had really, taking things as they were, nothing to grumble at;
+ and, when I came to know a little more about, professional salaries, and
+ learnt what even the old hands were glad to get, I was very well
+ satisfied.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The company was engaged at summer prices, which are a good deal less than
+ winter ones, and these latter average something less than the wages of an
+ industrious sweep. The public, who read of this actor receiving a hundred
+ and twenty pounds a night, of that actress making eight hundred pounds a
+ week, of a low comedian’s yearly income being somewhere about six thousand
+ pounds, and of a London manager who has actually paid his rates and taxes
+ (so he says), can scarcely have any idea of what existence at the bottom
+ of the stage ladder is like. It is a long ladder, and there are very few
+ who possess a personal experience of both ends. Those who do, however,
+ must appreciate the contrast. Mr. Henry Irving, speaking somewhere of his
+ early days, mentions his weekly salary, I think, as having been
+ twenty-five shillings; and no doubt, at the time, he thought that very
+ good, and can most likely remember when he got less. In the provinces,
+ thirty shillings is a high figure for a good all-round “responsibles,” and
+ for that amount he is expected to be equal to Othello or Sir Peter Teazle
+ at a moment’s notice, and to find his own dress. A “lead” may get three
+ pounds in the winter, and a young “utility” thinks himself very well off
+ indeed on a guinea. Now and again, the latter will get twenty-two or three
+ shillings, but this only leads him into habits of extravagance, and he
+ suffers for it afterward. At the minor London theaters, there being no
+ expenses connected with traveling, etc., the salaries are even less, and
+ from eighteen shillings to two pounds are about the sums <i>promised.</i>
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I do not believe I should ever have got even the salary I did, if it had
+ not been for the extraordinary circumstance of a really successful season,
+ so successful, indeed, that the fact could not be disguised, and, for the
+ last three or four months—excess of good fortune having evidently
+ turned the manager’s head—salaries were paid <i>regularly and in
+ full!</i> This is not romancing, it is plain, sober truth. Such a thing
+ may surprise my readers, especially those who know much about the stage,
+ but it cannot surprise them one fiftieth part so much as it surprised us.
+ It completely bewildered the majority of the company. To have anything
+ more than five shillings paid to them at one time seemed to confuse them,
+ and, on treasury days, they went away from the theater with a puzzled air
+ of affluence and responsibility.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ They had not been accustomed to receiving salaries in that way. What they
+ had been used to was, say, two-and-sixpence one day, sixpence at the
+ beginning of the next night, another twopence after the first act, and
+ eightpence as they were going away.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “That makes one-and-four you’ve had to-night, and two-and-sixpence last
+ night makes three-and-ten, mind.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Yes, but, hang it all, you know, there was four shillings owing from last
+ week, and five-and-sixpence from the week before, that I’ve never had
+ yet.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “My dear boy, for Heaven’s sake don’t talk about last week and the week
+ before. Do let’s keep to one week at a time. We can’t go back to the
+ Flood.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ They had been accustomed to haggle and fight for every penny they got; to
+ dodge and trick and bully for their money in a way that a sixty-percent.
+ money-lender would rather lose principal and interest than resort to; to
+ entreat and clamor for it like Italian beggar children; to hang about
+ after the acting manager like hungry dogs after a cat’s-meat man; to come
+ down to the theater early in the morning and wait all day for him; to
+ watch outside his room by the hour together, so as to rush in the moment
+ the door was opened, and stick there till he threw them, a shilling; to
+ lie in wait at dark corners and spring out upon him as he passed; to run
+ after him upstairs and downstairs; to sneak after him into public-house
+ bars; or to drive him into a corner and threaten to punch his head unless
+ he gave them another sixpence—this last expedient, of course, being
+ possible only when the actor was big and the acting manager little.
+ Fortunately acting managers mostly were little, otherwise the profession
+ would have died of starvation.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ If, as sometimes happened, they left the acting manager alone, and went
+ for the lessee himself, the latter would always refer them to the former,
+ assuming for himself a magnificent indifference about such trivial things
+ as money matters; and he would even play out the farce to the length of
+ sending for the acting manager, and begging that gentleman, as a personal
+ favor to himself, to let Mr. So-and-So be paid without further delay,
+ which the acting manager would gravely promise should be done.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ If it had not filled one with shame for one’s profession, it would have
+ been amusing to listen to some of the comedies nightly played behind the
+ scenes.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Look here,” says the ghost of Hamlet’s father, suddenly darting out of
+ its dressing-room, and confronting the acting manager, who, thinking the
+ coast was clear, has made a dash down the passage; “look here, if I don’t
+ have something, I don’t go on.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “My dear boy,” replies the acting manager, in a tone of suppressed
+ exasperation mingled with assumed sympathy, and glancing furtively about
+ for a chance of escape, “I really cannot. I have not got a penny. I will
+ see you later on, when I shall have some money. I must go now. There’s
+ somebody waiting for me in front.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “I don’t care who is waiting for you in front. I’ve been waiting for you
+ behind for two nights, and I mean to have some money.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “How can I give you any money, when I haven’t got any!” This is the gist
+ of what he says. The embellishments had better not be added here. Realism
+ is an excellent thing in its way, but a Zola must draw the line somewhere.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ After this, seeing that the actor looks determined, he begins to fumble in
+ his pocket, and at last brings out half a crown, and presents it—without
+ compliments.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “This won’t do for me,” says the other, first pocketing the money; “I
+ can’t live for four days on half a crown.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Then the acting manager, with a further string of needless comments,
+ thrusts five shillings into his hand, and rushes past, for he hears a
+ footstep on the stairs, and fears another onslaught.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ It is one of the chief characteristics of both managers and acting
+ managers that they never do have any money. If caught holding it open in
+ their hands, they always, from mere force of habit, say they haven’t got
+ any. A common answer to an appeal is: “I really haven’t got any money at
+ all, my boy; how much do you want?”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The women, of course, could not bully for their money, but they showed a
+ quiet, never-tiring persistence, more effective perhaps than all our
+ storming. Certain it is that on the whole they were more successful than
+ the men, and this might have been attributed to their sex’s irresistible
+ wheedling powers, if one could possibly have imagined such a thing as an
+ acting manager open to humanizing influences.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Nobody grumbled at this state of things. The pleasure and surprise of
+ getting any money at all was so great that the trouble of getting it was
+ forgotten. They were too used to being robbed of all their earnings to
+ mind being defrauded of only a part. An absconding manager was so common a
+ thing that he did not even excite remark. He was regarded as something in
+ the ordinary way of business, and his victims only sighed, when he was
+ gone, and proceeded to look out for somebody else to cheat them.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ And such another was by no means difficult to find in my time: the roll of
+ theatrical managers teemed with thieves. It seemed to me that whenever a
+ man got kicked out of everything else, he engaged as big a blackguard as
+ himself for his acting manager and started a show. It must have been a
+ profitable game, that played by these swindling managers, and there was no
+ risk of any kind attending it. Nobody ever thought of interfering with
+ them. If, by any clumsy accident on their own part, they did get within
+ the clutches of the law, no harm came to them. County Court judges
+ appeared to regard their frauds as mere practical jokes, and the worst
+ they had to fear was a playful admonition of the “Ah well, you mustn’t do
+ it again, you know,” kind.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ In the profession itself, they were received with respect, as men of
+ decided talent in their way. Even the most notorious of them were treated
+ with civility, and care was taken never to mention before them such
+ subjects as dishonesty and knavery, for fear of hurting their feelings.
+ When actors and actresses went from London to Aberdeen to join Mr. Smith’s
+ company, and found on arriving that Mr. Smith was the same man who had
+ already swindled them under half a dozen different names at half a dozen
+ different times and places, what do you think they did? Shook hands
+ cordially with the gentleman, made some pleasant observations about having
+ met before, and hoped, in whispers among themselves, that he would not
+ serve them the same this time! Of course, on the first Saturday night,
+ while they were on the stage, he would run off with all the week’s
+ takings, go to the next town, and advertise for another company under the
+ name of Jones.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ It was no light matter for a man—and worse still for a poor girl—to
+ be left without a penny or a friend in a strange town hundreds of miles
+ from home. The poor players helped each other as well as they could, but
+ provincial Pros, are—or, at least were—not a wealthy class,
+ and, after having paid their fares down, and kept themselves for a week or
+ a fortnight, the most bloated capitalists among them rarely had more than
+ a few shillings remaining in their pockets. Wardrobes had to be left as
+ security with irate landladies, and, until they were redeemed or replaced,
+ no other engagement was possible. Friends, poor enough themselves,
+ goodness knows, had to be begged of. Every kind of valuable, even the
+ wedding ring, had to be pawned, and the return home was made with troubled
+ faces and empty hands.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The misery caused by these scoundrels makes one’s blood boil to think of.
+ I have known men and women forced to tramp home again half across the
+ kingdom, seeking shelter in casual wards when the nights were too cold or
+ wet to sleep under a haystack. I have known actors and actresses obliged
+ to sell the clothes off their backs in order to get fresh stage wardrobes.
+ I have known whole families, after having scraped together every penny
+ they could get, so as to be able to join one of these companies, come back
+ again a few days afterward, utterly destitute, and compelled to sell the
+ few sticks of furniture they had about the place before making another
+ start. I knew one poor fellow, left penniless in Glasgow, with a delicate
+ young wife near her confinement, and they had to come back to London by
+ boat—steerage passage—for, after pledging everything, that was
+ all they had money enough for. It was fearful weather in the middle of
+ January, and the vessel tossed about in the Channel for over a week,
+ landing them just in time for the woman to die at home.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Some managers saved themselves the trouble of running away, and attempted
+ to throw an air of respectability over the proceeding, by paying their
+ company about one-and-sixpence apiece on treasury day, stating that they
+ were very sorry, but that the thing had been a failure; that the houses
+ had been all paper, the expenses unusually heavy, or any other of the
+ stock lies always on hand. And he would think to comfort them by telling
+ them that he himself had lost money, as though that were an unanswerable
+ reason for their losing all theirs!
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ As to these men losing money of their own, that was impossible. They had
+ not any to lose. Whatever they lost was somebody else’s; of that you may
+ be sure. They were men without any capital whatever, and they made use of
+ actors merely as cat’s paws in a speculation where all the risks were with
+ the company, and all the advantages with themselves.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The “share” system was worse even than this. It meant, in plain language,
+ that, if the undertaking failed, the actors shared the losses amongst
+ them, and, if it succeeded, the manager pocketed the profits.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ As a matter of fact, actors were then the least considered, and the most
+ imposed upon of any people connected with the stage. If, at that time, one
+ of my friends had started as a theatrical manager, I might, with a view of
+ saving him unnecessary expense, have given him the following hints:
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “You must pay your bill-poster, or he won’t stick up your bills, or, if he
+ does, it will be topsyturvy. Pay for your advertisements, or they won’t
+ get inserted. Pay your carpenters and sceneshifters, or they’ll make it
+ decidedly uncomfortable for you. Pay your money-takers or they’ll pay
+ themselves; your gas, or it will be cut off; your rent, or you will be
+ turned into the street. Be careful to pay the supers, too, or you’ll find
+ when it is time for them to go on that they’ve all gone off. For goodness
+ sake, don’t keep your charwoman waiting for her wages; you’ll not have
+ five minutes’ quiet until she is satisfied. And if you don’t wish to find
+ yourself in the County Court on Monday morning, pay your call boy on
+ Saturday night. You <i>must</i> pay these people. It is not a case of
+ choice, there is simply no help for you; if you don’t you’ll have to shut
+ up shop in a couple of days. <i>But you needn’t pay any one else</i>. If
+ you have a few shillings left that you really don’t know what to do with,
+ you might divide it among the actors and actresses; but you can please
+ yourself entirely about this. They work just the same whether they are
+ paid or not.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Your author, by the by, is another person you never need pay. Indeed, in
+ his case, it would be positively dangerous to do so. There is no telling
+ what effect such a shock might have upon him.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Your company will, it is true, pester you a good deal for their money,
+ and grumble and threaten, but it never comes to anything, and, after a
+ while, you get used to it, and don’t mind.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ As to actors and actresses taking any actual measures for their own
+ protection, the idea never occurred to them in their wildest dreams. If
+ you suggested such a thing to them, it took their breath away, and you
+ were looked upon as a young man with dangerous revolutionary tendencies
+ that would some day get you into trouble. It was useless for one man to
+ attempt to do anything by himself. I remember an actor summoning a manager
+ who had cheated him out of seven pounds, and, after spending about ten
+ pounds in costs, he got an order for payment by monthly instalments of ten
+ shillings, not one of which, of course, he ever saw. After that, it was
+ next to impossible for him to get a shop (this expression is not slang, it
+ is a bit of local color). No manager who had heard of the affair would
+ engage him.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “A pretty pass the stage will come to,” said they, “if this sort of thing
+ is to become common.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ And the newspapers observed, it was a pity that he (the actor) should wash
+ his dirty linen in public.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I have been careful to use the past tense all through these remarks. Some
+ of them would apply very well to the present time, but on the whole,
+ things have improved since I was on the stage. I am glad of it.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <br /><br />
+ </p>
+ <hr />
+ <p>
+ <a name="link2HCH0010" id="link2HCH0010"> </a>
+ </p>
+ <div style="height: 4em;">
+ <br /><br /><br /><br />
+ </div>
+ <h2>
+ CHAPTER X. I Buy a Basket, and go into the Provinces.
+ </h2>
+ <p>
+ <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0010" id="linkimage-0010"> </a>
+ </p>
+ <div class="figleft" style="width:20%;">
+ <img src="images/9106.jpg" alt="9106 " width="100%" /><br /><a
+ href="images/9106.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
+ </div>
+ <p>
+ UR season at the London theater came to a close early in December, and,
+ about the end of November, we all be gan to take a great interest in the
+ last page but one of “The Actor’s Bible.” Being just before Christmas,
+ which is the busiest period of the theatrical year, there was no
+ difficulty in getting another shop, for “Useful people,” “Clever people,”
+ “Talented people,” “Knockabout people,” “First-class High Kickers,” and
+ “Entire Dramatic Companies,” were wanted here, there, and everywhere. I
+ only answered one advertisement, and was engaged at once; but this, no
+ doubt, was owing to my having taken the precaution, when applying, of
+ enclosing my photograph.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I was to join the company a week before Christmas, at a town in the west
+ of England, where we were to open with pantomine. I was to give the first
+ week for rehearsals at half salary, afterward receiving a guinea a week
+ for “responsibles,” traveling expenses, when we went on tour, being paid
+ by the management.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ And here let me say that a more honorable and courteous gentleman than the
+ manager of this company I never met. We did not even have to ask for our
+ money; we were paid regularly, and to the last farthing, no matter whether
+ business was good or bad. In short, he was an honest man, and as such held
+ a conspicuous position among the theatrical managers of that day.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Previous to leaving London, I got together a small wardrobe. I already had
+ a stock of boots and shoes, and tights, but these were only a few of the
+ things required, and I found it rather an expensive matter before I had
+ done. Varying in price from seven shillings to two pounds, wigs cost the
+ most of anything, and I had to buy seven or eight of these—a “white
+ Court,” a “brown George,” a “flowing ringlets,” a “scratch” (why called
+ scratch I haven’t the faintest notion), a “comic oldman,” a “bald,” and a
+ “flow” for everything that one was not quite sure about.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I picked up a good many odds and ends of costume in Petticoat Lane one
+ Sunday morning. It is a famous place for theatrical wardrobes. I got a
+ complete sailor’s suit for five shillings, and a suit of livery for
+ sixteen. Old-fashioned swallowtails and embroidered waistcoats, knee
+ breeches, blouses, pants, hats, cloaks, and swords were also to be had
+ there in plenty, and at very small cost. My sisters made me some more
+ things (they had become reconciled to my “mad trick” by this time, and had
+ even got to rather like the idea of having an actor in the family), and
+ for the rest I had to go to a regular costumier’s. All these articles,
+ together with a pretty complete modern wardrobe, a bundle of acting
+ editions and other books, a “make-up” box, a dressing-case, writing-case,
+ etc., etc., made a pretty big pile, and, as this pile would be increased
+ rather than diminished as time went on, I determined to get one big
+ traveling basket to hold everything, and have done with it.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I did get a big one. I’ve got it now. It’s downstairs in the washhouse.
+ I’ve never been able to get rid of it from that day to this. I’ve tried
+ leaving it behind when removing into new lodgings, but it has always been
+ sent on after me, generally in a wagon with a couple of men, who,
+ evidently imagining they were restoring me a treasured heirloom, have been
+ disappointed at my complete absence of enthusiasm. I have lured stray boys
+ into the house, and offered them half a crown to take it away and lose it,
+ but they have become frightened, and gone home and told their mothers,
+ and, after that, it has got about in the neighborhood that I have
+ committed a murder. It isn’t the sort of thing you can take out with you
+ on a dark night, and drop down somebody else’s area.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ When I used it, I had to do all my packing in the hall, for it was
+ impossible to get the thing up and down stairs. It always stood just
+ behind the front door, which left about six inches of space for people to
+ squeeze past, and every one that came in got more or less injured. The
+ owner of the house, returning home late at night, would pitch head
+ foremost over it, and begin yelling murder and police, under the
+ impression it was burglars. The girl, coming in with the beer, would bang
+ up against it, and upset the jug over it, when the whole contents would
+ become saturated, and smell like a public-house.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The language used in connection with that basket was simply appalling. It
+ roused railway porters and cabmen to madness, and the savage way in which
+ they rushed upon it used to make my blood run cold. Landladies, who upon
+ my first call had welcomed me with effusion, grew cool and distant when
+ the basket arrived. Nobody had a good word for it. Everywhere, it was
+ hated and despised. I even feared that some day its victims would rise up
+ and sweep it from the face of the earth. But no, it has survived both
+ curses and kicks, and feeling it is hopeless ever to expect to get rid of
+ it, I have made up my mind to be buried in it.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Faithful old basket! it is a good many years since you and I started on
+ our travels that snowy seventeenth of December, and what a row we had with
+ the cabman, ah me! But why did you desert me at Bristol? Why did you———
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ But stay, wherefore should I go on apostrophizing the miserable old thing
+ in this imbecile manner, And now I come to think of it, why too should I
+ sit here sucking the end of my pen and scowling savagely at the lamp, in
+ the agonies of composition, when “copy,” which one of Field & Tuer’s
+ devils is plaguing me for (I do wish they’d send a boy who couldn’t
+ whistle), is lying ready to my hand?
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Before me, borrowed for reference in penning these reminiscences, is a
+ pile of letters, written during my travels to my old pal, Jim. Here’s one:
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Dear Jim:
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “We (the basket and I) had a terribly cold journey down. Lost the basket
+ at Bristol and had to telegraph after it. That basket will be the death of
+ me, I know. There is one advantage, though; it stamps you as an actor at
+ once, and the porters don’t expect any gratuities. Got jolly lodgings
+ here. Nice, big bedroom, use of sitting-room, full attendance, and cooking
+ for four bob a week. Pleasant, homely people, everything as clean as a new
+ pin, and daughter rather pretty.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “I should have written before, but we have been so busy. Two and sometimes
+ three rehearsals a day, to say nothing of painting the scenery, at which
+ we all assisted. We had a crowded house for the opening on Boxing night,
+ and have had very fair ones ever since—all over fifteen pounds.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Sergeant Parry was in the stalls the other night, and a big London actor,
+ whose name I forget just now. We (I say ‘we’ because we all help in
+ everything—two of us went out early a morning or two ago
+ bill-posting: we’ve got a regular billposter, but it’s his week for being
+ drunk)—we, then, had a good deal of trouble training the supers and
+ ballet. You should hear the supers dance: you can do so easily a mile off.
+ They shake the whole building. Both they and the ballet are drawn from the
+ fishing population of the town, and this is their first appearance on any
+ stage. The ballet consists of eight at present, but that is only for the
+ first go off, we shall reduce it to six in a little while. We have also
+ got about a dozen children to do a May-pole dance. It’s a treat to see
+ them. They are paid threepence a night, but they get three shillings’
+ worth of enjoyment out of it for themselves. There is one little girl with
+ the face of an angel—I honestly confess I’ve never seen an angel’s
+ face, and don’t suppose I ever shall till I die, but I think it is that
+ sort of face. She is dressed by seven every evening, and, from then, till
+ she goes on the stage at ten, she is dancing and singing on her own
+ account all over the place. When the May-pole is at last set up, she
+ stands and gazes at it open-mouthed, and laughs to herself with glee. In
+ her excitement, she always dances round the wrong way, and with the wrong
+ boy—but it’s always the same wrong boy, that is what makes it
+ extraordinary. Happy wrong boy, only he doesn’t know he’s happy; he is so
+ small. After the dance, the little boys kiss the little girls. You ought
+ to see this little fairy turn aside and giggle, and push her little lover
+ away. The boys are awfully shy over the business, but the little girls
+ don’t seem a bit afraid. Such is the superiority of woman over man?
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “The pantomime dresses all come from London, and are quite handsome and
+ costly. The piece is <i>Whittington and his Cat</i>, written by the stage
+ manager here, but it is nearly all songs and dances, and what little is
+ spoken is more gag than book. I’ve two songs in one of my parts, and one
+ in the other. I suppose singing is easy enough when you are used to it. It
+ is the orchestra that puts me out, though. I should feel much freer
+ without the music. We give them plenty of topical allusions on burning
+ local questions, being careful, of course, to follow Mr. Pickwick’s
+ advice, and ‘shout with the crowd.’ It fetches them immensely. The
+ enthusiasm created nightly by a reference to the new lamp-post in the High
+ Street is tremendous.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Our low comedian is teaching me dancing, and I practice for about an hour
+ a day. It’s terribly hard work, but I can nearly do a hornpipe already. I
+ want to do that: there is nothing knocks a country audience like a
+ hornpipe.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “The stage manager is a surly fellow, of course: but the manager himself
+ is a brick, and treats us—the actors—with as much respect as
+ if we were stage carpenters; and money is safe. Our leading man has never
+ turned up, so his part has been cut out, and this has not improved the
+ plot. I play a lazy clerk in the opening (it’s like going back to the old
+ Civil Service days), and also prime minister of Tittattoo; having only
+ three minutes for change. I get some legitimate fun out of the prime
+ minister, but the clerk does not require artistic acting. I pretend to go
+ to sleep, and then the clown, who plays another clerk catches me over the
+ head with a clapper, and then I wake up and catch him over the head with
+ the clapper, and then he rushes at me and hits me, and I take the nap from
+ him, and then he takes a nap from me (it wakes you up, this sort of nap, I
+ tell you), after which, we both have a grand struggle with the cat. I fell
+ on my head the other night (lucky it wasn’t any other part of me), and
+ broke a chair in the course of this struggle. I got an encore for that,
+ but didn’t take it. I suppose you might call this knockabout business. I’m
+ glad there are none of my friends here to see me. Acting isn’t all making
+ love in tights, and fighting with a real sword.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “We play a drama before the Panto, on Saturday next. Fancy me as the heavy
+ father, blessing the stage manager and the leading lady, whose united ages
+ amount to about eighty. That is what I am going to do.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “We all dined with the manager on Christmas Day at his hotel, and had a
+ very pleasant evening, keeping it up till four. We are each of us to have
+ a ‘ben.’ before leaving here. I was rather pleased at this when I heard
+ it, but the others displayed no rapture. Our walking gent, told me he
+ never lost less than thirty shillings at his benefits. I don’t think I
+ shall take one. You pay all expenses, and have half the receipts. The
+ attraction about it to my mind, though, is that you can put up what you
+ like, and choose your own parts. I should like to have a try at Romeo.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “I have tasted fame and don’t like it. I have been recognized in the
+ street, and followed by a small crowd of children. They evidently expected
+ me to stop at some corner and sing.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “The men’s dressing-room at the theater is up in the flies, and the only
+ means of communication with it is by a ladder. This got removed the other
+ night, so that our low comedian couldn’t get down. We didn’t know this,
+ however, so the Lord Chamberlain went on and said, ‘Behold your Prince
+ approaches,’ and of course he didn’t come. So the Lord Chamberlain said it
+ again, and the house began to laugh; and then an excited voice from above
+ cried out, ‘Shut up, you fool. Where’s the ladder?’
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Must ‘shut up’ myself now, for it’s half-past seven, and I’m on at eight.
+ I’m very comfortable down here. Write soon, old chap, and give us all the
+ news. Have you seen dear little ————?”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Oh! the rest has nothing to do with theatrical matters.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <br /><br />
+ </p>
+ <hr />
+ <p>
+ <a name="link2HCH0011" id="link2HCH0011"> </a>
+ </p>
+ <div style="height: 4em;">
+ <br /><br /><br /><br />
+ </div>
+ <h2>
+ CHAPTER XI. First Provincial Experiences
+ </h2>
+ <p>
+ <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0011" id="linkimage-0011"> </a>
+ </p>
+ <div class="figleft" style="width:20%;">
+ <img src="images/9116.jpg" alt="9116 " width="100%" /><br /><a
+ href="images/9116.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
+ </div>
+ <p>
+ THOUGHT I was safe for the summer with this company, and congratulated
+ myself upon having found such good quarters. The glorious uncertainty of
+ the boards, however, almost rivals that of the turf. From one reason and
+ another, we broke up without ever going on tour, so that, two months after
+ leaving London, I found myself back there again on my way to the opposite
+ side of the kingdom to join another company.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ But, short as was my first country engagement, it gave me a pretty good
+ insight into what provincial work was like. The following is from one of
+ my letters, written after about a fortnight’s experience of this work,
+ which did not begin until the pantomime was withdrawn:
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “The panto, is over. I wasn’t by any means fond of it, but I’m sorry for
+ one thing. While it was running, you see, there was no study or rehearsal,
+ and we had the whole day free, and could—and did—enjoy
+ ourselves. But no skating parties now! no long walks! no drives! no
+ getting through a novel in one day! We play at least two fresh pieces
+ every night and sometimes three. Most of them here already know their
+ parts as well as they know their alphabet, but everything is new to me,
+ and it is an awful grind. I can never tell until one night what I’m going
+ to play the next. The cast is stuck up by the stage door every evening,
+ and then, unless you happen to have the book yourself, you must borrow the
+ stage manager’s copy, and write out your part. If somebody else wants it,
+ too, and is before you, you don’t get hold of it till the next morning
+ perhaps, and that gives you about eight hours in which to work up a part
+ of say six or seven lengths (a ‘length’ is forty-two lines).
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Sometimes there’s a row over the cast. Second Low Comedy isn’t going to
+ play old men. That’s not his line; he was not engaged to play old men.
+ He’ll see everybody somethinged first.—First Old Man wants to know
+ what they mean by expecting him to play Second Old Man’s part. He has
+ never been so insulted in his life. He has played with Kean and Macready
+ and Phelps and Matthews, and they would none of them have dreamt of asking
+ him to do such a thing.—Juvenile Lead has seen some rum things, but
+ he is blowed if ever he saw the light comedy part given to the Walking
+ Gentleman before. Anyhow he shall decline to play the part given him, it’s
+ mere utility.—Walking Gent, says, well it really isn’t his fault; he
+ doesn’t care one way or the other. He was cast for the part, and took it.—Juvenile
+ Lead knows it isn’t his fault—doesn’t blame him at all—it’s
+ the stage manager he blames. Juvenile Lead’s opinion is that the stage
+ manager is a fool. Everybody agrees with him here; it is our rallying
+ point.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “The general result, when this sort of thing occurs, is that the part in
+ dispute, no matter what it is, gets pitched on to me as ‘Responsibles.’
+ There’s a little too much responsibility about my line. I like the way
+ they put it, too, when they want me to take a particularly heavy part.
+ They call it ‘giving me an opportunity!’ If they mean an opportunity to
+ stop up all night, I agree with them. That is the only opportunity I see
+ about it. Do they suppose you are going to come out with an original and
+ scholarly conception of the character, when you see the part for the first
+ time the night before you play it? Why, you haven’t time to think of the
+ meaning of the words you repeat. But even if you had the chance of
+ studying a character, it would be no use. They won’t let you carry out
+ your own ideas. There seems to be a regular set of rules for each part,
+ and you are bound to follow them. Originality is at a discount in the
+ provinces.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “I have lived to see our stage manager snubbed—sat upon—crushed.
+ He has been carrying on down here, and swelling around to that extent
+ you’d have thought him a station-master at the very least. Now he’s like a
+ bladder with the air let out. His wife’s come.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “The company is really getting quite famili-fied. There are three married
+ couples in it now. Our Low Comedian’s wife is the Singing Chambermaid—an
+ awfully pretty little woman (why have ugly men always got pretty wives?).
+ I played her lover the other night, and we had to kiss two or three times.
+ I rather liked it, especially as she doesn’t make-up much. It isn’t at all
+ pleasant getting a mouthful of powder or carmine.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “I gained my first ‘call’ on Saturday, before a very full house. Of course
+ I was highly delighted, but I felt terribly nervous about stepping across
+ when the curtain was pulled back. I kept thinking, ‘Suppose it’s a
+ mistake, and they don’t want me.’ They applauded, though, the moment I
+ appeared, and then I was all right. It was for a low comedy part—Jacques
+ in <i>The Honeymoon</i>. I always do better in low comedy than in anything
+ else, and everybody tells me I ought to stick to it. But that is just what
+ I don’t want to do. It is high tragedy that I want to shine in. I don’t
+ like low comedy at all. I would rather make the people cry than laugh.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “There is one little difficulty that I have to contend with at present in
+ playing comedy, and that is a tendency to laugh myself when I hear the
+ house laughing. I suppose I shall get over this in time, but now, if I
+ succeed in being at all comical, it tickles me as much as it does the
+ audience, and, although I could keep grave enough if they didn’t laugh,
+ the moment they start I want to join in. But it is not only at my own
+ doings that I am inclined to laugh. Anything funny on the stage amuses me,
+ and being mixed up in it makes no difference. I played Frank to our Low
+ Comedian’s Major de Boots the other night. He was in extra good form and
+ very droll, and I could hardly go on with my part for laughing at him. Of
+ course, when a piece is played often, one soon ceases to be amused; but
+ here, where each production enjoys a run of one consecutive night only,
+ the joke does not pall.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “There is a man in the town who has been to the theater regularly every
+ night since we opened. The pantomime ran a month, and he came all through
+ that. I know I was sick enough of the thing before it was over, but what I
+ should have been sitting it out from beginning to end every evening, I do
+ not like to think. Most of our patrons, though, are pretty regular
+ customers. The theater-going population of the town is small but
+ determined. Well, you see, ours is the only amusement going. There was a
+ fat woman came last week, but she did not stay long. The people here are
+ all so fat themselves they thought nothing of her.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <br /><br />
+ </p>
+ <hr />
+ <p>
+ <a name="link2HCH0012" id="link2HCH0012"> </a>
+ </p>
+ <div style="height: 4em;">
+ <br /><br /><br /><br />
+ </div>
+ <h2>
+ CHAPTER XII. “Mad Mat” Takes Advantage of an Opportunity.
+ </h2>
+ <p>
+ <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0012" id="linkimage-0012"> </a>
+ </p>
+ <div class="figleft" style="width:20%;">
+ <img src="images/9121.jpg" alt="9121 " width="100%" /><br /><a
+ href="images/9121.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
+ </div>
+ <p>
+ HAD a day in London before starting off on my next venture, and so looked
+ in at my old theater. I knew none of the company, but the workmen and
+ supers were mostly the same that I had left there. Dear old Jim was in his
+ usual state and greeted me with a pleasant:
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Hulloa! you seem jolly fond of the place, <i>you</i> do. What the deuce
+ brings here?”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I explained that it was a hankering to see him once again.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Mad Mat” was there, too. The pantomime was still running, and Mat played
+ a demon with a pasteboard head. He was suffering great injustice nightly,
+ so it appeared from what he told me. He was recalled regularly at the end
+ of the scene in which he and his brother demons were knocked about by the
+ low comedian, but the management would not allow him to go on again and
+ bow.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “They are jealous,” whispered Mat to me, as we strolled into <i>The Rodney</i>
+ (it would be unprofessional for an actor to meet a human creature whose
+ swallowing organization was intact, and not propose a drink)—“jealous,
+ that’s what it is. I’m getting too popular, and they think I shall cut
+ them out.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The poor fellow was madder than ever, and I was just thinking so at the
+ very moment that he turned to me and said:
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Do you think I’m mad? candidly now.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ It’s a little awkward when a maniac asks you point-blank if you think he’s
+ mad. Before I could collect myself sufficiently to reply, he continued:
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “People often say I’m mad—<i>I’ve</i> heard them. Even if I am, it
+ isn’t the thing to throw in a gentleman’s teeth, but I’m not—I’m
+ not. <i>You</i> don’t think I am, do you?”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I was that “took aback,” as Mrs. Brown would put it, that, if I had not
+ had the presence of mind to gulp down a good mouthful of whisky and water,
+ I don’t know what I should have done. I then managed to get out something
+ about “a few slight eccentricities, perhaps, but——”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “That’s it,” he cried excitedly, “‘eccentricities ‘—and they call
+ that being mad. But they won’t call me mad long—wait till I’ve made
+ my name. They won’t call me mad then. Mad! It’s <i>they’re</i> the fools,
+ to think a man’s mad when he isn’t. Ha, ha, my boy, I’ll surprise ‘em one
+ day. I’ll show the fools—the dolts—the idiots, who’s been mad.
+ ‘Great genius is to madness close allied.’ Who said that, eh? <i>He</i>
+ was a genius, and they called <i>him</i> mad, perhaps. They’re fools—all
+ fools, I tell you. They can’t tell the difference between madness and
+ genius, but I’ll show them some day—some day.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Fortunately there was nobody else in the bar where we were, or his ravings
+ would have attracted an unpleasant amount of attention. He wanted to give
+ me a taste of his quality then and there in his favorite <i>rôle</i> of
+ Romeo, and I only kept him quiet by promising to call that night and hear
+ him rehearse the part.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ When we were ready to go out, I put my hand in my pocket to pay, but, to
+ my horror, Mat was before me, and laid down the money on the counter. Nor
+ would any argument induce him to take it up again. He was hurt at the
+ suggestion even, and reminded me that I had stood treat on the last
+ occasion—about three months ago. It was impossible to force the
+ money on him. He was as proud on his six shillings a week as Croesus on
+ sixty thousand a year, and I was compelled to let him have his way. So he
+ paid the eightpence, and then we parted on the understanding that I was to
+ see him later on at his “lodgings.”—“They are not what I could
+ wish,” he explained, “but you will, I am sure, overlook a few bachelor
+ inconveniences. The place suits me well enough—for the present.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Hearing a lunatic go through Romeo is not the pleasantest way of passing
+ the night, but I should not have had pluck enough to disappoint the poor
+ fellow, even if I had not promised, and, accordingly, after having spent
+ the evening enjoying the unusual luxury of sitting quiet, and seeing,
+ other people excite themselves for <i>my</i> amusement, I made my way to
+ the address Mat had given me.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The house was in a narrow court at the back of the New Cut. The front door
+ stood wide open, though it was twelve o’clock, and a bitterly cold night.
+ A child lay huddled up on the doorstep, and a woman was sleeping in the
+ passage. I stumbled over the woman, groping my way along in the dark. She
+ seemed used to being trodden upon though, for she only looked up
+ unconcernedly, and went to sleep again at once. Mat had told me his place
+ was at the very top, so I went on until there were no more stairs, and
+ then I looked round me. Seeing a light coming from one of the rooms, I
+ peered in through the halfopen door, and saw a fantastic object, decked in
+ gaudy colors and with long, flowing hair, sitting on the edge of a
+ broken-down bedstead. I didn’t know what to make of it at first, but it
+ soon occurred to me that it must be Mat, fully made-up as Romeo, and I
+ went in.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I thought, when I had seen him a few hours before, that he looked queer—even
+ for him—but now, his haggard face daubed with paint, and his great
+ eyes staring out of it more wildly than ever, he positively frightened me.
+ He held out his hand, which was thin and white, but remained seated.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Excuse my rising,” he said slowly, in a weak voice, “I feel so strange. I
+ don’t think I can go through the part to-night. So sorry to have brought
+ you here for nothing, but you must come and see me some other time.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I got him to lie down on the bed just as he was, and covered him with the
+ old rags that were on it. He lay still for a few minutes, then he looked
+ up and said:
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “I won’t forget you, L———, when I’m well off. You’ve
+ been friendly to me when I was poor: I shan’t forget it, my boy. My
+ opportunity will soon come now—very soon, and then———”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ He didn’t finish the sentence, but began to murmur bits of the part to
+ himself, and in a little while he dropped asleep. I stole softly out, and
+ went in search of a doctor. I got hold of one at last, and returned with
+ him to Mat’s attic. He was still asleep, and after arranging matters as
+ well as I could with the doctor, I left, for I had to-be on my way early
+ in the morning.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I never expected to see Mat again, and I never did. People who have lived
+ for any length of time on six shillings a week don’t take long to die when
+ they set about it, and two days after I had seen him, Mad Mat’s
+ opportunity came, and he took it.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <br /><br />
+ </p>
+ <hr />
+ <p>
+ <a name="link2HCH0013" id="link2HCH0013"> </a>
+ </p>
+ <div style="height: 4em;">
+ <br /><br /><br /><br />
+ </div>
+ <h2>
+ CHAPTER XIII. Lodgings and Landladies.
+ </h2>
+ <p>
+ <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0013" id="linkimage-0013"> </a>
+ </p>
+ <div class="figleft" style="width:20%;">
+ <img src="images/9126.jpg" alt="9126 " width="100%" /><br /><a
+ href="images/9126.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
+ </div>
+ <p>
+ HEY charged me extra for the basket on the Great Eastern Line, and I have
+ hated that company ever since. Of course it was over weight, but actors
+ are good customers to the railways, and a little excess luggage is not, as
+ a rule, too closely inquired into. The myrmidons at Bishopsgate, however,
+ were inexorable. It was in vain I tried to persuade them that the thing
+ was “as light as a feather.” They insisted on sticking it up edgeways on a
+ shaky iron plate, and wobbling something up and down a bar; afterward
+ giving me an absurd bit of paper with “4s. 4d.” on it, which, I explained,
+ I didn’t want, but which they charged me for just as though I had
+ specially ordered it.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ My destination was a small market-town in the eastern counties, where I
+ arrived about mid-day. It was the most dead and alive place I have ever
+ been to. All eastern county towns are more or less dead and alive—particularly
+ the former—but this one was dreariness personified. Not a soul was
+ to be seen outside the station. In the yard stood a solitary cab to which
+ was attached a limp horse that, with head hanging down and knees bent out,
+ looked the picture of resigned misery; but the driver had disappeared—washed
+ away by the rain, perhaps, which was pouring steadily down. I left my
+ belongings in the cloak room, and walked straight to the theater. I passed
+ two or three green posters on my way, headed:
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Theater Royal,” and setting forth that “——— ————,
+ the World-Renowned Tragedian from Drury Lane,” would give his magnificent
+ impersonations of <i>Richard III.</i> and <i>The Idiot Witness</i> that
+ night, and begging the inhabitants, for their own sakes, to “come early.”
+ I found the whole company assembled on the stage, and looking as dismal as
+ the town itself. They all had colds in the head, including the manager,
+ “the World-Renowned Tragedian from Drury Lane,” who had the face-ache into
+ the bargain.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ After a rough and ready rehearsal of the tragedy, melodrama, and burlesque
+ to be played that evening (I had had all my parts sent me by post before
+ joining), I started off by myself to look for lodgings, as I had come to
+ the conclusion that my own society would, on the whole, be less depressing
+ than that of any gentleman in the company.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Lodging hunting is by no means the most pleasant business connected with
+ touring. It always means an hour or two’s wandering up and down back
+ streets, squinting up at windows, knocking at doors, and waiting about on
+ doorsteps. You are under the impression, all the while that the entire
+ street is watching you, and that it has put you down as either a begging
+ letter impostor, or else as the water-rate man, and despises you
+ accordingly. You never find the place that suits you until you have been
+ everywhere else. If you could only begin at the end and work backwards,
+ the search would be over at once. But, somehow or other, you can never
+ manage to do this, and you have always to go through the same routine.
+ First of all, there are the places that ask about twice as much as you are
+ prepared to give, and at which you promise to call again when you have
+ seen your friend. Then there are the places that are just taken, or just
+ going to be taken, or just not to be taken. There are the places where you
+ can have half a bed with another gentleman, the other gentleman generally
+ being the billiard-marker at the hotel opposite, or some journeyman
+ photographer. There are the people who won’t take you because you are not
+ a married couple, and the people who won’t take you because you are a
+ play-actor, and the people who want you to be out all day, and the people
+ who want you to be in by ten. Added to these, there is the slatternly
+ woman, who comes to the door, followed by a mob of dirty children, that
+ cling to her skirts and regard you with silent horror, evidently thinking
+ that the “big ugly man,” so often threatened, has really come this time.
+ Or the fool of a husband, who scratches his head and says you had better
+ call again, when his “missus” is in. Or, most aggravating of all, the
+ woman who stands on the step, after you have gone, and watches you down
+ the street, so that you don’t like to knock anywhere else.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ All this I was prepared for when I started, but no such ordeal was in
+ store for me. The difficulty of selecting lodgings was got rid of
+ altogether in the present case by there simply being no lodgings of any
+ kind to be let. It had evidently never occurred to the inhabitants of this
+ delightful spot that any human being could possibly desire to lodge there,
+ and I don’t wonder at it. There were a couple of inns in the High Street,
+ but country actors cannot afford inns, however moderate, and of “Furnished
+ Apartments” or “Bed Rooms for Single Gentlemen” there were none. I
+ explored every street in the town without coming across a single bill, and
+ then, as a last resource, I went into a baker’s shop to inquire. I don’t
+ know why bakers should be better acquainted than any other tradesmen with
+ the private affairs of their neighbors, but that they are has always been
+ my impression, or, at least, <i>had</i> been up till then, when it
+ received a rude blow. I asked two bakers, and both of them shook their
+ heads, and knew of no one who let lodgings. I was in despair, and the High
+ Street, when I glanced up and saw a very pleasant face smiling at me from
+ the door of a milliner’s shop. Somehow, the sight of it inspired me with
+ hope. I smiled back, and—
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Could the owner of the pleasant face recommend me to any lodgings?”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The owner of the pleasant face looked surprised. “Was Monsieur going to
+ stop in the town?” On Monsieur explaining that he was an actor, Madame was
+ delighted, and smiled more pleasantly than ever. “Madame did so love the
+ theater. Had not been to one for, Oh! so long time; not since she did
+ leave Regent Street—the Regent Street that was in our London. Did
+ Monsieur know London? Had been to heaps and heaps of theaters then. And at
+ Paris! Ah! Paris! Ah, the theaters at Paris! Ah! But there was nothing to
+ go to here. It was so quiet, so stupid, this town. We English, we did seem
+ so dull. Monsieur, son mari, he did not mind it. He had been born here. He
+ did love the sleepiness—the what we did call the monotony. But
+ Madame, she did love the gayety. This place was, oh, so sad.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Here Madame clasped her hands—pretty little hands they were, too—and
+ looked so piteous, that Monsieur felt, strongly inclined to take her in
+ his arms and comfort her. He, however, on second thoughts, restrained his
+ generous impulse.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Madame then stated her intention to go to the theater that very evening,
+ and requested to know what was to be played.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ On Monsieur informing her that “————, the
+ World-Renowned Tragedian from Drury Lane, would give his magnificent
+ impersonations of <i>Richard III.</i> and <i>The Idiot Witness</i>,” she
+ seemed greatly impressed, and hoped it was a comedy. Madame loved
+ comedies. “To laugh at all the fun—to be made merry—that was
+ so good.” Monsieur thought that Madame would have plenty to laugh at in
+ the magnificent impersonations of Richard III. and The Idiot Witness, even
+ if she found the burlesque a little heavy, but he didn’t say so.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Then Madame remembered Monsieur was looking for lodgings. Madame put the
+ tip of her forefinger in her mouth, puckered her brows, and looked
+ serious. “Yes, there was Miss Kemp, she had sometimes taken a lodger. But
+ Miss Kemp was so strict, so particular. She did want every one to be so
+ good. Was Monsieur good?” This with a doubting smile.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Monsieur hazarded the opinion that having gazed into Madame’s eyes for
+ five minutes was enough to make a saint of any man. Monsieur’s opinion was
+ laughed at, but, nevertheless notwithstanding, Miss Kemp’s address was
+ given him, and thither he repaired, armed with the recommendation of his
+ charming little French friend.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Miss Kemp was an old maid, and lived by herself in a small three-cornered
+ house that stood in a grass-grown courtyard behind the church. She was a
+ prim old lady, with quick eyes and a sharp chin. She looked me up and down
+ with two jerks of her head, and then supposed that I had come to the town
+ to work.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “No,” I replied, “I had come to play. I was an actor.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Oh,” said Miss Kemp. Then added severely, “You’re married.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I repudiated the insinuation with scorn.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ After that, the old lady asked me inside, and we soon became friends. I
+ can always get on with old ladies. Next to young ones, I like them better
+ than any other class of the community. And Miss Kemp was a very nice old
+ lady. She was as motherly as a barnyard hen, though she was an old maid. I
+ suggested going out again to buy a chop for my tea, and to fetch my
+ basket, but she would not hear of it.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Bless the child,” said she, “do run and take off those wet boots. I’ll
+ send some one for your luggage.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ So I was made to take off my coat and boots, and to sit by the fire, with
+ my feet wrapped up in a shawl, while Miss Kemp bustled about with toast
+ and steaks, and rattled the tea things and chatted.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I only stopped a week with Miss Kemp, that being the length of time the
+ company remained in the town, but it will be a long while before I forget
+ the odd little old maid with her fussy ways and kindly heart. I can still
+ see, in memory, the neat kitchen with its cheerful fire in polished grate,
+ before which sleek purring Tom lies stretched. The old-fashioned lamp
+ burns brightly on the table, and, between it and the fire, sits the little
+ old lady herself in her high-backed chair, her knitting in her hands and
+ her open Bible on her knee. As I recall the picture, so may it still be
+ now, and so may it still remain for many a year to come.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I must have been singularly fortunate in regard to landladies, or else
+ they are a very much maligned class. I have had a good deal to do with
+ them, and, on the whole, I have found them kind, obliging, and the very
+ reverse of extortionate. With country landladies, especially, I have ever
+ been most comfortable, and even among London ones, who, as a class, are
+ not so pleasant as their provincial sisters, I have never, as yet, come
+ across a single specimen of that terrible she-dragon about which I have
+ heard so much. To champion the cause of landladies is rather an
+ extraordinary proceeding, but, as so much is said against them, I think it
+ only fair to state my own experience. They have their faults. They bully
+ the slavey (but then the slavey sauces them, so perhaps it is only tit for
+ tat), they will fry chops, and they talk enough for an Irish M. P. They
+ persist in telling you all their troubles, and they keep you waiting for
+ your breakfast while they do it. They never tire of recounting to you all
+ they have done for some ungrateful relative, and they bring down a
+ drawerful of letters on the subject, which they would like you to cast
+ your eye through. They bore you to death every day, too, with a complete
+ record of the sayings and doings of some immaculate young man lodger they
+ once had. This young man appears to have been quite overweighted with a
+ crushing sense of the goodness of the landlady in question. Many and many
+ a time has he said to her, with tears in his eyes: “Ah, Mrs. So-and-so,
+ you have been more than a mother to me”; and then he has pressed her hand,
+ and felt he could never repay her kindness. Which seems to have been the
+ fact, for he has generally gone off, in the end, owing a pretty
+ considerable sum.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <br /><br />
+ </p>
+ <hr />
+ <p>
+ <a name="link2HCH0014" id="link2HCH0014"> </a>
+ </p>
+ <div style="height: 4em;">
+ <br /><br /><br /><br />
+ </div>
+ <h2>
+ CHAPTER XIV. With a Stock Company,
+ </h2>
+ <p>
+ <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0014" id="linkimage-0014"> </a>
+ </p>
+ <div class="figleft" style="width:20%;">
+ <img src="images/9135.jpg" alt="9135 " width="100%" /><br /><a
+ href="images/9135.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
+ </div>
+ <p>
+ WAS most miserable with the company I had now joined. What it was like may
+ be gathered from the following:
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Dear Jim: If I stop long with this company I shall go mad (not very far
+ to go, perhaps you’ll say!). I must get out of it soon. It’s the most
+ wretched affair you could possibly imagine. Crummies’s show was a <i>Comédie
+ Française</i> in its arrangements compared with this. We have neither
+ stage-manager nor acting-manager. If this were all, I shouldn’t grumble;
+ but we have to do our own bill posting, help work the scenes, and take the
+ money at the doors—not an arduous task this last. There are no
+ ‘lines.’ We are all ‘responsibles,’ and the parts are distributed among us
+ with the utmost impartiality. In the matter of salary, too, there is the
+ same charming equality; we all get a guinea. In theory, that is: in
+ reality, our salaries vary according to our powers of nagging; the maximum
+ ever attained by any one having been fifteen shillings. I wonder we got
+ any, though, considering the audiences we play to. The mere sight of the
+ house gives one the horrors every night. It is so dimly lighted (for, to
+ save expense, the gas is only turned a quarter on) that you can hardly see
+ your way about, and so empty, that every sound echoes and re-echoes
+ through the place, till it seems as though a dozen people are talking in a
+ scene where there are only two. You walk on the stage, and there in front
+ of you are, say, twenty people dotted about the pit, a few more are
+ lolling listlessly over the gallery rails, and there are two or three
+ little groups in the boxes, while, as a background to these patches of
+ unhappy humanity, there stares out the bare boards and the dingy
+ upholstery. It is impossible to act among such surroundings as these. All
+ you can do#is to just drag through your part, and the audience, who one
+ and all have evidently been regretting from the very first that they ever
+ came—a fact they do not even attempt to disguise—are as glad
+ when it is over as you are. We stop a week in each town and play the same
+ pieces, so, of course, there is no study or rehearsal now. But I wish
+ there were; anything would be better than this depressing monotony.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “I might have guessed what sort of a company it was by his sending me the
+ parts he did. I play Duncan, Banquo, Seyton, and a murderer in <i>Macbeth</i>;
+ Tybalt and the Apothecary in <i>Romeo and Juliet</i>; and Laertes, Osric,
+ and the Second Player in <i>Hamlet</i>—and so on all through. None
+ of us play less than two parts in the same piece. No sooner are we killed
+ or otherwise disposed of as one person, than we are up again as somebody
+ else, and that, almost before we have time to change our clothes. I
+ sometimes have to come on as an entirely new party with no other change
+ than the addition of a beard. It puts me in mind of the nigger who
+ borrowed his master’s hat with the idea of passing himself off as ‘one of
+ them white folks.’ I should think that if the audience—when there
+ are any—attempt to understand the play, they must have a lively time
+ of it; and if they are at all acquainted with our National Bard, they must
+ be still more puzzled. We have improved so on the originals, that the old
+ gentleman himself would never recognize them. They are one-third
+ Shakespeare, and two-thirds the Renowned Tragedian from Drury Lane.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Of course, I have not had my railway fare, which I was promised after
+ joining, and I’ve given up asking for it now.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “I got a chance of changing my quarters after a few weeks, and I need
+ scarcely say I jumped at it. We passed through a big town that was the
+ headquarters of an established circuit company, and, hearing that one of
+ their ‘responsibles’ had just left, I went straight to the manager,
+ offered myself, and was accepted. Of course, in the usual way, I ought to
+ have given a fortnight’s notice to the other manager, but, under the
+ circumstances, this could hardly have been insisted upon. So I made the
+ Renowned Tragedian from Drury Lane a present of all the arrears of salary
+ he owed me—at which generosity on my part we both grinned—and
+ left him at once. I don’t think he was very sorry. It saved him a few
+ shillings weekly, for my place was filled by one of the orchestra, that
+ body being thereby reduced to two.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The company of which I was now a member was one of the very few stock
+ companies then remaining in the provinces. The touring system had fairly
+ set in by this time, and had, as a consequence, driven out the old
+ theatrical troupes that used to act on from year to year within the same
+ narrow circle, and were looked upon as one of the institutions of the
+ half-dozen towns they visited.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I am not going to discuss here the rival merits or demerits of the two
+ systems. There are advantages and disadvantages to be urged on both sides,
+ not only from the “school” point of view, but also as regards the personal
+ interests and comfort of the actor. I will merely say, with reference to
+ the latter part of the question, that I myself preferred the bustle and
+ change of touring. Indeed, in spite of all the attending anxieties and
+ troubles, it was in this constant change—this continual shifting of
+ the panorama of scenes and circumstances by which I was surrounded—that,
+ for me, the chief charm of stage-life lay. Change of any kind is always
+ delightful to youth; whether in big things or in little ones. We have not
+ been sufficiently seasoned by disappointment in the past, then, to be
+ skeptical as to all favors the Future may be holding for us in her hand. A
+ young man looks upon every change as a fresh chance. Fancy points a more
+ glowing fortune for each new departure, and at every turn in the road he
+ hopes to burst upon his goal.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ At each new town I went to, and with each new company I joined, new
+ opportunities for the display of my talents would arise. The genius that
+ one public had ignored, another would recognize and honor. In minor
+ matters, too, there was always pleasant expectation. Agreeable companions
+ and warm friends might be awaiting me in a new company, the lady members
+ might be extraordinarily lovely, and money might be surer. The mere
+ traveling, the seeing strange towns and country, the playing in different
+ theaters, the staying in different lodgings, the occasional passing
+ through London and looking in at home, all added to the undoubted delight
+ I felt in this sort of life, and fully reconciled me to its many
+ annoyances.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ But being fixed in a dull country town for about six months at a stretch,
+ with no other recreation than a game of cards, or a gossip in an inn
+ parlor, I didn’t find at all pleasant. To the staid, or to the married
+ members, I daresay it was satisfactory enough. They had, some of them,
+ been born in the company, and had been married in the company, and they
+ hoped to die in the company. They were known throughout the circuit. They
+ took an interest in the towns, and the towns took an interest in them, and
+ came to their benefits. They returned again and again to the same
+ lodgings. There was no fear of their forgetting where they lived, as
+ sometimes happened to a touring actor on his first day in a new town. They
+ were not unknown vagabonds wandering houseless from place to place; they
+ were citizens and townsmen, living among their friends and relations.
+ Every stick of furniture-in their rooms was familiar to them. Their
+ lodgings were not mere furnished apartments, but “home,” or as near to a
+ home as a country player could ever expect to get No doubt they, as madame
+ would have said, “did love the sleepiness”; but I, an energetic young
+ bachelor, found it “oh! so sad.” Sad as I might have thought it, though, I
+ stayed there five months, during which time I seem to have written an
+ immense number of letters to the long-suffering Jim. All that is worth
+ recording here, however, is contained in the following extracts:
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “.....The work is not so hard now. It was very stiff at first, as we
+ changed the bill about every other night, but I got hold of the <i>répertoire</i>
+ and studied up all the parts I knew I should have to play. It still comes
+ heavy when there is a benefit, especially when anything modern is put up,
+ as, then, having a good wardrobe, I generally get cast for the
+ ‘gentlemanly party,’ and that is always a lengthy part. But what makes it
+ still more difficult, is the way everybody gags. Nobody speaks by the book
+ here. They equivocate, and then I am undone. I never know where I am. The
+ other day, I had a particularly long part given me to play the next
+ evening. I stayed up nearly all night over it. At rehearsal in the
+ morning, the light comedy, with whom I was principally concerned, asked me
+ how I’d got on. ‘Well, I think I shall know something about it,’ I
+ answered. ‘At all events, I’ve got the cues perfect.’ ‘Oh! don’t bother
+ yourself about cues,’ replied he cheerfully. ‘You won’t get a blessed cue
+ from me. I use my own words now. Just you look out for the sense.’
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “I did look out for the sense, but I’ll be hanged if I could see any in
+ what he said. There was no doubt as to the words being his own. How I got
+ through with it I don’t know. He helped me with suggestions when I stuck,
+ such as: ‘Go on, let off your bit about a father,’ or ‘Have you told me
+ what Sarah said?’
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Get me a pair of second-hand tights at Stinchcombe’s, will you, and have
+ them washed and sent down. Any old things will do. I only want them to
+ wear underneath others. I have to appear in black tights next Monday. They
+ make your legs look so awfully thin, and I’m not too stout in those parts
+ as it is.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “I have got hold of an invaluable pair of boots (well, so they ought to
+ be, I paid fifteen shillings for them). Pulled up to their full height,
+ they reach nearly to the waist, and are a pair of American jack-boots;
+ doubled in round the calf, and with a bit of gold lace and a tassel pinned
+ on, they are hessians; with painted tops instead of the gold lace and
+ tassel, they are hunting boots; and wrinkled down about the ankle, and
+ stuck out round the top, they are either Charles or Cromwell, according to
+ whether they are ornamented with lace and a bow, or left plain. You have
+ to keep a sharp eye on them, though, for they have a habit of executing
+ changes on their own account unbeknown to you, so that while one of your
+ legs is swaggering about as a highwayman, the other is masquerading as a
+ cavalier. We dress the pieces very well indeed here. There is an excellent
+ wardrobe belonging to the theater.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “I do wish it were possible to get the programmes made out by intelligent
+ men, instead of by acting-managers. If they do ever happen, by some
+ strange accident, not to place your name opposite the wrong character,
+ they put you down for a part that never existed; and if they get the other
+ things right, they spell your name wrong.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “I say, here’s a jolly nice thing, you know; they’ve fined me half a crown
+ for not attending rehearsal. Why, I was there all the while, only I was
+ over the way, and when I came back they had finished. That’s our fool of a
+ prompter, that is; he knew where I was. I’ll serve him out.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <br /><br />
+ </p>
+ <hr />
+ <p>
+ <a name="link2HCH0015" id="link2HCH0015"> </a>
+ </p>
+ <div style="height: 4em;">
+ <br /><br /><br /><br />
+ </div>
+ <h2>
+ CHAPTER XV. Revenge
+ </h2>
+ <p>
+ <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0015" id="linkimage-0015"> </a>
+ </p>
+ <div class="figleft" style="width:20%;">
+ <img src="images/9144.jpg" alt="9144 " width="100%" /><br /><a
+ href="images/9144.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
+ </div>
+ <p>
+ ORE extracts:
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “... I’m afraid I shall have to trouble you to get me another wig. I
+ thought my own hair would do for modern juvenile parts, but it isn’t
+ considered light enough. ‘Be virtuous and you will have hair the color of
+ tow,’ seems to be the basis of the whole theatrical religion. I wish I
+ could be as economical in wigs as our First Old Man is. He makes one do
+ for everything. He wears it the right way when he is a serious old man,
+ and hind part foremost when he wants to be funny.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Talking of wigs puts me in mind of an accident our manager had the other
+ night. He is over fifty, but he fancies he is a sort of Charles Mathews,
+ and will play young parts. So on Saturday evening he came on as the lover
+ in an old English comedy, wearing one of those big three-cornered hats.
+ ‘Who is that handsome young man with the fair hair?’ says the heroine to
+ her confidante. ‘Oh, that, why that is Sir Harry Monfort, the gallant
+ young gentleman who saved the Prince’s life. He is the youngest officer in
+ the camp, but already the most famous.’ ‘Brave boy.’ murmurs the heroine;
+ ‘I would speak a word with him. Call him hither, Lenora.’ So Lenora called
+ him thither, and up he skipped. When the heroine spoke to him, he was
+ quite overcome with boyish bashfulness. ‘Ah, madam,’ sighed he, taking off
+ his hat and making a sweeping bow—‘What the devil’s the matter? What
+ are they laughing at? Oh my———’
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “He had taken his wig off with his hat, and there was the ‘brave boy’s’
+ poor old bald head exposed to the jeers of a ribald house.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “I’d half a mind to rush up to town last week. I was out of the bill for
+ three nights running. But the mere railway fare would have cost me nearly
+ half a week’s salary, so I contented myself with a trip over to R————
+ and a look in at the show there. I met W———. He’s
+ married little Polly ————, who was walking lady at———.
+ She is up at Aberdeen now, and he hasn’t seen her for over three months.
+ Rather rough on a young couple who haven’t been married a year. The old
+ ones bear up against this sort of thing very well indeed, but poor W————
+ is quite upset about it.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “They kept together as long as they could, but business got so bad that
+ they had to separate, and each take the first thing that offered.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “You remember my telling you how our prompter got me fined for not
+ attending a rehearsal some time ago. I said I would serve him out, and so
+ I have. Or rather <i>we</i> have—I and one of the others who had a
+ score against him—for he’s a bumptious, interfering sort of fellow,
+ and makes himself disagreeable to everybody. He is awful spoons on a Miss
+ Pinkeen, whose father keeps an ironmonger’s shop next door to the theater.
+ The old man knows nothing about it, and they are up to all kinds of dodges
+ to get a word with each other. Now, one of our dressing-room windows is
+ exactly opposite their staircase window, and he and the girl often talk
+ across; and, once or twice, he has placed a plank between the two windows,
+ and crawled along it into the house when her father has been away. Well,
+ we got hold of a bit of this girl’s writing the other day, and forged a
+ letter to him, saying that her father had gone out, and that she wanted to
+ see him very particularly, and that he was to come over through the window
+ and wait on the landing till she came upstairs. Then, just before
+ rehearsal, we went out and gave a stray boy twopence to take it in to him.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Of course no sooner did we see that he was fairly inside the house, and
+ out of sight, than we pulled the board in and shut our window. It got
+ quite exciting on the stage as time went by. ‘Where’s————?’
+ fumed the stage manager. ‘Where the devil’s———? It’s too
+ bad of him to keep us all waiting like this.’ And then the call-boy was
+ sent round to four public houses, and then to his lodgings; for he had got
+ the book in his pocket, and we couldn’t begin without him. ‘Oh, it’s too
+ bad of him to go away and stop like this,’ cried the stage manager again
+ at the end of half an hour. I’ll fine him five shillings for this. I won’t
+ be played the fool with.’ In about an hour, he came in looking thunder and
+ lightning. He wouldn’t give any explanation. All we could get out of him
+ was, that if he could find out who’d done it, he’d jolly well wring his
+ neck.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “From what the ironmonger’s boy told our call-boy, it seems that he waited
+ about three-quarters of an hour on the stairs, not daring to move, and
+ that then the old man came up and wanted to know what he was doing there.
+ There was a regular scene in the house, and the girl has sworn that she’ll
+ never speak to him again for getting her into a row, and about four of her
+ biggest male relatives have each expressed a firm determination to break
+ every bone in his body; and the boy adds, that from his knowledge of them
+ they are to be relied upon. We have thought it our duty to let him know
+ these things.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I find nothing further of any theatrical interest, until I come to the
+ following, written about four months after the date of my entering the
+ company:
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “I was far too busy to write last week. It’s been something awful. We’ve
+ got ———— * down here for a fortnight. His list
+ consists of eighteen pieces—eight ‘legitimate,’ five dramas, four
+ comedies, and a farce; and we only had a week in which to prepare. There
+ have been rehearsals at ten, and rehearsal at three, and rehearsals at
+ eleven, after the performance was over. First I took all the parts given
+ me, and studied them straight off one after the other. Then I found I’d
+ got them all jumbled up together in my head, and the more I tried to
+ remember what belonged to which, the more I forgot which belonged to what.
+ At rehearsal I talked Shakespeare in the farce, and put most of the farce
+ and a selection from all the five dramas into one of the comedies. And
+ then the stage manager went to put me right, and then <i>he</i> got mixed
+ up, and wanted to know if anybody could oblige him by informing him what
+ really was being rehearsed; and the Leading Lady and the First Low Comedy
+ said it was one of the dramas, but the Second Low Comedy, the Soubrette,
+ and the Leader of the Orchestra would have it was a comedy, while the rest
+ of us were too bewildered to be capable of forming any opinion on any
+ subject.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ *A “Star” from London,
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “The strain has so upset me, that I don’t even now know whether I’m
+ standing on my head or my heels; and, our First Old Man—but I’ll
+ come to him later on. My work has been particularly heavy, for, in
+ consequence of a serious accident that has happened to our Walking
+ Gentleman, I’ve had to take his place. He was playing a part in which
+ somebody—the Heavy Man—tries to stab him while he’s asleep.
+ But just when the would-be murderer has finished soliloquizing, and the
+ blow is about to fall, he starts up, and a grand struggle ensues. I think
+ the other fellow must have been drunk on the last occasion..Anyhow, the
+ business was most clumsily managed, and R————, our
+ Walking Gent, got his eye cut out, and is disfigured for life. It is quite
+ impossible for him now to play his old line, and he has to do heavies or
+ low comedy, or anything where appearance is of no importance. The poor
+ fellow is terribly cut up—don’t think I’m trying to make a ghastly
+ joke—and he seems to be especially bitter against me for having
+ slipped into his shoes. I’m sure he need not be; whatever good his ill
+ wind has blown me has brought with it more work than it’s worth; and I
+ think, on the whole, taking this star business into consideration, I would
+ rather have stopped where I was. I knew a good many of the parts I should
+ have had to play, but as it is, everything has been fresh study.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Well, I was going to tell you about our old man. He had always boasted
+ that he hadn’t studied for the last ten years. I don’t know what
+ particular merit there was in this, that he should have so prided himself
+ upon it, but that he considered it as highly clever on his part there
+ could not be the slightest doubt; and he had even got to quite despise any
+ one who did study. You can imagine his feelings, therefore, when sixteen
+ long parts, eleven at least of which he had never seen before, were placed
+ in his hand, with a request that he would be letter ‘perfect in all by the
+ following Thursday. It was observed that he didn’t say much at the time.
+ He was a garrulous old gentleman as a rule, but, after once glancing over
+ the bundle, he grew thoughtful and abstracted and did not join in the
+ chorus of curses loud and deep which was being sung with great vigor by
+ the rest of the company. The only person to whom he made any remark was
+ myself, who happened to be standing by the stage-door when he was going
+ out. He took the bundle of parts out of his pocket, and showed them to me.
+ ‘Nice little lot, that—ain’t it?’ he said. ‘I’ll just go home and
+ study them all up—that’s what I’ll do.’ Then he smiled—a sad,
+ wan smile—and went slowly out.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “That was on Saturday evening, and on Monday morning we met at ten for
+ rehearsal. We went on without the old man until eleven; and then, as he
+ hadn’t turned up, and was much wanted, the boy was despatched to his
+ lodgings to see if he was there. We waited patiently for another quarter
+ of an hour, and then the boy returned.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “The old man had not been seen since Sunday.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “His landlady had left him in the morning, looking over the ‘parts,’ and
+ when she returned in the evening, he was gone. A letter, addressed to her,
+ had been found in his room, and this she had given the boy to take back
+ with him.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “The stage manager took it and hurriedly opened it. At the first glance,
+ he started and uttered an exclamation of horror; and when he had finished
+ it, it dropped from his hand, and he sank down in the nearest chair, dazed
+ and bewildered, like a man who has heard, but cannot yet grasp, some
+ terrible news.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “A cold, sickly feeling came over me. The strange, far-away look, and the
+ quiet, sad smile that I had last seen on the old man’s face came back to
+ me with startling vividness, and with a new and awful meaning. He was old
+ and enfeebled. He had not the elastic vigor of youth that can bear up
+ under worry and work. His mind, to all seeming, had never at any time been
+ very powerful. Had the sudden and heavy call upon his energies actually
+ unhinged it? and had the poor old fellow in some mad moment taken up arms
+ against his sea of troubles, and by opposing ended them? Was he now lying
+ in some shady copse, with a gaping wound from ear to ear, or sleeping his
+ last sleep with the deep waters for a coverlet? Was what lay before me a
+ message from the grave? These thoughts flashed like lightning through my
+ brain as I darted forward and picked the letter up. It ran as follows:
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Dear Mrs. Hopsam,—I’m off to London by the 3.30, and shan’t come
+ back. I’ll write and let you know where to send my things. I left a pair
+ of boots at Jupp’s to have the toe-caps sewn—please get ‘em; and
+ there was a night-shirt short last week—it’s got a D on it. If they
+ send from the theater, tell them to go to the devil; and if they want
+ sixteen parts studied in a week, they’d better get a cast-iron actor.
+ Yours truly, D———.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “This was a great relief to me, but it didn’t seem to have soothed the
+ stage manager much. When he recovered from his amazement, he said what he
+ thought of the old man, which I will not repeat. There was a deuce of a
+ row, I can tell you. Our Leading Man, who had consoled himself for being
+ temporarily ousted from his proper position by the thought of having
+ nothing to do all the time, and being able to go in front each night and
+ sneer at the ‘star,’ had to take the First Old Man’s place, and a pretty
+ temper he’s in about it. It’s as much as one’s life’s worth now, even, to
+ sneak a bit of his color. Another old man joins us after next week, but of
+ course that is just too late for the hard work. ——— will
+ be gone then...”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <br /><br />
+ </p>
+ <hr />
+ <p>
+ <a name="link2HCH0016" id="link2HCH0016"> </a>
+ </p>
+ <div style="height: 4em;">
+ <br /><br /><br /><br />
+ </div>
+ <h2>
+ CHAPTER XVI. Views on Acting
+ </h2>
+ <p>
+ <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0016" id="linkimage-0016"> </a>
+ </p>
+ <div class="figleft" style="width:20%;">
+ <img src="images/9153.jpg" alt="9153 " width="100%" /><br /><a
+ href="images/9153.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
+ </div>
+ <p>
+ QUOTE from two more letters, and then I have done with this stock company.
+ The first was written just after our star had set—or rather gone to
+ the next town—the second about a fortnight later:
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “... ——— ———- left on Saturday. We had
+ crowded houses all the time he was with us, and I’m not surprised. It must
+ have been a treat to these benighted provincials to see real acting. No
+ wonder country people don’t care much for theaters, seeing the wretched
+ horse-play presented to them under the name of acting. It does exasperate
+ me to hear people talking all that thundering nonsense about the provinces
+ being such a splendid school for young actors. Why, a couple of months of
+ it is enough to kill any idea of acting a man may have started with. Even
+ if you had time to think of anything but how to gabble through your lines,
+ it would be of no use. You would never be allowed to carry out any ideas
+ of your own. If you attempted to <i>think</i>, you would be requested to
+ look out for, another shop at once. The slightest naturalness or
+ originality would be put down to ignorance. You must walk through each
+ part by the beaten track of rule and tradition—and such rule and
+ tradition! The rule of Richardson’s Show, the tradition of some ranting
+ inn-yard hack. To reach the standard of dramatic art in the provinces, you
+ have to climb down, not up. Comedy consists in having a red nose, and
+ tumbling about the stage; being pathetic makes you hoarse for an hour
+ after; and as for tragedy! no one dare attempt that who hasn’t the lungs
+ of a politician.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “But ———— changed all that for us. He infused a
+ new spirit into everybody, and, when he, was on the stage, the others
+ acted better than I should ever have thought they could have done. It is
+ the first time I have played with any one who can properly be called an
+ actor, and it was quite a new sensation. I could myself tell that I was
+ acting very differently to the way in which I usually act. I seemed to
+ catch his energy and earnestness; the scene grew almost real, and I began
+ to <i>feel</i> my part. And that is the most any one can do on the stage.
+ As to ‘being the character you are representing,’ that is absurd. I can
+ hardly believe in any sane person seriously putting forward such a
+ suggestion. It is too ridiculous to argue against. Picture to yourself a
+ whole company forgetting they were merely acting, and all fancying
+ themselves the people they were impersonating. Words and business would of
+ course be out of the question. They would all say and do just what came
+ natural to them, and just <i>when</i> it came natural; so that sometimes
+ everybody would be talking at once, and at other times there would be
+ nobody doing anything. Such enthusiasm as theirs would never bow to the
+ pitiful requirements of stage illusion. They would walk over the
+ footlights on to the heads of the orchestra, and they would lean up
+ against the mountains in the background. It would be a grand performance,
+ but it wouldn’t last long. The police would have to be called in before
+ the first act was over. If they were not, the Leading Man would slaughter
+ half the other members of the company; the Juvenile Lead would run off
+ with the Walking Lady and the property jewels; and the First Old Man would
+ die of a broken heart. What the manager would do on the second night I
+ don’t know. If he opened at all, I suppose he would go in front and
+ explain matters by saying:
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “‘Ladies and Gentlemen,—I must apologize for the incompleteness with
+ which the play will be presented to you this evening. The truth is, the
+ performance last night was so realistic all round, that there is only the
+ Low Comedy and a General Utility left. But we’ve a good many corpses about
+ the theater, and with these, and the assistance of the two gentlemen
+ mentioned, we will do what we can.’
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Even when studying in one’s own room, one cannot for a moment lose sight
+ of one’s identity. A great actor, creating a character, doesn’t forget
+ he’s himself, and think he’s somebody else. It’s only lunatics who have
+ those fancies. But he is a man of such vast sympathy that he can
+ understand and enter into all human thoughts and feelings; and, having
+ pictured to himself the character of the man he wishes to represent, he
+ can follow the workings of that supposed man’s mind under all possible
+ circumstances.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “But even this sympathy must be left outside the theater doors. Once
+ inside, the mind must be kept clear of all distracting thought. What is
+ gone through on the stage is merely an exact repetition of what is
+ conceived in the study, and a cool head and a good memory are the only
+ reliable servants when once the curtain is up. Of course a man should <i>feel</i>
+ what he is acting. Feeling is the breath of acting. It is to the actor
+ what Aphrodite’s gift was to Pygmalion—it gives life to his statue.
+ But this feeling is as much a matter of memory as the rest. The actual
+ stage is too artificial for emotion to come to one naturally while there.
+ Each passion is assumed and dropped by force of will, together with the
+ words and action which accompany it.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “...I made a sensation here last Tuesday. I was playing the very part in
+ which our Walking Gentleman met with his accident, and he was playing the
+ villain, who tries to stab me while I am asleep. (The Heavy Man has left.
+ He went soon after he had done the mischief.) Well, everything had gone
+ very smoothly so far, and I was lying there on the couch at the back of
+ the darkened stage, and he was leaning over me with the knife in his hand.
+ I was quite still, waiting for my cue to awake, and wondering if I could
+ manage to start up quickly, when I raised my eyes and caught sight of R——‘s
+ face. I may have done him an injustice. His expression may have been mere
+ acting. The whole idea was, perhaps, due to nothing but my own
+ imagination. I have thought this since. At the time it flashed across me:
+ ‘He means to revenge himself on me for having taken his place. He is going
+ to disfigure me just as he was disfigured.’ In an instant I sprung up and
+ wrested the knife from his hand.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “We stood there looking at one another, and neither of us moved or spoke;
+ he, livid underneath his color, and trembling from head to foot. How long
+ we kept in that position I do not know, for the thud of the curtain upon
+ the stage was the first thing that recalled me to myself. Up to when I had
+ snatched the knife from him, all had been in exact accordance with the
+ book. After that, I should have held him down by the throat, and made a
+ speech of about eight lines. I think our impromptu tableau was more
+ effective.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “There was immense applause, and everybody congratulated me on my success.
+ ‘I suppose you know you cut out the end,’ said the manager; ‘but never
+ mind that. I daresay you were a little nervous, and you acted splendidly,
+ my boy.’”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “I didn’t say it wasn’t acting, and neither did R————....”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I left here to join a small touring company as Juvenile Lead. I looked
+ upon the offer as a grand opportunity at the time, and following Horace’s
+ * advice, grasped it by the forelock. I therefore, one Sunday morning
+ packed my basket, went round the town and shook hands with everybody—not
+ without a pang of regret, for there are few human beings we can be with
+ for any length of time and not be sorry to say good-by to—and then,
+ as the bright summer’s sun was setting and the church bells beginning to
+ peal, I steamed away, or rather the engine did, and the city and its
+ people faded out of my sight and out of my life.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ * Not quite sure whose advice this is. Have put it down to Horace to avoid
+ contradiction.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Sunday is the great traveling day for actors. It loses them no time. A
+ company can finish at one town on the Saturday night, and wake up on
+ Monday morning in the next, ready to get everything ship-shape for the
+ evening. Or an actor can leave one show and join another at the other end
+ of the kingdom without missing a single performance. I have known a man
+ play in Cornwall on the Saturday, and at Inverness on the following
+ Monday. But convenient though it is in this respect, in every other,
+ Sunday traveling is most unpleasant, and, for their gratification, I can
+ assure strict Sabbatarians that it brings with it its own punishment.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Especially to a man with a conscience—an article which, in those
+ early days, I was unfortunate enough to possess. A conscience is a
+ disagreeable sort of thing to have with one at any time. It has a nasty
+ disposition—a cantankerous, fault-finding, interfering disposition.
+ There is nothing sociable about it. It seems to take a pleasure in making
+ itself objectionable, and in rendering its owner as uncomfortable as
+ possible. During these Sunday journeys, it used to vex me by every means
+ in its power. If any mild old gentleman, sitting opposite me in the
+ carriage, raised his eyes and looked at me, I immediately fancied he was
+ silently reproaching me, and I felt ashamed and miserable. It never
+ occurred to me at the time that he was every bit as bad as I was, and that
+ I had as much right to be shocked at him as he to be horrified at me. Then
+ I used to ask myself what my poor aunt would say if she could see me. Not
+ that it was of the slightest consequence what the old lady would have
+ said, but the question was just one of those petty annoyances in which a
+ mean-spirited conscience delights. I was firmly convinced that everybody
+ was pointing the finger of scorn at me. I don’t know which particular
+ finger is the finger of scorn: whichever it is, that, I felt, was the one
+ that was pointed at me. At every station, my exasperating inward monitor
+ would whisper to me: “But for such abandoned wretches as you, all those
+ porters and guards would be sleeping peacefully in the village church.”
+ When the whistle sounded, my tormentor would add; “But for you and other
+ such despicable scoundrels, that grimy, toil-stained engine-driver would
+ be dressed in his best clothes, lounging up against a post at his own
+ street corner.” Such thoughts maddened me.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ My fellow-passengers generally let on that they were going to see sick
+ relatives, and I would have done the same if it hadn’t been for that awful
+ basket of mine. But the inventive faculty of a newspaper reporter couldn’t
+ have explained away a basket the size of an average chest of drawers. I
+ might have said that it contained a few delicacies for the invalid, but
+ nobody would have believed me, and there would have been a good lie
+ wasted.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ But it is not only to people with consciences that Sunday traveling
+ presents vexations. Even you, my dear reader, would find it unpleasant.
+ There is a subdued going-to-a-funeral air about the whole proceeding,
+ which makes you melancholy in spite of yourself. You miss the usual
+ bustling attributes of railway traveling. No crowded platforms! no piles
+ of luggage! no newspaper boys! The refreshment rooms don’t seem the same
+ places at all, and the damsels there are haughtier then ever. When you
+ arrive at your destination, you seem to have come to a city of the dead.
+ You pass through deserted streets to your hotel. Nobody is about. You go
+ into the coffee-room and sit down there by yourself. After a while the
+ boots looks in. You yearn toward him as toward a fellow-creature. You
+ would fall upon his neck, and tell him all your troubles. You try to
+ engage him in conversation, so as to detain him in the room, for you dread
+ to be left alone again. But he doesn’t enter into your feelings: he
+ answers all questions by monosyllables, and gets away as quickly as
+ possible. You go out for a walk. The streets are dark and silent, and you
+ come back more miserable than you started. You order supper, but have no
+ appetite, and cannot eat it when it comes. You retire to your room early,
+ but cannot go to sleep. You lie there and wonder what the bill will come
+ to, and, while thinking of this, you are softly borne away into the land
+ of dreams, and fancy that the proprietor has asked you for a hundred and
+ eighty-seven pounds nine and fourpence ha’penny, and that you have killed
+ him on the spot, and left the house in your nightshirt without paying.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0017" id="linkimage-0017"> </a>
+ </p>
+ <div class="figleft" style="width:20%;">
+ <img src="images/9163.jpg" alt="9163 " width="100%" /><br /><a
+ href="images/9163.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
+ </div>
+ <p>
+ HE show which I now graced with my presence was a “fit-up.” I didn’t know
+ this beforehand, or I should never have engaged myself. A “fit-up” is only
+ one grade higher than a booth, which latter branch of the profession, by
+ the way, I have always regretted never having explored. I missed the most
+ picturesque and romantic portion of the theatrical world by not
+ penetrating into that time-forsaken corner. Booth life is a Bohemia within
+ a Bohemia. So far as social and artistic position is concerned, it is at
+ the bottom of the dramatic ladder; but for interest and adventure, it
+ stands at the very top.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ However, I never did join a booth, so there is an end of the matter. The
+ nearest I approached to anything of the kind was this fit-up, and that I
+ didn’t like at all. We kept to the very small towns, where there was no
+ theater, and fitted up an apology for a stage in any hall or room we could
+ hire for the purpose. The town-hall was what we generally tried for, but
+ we were not too particular; any large room did, and we would even put up
+ with a conveniently situated barn. We carried our own props, scenery, and
+ proscenium, and trusted for the wood work to some local carpenter. A row
+ of candles did duty for footlights, and a piano, hired in the town,
+ represented the orchestra. We couldn’t get a piano on one occasion, so the
+ proprietor of the hall lent us his harmonium.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I will not linger over my experience with this company; they were not
+ pleasant ones. Short extracts from two letters, one written just after
+ joining, and the other sent off just before I left, will be sufficient:
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Dear Jim: I find I’ve dropped the substance and grasped the shadow (I
+ pride myself not so much on the originality of this remark as on its
+ applicability). I shall leave as soon as possible, and try my luck in
+ London. My ambition to play Juvenile Lead vanished the moment I saw the
+ Leading Lady, who is, as usual, the manager’s wife. She is a fat greasy
+ old woman. She has dirty hands and finger nails, and perspires freely
+ during the course of the performance. She is about three times my size,
+ and if the audiences to which we play have the slightest sense of humor—which,
+ from what I have seen of them, I think extremely doubtful—our
+ love-making must be a rare treat to them. How a London first-night gallery
+ would enjoy it! I’m afraid, though, it’s only wasted down here. My arm,
+ when I try to clasp her waist, reaches to about the middle of her back;
+ and, when we embrace, the house can’t see me at all. I have to carry her
+ half-way across the stage in one part! By Jove! I’m glad we don’t play
+ that piece often.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “She says I shall never make a good ‘lover’ unless I throw more ardor
+ (‘harder,’ she calls it) into my acting....”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “... Shall be with you on Monday next. Can’t stand this any longer. It’s
+ ruining me. Seven-and-six was all I could get last week, and eleven
+ shillings the week before. We are not doing bad business by any means.
+ Indeed, we have very good houses. The old man has got the knack of making
+ out good gag bills, and that pulls ‘em in for the two or three nights we
+ stay at each place. You know what I mean by a ‘gag’ bill: ‘The Ruined Mill
+ by Dead Man’s Pool. Grace Mervin thinks to meet a friend, but finds a foe.
+ Harry Baddun recalls old days.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Why do you not love me?”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Because you are a bad man.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Then die!” The struggle on the brink!! “Help!!” “There is none to help
+ you here.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “You lie, Harry Baddun; <i>I</i> am here.” A hand from the grave!! Harry
+ Baddun meets his doom!!!
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “That’s what I mean by a gag bill.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Whatever money is made, however, he takes care to keep for himself. He
+ can always put up at the best hotel in the place, while we have to pawn
+ our things to pay for the meanest of lodgings.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “It isn’t only actors who get robbed by these managers: authors also
+ suffer pretty considerably. We have two copyright pieces in our list, both
+ of which draw very well, but not a penny is paid for performing them. To
+ avoid any chance of unpleasantness, the titles of the pieces and the names
+ of the chief characters are altered. So that even if the author or his
+ friends (supposing it possible for any author to have any friends) were on
+ the lookout, they would never know anything about it. And, if they did, it
+ would be of no use. It would be throwing good money after bad to attempt
+ to enforce payment from the men who do this sort of thing,—and I
+ hear that it is done all over the provinces,—they have no money and
+ none can be got out of them. Your penniless man can comfortably defy half
+ the laws in the statute book.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “What a nuisance firearms are on the stage! I thought I was blinded the
+ other night, and my eyes are painful even now. The fellow should have
+ fired up in the air. It is the only safe rule on a small stage, though it
+ does look highly ridiculous to see a man drop down dead because another
+ man fires a pistol at the moon. But there is always some mishap with them.
+ They either don’t go off at all, or else they go off in the wrong place,
+ and, when they do go off, there is generally an accident. They can never
+ be depended upon. You rush on to the stage, present a pistol at somebody’s
+ head, and say, ‘Die!’ but the pistol only goes click, and the man doesn’t
+ know whether to die or not. He waits while you have another try at him,
+ and the thing clicks again; and then you find out that the property man
+ hasn’t put a cap on it, and you turn round to get one. But the other man,
+ thinking it is all over, makes up his mind to die at once from nothing
+ else but fright, and, when you come back to kill him for the last time,
+ you find he’s already dead.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “We have recourse to some rum makeshifts here, to eke out our wardrobes.
+ My old frock coat, with a little cloth cape which one of the girls has
+ cutout for me pinned on underneath the collar, and with a bit of lace
+ round the cuffs, does for the gallant of half the old comedies; and, when
+ I pin the front corners back and cover them with red calico, I’m a French
+ soldier. A pair of white thingumies does admirably for buckskin riding
+ breeches, and for the part of a Spanish conspirator, I generally borrow my
+ landlady’s tablecloth....”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ It was about the end of October when I found myself once more in London.
+ The first thing I then did was to go to my old shop on the Surrey-side.
+ Another company and another manager were there, but the latter knew me,
+ and, as I owned a dress suit, engaged me at a salary of twelve shillings
+ weekly to play the part of a swell. When I had been there just one week,
+ he closed. Whether it was paying me that twelve shillings that broke him,
+ I cannot say; but on Monday morning some men came and cut the gas off, and
+ then he said he shouldn’t go on any longer, and that we must all do the
+ best we could for ourselves.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I, with two or three others, thereupon started off for a theater at the
+ East End, which was about to be opened for a limited number of nights by
+ some great world-renowned actor. This was about the fortieth
+ world-renowned party. I had heard of for the first time within the last
+ twelvemonth. My education in the matter of world-renowned people had
+ evidently been shamefully neglected.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The theater was cunningly contrived, so that one had to pass through the
+ bar of the adjoining public-house—to the landlord of which it
+ belonged—to get to the stage. Our little party was saved from
+ temptation, however, for I don’t think we could have mustered a shilling
+ among the lot of us that morning. I was getting most seriously hard up at
+ this time. The few pounds I had had left, after purchasing my wardrobe and
+ paying my railway fares, etc., had now dwindled down to shillings, and,
+ unless things mended, I felt I should have to throw up the sponge and
+ retire from the stage. I was determined not to do this though, till the
+ very last, for I dreaded the chorus of “I told you so’s,” and “I knew very
+ well how ‘twould be’s,” and such like well-known and exasperating crows of
+ triumph, with which, in these cases, our delighted friends glorify
+ themselves and crush us.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The East End theater proved a stop-gap for a while. I was fortunate enough
+ to be one of those engaged out of the crowd of eager and anxious
+ applicants, among whom I met a couple from the fit-up company I had lately
+ left, they having come to the same conclusion as myself, viz., that it was
+ impossible to live well and “dress respectably on and off the stage” upon
+ an average salary of ten shillings weekly. The engagement was only for a
+ fortnight, and there is only one incident connected with it that I
+ particularly remember. That was my being “guyed” on one occasion. We were
+ playing a melodrama, the scene of which was laid in some outlandish place
+ or other, and the stage manager insisted on my wearing a most outrageous
+ costume. I knew it would be laughed at, especially in that neighborhood,
+ and my expectations were more than fulfilled. I hadn’t been on the stage
+ five seconds before I heard a voice from the gallery hoarsely inquire:
+ “What is it, Bill?” And then another voice added: “Tell us what it is, and
+ you shall have it.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ A good deal of laughter followed these speeches. I got hot all over, and
+ felt exceedingly uncomfortable and nervous. It was as much as I could do
+ to recollect my part, and it was with a great effort that I began my first
+ line. No sooner had I opened my mouth, however, than somebody in the pit
+ exclaimed, in tones of the utmost surprise, “Blowed if it ain’t alive!”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ After that, the remarks on my personal appearance fell thick and fast:
+ “Look well in a shop window, that bloke!” “Nice suit to take your gal out
+ on a Sunday in!”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “This style, thirty shillings,” etc.; while one good-natured man sought to
+ put me at my ease by roaring out in a stentorian voice, “Never you mind,
+ old man; you go on. They’re jealous ‘cos you’ve got nice clothes on.” How
+ I managed to get through the part I don’t know. I became more nervous and
+ awkward every minute, and, of course, the more I bungled, the more the
+ house jeered. I gained a good deal of sympathy behind, for most of them
+ had had similar experiences of their own; but I was most intensely
+ miserable all that evening, and, for the next night or two, quite dreaded
+ to face the audience. Making game of any one is a very amusing occupation,
+ but the “game” doesn’t see the fun till a long while afterward. I can’t
+ bear to hear any of the performers chaffed when I’m at a theater. Actors
+ are necessarily a sensitive class of people, and I don’t think those who
+ make fun of them, when any little thing goes wrong, have any idea of the
+ pain they are inflicting. It is quite right, and quite necessary
+ sometimes, that disapprobation should be expressed, and that unmistakably,
+ but it should be for the purpose of correcting real faults. “Guying” is,
+ as a rule, indulged in only by the silliest portion of the audience, and
+ for no other object but to display their own vulgar wit.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ After my fortnight at the East End, I went as one of the chorus in a new
+ opera-bouffe to be brought out at a West End theater. We rehearsed for
+ three weeks, the piece ran for one, and then I again took a provincial
+ engagement, which, as it was now close upon Christmas, was easy enough to
+ obtain.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ My stay in London had not been very profitable to me, but it had given my
+ friends a treat, as they had been able to come and see me act again. At
+ least, I suppose it was a treat to them, though they did not say so. My
+ friends are always most careful never to overdo the thing in the matter of
+ praise. I cannot accuse them of sycophancy. They scorn to say pleasant
+ things that they don’t mean. They prefer saying unpleasant things that
+ they do mean. There’s no humbug about them; they never hesitate to tell me
+ just exactly what they think of me. This is good of them. I respect them
+ for saying what they think; but if they would think a little differently,
+ I should respect them still more. I wonder if everybody’s friends are as
+ conscientious? I’ve heard of people having “admiring friends,” and
+ “flattering friends,” and “over-indulgent friends,” but I’ve never had any
+ of that sort myself. I’ve often thought I should rather like to, though,
+ and if any gentleman has more friends of that kind than he wants, and
+ would care to have a few of the opposite stamp, I am quite ready to swop
+ with him. I can warrant mine never to admire or flatter under any
+ circumstances whatsoever; neither will he find them over-indulgent. To a
+ man who really wishes to be told of his faults, they would be invaluable;
+ on this point they are candor itself. A conceited man would also derive
+ much benefit from their society. I have myself.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <br /><br />
+ </p>
+ <hr />
+ <p>
+ <a name="link2HCH0017" id="link2HCH0017"> </a>
+ </p>
+ <div style="height: 4em;">
+ <br /><br /><br /><br />
+ </div>
+ <h2>
+ CHAPTER XVIII. My Last Appearance.
+ </h2>
+ <p>
+ <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0018" id="linkimage-0018"> </a>
+ </p>
+ <div class="figleft" style="width:20%;">
+ <img src="images/9173.jpg" alt="9173 " width="100%" /><br /><a
+ href="images/9173.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
+ </div>
+ <p>
+ LEFT London exactly twelve months from the day on which I had started to
+ fulfill my first provincial engagement, and I did not return to it again
+ while I was an actor. I left it with my baggage early in the morning by
+ the newspaper express from Euston; I returned to it late at night,
+ footsore and hungry, and with no other possessions than the clothes I
+ stood upright in.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Of the last few months of my professional life, the following brief
+ extracts will speak. A slightly bitter tone runs through some of them, but
+ at the time they were written I was suffering great disappointment, and
+ everything was going wrong with me—circumstances under which a man
+ is perhaps apt to look upon his surroundings through smoke-colored
+ glasses.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Three weeks after Christmas I write:
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “... good and money regular.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Business is almost always good, though, at pantomime time: the test will
+ come later on, when we begin to travel. How a provincial audience does
+ love a pantomime! and how I do hate it! I can’t say I think very highly of
+ provincial audiences. They need a lot of education in art. They roar over
+ coarse buffoonery, and applaud noisy rant to the echo. One might as well
+ go to Billingsgate to study English as to the provinces to learn acting.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “I played First Low Comedy on Saturday night at half an hour’s notice, the
+ real First Low Comedy being hopelessly intoxicated at the time. It’s a
+ pity, amidst all the talk about the elevation of the stage, that the
+ elevation of actors is not a less frequent occurrence. It can hardly
+ improve the reputation of the profession in the eyes of the public, when
+ they take up the <i>Era</i> and read advertisement after advertisement,
+ ending with such lines as, ‘None but sober people need apply,’ ‘Must
+ contrive to keep sober, at all events during the performance.’ ‘People who
+ are constantly getting drunk need not write.’ I’ve known some idiots
+ actually make themselves half tipsy on purpose before coming on the stage,
+ evidently thinking, because they can’t act when they’ve got all their few
+ wits about them, that they’ll manage better if they get rid of them
+ altogether. There is a host of wonderful traditions floating about the
+ theatrical world of this, that, and the other great actor having always
+ played this, that, and the other part while drunk; and so, when some
+ wretched little actor has to take one of these parts, he, fired by a noble
+ determination to follow in the footsteps of his famous predecessor, gets
+ drunk too.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Bad language is another thing that the profession might spare a lot of,
+ and still have enough remaining for all ordinary purposes. I remember a
+ penny each time we swore. We gave it up after two hours’ trial: none of us
+ had any money left.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Six weeks later:
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “... Business gets worse instead of better. Our manager has behaved very
+ well indeed. He paid us our salaries right up to the end of last week,
+ though any one could see he was losing money every night; and then on
+ Saturday, after treasury, he called us all together, and put the case
+ frankly. He said he could not continue as he had been doing, but that, if
+ we liked, he was ready to keep on with us for a week or two longer upon
+ sharing terms, to see if the luck turned. We agreed to this, and so formed
+ ourselves into what is called a ‘commonwealth’—though common poverty
+ would be a more correct one night at ———— we all
+ agreed to fine ourselves term in my opinion, for the shares each night,
+ after deducting expenses, have been about eighteen-pence. The manager
+ takes three of these shares (one for being manager, one for acting, and
+ the other one to make up the three), and the rest of us have one each. I’m
+ getting awfully hard up, though I live for a week, now, on less than what
+ I’ve often given for a dinner.....”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ A week later, this company broke up, and I then joined another that was
+ close handy at the time. It is from this latter that the following is
+ written:
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “... I just manage to keep my head above water, and that is all. If things
+ get worse, I shall be done for. I’ve no money of my own left now.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “A very sad thing happened here last week. Our leading man died suddenly
+ from heart disease leaving his wife and two children totally destitute. If
+ he had been a big London actor, for half his life in receipt of a salary
+ of, say, three thousand a year, the theatrical press would have teemed
+ with piteous appeals to the public, all his friends would have written to
+ the papers generously offering to receive subscriptions on his behalf, and
+ all the theaters would have given performances at double prices to help
+ pay his debts and funeral expenses. As, however, he had never earned
+ anything higher than about two pounds a week, Charity could hardly be
+ expected to interest herself about the case; and so the wife supports
+ herself and her children by taking in washing. Not that I believe she
+ would ask for alms, even were there any chance of her getting them, for,
+ when the idea was only suggested to her, she quite fired up, and talked
+ some absurd nonsense about having too much respect for her husband’s
+ profession to degrade it into a mere excuse for begging....
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “This company also went wrong. It was a terrible year for theaters. Trade
+ was bad everywhere, and “amusements” was the very first item that people
+ with diminishing incomes struck out of the list of their expenditure. One
+ by one I parted with every valuable I had about me, and a visit to the
+ pawnshop, just before leaving each town, became as essential as packing. I
+ went through the country like a distressed ship through troubled waters,
+ marking my track by the riches I cast overboard to save myself. My watch I
+ left behind me in one town, my chain in another; a ring here, my dress
+ suit there; a writing-case I dropped at this place, and a pencil-case at
+ that. And so things went on—or, rather, off—till the beginning
+ of May, when this letter, the last of the series, was written:
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Dear Jim: Hurrah! I’ve struck oil at last. I think it was time I did
+ after what I’ve gone through. I was afraid the profession would have to do
+ without me, but it’s all safe now. I’m in a new company—joined last
+ Saturday, and we’re doing splendidly. Manager is a magnificent fellow, and
+ a good man of business. He understands how to make the donkey go. He
+ advertises and bills right and left, spares no expense, and does the thing
+ thoroughly well. He’s a jolly nice fellow, too, and evidently a man of
+ intelligence, for he appreciates me. He engaged me without my applying to
+ him at all, after seeing me act one night last week, when he was getting
+ his company together. I play First Walking Gent, at thirty-five shillings
+ a week. He has been a captain in the army, and is a thorough gentlemen. He
+ never bullies or interferes, and everybody likes him. He is going all
+ round the North of England, taking all the big Lancashire and Yorkshire
+ towns, and then going to bring us to London for the winter. He wants me to
+ sign an agreement for one year certain at two pounds five. I haven’t
+ appeared to be too anxious. It’s always best to hang back a bit in such
+ cases, so I told him I would think it over; but of course I shall accept.
+ Can’t write any more now. I’m just off to dine with him. We stop here
+ three weeks, and then go to ————. Very comfortable
+ lodgings. Yours, ———-”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ That was written on Tuesday. On Saturday we came to the theater at twelve
+ for treasury. The Captain was not there. He had gone that morning to pay a
+ visit to Sir somebody or other, one of the neighboring gentry, who was a
+ great friend of his, and he had not yet returned. He would be back by the
+ evening—so the courteous acting manager assured us—and
+ treasury would take place after the performance.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ So in the evening, when the performance was over, we all assembled on the
+ stage, and waited. We waited about ten minutes, and then our Heavy Man,
+ who had gone across the way to get a glass before they shut up, came back
+ with a scared face to say that he’d just seen the booking clerk from the
+ station, who had told him that the “Captain” had left for London by an
+ early train that morning. And no sooner had the Heavy Man made this
+ announcement, than it occurred to the call boy that he had seen the
+ courteous acting manager leave the theater immediately after the play had
+ begun, carrying a small black bag.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I went back to the dressing-room, gathered my things into a bundle, and
+ came down again with it. The others were standing about the stage, talking
+ low, with a weary, listless air. I passed through them without a word, and
+ reached the stage door. It was one of those doors that shut with a spring.
+ I pulled it open, and held it back with my foot, while I stood there on
+ the threshold for a moment, looking out at the night. Then I turned my
+ coat collar up, and stepped into the street: the stage door closed behind
+ me with a bang and a click, and I have never opened another one since.
+ </p>
+ <h3>
+ THE END.
+ </h3>
+ <div style="height: 6em;">
+ <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+ </div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg’s On The Stage-And Off, by Jerome K. Jerome
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of On The Stage-And Off, by Jerome K. Jerome
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
+other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
+the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
+to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
+
+
+
+Title: On The Stage-And Off
+ The Brief Career Of A Would-Be Actor
+
+Author: Jerome K. Jerome
+
+Release Date: March 12, 2015 [EBook #48475]
+Last Updated: October 8, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ON THE STAGE-AND OFF ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger from page images generously
+provided by the Internet Archive
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+ <div style="height: 8em;">
+ <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+ </div>
+ <h1>
+ ON THE STAGE-AND OFF
+ </h1>
+ <h3>
+ The Brief Career Of A Would-Be Actor
+ </h3>
+ <h2>
+ By Jerome K. Jerome
+ </h2>
+ <h5>
+ New York <br /> <br /> Henry Holt And Company <br /> <br /> 1891
+ </h5>
+ <div class="fig" style="width:65%">
+ <img src="images/titlepagem.jpg" alt="0000m " width="100%" /><br />
+ </div>
+ <h5>
+ <a href="images/titlepage.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
+ </h5>
+ <p>
+ <br /><br />
+ </p>
+ <hr />
+ <p>
+ <br /><br />
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <b>CONTENTS</b>
+ </p>
+ <p class="toc">
+ <a href="#link2H_PREF"> PREFACE. </a>
+ </p>
+ <p class="toc">
+ <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> <b>ON THE STAGE-AND OFF.</b> </a>
+ </p>
+ <p class="toc">
+ <a href="#link2HCH0001"> CHAPTER I. I Determine to Become an Actor. </a>
+ </p>
+ <p class="toc">
+ <a href="#link2HCH0002"> CHAPTER II. I Become an Actor. </a>
+ </p>
+ <p class="toc">
+ <a href="#link2HCH0003"> CHAPTER III. Through the Stage Door </a>
+ </p>
+ <p class="toc">
+ <a href="#link2HCH0004"> CHAPTER IV. Behind the Scenes. </a>
+ </p>
+ <p class="toc">
+ <a href="#link2HCH0005"> CHAPTER V. A Rehearsal. </a>
+ </p>
+ <p class="toc">
+ <a href="#link2HCH0006"> CHAPTER VI. Scenery and Supers </a>
+ </p>
+ <p class="toc">
+ <a href="#link2HCH0007"> CHAPTER VII. Dressing. </a>
+ </p>
+ <p class="toc">
+ <a href="#link2HCH0008"> CHAPTER VIII. My “First Deboo” </a>
+ </p>
+ <p class="toc">
+ <a href="#link2HCH0009"> CHAPTER IX. Birds of Prey. </a>
+ </p>
+ <p class="toc">
+ <a href="#link2HCH0010"> CHAPTER X. I Buy a Basket, and go into the
+ Provinces. </a>
+ </p>
+ <p class="toc">
+ <a href="#link2HCH0011"> CHAPTER XI. First Provincial Experiences </a>
+ </p>
+ <p class="toc">
+ <a href="#link2HCH0012"> CHAPTER XII. “Mad Mat” Takes Advantage of an
+ Opportunity. </a>
+ </p>
+ <p class="toc">
+ <a href="#link2HCH0013"> CHAPTER XIII. Lodgings and Landladies. </a>
+ </p>
+ <p class="toc">
+ <a href="#link2HCH0014"> CHAPTER XIV. With a Stock Company, </a>
+ </p>
+ <p class="toc">
+ <a href="#link2HCH0015"> CHAPTER XV. Revenge </a>
+ </p>
+ <p class="toc">
+ <a href="#link2HCH0016"> CHAPTER XVI. Views on Acting </a>
+ </p>
+ <p class="toc">
+ <a href="#link2HCH0017"> CHAPTER XVIII. My Last Appearance. </a>
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <br /><br />
+ </p>
+ <hr />
+ <p>
+ <a name="link2H_PREF" id="link2H_PREF"> </a>
+ </p>
+ <div style="height: 4em;">
+ <br /><br /><br /><br />
+ </div>
+ <h2>
+ PREFACE.
+ </h2>
+ <p>
+ In penning the following pages I have endeavored to be truthful. In
+ looking back upon the scenes through which I passed, I have sought to
+ penetrate the veil of glamour Time trails behind him as he flies, and to
+ see things exactly as they were—to see the rough road as well as the
+ smiling landscape, the briers and brambles as well as the green grass and
+ the waving trees.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Now, however, that my task is done, and duty no longer demands that memory
+ should use a telescope, the mellowing haze of distance resumes its sway,
+ and the Stage again appears the fair, enchanted ground that I once dreamt
+ it. I forget the shadows, and remember but the brightness. The hardships
+ that I suffered seem now but picturesque incidents; the worry only
+ pleasurable excitement.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I think of the Stage as of a lost friend. I like to dwell upon its virtues
+ and to ignore its faults. I wish to bury in oblivion the bad, bold
+ villains and the false-hearted knaves who played a part thereon, and to
+ think only of the gallant heroes, the virtuous maidens, and the good old
+ men.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Let the bad pass. I met far more honest, kindly faces than deceitful ones,
+ and I prefer to remember the former. Plenty of honest, kindly hands
+ grasped mine, and such are the hands that I like to grip again in thought.
+ Where the owners of those kindly hands and faces may be now I do not know.
+ Years have passed since I last saw them, and the sea of life has drifted
+ us farther and farther apart. But wherever on that sea they may be
+ battling, I call to them from here a friendly greeting. Hoping that my
+ voice may reach across the waves that roll between us, I shout to them and
+ their profession a hearty and sincere God Speed.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <br /><br />
+ </p>
+ <hr />
+ <p>
+ <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002"> </a>
+ </p>
+ <div style="height: 4em;">
+ <br /><br /><br /><br />
+ </div>
+ <h1>
+ ON THE STAGE-AND OFF.
+ </h1>
+ <p>
+ <br /><br />
+ </p>
+ <hr />
+ <p>
+ <a name="link2HCH0001" id="link2HCH0001"> </a>
+ </p>
+ <div style="height: 4em;">
+ <br /><br /><br /><br />
+ </div>
+ <h2>
+ CHAPTER I. I Determine to Become an Actor.
+ </h2>
+ <p>
+ <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0001" id="linkimage-0001"> </a>
+ </p>
+ <div class="figleft" style="width:20%;">
+ <img src="images/9011.jpg" alt="9011 " width="100%" /><br /><a
+ href="images/9011.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
+ </div>
+ <p>
+ HERE comes a time in every one’s life when he feels he was born to be an
+ actor. Something within him tells him that he is the coming man, and that
+ one day he will electrify the world. Then he burns with a desire to show
+ them how the thing’s done, and to draw a salary of three hundred a week.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ This sort of thing generally takes a man when he is about nineteen, and
+ lasts till he is nearly twenty. But he doesn’t know this at the time. He
+ thinks he has got hold of an inspiration all to himself—a kind of
+ solemn “call,” which it would be wicked to disregard; and when he finds
+ that there are obstacles in the way of his immediate appearance as Hamlet
+ at a leading West-end theater, he is blighted.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I myself caught it in the usual course. I was at the theater one evening
+ to see <i>Romeo and Juliet</i> played, when it suddenly flashed across me
+ that that was my vocation. I thought all acting was making love in tights
+ to pretty women, and I determined to devote my life to it. When I
+ communicated my heroic resolution to my friends, they reasoned with me.
+ That is, they called me a fool; and then said that they had always thought
+ me a sensible fellow, though that was the first I had ever heard of it.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ But I was not to be turned from my purpose.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I commenced operations by studying the great British dramatists. I was
+ practical enough to know that some sort of preparation was necessary, and
+ I thought that, for a beginning, I could not do better than this.
+ Accordingly, I read through every word of Shakespeare,—with notes,
+ which made it still more unintelligible,—Ben Jonson, Beaumont and
+ Fletcher, Sheridan, Goldsmith, and Lord Lytton. This brought me into a
+ state of mind bordering on insanity. Another standard dramatist, and I
+ should have gone raving mad: of that I feel sure. Thinking that a change
+ would do me good, I went in for farces and burlesques, but found them more
+ depressing than the tragedies, and the idea then began to force itself
+ upon me that, taking one consideration with another, an actor’s lot would
+ not be a happy one. Just when I was getting most despondent, however, I
+ came across a little book on the art of “making-up,” and this resuscitated
+ me.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I suppose the love of “making-up” is inherent in the human race. I
+ remember belonging, when a boy, to “The West London United Concert and
+ Entertainment Association.” We used to meet once a week for the purpose of
+ regaling our relations with original songs and concertina solos, and on
+ these occasions we regularly burnt-corked our hands and faces. There was
+ no earthly reason for doing so, and I am even inclined to think we should
+ have made our friends less unhappy if we had spared them this extra
+ attraction. None of our songs had the slightest reference to Dinah. We
+ didn’t even ask each other conundrums; while, as for the jokes, they all
+ came from the audience. And yet we daubed ourselves black with as much
+ scrupulousness as if it had been some indispensable religious rite. It
+ could only have been vanity.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Making-up” certainly assists the actor to a very great degree. At least,
+ I found it so in my case. I am naturally of mild and gentle appearance,
+ and, at that time, was particularly so. It was no earthly use my standing
+ in front of the glass and trying to rehearse the part of, say, a drunken
+ costermonger. It was perfectly impossible for me to imagine myself the
+ character. I am ashamed to have to confess it, but I looked more like a
+ young curate than a drunken costermonger, or even a sober one, and the
+ delusion could not be sustained for a moment. It was just the same when I
+ tried to turn myself into a desperate villain; there was nothing of the
+ desperate villain about me. I might, perhaps, have imagined myself going
+ for a walk on Sunday, or saying “bother it,” or even playing ha’penny nap,
+ but as for ill-treating a lovely and unprotected female, or murdering my
+ grandfather, the thing was absurd. I could not look myself in the face and
+ do it. It was outraging every law of Lavater.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ My fiercest scowl was a milk-and-watery accompaniment to my bloodthirsty
+ speeches; and, when I tried to smile sardonically, I merely looked
+ imbecile.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ But crape hair and the rouge pot changed all this. The character of Hamlet
+ stood revealed to me the moment that I put on false eyebrows, and made my
+ cheeks look hollow. With a sallow complexion, dark eyes, and long hair, I
+ <i>was</i> Romeo, and, until I washed my face, loved Juliet to the
+ exclusion of all my female cousins. Humor came quite natural when I had a
+ red nose; and, with a scrubby black beard, I felt fit for any amount of
+ crime.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ My efforts to study elocution, however, were not so successful. I have the
+ misfortune to possess a keen sense of the ludicrous, and to have a morbid
+ dread of appearing ridiculous. My extreme sensitiveness on this point
+ would have been enough to prevent my ever acting well under any
+ circumstances, and, as it was, it hampered and thwarted me at every turn:
+ not only on the stage, but even in my own room, with the door locked. I
+ was always in a state of terror lest any one should overhear me, and half
+ my time was taken up in listening on one side of the key-hole, to make
+ sure that no one was listening on the other; while the slightest creak on
+ the stairs was sufficient to make me stop short in the middle of a
+ passage, and commence whistling or humming in an affectedly careless
+ manner, in order to suggest the idea that I was only amusing myself. I
+ tried getting up early and going to Hampstead Heath, but it was no good.
+ If I could have gone to the Desert of Sahara, and assured myself, by the
+ aid of a powerful telescope, that no living creature was within twenty
+ miles of me, I might have come out strong, but not else. Any confidence I
+ might have placed in Hampstead Heath was rudely dissipated on the very
+ second morning of my visits. Buoyed up by the belief that I was far from
+ every vestige of the madding crowd, I had become quite reckless, and,
+ having just delivered, with great vigor, the oration of Antony over the
+ body of Cæsar, I was about starting on something else, when I heard a loud
+ whisper come from some furze bushes close behind me: “Ain’t it proper,
+ Liza! Joe, you run and tell ‘Melia to bring Johnny.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I did not wait for Johnny. I left that spot at the rate of six miles an
+ hour. When I got to Camden Town I looked behind me, cautiously. No crowd
+ appeared to be following me, and I felt relieved, but I did not practice
+ on Hampstead Heath again.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ After about two months of this kind of thing, I was satisfied that I had
+ learned all that could possibly be required, and that I was ready to “come
+ out.” But here the question very naturally arose, “How can I get out?” My
+ first idea was to write to one of the leading managers, tell him frankly
+ my ambition, and state my abilities in a modest but a straightforward
+ manner. To this, I argued, he would reply by requesting me to call upon
+ him, and let him see for himself what I could do. I should then go to the
+ theater at the time appointed, and send up my card. He would ask me into
+ his private room, and, after a little general conversation on the weather,
+ and the latest murder, etc., etc., he would suggest my rehearsing some
+ short scene before him or reciting one or two speeches. This I should do
+ in a way that would quite astonish him, and he would engage me on the spot
+ at a small salary. I did not expect much at first, but fancied that five
+ or six pounds per week would be near the mark. After that, the rest would
+ be easy. I should go on for some months, perhaps a year, without making
+ any marked sensation. Then my opportunity would come. A new play would be
+ produced, in which there would be some minor part, not considered of any
+ importance, but which in my hands (I had just read the history of “Lord
+ Dundreary,” and believed every word of it) would become the great thing in
+ the play, and the talk of London.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I should take the town by storm, make the fortune of my manager, and be
+ the leading actor of the day. I used to dwell on the picture of the night
+ when I should first startle the world. I could see the vast house before
+ me with its waves of wild, excited faces. I could hear their hoarse roar
+ of applause ringing in my ears. Again and again I bowed before them, and
+ again and again the cheers burst forth, and my name was shouted with
+ waving of hats and with bravos.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I did not write to a manager, though, after all. A friend who knew
+ something about the subject said he wouldn’t if he were I, and I didn’t.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I asked him what course he would advise, and he said: “Go to an agent, and
+ tell him just exactly what you want.” I went to two or three agents, and
+ told them all just exactly what I wanted, and they were equally frank, and
+ told me just exactly, what <i>they</i> wanted, which, speaking generally,
+ was five shillings booking fee, to begin with. To do them justice, though,
+ I must say that none of them appeared at all anxious to have me; neither
+ did they hold out to me much hope of making my fortune. I believe my name
+ is still down in the books of most of the agents—at least, I have
+ never been round to take it off—and I expect that among them they
+ will obtain for me a first-class engagement one of these days, when I am
+ Bishop of London, or editor of a society paper, or something of that sort.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ It was not for want of worrying that they did not do anything for me then.
+ I was forever what I called “waking them up,” a process which consisted of
+ studying the photos in the outer office for half an hour, and then being
+ requested to call again. I had regular days for performing this duty, on
+ the mornings of which I would say to myself: “Well, I must go round, and
+ wake those agents up again to-day.” When I had said this, I felt quite
+ important, and had some vague idea that I was overworking myself. If, on
+ my way, I happened to meet a friend, I greeted him with “Haven’t got a
+ minute, old man. I’m just going round to my agents,” and, scarcely
+ stopping to shake hands, would rush off, leaving him with the impression
+ that I had been telegraphed for.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ But I never succeeded in rousing them to a full sense of their
+ responsibilities, and, after a while, we began to get mutually tired of
+ one another; especially as about this time I managed to get hold of two or
+ three sham agents,—or rather, they managed to get hold of me,—who
+ were much more pleased to see me. One of these, a very promising firm
+ (though not quite so good at performing), had its offices then in
+ Leicester Square, and consisted of two partners, one of whom, however, was
+ always in the country on important business, and could never be seen. I
+ remember they got four pounds out of me, for which they undertook, in
+ writing, to obtain me a salaried London engagement before the expiration
+ of a month. Just when the time was nearly up, however, I received a long
+ and sympathetic letter from the mysterious traveling partner. This
+ hitherto rusticating individual had, it appeared, returned to town the
+ previous day, but only to discover a state of things that had shocked him
+ beyond all expression. His partner, the one to whom I had paid the four
+ pounds, besides defrauding nearly all the clients by taking money for
+ engagements which he had no possible means of obtaining, had robbed him,
+ the writer of the letter, of upward of seventy pounds, and had bolted, no
+ one knew whither. My present correspondent expressed himself deeply
+ grieved at my having been so villainously cheated, and hoped I would join
+ him in taking proceedings against his absconding partner—when found.
+ He concluded by stating that four pounds was an absurd sum to charge for
+ obtaining such an engagement as had been held out to me, and that if I
+ would give him (who really had the means of performing his promises) two
+ pounds, he would get me one in a week, or ten days at the outside. Would I
+ call and see him that evening? I did not go that evening, but I went the
+ first thing the next morning. I then found the door locked, and a notice
+ on it that all letters were to be left with the housekeeper. Coming
+ downstairs, I met a man coming up, and asked him if he knew where either
+ of the partners could be found. He said that he would give a sovereign to
+ know, and that he was the landlord. I heard of the firm again the other
+ day, and I believe it is still flourishing, though with the customary
+ monthly change as to name and address. By the by, I wonder if the agent
+ nuisance will ever be stamped out. Perhaps, now that education is
+ compulsory, the next generation of actors and managers may be able to look
+ after their own affairs, and so dispense with the interference of these
+ meddlers on commission.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <br /><br />
+ </p>
+ <hr />
+ <p>
+ <a name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002"> </a>
+ </p>
+ <div style="height: 4em;">
+ <br /><br /><br /><br />
+ </div>
+ <h2>
+ CHAPTER II. I Become an Actor.
+ </h2>
+ <p>
+ <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0002" id="linkimage-0002"> </a>
+ </p>
+ <div class="figleft" style="width:20%;">
+ <img src="images/9021.jpg" alt="9021 " width="100%" /><br /><a
+ href="images/9021.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
+ </div>
+ <p>
+ MONG the sham agents must be classed the “Professors,” or “X. Y. Z.‘s,”
+ who are always “able to place two or three” (never more than two or three:
+ it would be no use four applying) “lady and gentlemen amateurs, of tall or
+ medium stature, either dark or fair, but <i>must</i> be of good
+ appearance, at a leading West-end theater, in good parts: Salaried
+ engagement.” These gentlemen are appreciative, and very quick to discern
+ real talent. They perceived mine in a moment. They were all of them sure
+ that I should make a splendid actor, and I was just the man they wanted.
+ But they were conscientious. They scorned to hide the truth, and told me
+ of my faults without reserve. They said that I was full of promise, that I
+ had the makings of a really great actor in me, <i>but</i>—and the
+ remarkable part of it was that no two of them agreed as to that “but.” One
+ said it was my voice. All that I wanted was to train my voice; then I
+ should be perfect. Another thought my voice was a very fine one, but told
+ me that my attitudes would not do at all. When my attitudes were a little
+ more artistic, he could get me an engagement at once. A third, after
+ hearing me recite a trifle or two from <i>Macbeth</i>, clapped me on
+ shoulder, and insisted on shaking hands. There were tears almost in his
+ eyes, and he appeared quite overcome. He said:
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “My boy, you have got it in you. You are an actor! but—you want
+ chic.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I had not got the slightest notion what he meant. I said:
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “You think so.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ He was sure of it. It would be impossible for me to succeed without chic:
+ <i>with</i> chic, I should soon be famous. I determined, at any price, to
+ get chic, and I deferentially put it to him, how he thought I could obtain
+ it. He paused for a minute or so, evidently considering how it could be
+ done, while I stood anxiously awaiting the result. Suddenly a bright idea
+ seemed to strike him. He laid his hand confidentially on my arm, and in
+ the impressive voice of a man who is communicating some extraordinary
+ discovery, said: “Come to me, twice a week, Tuesdays and Fridays, say,
+ from eight to nine.” Then he drew back a few paces to see what effect it
+ had upon me.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I replied that I supposed he meant he would teach it me. He seemed struck
+ with my intelligence, and acknowledged that that was just precisely what
+ he did mean. He explained—always in the same strictly confidential
+ manner, as though he would not for the world have any one else know—that
+ he had had great experience in this particular branch of dramatic
+ education. He had letters now in his desk from well-known actors and
+ actresses, persons of the greatest eminence, acknowledging that they owed
+ their present position entirely to his teaching, and thanking him for all
+ that he had done for them. He would show me those letters, and he rose to
+ do so. But no, on second thoughts he would not; they were written in
+ confidence, and it would not be right for him to let others see them—not
+ even me, whom he felt he could trust. To do him justice, he never did show
+ those letters, either to me, or, as far as I could learn, to any one else,
+ though I subsequently came across three or four people who expressed an
+ earnest desire to see them.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ But I was slowly and painfully gaining experience, and I went away without
+ leaving the five-pound note which I—“as a man of business’”—ought
+ to have seen was an absurdly small amount, his usual charge being twenty
+ guineas; only, somehow or other, he had taken an interest in me, and felt
+ sure I should reflect credit on his teaching, and so make it up to him in
+ that way.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Another class that make a very good thing out of stage-struck asses, are
+ the “managers” (?) who have vacancies for “an amateur lady and gentleman
+ in a specially selected company.” They are men who evidently believe in
+ the literal truth of Jaques’s opinion as to all men and women being
+ players, for they put raw novices into the leading parts with a confidence
+ as to the result that is simply touching. The Thespian aspirant, who has
+ never acted out of his own back parlor, feels a little nervous, though, at
+ being cast for Banquo and Colonel Damas, to open with on the following
+ Saturday. He cannot quite make up his mind whether a mistake has been
+ made, a practical joke played upon him for the amusement of the rest of
+ the company, or whether it is that the manager is really an intelligent
+ man, who knows ability when he sees it. He does not like to speak about
+ it, lest it should be thought he was not confident of his own powers—a
+ failing of which the stage tyro is not usually guilty. Besides which, the
+ parts might be taken from him, and this he by no means desires, although,
+ at the same time, he is perfectly sure that he could play every other
+ character in the piece much better. I had only one experience of the sham
+ manager—at least, of this kind of sham manager. Unfortunately, there
+ are other kinds, as most actors know to their cost, but these I have not
+ come to yet. No, and I wish I had never gone to them, either.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ There were about half a dozen of us noodles who had answered one
+ advertisement, and we met every night for rehearsals at a certain house in
+ Newman Street. Three or four well-known professionals, who were then
+ starring in the provinces, but who would join us at the beginning of the
+ next week, were to fill the chief parts, and we were to start for
+ Gravesend immediately after their arrival. I had been engaged at a weekly
+ salary of one pound fifteen shillings, and had been cast for the parts of
+ Gilbert Featherstone in <i>Lost in London</i>, and the King in <i>Hamlet</i>.
+ Everything went smoothly; there had been no suggestion of a premium or
+ anything of that kind; and although I had, by this time, grown exceedingly
+ suspicious, I began to think that this, at all events, was not a swindle.
+ But I soon found out the trick. On the fifth night of the rehearsals, our
+ manager was particularly pleasant, and complimented me on what he called
+ my really original reading of the parts. During the pauses, he leant
+ familiarly on my shoulder, and discussed the piece with me. We had a
+ little argument about the part of the King. He differed from me, at first,
+ on one or two points, but afterward came round to my views, and admitted
+ that I was right. Then he asked me how I was going to dress the part. I
+ had thought of this, even before I had studied the words, so I was as pat
+ as could be on the subject, and we went through all the details, and
+ arranged for a very gorgeous costume, indeed. He did not try to stint me
+ in the leasts though I was once or twice afraid he might grumble at the
+ cost. But no, he seemed quite as anxious as I was that the thing should be
+ done in good style. It would be a little expensive, as he himself said,
+ but then, “you may just as well do the thing properly, while you are about
+ it,” he added, and I agreed with him. He went on to reckon up the amount.
+ He said that he could get the things very cheap—much cheaper than
+ any one else, as he had a friend in the business, who would let him have
+ them for exactly what they cost to make. I congratulated him on the fact,
+ but feeling no personal interest in the matter, began to be rather bored
+ by his impressiveness on the subject. After adding it all up, he came to
+ the conclusion that nine pounds ought to cover the lot.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “And very cheap, too,” said he; “the things will be good, and will always
+ come in useful;” and I agreed with him again, and remarked that I thought
+ they would be well worth the money; but wondering what on earth all this
+ had got to do with me.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Then he wanted to know whether I would pay the money that evening, or
+ bring it with me next time.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Me! me pay!” I exclaimed, rendered ungrammatical by surprise. “What for?”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “What for! Why, for the costume,” replied he; “you can’t play the part
+ without, and if you got the things yourself, you’d have to pay about four
+ pounds more, that’s all. If you haven’t got all the money handy,” he
+ continued soothingly, “let me have as much as you can, you know, and I’ll
+ try and get my friend to trust you for the rest.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ On subsequent inquiry among the others, I found that three of them had
+ already let him have about five pounds each, and that a fourth, intended
+ to hand him over four pounds ten the following night. I and another agreed
+ to wait and see. We did not see much, however. We never saw the well-known
+ professionals, and, after the next evening, we never saw our manager
+ again. Those who had paid saw less.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I now thought I would try hunting for myself, without the aid of agents or
+ advertisements. I might be more successful, and certainly could not be
+ less. The same friend that had recommended me not to write to the
+ managers, concurred with me in this view, and thought I could not do
+ better than drop in occasionally at “The Occidental”; and I accordingly so
+ dropped in. I suppose there is no actor who does not know “The
+ Occidental,” though it does try to hide itself down a dark court, being,
+ no doubt, of a retiring disposition, like the rest of the profession.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I found the company there genial and pleasant, and without any objection
+ to drinking at my expense. When, however, I hinted my wish to join the
+ profession, they regarded me with a look of the most profound pity, and
+ seemed really quite concerned. They shook their heads gravely, told me
+ their own experiences, and did all they could to dissuade me from my
+ intention. But I looked upon them as selfish fellows who wanted to keep
+ young talent from the stage. Even if their advice were given honestly, I
+ argued, it was no use taking any notice of it. Every one thinks his own
+ calling the worst, and if a man waited to enter a profession until those
+ already in it recommended him to, he might sit and twiddle his thumbs for
+ the rest of his life. So I paid no attention to their warning, but
+ continued in my course, and, at length, found some one to help me.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ He was a large, flabby-looking individual, who seemed to live on Scotch
+ whisky and big cigars, and was never either drunk or sober. He did not
+ smell refreshing—a fact he made all the more impressive by breathing
+ very hard, right into one’s face, while talking. He had formerly been a
+ country manager, but how he earned his livelihood now, was always a
+ mystery to me, as, although he rented a dirty little back room in a street
+ leading out of the Strand, and called it his office, he never did anything
+ there but go to sleep. He was, however, well known to the theatrical
+ frequenters of “The Occidental,”—better known than respected, as I
+ afterward learnt,—while he himself knew everybody, and it appeared
+ to me that he was just the very man I wanted. At first, he was not any
+ more enthusiastic than the others, but my mentioning that I was prepared
+ to pay a small premium in order to obtain an appearance, set him
+ pondering, and, in the end, he didn’t see why it could not be done. When I
+ stated the figure I was ready to give, he grew more hopeful still, and
+ came to the conclusion that it <i>could</i> be done. He did not even see
+ why I should not make a big name, if I only left myself entirely in his
+ hands.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “I have done the same thing for other people,” said he, “and I can for
+ you, if I like. There is ————,” he went on,
+ getting talkative all at once, “he is drawing his eighty pounds a week
+ now. Well, damn it all, sir, I made that man—made him. He’d never
+ have been anything more than a third-rate provincial actor, if it hadn’t
+ been for me. Then look at ————, at the ———,
+ I knew him when he was having twenty-two shillings a week for
+ responsibles, with old Joe Clamp, and that only when he could get it, mind
+ you. I brought him up to London, started him at the Surrey, took him on to
+ the West-end, and worked him up to what he is. And now, when he passes me
+ in his brougham, he don’t know me,” and my newfound friend heaved a sigh,
+ and took another pull to drown his grief at the ingratitude of human
+ nature.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Yes, sir,” he continued, on emerging from his glass, “I made those men,
+ and why shouldn’t I make you?”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ As I could not show any reason for his not doing so, he determined that he
+ would; although he supposed that I should turn out just the same as the
+ rest of them, and forget him, when I was at the top of the tree. But I
+ assured him most solemnly that I would not, and that I should be just as
+ pleased to see him, when I was a great man, as I was then, and I shook
+ hands warmly with him, as a token of how pleased I was to see him then;
+ for I felt really grateful to him for the favors he was going to bestow on
+ me, and I was quite vexed that he should think I might prove ungrateful,
+ and neglect him.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ When I saw him the next day, he told me he had done it. He had arranged an
+ engagement for me with a Surrey-side manager, to whom he would introduce
+ me to-morrow, when the agreement could be signed, and everything settled.
+ I was, accordingly, to be at his office for the purpose at eleven o’clock
+ the following morning—and to bring the money with me. That was his
+ parting injunction.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I did not walk back to my lodgings, I skipped back. I burst open the door,
+ and went up the stairs like a whirlwind; but I was too excited to stop
+ indoors. I went and had dinner at a first-class restaurant, the bill for
+ which considerably lessened my slender means. “Never mind,” I thought,
+ “what are a few shillings, when I shall soon be earning my hundreds of
+ pounds!” I went to the theater, but I don’t know what theater it was, or
+ what was the play, and I don’t think I knew at the time. I did notice the
+ acting a little, but only to fancy how much better I could play each part
+ myself. I wondered how I should like these particular actors and
+ actresses, when I came to know them. I thought I should rather like the
+ leading lady, and, in my imagination, sketched out the details of a most
+ desperate flirtation with her, that would send all the other actors mad
+ with jealousy. Then I went home to bed, and lay awake all night, dreaming.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I got up at seven the next morning, and hurried over my breakfast, so as
+ to be in time for the appointment at eleven. I think I looked at my watch
+ (I wonder where that watch is now!) at least every other minute. I got
+ down to the Strand a little before ten, and wandered up and down a small
+ portion of it, frightened to go a stone’s throw from the office, and yet
+ dreading to go too near it. I bought a new pair of gloves. I remember they
+ were salmon color, and one of them split as I was trying to get it on, so
+ I carried it crumpled up in my hand, and wore the other one. When it got
+ within twenty minutes of the time, I turned into the street where the
+ office was, and loitered about there, with an uncomfortable feeling, that
+ every one living in it knew what I had come about, and was covertly
+ watching me from behind blinds and curtains. It seemed as though eleven
+ o’clock never would come, but Big Ben tolled it out at last, and I walked
+ up the door, trying to look as if I had just strolled!
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ When I reached the office, no one was there, and the door was locked. My
+ heart sank within me. Had the whole thing been a cruel hoax? Was it to be
+ another disappointment? Had the manager been murdered? Had the theater
+ been burned down? Why were they not here? Something extraordinary must
+ have happened to make them late on such an important occasion as this. I
+ spent half an hour of intense suspense and then they arrived. They hoped
+ they had not kept me waiting, and I replied, “Oh no, not at all,” and
+ murmured something about having only just come myself.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ As soon as we all three were inside the little office, I was introduced to
+ the manager, who turned out to be an actor I had often seen on the boards,
+ but who did not look a bit like himself, though he would have done very
+ well for his own son; he was so much shorter and younger than he ought to
+ have been. The clean-shaven face gives actors such a youthful appearance.
+ It was difficult to believe, at first, that the sedate-looking boys I used
+ to meet at rehearsal, were middle-aged men with families, some of them.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Altogether, my future manager did not realize my expectations of him. He
+ was not dressed with that reckless disregard for expense that I had looked
+ for in a man of his position. To tell the truth, he presented a very seedy
+ figure, indeed. I put it down, however, to that contempt for outward
+ appearance, so often manifested by men of great wealth, and called to mind
+ stories of millionaires who had gone about almost in rags; and I
+ remembered, too, how I had once seen the mother of one of our leading
+ burlesque actresses, and how I had been surprised at her extreme dinginess—the
+ mother’s.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ They had the agreements all ready, and the manager and I signed in each
+ other’s presence, and exchanged. Then I handed him a ten-pound bank note,
+ and he gave me a receipt for it. Everything was strictly formal. The
+ agreement, especially, was very plain and precise, and there could be no
+ mistake about it. It arranged for me to give my services for the first
+ month gratis, and after that I was to receive a <i>salary according to
+ ability</i>. This seemed to me very fair, indeed. If anything, it was,
+ perhaps, a little reckless on his part, and might press heavily upon him.
+ He told me candidly, however, that he did not think I should be worth more
+ than thirty shillings a week to him for the first two or three months
+ though, of course, it would depend upon myself entirely, and he should be
+ only too pleased if it, proved otherwise. I held a different opinion on
+ the subject, but did not mention it, thinking it would be better to wait
+ and let time prove it. So I merely said I wished for nothing but what was
+ fair and just, and it appearing that this was exactly what he wanted me to
+ have, we parted on the best of terms; but not before all particulars had
+ been arranged. He was going to open for the summer season in three weeks’
+ time, and the rehearsals were to commence about a fortnight before. For
+ the next week, therefore, I was nothing; after that, I was an Actor!!! *
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ * My friends deny this. They say I never became an actor. I say I did, and
+ I think I ought to know.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <br /><br />
+ </p>
+ <hr />
+ <p>
+ <a name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003"> </a>
+ </p>
+ <div style="height: 4em;">
+ <br /><br /><br /><br />
+ </div>
+ <h2>
+ CHAPTER III. Through the Stage Door
+ </h2>
+ <p>
+ <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0003" id="linkimage-0003"> </a>
+ </p>
+ <div class="figleft" style="width:20%;">
+ <img src="images/9035.jpg" alt="9035 " width="100%" /><br /><a
+ href="images/9035.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
+ </div>
+ <p>
+ T was not until about a week before the opening night, that I received a
+ summons to attend at the theater. Eleven o’clock was the time appointed
+ for “the company to assemble on the stage,” and, accordingly, at a few
+ minutes before that hour, I stood in front of the stage-door.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ It was a dingy-looking place, up a back street, with a barber’s shop on
+ one side, and a coal shed on the other. A glorious spring sunshine made it
+ look, by contrast, still more uninviting, and I likened it to the entrance
+ to the enchanted palace in the fairy tales, where the gloomier the portal
+ through which the prince passes, the more gorgeous the halls beyond. This
+ was before I had seen the inside.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ But it wouldn’t do for me to stop there meditating. It was already two
+ minutes past eleven and the rest of the company would be waiting for me.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I laid my hand upon the latch, and——
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ A moment, please. Before I throw open that door and let daylight in upon
+ the little world behind, let me offer a word or two of preparatory
+ explanation.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The theatrical world is a big world. From one of the leading London
+ theaters to a traveling booth (I intend no slighting allusion to our
+ talented American cousin) is a wide stretch, and embraces a great variety.
+ My experience was confined to three or four of these varieties, and by no
+ means extended to the whole. My short career was passed among the minor
+ London theaters, and second and third rate traveling companies; and it is
+ of these, and these only, that I shall speak. But of these—of what
+ came under my actual observation, that is—I shall speak freely,
+ endeavoring to record things exactly as I found them—nothing
+ extenuating, nor setting down aught in malice. It may be that, in the
+ course of my comments, I shall think it necessary to make a few more or
+ less sensible and original remarks; to tell actors and actresses what they
+ ought to do, and what they ought not to do; to explain to managers how
+ they ought to manage their own business; and to give good advice generally
+ all round. Therefore, at the outset, I wish to be clearly understood that,
+ when so doing, I have in mind only that part of the theatrical world with
+ which I am acquainted. As regards such theaters as, for example, the
+ Lyceum or the St. James’s, they are managed quite as well, perhaps, as I
+ could manage them myself, and I have no fault to find with them. Even if I
+ had, I should not do so here, for in these reminiscences I intend to talk
+ only about what I understand—an eccentric resolution for an author,
+ I admit; but no matter, I like to be original now and then. With this
+ understanding, we will push back the door and enter.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I found a wheezy little old man inside, boxed up behind a glass partition,
+ toasting a bloater before a small fire. On that morning, I felt kindly
+ disposed toward all living things, and I therefore spoke kindly, even to
+ this poor old buffer. I said:
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Good-morning. It’s a fine day.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ He said, “Shut the door, can’t yer; or else get outside.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Acting on this suggestion, I shut the door, and then stood leaning against
+ it, while he finished toasting the bloater. When I saw that this operation
+ was completed I had another try at him. I remarked that my name was
+ ————. Of course, I had assumed a stage name. They
+ all do it. Heaven only knows why; I am sure <i>they</i> don’t. While in
+ the profession, I met a young fellow whose real name happened to be the
+ very one that I had assumed, while he had taken my real name for his
+ assumed one. We were both happy and contented enough, until we met; but
+ afterward we took a sadder view of life, with all its shams and vanities.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ As the mere announcement of my name had no visible effect upon the
+ stage-door keeper—for such I found him to be—I fired my last
+ shot, and told him I was an actor. It roused him. It electrified him to
+ such a degree, that he took his gaze off the bloater, and looked at me.
+ Having feasted his eyes upon me to his full satisfaction, he said, “Down
+ the yard,” and returned to what, I suppose, was his breakfast; there being
+ a dismal, just-got-up sort of look about him.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Gathering from this that there was a yard somewhere in the neighborhood,
+ and that, when I had found it, I was to go down it, I started off to look
+ for it. I discovered it at last, quite unexpectedly, by the process of
+ stumbling over a friendly cat, and bursting open a door with my head. The
+ moment I got into it, I was surrounded by at least half a dozen of the
+ feline species. They looked hungry, and welcomed me with enthusiasm, under
+ an absurd idea that I was the cat’s meat man, whom I did not resemble in
+ the least. Cats are kept at theaters to keep away the rats, but sometimes
+ the cats themselves become so numerous as to be rather more of a nuisance
+ than the rats, and then it is necessary to keep some one to keep away the
+ cats. They take a great interest in the drama, these cats. They always
+ make a point of coming on in the middle of the most pathetic scenes, when
+ they take the center of the stage, and proceed to go through one or other
+ of their decidedly peculiar toilet exercises.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Going down the yard, as directed, and groping my way through a dark
+ passage at the end, I found myself in a vast, gloomy vault, full of hollow
+ echoes, and strange, shapeless shadows; at least, that is what it seemed
+ to me.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I cannot say, now, what notions I had previously formed of “behind the
+ scenes.” They were dispelled so rudely and suddenly, that all trace of
+ them is lost. I know they were formed; partly by Dower Wilson’s charming
+ sketches, where fairy damsels (in the costume of their country) lean
+ gracefully against the back of the landscapes, with their pretty legs
+ crossed; partly by the descriptions of friends who said they had been
+ there; and partly from my own imagination—a vivid one. The reality,
+ however, exceeded my wildest expectations. I could never have dreamt of
+ anything so utterly dismal, as an empty theater by daylight, or rather
+ day-darkness. No, not even after a supper of beefsteaks and porter.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ At first, I could see nothing; but, after a while, I got used to the
+ dimness, and was able to look about me. The decorations of the place (such
+ as they were—such as might be expected in a theater where the stalls
+ were three shillings, and the gallery fourpence) were shrouded in dirty
+ white cloths. The music stools and stands in the orchestra, together with
+ the big drum, and the violoncello in a green baize case, were all in a
+ heap in the corner, as if they had had a performance on their own account
+ during the night, and had ended up by getting drunk. This idea was further
+ suggested by the appearance of the gallery bar, which could be seen from
+ the stage, though it looked about half a mile off, and which was crowded
+ with empty bottles and dirty pewter pots and glasses. Shabby, patched
+ scenery—a mere unintelligible daub, seen close to—was littered
+ all round me; propped up against the great wooden beams which supported
+ the flies, or against the side walls; piled up at the back, in what was
+ called the “scene dock”; lying down flat at my feet; or hanging suspended
+ over my head. In the center of the stage was a rickety table, and on the
+ table was a candle, stuck in a ginger-beer bottle. A solitary sunbeam,
+ having sneaked in through some odd crevice, threw a band of light across
+ the gloom, and showed up the dust, of which the place seemed full. A
+ woman, with a noisy cold in her head, was sweeping out the pit; and some
+ unseen animal, which I judged to be a small boy, by the noise it made, was
+ performing a shrill whistle somewhere in the region of the dress circle.
+ The roar from the streets sounded dull and muffled, but the banging of a
+ door, or the falling of a chair within the building, made such a noise,
+ that the spiders ran into their holes for fright.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <br /><br />
+ </p>
+ <hr />
+ <p>
+ <a name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004"> </a>
+ </p>
+ <div style="height: 4em;">
+ <br /><br /><br /><br />
+ </div>
+ <h2>
+ CHAPTER IV. Behind the Scenes.
+ </h2>
+ <p>
+ <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0004" id="linkimage-0004"> </a>
+ </p>
+ <div class="figleft" style="width:20%;">
+ <img src="images/9041.jpg" alt="9041 " width="100%" /><br /><a
+ href="images/9041.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
+ </div>
+ <p>
+ HAD the stage all to myself for about half an hour. It is the etiquette of
+ the theater for every one to be late. You estimate the position of an
+ actor, by the time he is late for rehearsal. If he (I don’t say a word
+ about ladies: they are always an hour late for everything, bless ‘em) is
+ twenty minutes behind, he is most likely mere utility. If a man keeps
+ everybody waiting an hour and a half, you may put him down as a star.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I occupied the time pleasantly enough in wandering about, and finding out
+ all I could. I climbed up a shaky wooden staircase to the “flies,” and
+ looked down upon the stage from a height of fifty feet. I scrambled about
+ up there amidst ladders, and small platforms, and ropes, and pulleys, and
+ windlasses, and gas pipes, and empty gas bags, and beer cans, and
+ darkness, and dust. Then, up another ladder, leading higher still, and
+ along a narrow plank, crossing from one side of the stage to the other,
+ over a perfect hanging forest of scenery.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Clambering round behind, I came to the scene-painting room. It was a long,
+ narrow sort of loft, forty feet above the stage. One side of it was of
+ canvas—part of an enormous sheet, which passed right through it, in
+ at the top and out at the bottom. This sheet of canvas, on which a scene
+ was being painted, was suspended from the roof of the theater by means of
+ pulleys, so that the whole could be raised or lowered at pleasure, and
+ every portion of it brought within reach of the scene-painter, without his
+ moving.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ If I have not explained myself clearly, try this: Take your wife’s best
+ traveling trunk (choosing a time when she is not at home), wrench the
+ cover off, and then hold the box up against the window blind, in such a
+ position that the blind is where the cover would have been. There you have
+ it. The box is the scene-painter’s room—the blind, the scene.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ There was plenty of light and color (the latter in buckets) in the room,
+ but very little else. A long, deal table, crowded with brushes and paint
+ pots, ran nearly the whole length of it. The scene-painter’s palette, a
+ marble slab about six feet square, lay on the floor, and, near it, one of
+ the brushes with which the sky had been laid on. This brush was the size
+ of an ordinary carpet broom. Noting these things, I left the studio, and
+ descended.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ A little lower down was the wardrobe room.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ There was not much in it though. Dresses are borrowed as they are wanted,
+ now, from the costumiers round Covent Garden and Drury Lane; everything
+ being found for so much a week. Years ago, I believe, each theater used to
+ make, and keep, its own costumes. Even now, a few old-fashioned provincial
+ houses have a substantial wardrobe attached to them, but these are the
+ exceptions, and, as a rule, little, if any thing, is kept in stock. Here,
+ there were a few pairs of very loose and baggy-looking tights, half a
+ dozen rusty tin helmets, a heap of buff shoes in a corner—half of
+ them right, half left, sort ‘em as you want ‘em—some natty
+ waistcoats—red and blue, with a dash of yellow; the sort of thing
+ stage Yorkshiremen wear when they come to London, black cloaks for any one
+ who might wish to dissemble, and an assortment of spangled things. These
+ were the principal items, all of which had seen their best days.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Between the yard and the stage was a very big room, containing so
+ heterogeneous a collection of articles that at first I fancied it must be
+ a cooperative store in connection with the theater. It was, however, only
+ the property room, the things therein being properties; or, more commonly,
+ “props,” so called, I believe, because they help to support the drama. I
+ will give you some of the contents of the room haphazard as I recollect
+ them. There was a goodly number of tin cups, painted black up to within
+ half an inch of the rim, so as to give them the appearance of being always
+ full. It is from these vessels that the happy peasantry carouses, and the
+ comic army get helplessly fuddled. There is a universality about them.
+ They are the one touch of (stage) nature which makes the whole world kin.
+ They are used alike by the Esquimaux and the Hottenot. The Roman soldiery
+ appear never to have drunk out of anything else: while, without them, the
+ French Revolution would lose its chief characteristic. Besides these
+ common cups, there were gold and silver ones, used only for banquets, and
+ high-class suicides. There were bottles, and glasses, and jugs, and
+ decanters. From these aids to debauchery, it was pleasant to turn to a
+ cozy-looking tea service on a tray with a white table cloth: there was a
+ soothing suggestion of muffins and domestic bliss about it. There was
+ plenty of furniture, a couple of tables, a bedstead, a dresser, a sofa,
+ chairs—half dozen of them, high-backed ones, for “hall in the old
+ Grange,” etc.; they were made by fixing pasteboard backs on to ordinary
+ cane chairs. The result was that they were top heavy, and went over at the
+ slightest touch; so that picking them up, and trying to make them stand,
+ formed the chief business of the scenes in which they were used.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I remember the first time our light comedy attempted to sit down on one of
+ these chairs.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ It was on the opening night. He had just said something funny, and, having
+ said it, sat down, crossed his legs, and threw himself back, with all that
+ easy, negligent grace so peculiarly his own. Legs were the only things
+ that could be seen for the next few minutes.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Other “props” were, a throne, gorgeous in gilt paper and glazed calico; a
+ fire-grate, stuffed with red tinfoil; a mirror, made with silver paper; a
+ bunch of jailer’s keys; handcuffs; leg irons; flat irons; rifles; brooms;
+ bayonets; picks and crowbars for the virtuously infuriated populace; clay
+ pipes; daggers made of wood; stage broadswords—there is no need to
+ describe these, everybody knows them, they are like nothing else on earth;
+ battle axes; candlesticks; a pound or two of short dips; a crown, set with
+ diamonds and rubies each as big as a duck’s egg; a cradle—empty, an
+ affecting sight; carpets, kettles, and pots; a stretcher; a chariot; a
+ bunch of carrots; a costermonger’s barrow; banners; a leg of mutton, and a
+ baby. Everything, in short, that could possibly be wanted, either in a
+ palace or a garret, a farmyard or a battle-field.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Still wandering about, I came across a hole in the floor at the side of
+ the stage, and groped my way down a ladder to the region beneath, where
+ the fairies come from, and the demons go to. It was perfectly dark, and I
+ could see nothing. It smelt very moldy, and seemed to be full of cunning
+ contrivances for barking your shins. After bumping myself about a good
+ deal there, I was glad to find my way out again, deferring all further
+ investigations to some future period, with a candle.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ On emerging, I saw that the company had at last begun to arrive. A tall,
+ solemn-looking man was pacing the stage, and him I greeted. He was the
+ stage manager, and so of course rather surly. I don’t know why stage
+ managers are always surly, but they are.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ In the course of the next few minutes, there trotted in a demure-looking
+ little man, who turned out to be our “first low comedy,” and very good low
+ comedy he was, too, though, from his wooden expression, you might have
+ thought him as destitute of humor as the librettist of a comic opera. Then
+ followed the heavy man, talking in a very gruff voice to a good-looking
+ young fellow with him, who played the juveniles when our manager didn’t
+ take them himself. Then, after a short interval, a lady—an old
+ queer-looking little lady, who walked with a stick, and complained of
+ rheumatism, and who, as soon as she reached the stage, plumped herself
+ down on the thick end of a mossy bank, from which nothing would induce her
+ to rise until she got up to go home. She was our “old woman.” She did the
+ doting mothers and the comic old maids. She had played everything in her
+ time, and could play anything still. She would have taken Juliet, or
+ Juliet’s nurse, whichever you liked, and have done both of them well. She
+ would have been ten minutes making up for Juliet, and then, sitting in the
+ middle of the pit, you would have put her down for twenty.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The next to appear was a gentleman (“walking”) in a fur-trimmed overcoat,
+ patent-leather boots and white gaiters and lavender kid gloves. He carried
+ a silver-headed cane in his hand, a glass in his left eye, a cigar in his
+ mouth (put out as soon as he got to the stage, of course), and a small
+ nosegay in his button-hole. His salary I subsequently discovered to be
+ thirty shillings a week. After him came two ladies (not with any designs
+ upon the young man: merely in the order of time). One of them was thin and
+ pale, with a careworn look underneath the rouge, just as if she were some
+ poor, hard-working woman, with a large family and small means, instead of
+ an actress. The other was fat, fair, and—forty, if she was a day.
+ She was gloriously “got up,” both as regards complexion and dress. I can’t
+ describe the latter, because I never can tell what any woman has got on. I
+ only know she conveyed an impression to my mind of being stuck out all
+ round, and thrown out in front, and puffed out at the back, and towering
+ up at the top, and trailing away behind, and all to such a degree, that
+ she looked four times her natural size. As everybody was very glad indeed
+ to see her and welcomed her with what seemed to be irrepressible joy, even
+ the stage manager being civil, I naturally concluded that she was the
+ embodiment of all the virtues known to human kind. The whispered remarks
+ that I overheard, however, did not quite support this view, and I was at a
+ loss to reconcile matters, until I learned that she was the manager’s
+ wife. She was the leading lady, and the characters she particularly
+ affected, and in which she was affected, were the girlish heroines, and
+ the children who die young and go to heaven.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The rest of the company was made up of a couple of very old men, and a
+ middle-aged stout one, two rather pretty girls, evidently possessed of an
+ inexhaustible fund of humor, for they kept each other giggling all the
+ morning; and the manager himself, who arrived last, and was less
+ interested in the proceedings than any one else. No one took the slightest
+ notice of me, though I purposely stood about in conspicuous positions, and
+ I felt like the new boy at school.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ When everybody had arrived, the rickety table was brought down to the
+ front, and a bell rung; whereupon a small boy suddenly appeared for the
+ first time, and was given the “parts” to distribute. It was a manuscript
+ play, though well known to the company, nearly all of whom had played in
+ it plenty of times before. All the parts were torn and greasy except one,
+ which was prominently clean. When the boy came to that one he seemed
+ puzzled, not knowing to whom it belonged; so he stood in the center of the
+ stage and bawled out the name on it; and as it was my name, and I had to
+ claim the part, I was at once lifted out of my obscurity, and placed in an
+ opposite extreme hardly more comfortable.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <br /><br />
+ </p>
+ <hr />
+ <p>
+ <a name="link2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005"> </a>
+ </p>
+ <div style="height: 4em;">
+ <br /><br /><br /><br />
+ </div>
+ <h2>
+ CHAPTER V. A Rehearsal.
+ </h2>
+ <p>
+ <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0005" id="linkimage-0005"> </a>
+ </p>
+ <div class="figleft" style="width:20%;">
+ <img src="images/9050.jpg" alt="9050 " width="100%" /><br /><a
+ href="images/9050.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
+ </div>
+ <p>
+ HURRIEDLY unfolded the paper, to see what kind of a part I had got. I was
+ anxious to begin studying it immediately. I had to form my conception of
+ the character, learn the words and business, and get up gesture and
+ expression all in one week. No time was therefore to be lost. I give the
+ part in extenso:
+ </p>
+ <h3>
+ JOE JUNKS.
+ </h3>
+ <p>
+ Act I., scene I.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ ———— comes home.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ It’s a rough night.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ ————- if he does.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Ay. Ay.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ ——— stand back.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ (<i>Together</i>) ‘Tis he!
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <i>Fall down as scene closes in.</i>
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Act IV., scene 2.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <i>On with rioters.</i>
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I was of a sanguine disposition at that time, but I didn’t exactly see how
+ I was going to make much of a sensation with <i>that</i>. It seemed to me
+ that my talents were being thrown away. An ordinary actor would have done
+ for a part like that. However, if they chose to waste me, it was more
+ their misfortune than mine. I would say nothing, but do the best I could
+ with the thing, and throw as much feeling into the character as it would
+ hold. In truth, I ought to have been very proud of the part, for I found
+ out later on that it had been written especially for me by my manager. Our
+ low comedy, who knew the whole piece by heart, told me this. Then he
+ added, musingly: “A very good idea, too, of the boss’s. I always said the
+ first act wanted strengthening.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ At last, everybody having been supplied with his or her part, and the
+ leader of the band having arrived, the rehearsal really commenced. The
+ play was one of the regular old-fashioned melodramas, and the orchestra
+ had all its work cut out to keep up with it. Nearly all the performers had
+ a bar of music to bring them on each time, and another to take them off; a
+ bar when they sat down, and a bar when they got up again; while it took a
+ small overture to get them across the stage. As for the leading lady,
+ every mortal thing she did or said, from remarking that the snow was cold,
+ in the first act, to fancying she saw her mother and then dying, in the
+ last, was preceded by a regular concert. I firmly believe that if, while
+ on the stage, she had shown signs of wanting to sneeze, the band would at
+ once have struck up quick music. I began to think, after a while, that it
+ must be an opera, and to be afraid that I should have to sing my part.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The first scene was between the old landlord of an old inn, some village
+ gossips, and the villain of the piece. The stage manager (who played the
+ villain—naturally) stood in the center of the stage, from which the
+ rest of the company had retired, and, from there, with the manuscript in
+ his hand, he directed the proceedings.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Now then, gentlemen,” cried he, “first scene, please. Hallett, landlord,
+ Bilikins, and Junks” (I was Junks), “up stage, right. I shall be here”
+ (walking across and stamping his foot on the spot intended), “sitting at
+ table. All discovered at rise of curtain.” “You” (turning and speaking to
+ me, about whom he had evidently been instructed), “you, Mr. L., will be
+ sitting at the end, smoking a pipe. Take up your cues sharply, and mind
+ you, speak up or nobody will hear you: this is a big house. What are you
+ going to give us for an overture, Mr. P.?” (I call the leader of the band
+ Mr. P.). “Can you give us something old English, just before we ring up?
+ Thanks, do—has a good effect. Now then, please, we will begin. Very
+ piano all through this scene, Mr. P., until near the end. I’ll tell you
+ where, when we come to it.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Then, reading from our parts, we commenced. The speeches, with the
+ exception of the very short ones, were not given at full length. The last
+ two or three words, forming the cues, were clearly spoken, but the rest
+ was, as a rule, mumbled through, skipped altogether, or else represented
+ by a droning “er, er, er,” interspersed with occasional disjointed
+ phrases. A scene of any length, between only two or three of the
+ characters,—and there were many such,—was cut out entirely,
+ and gone through apart by the people concerned. Thus, while the main
+ rehearsal was proceeding in the center of the stage, a minor one was
+ generally going on at the same time in some quiet corner—two men
+ fighting a duel with walking sticks; a father denouncing his son, and
+ turning him out of doors; or, some dashing young gallant, in a big check
+ ulster, making love to some sweet young damsel, whose little boy, aged
+ seven, was sitting on her lap.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I waited eagerly for my cue, not knowing when it was coming, and, in my
+ anxiety, made two or three false starts. I was put out of any doubt about
+ it, when the time really did come, by a friendly nod from the gentleman
+ who represented the landlord, and thereupon I made my observation as to
+ the dreadful state of the weather in a loud, clear, and distinct voice, as
+ it seemed to me.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ As, however, nobody appeared to have heard me, and as they were evidently
+ waiting for me, I repeated the information in a louder, clearer, and more
+ distinct voice, if possible; after which the stage manager spoke and said:
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Now then, Mr. L., come along, let’s have it.” I explained to him that he
+ had already had it, and he then replied, “Oh, that will never do at all.
+ You must speak up more than that. Why, even <i>we</i> couldn’t hear you on
+ the stage. Bawl it out. Remember this is a large place; you’re not playing
+ in a back drawing-room now.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I thought it was impossible for me to speak louder than I had, without
+ doing myself some serious injury, and I began to pity the gallery boys.
+ Any one never having attempted to speak in a large public building would
+ hardly imagine how weak and insignificant the ordinary conversational
+ tones are, even at their loudest. To make your voice “carry,” you have to
+ <i>throw</i> it out, instead of letting it crawl out when you open your
+ mouth. The art is easily acquired, and, by it, you are able to make your
+ very whispers heard.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I was cautioned to look to this, and then we went on. The close of the
+ scene was a bustling one, and the stage manager explained it thus: “You”
+ (the landlord) “put the lantern close to my face, when you say ‘’Tis he!’
+ I spring up, throwing down the table” (a stamp here, to emphasize this).
+ “I knock you down. You two try to seize me; I break from you, and throw
+ you down, and cross center” (doing so). “I gain door, open it, and stand
+ there, pointing revolver. You all cower down.” We were squatting on our
+ toes, as an acknowledgment of having been all bowled over like a set of
+ nine-pins—or rather four-pins in our case—and we now further
+ bobbed our heads, to show that we did cower.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Picture,” says the stage manager approvingly, as drop falls. “Hurried
+ music all through that, Mr. P. Mind you all keep well up the stage” (“up”
+ the stage means toward the back, and “down” the stage, consequently,
+ implies near the footlights), “so as to let the drop come down. What front
+ drops have you got? Have you got an interior? We want a cottage interior.”
+ This latter was spoken to a stage carpenter, who was dragging some flats
+ about. Do not be shocked, gentle-reader; a stage flat is a piece of
+ scenery. No other kind of flat is ever seen on the stage.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “I dunno,” answered the man. “Where’s Jim? Jim!”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ It appeared that Jim had just stepped outside for a minute. He came back
+ at that point, however, wiping his mouth, and greatly indignant at hearing
+ the sound of his own name.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “All right, all right,” was his wrathful comment, as he came up the yard;
+ “don’t sing it; he ain’t dead. What the devil’s the matter? Is the ‘ouse
+ a-fire? <i>You</i> never go out, do yer!”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Jim was the head carpenter, and was a sulky and disagreeable man, even for
+ a stage carpenter. When he wasn’t “just stepped outside for a minute,” he
+ was quarreling inside, so that instead of anybody’s objecting to his
+ frequent temporary retirements, his absence was rather welcomed. He, in
+ common with all stage carpenters, held actors and actresses in the
+ greatest contempt, as people who were always in the way, and without whom
+ the play would get on much better. The chief charm about him, however, was
+ his dense stupidity. This trait was always brought into particular
+ prominence whenever the question of arranging scenery was under
+ discussion.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Fresh scenery is a very great rarity at the minor theaters. When anything
+ very special is produced, and an unusually long run is expected, say, of a
+ month or six weeks, one or two scenes may, perhaps, be specially painted,
+ but, as a rule, reliance is placed upon the scenery, the gradual growth of
+ years, already in stock, which, with a little alteration, and a good deal
+ of make-shift, generally does duty for the “entirely new and elaborate
+ scenery” so minutely described in the posters. Of course, under these
+ circumstances, slight inconsistencies must be put up with. Nobody objects
+ to a library drop representing “‘tween decks of the <i>Sarah Jane</i>,” or
+ to a back parlor being called a banqueting hall This is to be expected.
+ Our stage manager was not a narrow minded man on the subject of
+ accessories. He would have said nothing about such things as these. He
+ himself had, on the occasion of one of his benefits, played <i>Hamlet</i>
+ with nothing but one “interior” and “a garden,” and he had been a member
+ of a fit-up company that traveled with a complete Shakesperian <i>répertoire</i>
+ and four set scenes; so that he was not likely to be too exacting. But
+ even <i>he</i> used to be staggered at Jim’s ideas of mounting. Jim’s
+ notion of a “distant view of Hampstead Heath by moonlight,” was either a
+ tropical island, or the back of an old transformation scene; and for any
+ place in London—no matter what, whether Whitechapel or St. James’s
+ Park—he invariably suggested a highly realistic representation of
+ Waterloo Bridge in a snow-storm.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ In the present instance, on being asked for the cottage interior, he let
+ down a log cabin, with a couple of bowie knifes and revolvers artistically
+ arranged over the fire-place; anticipating any doubt upon the subject of
+ suitableness by an assurance that there you were, and you couldn’t do
+ better than that. The objection, that a log cabin with bowie knives and
+ revolvers over the fire-place, though it was doubtless a common enough
+ object in the Australian bush or the backwoods of America, was never, by
+ any chance, found in England, and that the cottage to be represented was
+ supposed to be within a few miles of London, he considered as too
+ frivolous to need comment, and passed it over in silent contempt. Further
+ argument had the effect of raising up Jim’s stock authority, a certain
+ former lessee, who had been dead these fifteen years; and about whom
+ nobody else but Jim seemed to have the faintest recollection. It appeared
+ that this gentleman had always used the log cabin scene for English
+ cottages, and Jim guessed that <i>he</i> (the defunct lessee) knew what he
+ was about, even if he (Jim) was a fool. The latter of Jim’s suppositions
+ had never been disputed, and it was a little too late then to discuss the
+ former. All I can say is, that if Jim’s Mr. Harris—as this
+ mysterious manager was generally dubbed—really did mount his
+ productions in the manner affirmed, their effect must have been novel in
+ the extreme.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Nothing could induce Jim to show anything else that morning, although the
+ manager reminded him of a cottage scene having been expressly painted for
+ the last lessee. Jim didn’t know where it was. Besides, one of the ropes
+ was broken, and it couldn’t be got at then; after which little brush with
+ the enemy, he walked away and took up a row with the gas man at the very
+ point where he had dropped it twenty minutes before.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Scenery and props were not being used at this, the first rehearsal, the
+ chief object of which was merely to arrange music, entrances and exits,
+ and general business; but of course it was desirable to know as soon as
+ possible what scenery was available, and whether it required any altering
+ or repairing.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ In the second scene the leading lady made her first appearance, an event
+ which called forth all the energies of the orchestra. It would not do for
+ her to burst upon the audience all at once. Great and sudden joy is
+ dangerous. They must be gradually prepared for it. Care was exercised that
+ the crisis should be well led up to, and that she should appear exactly at
+ the right moment. When all was satisfactorily settled, the cue was
+ announced to her by the stage manager. He said it was “Pom-pom—pom-pom—pom-pom—pom—Pom—POM.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “That’s your cue, my dear.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ On the stage, everybody calls the actresses “My dear.” You soon pick it
+ up, especially in the case of the young and pretty ones.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Where do I come on from?” asked the leading lady.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “I can’t say, my dear, until I’ve seen the drop. There’ll most likely be a
+ door in it, and then you can come on from the back.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Entrances from the back, it may be remarked, are the favorite ones.
+ Indeed, some artistes will never come on from anywhere else. Of course,
+ you make a much better impression on an audience, as regards first
+ appearance, by facing them on your entrance and walking straight down
+ toward them, than by coming on sideways and then turning round. Entrances
+ from the back, however, are sometimes carried to excess, and a whole scene
+ is rendered unnatural and absurd, merely to gratify personal vanity.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I will finish what I have to say about this rehearsal by giving a verbatim
+ report of a small part of it; viz., the fourth scene of the first act. The
+ actual scene is this:
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ STAGE MANAGER, <i>standing </i>CENTER <i>with his back to the footlights.
+ Close behind him, perched in a high chair, the</i> LEADER OF THE BAND <i>solus,
+ representing the orchestra with a fiddle. Two or three groups of artists,
+ chatting at the wings. THE HEAVY MAN facing up and down at the back,
+ conning his part in an undertone, and occasionally stopping to suit the
+ action to the word. LOW COMEDY AND WALKING GENT., going through scene by
+ themselves in L. 3. E. SINGING CHAMBERMAID, flirting with JUVENILES (only
+ one of them), R. 2. E. PROPERTY MAN, behind, making a veal and ham pie out
+ of an old piece of canvas and a handful of shavings. COUPLE OF CARPENTERS,
+ in white jackets, hovering about with hammers in their hands and mischief
+ in their eyes, evidently on the look-out for an excuse to make a noise.
+ CALL BOY all over the place, and always in the way—except when
+ wanted.</i>
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ OUR FIRST OLD MAN (<i>standing R. C., and reading part by the aid of a large
+ pair of specs</i>). “‘Er-er—wind howls—er-er-er—night as
+ this, fifteen years ago—er—sweet child—er-r-r—stolen
+ away—er-r-r—baby prattle—er-ears—er-r—shall
+ I never hear her voice again?”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <i>He looks up, and finding that nobody makes any sign of caring a hang
+ whether he does or not, he repeats the question louder.</i>
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ STAGE MANAGER (<i>severely, as if this was a question that really must be
+ answered</i>). “’ Shall I never hear her voice again?’ Oh! that’s a music
+ cue, Mr. P. Have you got it down? Miss ————”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ (<i>stage name of the manager’s wife</i>) “sings a song there, without.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ MR. P. “No, I’ll put it down now. What is it—’ hear her voice
+ again?’” (<i>Writes on some loose slips of paper, lying before him on the
+ stage.</i>)
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Have you the music?”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ STAGE MAN. “Oh, anything dismal does. No matter what, so long as it gives
+ ‘em the hump. What will you have, my dear?” MANAGER’S WIFE (<i>who has
+ just finished a social bottle of Bass with another lady</i>). “Oh, the old
+ thing, you know. ‘Home, sweet home.’” JUVENILES (<i>in a whisper to</i>
+ LOW COM.). “Is <i>she</i> going to <i>sing?</i>”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ LOW COM. “Yes, always does it.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ JUVENILES. “Oh, my——!”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ MAN. WIFE <i>and</i> THE FIDDLE <i>do first verse of “Home, sweet home.”</i>
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ FIRST OLD MAN. “‘Ah, that voice—er-er—echo of old memories—er-er-er—houseless
+ wanderer-dry herself’” (<i>crossing and opening an imaginary door</i>).
+ “Poor child—er-er-er—I’m an old man—er—my wife’s
+ out—return and—er—the homeless orphan.’”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ MAN. WIFE. “Will there be any lime-light on here?”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ FIRST OLD WOMAN (<i>sotto voce</i>). “Oh, let her have some lime-light.
+ She wants to let her back hair down.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ STAGE MAN. “Certainly, my dear. There’ll be a fire-place in this corner,
+ and red lime-light from it.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ MAN. WIFE. “Oh, all right; I only wanted to know. Now, what was it—‘homeless
+ orphan.’ Oh, that’s my long speech, you know: ‘Is this a dream that I have
+ dreamt before—played here when a child.’”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ FIRST O. M. “‘Sweet child—your face recalls strange memories of
+ er-er-er—been just your age.’”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ STAGE MAN. (<i>interrupting</i>). “Slow music throughout.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ FIRST O. M. (<i>continuing</i>). “‘Never from that night—er—golden—I
+ can’t believe she’s dead.’”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <i>Scrape from the fiddle, followed by bar, to bring on</i> FIRST OLD
+ WOMAN.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ FIRST O. W. (<i>without moving from her seat, and coming straight to the
+ cue with a suddenness which startles everybody)</i>. “‘Fold you to my
+ breast.’”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ MAN. WIFE. “’ Mother! ‘—Got the rheumatism again?”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ FIRST O. W. “Got it <i>again</i>! It’s never gone yet, drat it—’ My
+ child!’”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <i>Powerful scrape from the fiddle.</i>
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ FIRST O. M. “Where am I?”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ STAGE MAN. “Left, down stage.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ MAN. WIFE. “We embrace, left center. Knock heard.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ STAGE MAN. (<i>crossing center</i>). “That’s me. * Keep it up: it’s a
+ picture. You and Mrs. ———— there, embracing, and
+ the old boy down in the corner, when I open the door.—Rain and wind
+ for this scene, mind.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ * That was the way he treated Lindley Murray. We were inexpressibly
+ grieved and shocked—all of us—but what were we to do?
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ HOVERING CARPENTER (<i>at top of his voice</i>). “Jim! wind and rain for
+ last scene of first act.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <i>Husky but indignant voice from the flics expressing an earliest desire
+ that every one should go to the devil.</i>
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ STAGE MAN. (<i>who always rehearsed his speeches at full length, and in a
+ tone of voice as if he were reciting the multiplication table</i>). “‘I am
+ pursued. My life is at stake. Hide me from these bloodhounds who are on my
+ track. Hark! they are here. Thank Heaven, they are past. I am safe. Ha,
+ who is this we have here? ‘Sdeath, I am in luck to-night. Sir Henry will
+ thank me, when I bring his strayed lamb back to him. Come with me, my
+ little runaway,’ Nay, resist not, or ‘twill be the worse for all.’ I catch
+ hold of you. We struggle. ‘Come, I say, with me. Come, I say!”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ FIRST O. W. “* Die together!”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <i>Scrape from the fiddle.</i>
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ STAGE MAN. (<i>loudly, after waiting a minute</i>). “‘Die together.’”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ FIRST O. M. “I beg pardon. I didn’t hear.” (<i>Fumbles with his part, and
+ loses his place.</i>)
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ MAN. WIFE. “He really ought to use an ear-trumpet.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ FIRST O. M. Er-r-r—Heaven will give me strength—er—can
+ strike a blow!” (<i>Shakes his stick at</i> STAGE MANAGER.)
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <i>Tremendous hammering suddenly begun at back, eliciting forcible
+ expressions of disapproval from all the members of the company, with the
+ exception of the FIRST OLD MAN, who doesn’t hear it, and goes on calmly
+ with the rehearsal all by himself.</i>
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ STAGE MAN. (<i>in a rage</i>). “Stop that noise! Stop that noise, I say!”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <i>Noise continues.</i>
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ JIM (<i>eager for the fray</i>). “How can we do our work without noise, I
+ should like to know?”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ STAGE MAN. (<i>crossly</i>). “Can’t you do it at some other time?”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ JIM (<i>angrily</i>). “No, we can’t do it at some other time! Do you think
+ we’re here all night?”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ STAGE MAN. (<i>mildly</i>). “But, my dear fellow, how can we go on with
+ the rehearsal?”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ JIM (<i>in a rage</i>), “<i>I</i> don’t know anything about you and your
+ rehearsal! That’s not my business, is it? I do my own work; I don’t do
+ other people’s work! I don’t want to be told how to do my work!” (<i>Pours
+ forth a flood of impassioned eloquence for the next ten minutes, during
+ which time the hammering is also continued. Complete collapse of STAGE
+ MANAGER, and suspension of rehearsal. Subsequent dryness on the part of
+ JIM.</i>)
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ MAN. WIFE (<i>when rehearsal is at last resumed</i>). “Just try back that
+ last bit, will you, for positions?”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <i>The last two or three movements gone over again.</i> Then:
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ STAGE MAN. “We all three struggle toward door. Stand back, old man! I do
+ not wish to harm thee!—I push you aside. ‘Back, or it will be
+ murder!’—This must be well worked up. ‘Who dares to stay me?’ (<i>to
+ LOW COMEDY</i>). “There’ll be a bar to bring you on. You know the
+ business.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ LOW COM. (<i>coming forward</i>). “’ Shure and I will.’”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <i>Scrape from fiddle.</i>
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ STAGE MAN. “Well then there’s our struggle.” (<i>STAGE MANAGER and LOW
+ COMEDY take hold of each other’s shoulders, and turn round</i>). “I’ll
+ have the book in the left-hand side.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ LOW COM. “‘Ah, begorra, shure he’s clane gone; but, be jabers, I’ve got
+ this ‘” (<i>holding up an imaginary pocket-book</i>), “‘and it’s worth a
+ precious deal more than he is.’”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ STAGE MAN. “End of first act.—Tommy, go and fetch me half a pint of
+ stout.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <br /><br />
+ </p>
+ <hr />
+ <p>
+ <a name="link2HCH0006" id="link2HCH0006"> </a>
+ </p>
+ <div style="height: 4em;">
+ <br /><br /><br /><br />
+ </div>
+ <h2>
+ CHAPTER VI. Scenery and Supers
+ </h2>
+ <p>
+ <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0006" id="linkimage-0006"> </a>
+ </p>
+ <div class="figleft" style="width:20%;">
+ <img src="images/9067.jpg" alt="9067 " width="100%" /><br /><a
+ href="images/9067.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
+ </div>
+ <p>
+ E had five rehearsals for this play.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “What the dickens do they want with with so many?” was the indignant
+ comment of the First Old Woman. “Why, they’ll rehearse it more times than
+ they’ll play it.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I thought five a ridiculously small number at the time, especially when I
+ remembered my amateur days, and the thirty or so rehearsals, nearly all
+ full-dressed ones, required for a short farce; but there came a time when
+ I looked upon two as betokening extraordinary anxiety about a production.
+ In the provinces, I have known a three-act comedy put on without any
+ rehearsal at all, and with half the people not even knowing the patter.
+ “Business” was arranged in whispered consultations, while the play was
+ proceeding, and when things got into a more than usually glorious muddle,
+ one or other of the characters would come off the stage and have a look at
+ the book. As for the prompter, after vainly struggling to keep them to one
+ act at a time, and to dissuade the hero from making love to the wrong
+ girl, he came to the conclusion that he was only in the way, and so went
+ and had a quiet pipe at the stage-door, and refrained from worrying
+ himself further.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The rehearsals got more ship-shape as we went on. At the fourth every one
+ was supposed to be “letter perfect,” and “parts” were tabooed. On this
+ occasion, the piece was played straight through with nothing omitted, and
+ the orchestra (two fiddles, a bass-viol, cornet, and drum) appeared in
+ full force. For the last rehearsal, props and scenery were called. We had
+ an exciting time with Jim, over the scenery, as might be expected. He had
+ a row with everybody, and enjoyed himself immensely.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I saw our scene painter then for the first time. He was a jolly little
+ fellow, and as full of cheery contrivance as a Mark Tapley. No
+ difficulties seemed to daunt him. If a court of justice were wanted for
+ the following night, and the nearest thing he had to it were a bar parlor,
+ he was not in the least dismayed. He would have the bar parlor down; paint
+ in a bit here; paint out a bit there; touch up a bit somewhere else—there
+ was your court of justice! Half an hour was quite long enough for him to
+ turn a hay-field into a church-yard, or a prison into a bedroom.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ There was only one want, in the present case, that he didn’t supply, and
+ that was cottages. All the virtuous people in the play lived in cottages.
+ I never saw such a run on cottages. There were plenty of other residences
+ to which they would have been welcome—halls, palaces, and dungeons
+ the saloon cabin of a P. and O. steamer, drawingroom of No. 200 Belgrave
+ Square (a really magnificent apartment this, with a clock on the
+ mantelpiece). But no, they would all of them live in cottages. It would
+ not pay to alter three or four different scenes, and turn them all into
+ cottages, especially as they might, likely enough, be wanted for something
+ else in a week’s time; so our one cottage interior had to accommodate
+ about four distinct families. To keep up appearances, however, it was
+ called by a different name on each occasion. With a round table and a
+ candle, it was a widow’s cottage. With two candles and a gun, it was a
+ blacksmith’s house. A square table instead of a round one—“Daddy
+ Soloman’s home on the road to London. ‘Home, sweet home.’” Put a spade in
+ the corner, and hang a coat behind the door, and you had the old mill on
+ the Yorkshire moors.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ It was all no use though. The audience, on the opening night, greeted its
+ second appearance with cries of kindly recognition, and at once entered
+ into the Humor of the thing. A Surrey-side Saturday-night audience are
+ generally inclined to be cheerful, and, if the fun on the stage doesn’t
+ satisfy them, they rely on their own resources. After one or two more
+ appearances, the cottage became an established favorite with the gallery.
+ So much so, indeed, that when two scenes passed without it being let down,
+ there were many and anxious inquiries after it, and an earnest hope
+ expressed that nothing serious had happened to it. Its reappearance in the
+ next act (as something entirely new) was greeted with a round of applause,
+ and a triumphant demand to know, “Who said it was lost?”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ It was not until the last rehearsal that the supers were brought into play—or
+ work, as they would have called it. These supers were drawn from two
+ distinct sources. About half of them were soldiers, engaged to represent
+ the military force of the drama, while the other half, who were to be
+ desperate rioters, had been selected from among the gentry of the New Cut
+ neighborhood.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The soldiers, who came under the command of their sergeant, were by far
+ the best thing in the play. They gave an air of reality to all the scenes
+ in which they appeared. They <i>were</i> soldiers, and went about their
+ business on the stage with the same calm precision that they would have
+ displayed in the drill yard, and with as much seriousness as if they had
+ been in actual earnest. When the order was given to “fix bayonets and
+ charge,” they did so with such grim determination, that there was no
+ necessity at all to direct the stage mob to “feign fear and rush off L. I.
+ E.” They went as one man, in a hurry. There was no trouble, either, about
+ rehearsing the soldiers—no cursing and swearing required, which, in
+ itself, was an immense saving of time. The stage manager told the sergeant
+ what was wanted. That gruff-voiced officer passed the order on to his men
+ (first translating it into his own unintelligible lingo), and the thing
+ was done.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ To represent soldiers on the stage, real soldiers should, without doubt,
+ be employed, but it is no good attempting to use them for anything else.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ They are soldier-like in everything they do. You may dress them up in what
+ you choose, and call them what you will, but they will never be anything
+ else but soldiers. On one occasion, our manager tried them as a rabble.
+ They were carefully instructed how to behave. They were told how to rush
+ wildly on with a fierce, tumultuous yell; how to crowd together at the
+ back of the stage, and, standing there, surging backward and forward like
+ an angry sea, brandish their weapons, and scowl menacingly upon the
+ opposing myrmidons of the law, until, at length, their sullen murmurs
+ deepening into a roar of savage hate, they would break upon the wall of
+ steel before them, and sweep it from their path, as pent-up waters,
+ bursting their bonds, bear down some puny barrier.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ That was the theory of the thing. That is how a stage mob <i>ought</i> to
+ behave itself. How it really does behave itself is pretty generally known.
+ It comes in with a jog-trot, every member of it prodding the man in front
+ of him in the small of his back. It spreads itself out in a line across
+ the stage, and grins. When the signal is given for the rush, each man—still
+ grinning—walks up to the soldier nearest to him, and lays hold of
+ that warrior’s gun. The two men then proceed to heave the murderous weapon
+ slowly up and down, as if it were a pump handle. This they continue to do
+ with steady perseverance, until the soldier, apparently from a fit of
+ apoplexy—for there is no outward and visible cause whatever to
+ account for it—suddenly collapses, when the conquering rioter takes
+ the gun away from him, and entangles himself in it.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ This is funny enough, but our soldiers made it funnier still. One might
+ just as well have tried to get a modern House of Commons to represent a
+ disorderly rabble. They simply couldn’t do it. They went on in single file
+ at the double quick, formed themselves into a hollow square in the center
+ of the stage, and then gave three distinct cheers, taking time from the
+ sergeant. That was their notion of a rabble.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The other set, the regular bob (sometimes eighteenpence) a night “sups,”
+ were of a very different character. Professional supers, taken as a class,
+ are the most utterly dismal specimens of humanity to be met with in this
+ world. Compared with them, “sandwich-men” are dashing and rollicky. Ours
+ were no exception to the rule. They hung about in a little group by
+ themselves, and looked like a picture of dejected dinginess, that their
+ mere presence had a depressing effect upon everybody else. Strange that
+ men can’t be gay and light-hearted on an income of six shillings a week,
+ but so it is.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ One of them I must exclude from this description—a certain harmless
+ idiot, who went by the title of “Mad Mat,” though he himself always gave
+ his name as “Mr. Matthew Alexander St. George Clement.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ This poor fellow had been a super for a good many years, but there had
+ evidently been a time when he had played a very different part in life.
+ “Gentleman” was stamped very plainly upon his thin face, and where he was
+ not crazy he showed thought and education. Rumor said that he had started
+ life as a young actor, full of promise and talent, but what had set him
+ mad nobody knew. The ladies naturally attributed it to love, it being a
+ fixed tenet among the fair sex that everything that happens to mankind,
+ from finding themselves in bed with their boots on to having the water cut
+ off, is all owing to that tender passion. On the other hand, the
+ uncharitable—generally a majority—suggested drink. But nobody
+ did anything more than conjecture: nobody really knew. The link between
+ the prologue and the play was lost. Mat himself was under the firm
+ conviction that he was a great actor who was only kept from appearing in
+ the leading <i>rôles</i> by professional jealousy. But a time would come,
+ and then he would show us what he could do. Romeo was his great ambition.
+ One of these days he meant to act that character. He had been studying it
+ for years, he once whispered to me in confidence, and when he appeared in
+ it, he knew he should make a sensation.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Strange to say, his madness did not interfere at all with his superial
+ duties. While on the stage he was docile enough, and did just as he saw
+ the other supers do. It was only off the stage that he put on his
+ comically pathetic dignity; then, if the super-master attempted to tell
+ him what to do he would make a ceremonious bow, and observe, with some
+ hauteur, that Mr. St. George Clement was not accustomed to be instructed
+ how to act his part. He never mixed with the other supers, but would stand
+ apart, talking low to himself, and seeming to see something a long way
+ off. He was the butt of the whole theater, and his half-timid,
+ half-pompous ways afforded us a good deal of merriment; but sometimes
+ there was such a sad look in Mat’s white face, that it made one’s heart
+ ache more than one’s sides.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ His strange figure and vague history haunted my thoughts in a most
+ uncomfortable manner. I used to think of the time when those poor vacant
+ eyes looked out upon the world, full of hope and ambition, and then I
+ wondered if <i>I</i> should ever become a harmless idiot, who thought
+ himself a great actor.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <br /><br />
+ </p>
+ <hr />
+ <p>
+ <a name="link2HCH0007" id="link2HCH0007"> </a>
+ </p>
+ <div style="height: 4em;">
+ <br /><br /><br /><br />
+ </div>
+ <h2>
+ CHAPTER VII. Dressing.
+ </h2>
+ <p>
+ <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0007" id="linkimage-0007"> </a>
+ </p>
+ <div class="figleft" style="width:20%;">
+ <img src="images/9076.jpg" alt="9076 " width="100%" /><br /><a
+ href="images/9076.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
+ </div>
+ <p>
+ E had no dress rehearsal. In the whole course of my professional life, I
+ remember but one dress rehearsal. That was for a pantomime in the
+ provinces. Only half the costumes arrived in time for it. I myself
+ appeared in a steel breast-plate and helmet, and a pair of check trousers;
+ and I have a recollection of seeing somebody else—the King of the
+ Cannibal Islands, I think—going about in spangled tights and a frock
+ coat. There was a want of finish, as one might say, about the affair.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Old stagers, of course, can manage all right without them, but the novice
+ finds it a little awkward to jump from plain dress rehearsals to the
+ performance itself. He has been making love to a pale-faced, middle-aged
+ lady, dressed in black grenadine and a sealskin jacket, and he is quite
+ lost when smiled upon by a high-complexioned, girlish young thing, in blue
+ stockings and short skirts. He finds defying stout, good-tempered Mr.
+ Jones a very different thing to bullying a beetle-browed savage, of
+ appearance something between Bill Sykes and a Roman gladiator, and whose
+ acquaintance he then makes for the first time. Besides, he is not at all
+ sure that he has got hold of the right man.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I, in my innocence, so fully expected at least one dress rehearsal, that,
+ when time went on, and there were no signs of any such thing, I mooted the
+ question myself, so that there should be no chance of its being
+ accidentally overlooked. The mere idea, however, was scouted. It was
+ looked upon as the dream of a romantic visionary.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Don’t talk about dress rehearsals, my boy,” was the reply; “think
+ yourself lucky if you get your dress all right by the night.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The “my boy,” I may remark, by no means implied that the speaker thought
+ me at all youthful. Indeed, seeing that I was eighteen at the time, he
+ hardly could, you know. Every actor is “my boy,” just, as before
+ mentioned, every actress is “my dear.” At first I was rather offended; but
+ when I heard gray-headed stars, and respectable married heads, addressed
+ in the same familiar and unceremonious manner, my dignity recovered
+ itself. It is well our dignity is not as brittle as Humpty Dumpty. How
+ very undignified we should all become, before we had been long in this
+ world.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ As a matter of fact, nobody—at all events, none of the men, with the
+ exception of Chequers—seemed to care in the slightest about what
+ they should wear. “Chequers” was the name we had given to our walking
+ gentleman, as a delicate allusion to the pattern of his overcoat. I think
+ I have already described the leading features in this young man’s
+ private-life apparel. He went in a good deal for dress, and always came
+ out strong. His present ambition was to wear his new ulster in the piece,
+ and this he did, though, seeing that the action of the play was supposed
+ to take place a century ago, it was hardly consistent with historical
+ accuracy. But then historical accuracy was not a strong point with our
+ company, who went more on the principle of what you happened to have by
+ you. At the better class of London theater, everything is now provided by
+ the management, and the actor has only to put on what is given him. But
+ with the theaters and companies into which I went, things were very
+ different; costumes being generally left to each person’s individual
+ discretion. For ordinary modern dress parts, we had to use our own things
+ entirely, and in all cases we were expected to find ourselves in hosiery
+ and boot leather, by which I mean such things as tights and stockings, and
+ the boots and shoes of every period and people; the rest of the costume
+ was provided for us—at all events in London.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ In the provinces, where every article necessary for either a classical
+ tragedy or a pantomime has often to be found by the actor himself, I have
+ seen some very remarkable wardrobe effects. A costume play, under these
+ circumstances, rivaled a fancy dress ball in variety. It was considered
+ nothing out of the way for a father, belonging to the time of George III,
+ to have a son who, evidently from his dress, flourished in the reign of
+ Charles II. As for the supers, when there were any, they were attired in
+ the first thing that came to hand, and always wore their own boots.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Picturesqueness was the great thing. Even now, and at some of the big
+ London houses, this often does duty for congruity and common sense. The
+ tendency to regard all female foreigners as Italian peasant girls, and to
+ suppose that all agricultural laborers wear red waistcoats embroidered
+ with yellow, still lingers on the stage.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Even where costumes were provided, the leading actors, and those who had
+ well-stocked wardrobes of their own, generally preferred to dress the part
+ themselves, and there was nobody who did not supplement the costumier’s
+ ideas to some greater or less extent.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I am speaking only of the men. Actresses nearly always find their own
+ dresses. There is no need of a very varied wardrobe in their case, for in
+ spite of all the talk about female fashions, a woman’s dress is much the
+ same now as in the time of the Mrs. Noahs—at least, so it seems to
+ me, judging from my own ark. The dress that Miss Eastlake wore in the <i>Silver
+ King</i> would, I am sure, do all right for Ophelia; and what difference
+ is there between Queen Elizabeth and Mrs. Bouncer? None whatever, except
+ about the collar and the sleeves; and anybody can alter a pair of sleeves
+ and make a ruff. Why do actresses have so many dresses? As far as mere
+ shape is concerned, one would do for everything, with a few slight
+ alterations. You just tack on a tuck or a furbelow, or take in a flounce,
+ and there you are.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Maybe I’m wrong, though.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ We were told to look in at the costumier’s some time during the week, for
+ him to take our measurement, and those of us who were inexperienced in
+ theatrical costumiers did so, and came away with a hopeful idea that we
+ were going to be sent clothes that would nearly fit us. The majority,
+ however, did not go through this farce, but quietly took what they found
+ in their dressing-rooms on the opening night, and squeezed themselves
+ into, or padded themselves out to it, as the necessity happened to be.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The dressing-rooms (two rows of wooden sheds, divided by a narrow passage)
+ were situated over the property-room, and were reached by means of a
+ flight of steps, which everybody ascended and descended very gingerly
+ indeed, feeling sure each time that the whole concern would come down
+ before they got to the other end. These apartments had been carefully
+ prepared for our reception. The extra big holes in the partitions had been
+ bunged up with brown paper, and the whitewash had been laid on everywhere
+ with a lavishness that betokened utter disregard of the expense; though
+ as, before a week was over, nearly the whole of it had been transferred to
+ our clothes, this was rather a waste, so far as the management was
+ concerned. It was even reported that one of the rooms had been swept out,
+ but I never saw any signs of such a thing having been done myself either
+ then or at any other time, and am inclined to look upon the statement
+ merely in the light of a feeler, thrown out for the purpose of getting at
+ the views of the charwoman. If so, however, it was a failure. She said
+ nothing on hearing it, but looked offended, and evidently considered it a
+ subject that should not have been mentioned to a lady.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ One or two of the doors still hung upon their hinges, and could, with a
+ little maneuvering, be opened or shut; but in most cases they had been
+ wrenched off, and stood propped up against their own posts, like drunken
+ revelers taken home by the cabmen. The only means therefore of getting in
+ or out of the rooms was by lifting them bodily away. It was a pretty sight
+ to watch some stout, short-winded actor, staggering about the place with
+ one of these great doors in his arms, trying to make it stand up. After a
+ series of fearful efforts, he would get it wedged firmly across the
+ passage, and, at that exact moment, some one would be sure to come rushing
+ upstairs in a desperate hurry to get to his room. He could not, of course,
+ pass while the wretched door was in that position, so, with a view of
+ expediting matters, he would lay hold of the other side of it, and begin
+ tugging. The first man, not being able to see what was going on, and
+ thinking larks were being played with him, would plunge about more wildly
+ than ever, and jam the door down on the other fellow’s toes. Then they
+ would both grapple madly with it, one on each side, bump each other’s head
+ with it, crush each other with it against the sides of the passage, and
+ end by all three going down in a heap together, the door uppermost.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The furniture provided, simple though it was, had evidently been selected
+ with a thoughtful desire that everything should be in keeping: it
+ consisted of a few broken chairs. The supply of toilet requisites in hand,
+ too, seemed to be rather limited, but great care and ingenuity had been
+ displayed in their distribution. There not being enough basins and jugs to
+ go all around, these had been divided. Some rooms had a jug but no basin,
+ while others had a basin but no jug, either circumstance being a capital
+ excuse for leaving them without any water. Where there was neither basin
+ nor jug, you could safely reckon on a soap-dish. We were supplied with
+ towels, the allowance being one a fortnight—a small thin one with a
+ big hole in the middle—among six, but we brought our own soap: at
+ least some of us did, and the others, without a moment’s hesitation,
+ appropriated it. One of the rooms was better appointed than the others,
+ being able to boast a washstand, made out of an old cane chair that had
+ lost its back and one of its legs. This article of luxury was the cause of
+ a good deal of bitterness at first among the occupants of the less-favored
+ apartments, but its tendency toward sudden and unexpected collapse soon
+ lessened this feeling of envy. Even its owners ceased to take any pride in
+ it after a while, and it was eventually kicked to pieces in a fit of
+ frenzy by Juveniles; it having been the cause, as far as we could gather
+ from his disjointed blasphemy, of his being compelled to play all the rest
+ of that evening in sopping wet tights.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ A blear-eyed individual used to hang about these rooms of a night. He
+ called himself a dresser, though, for all the dressing he ever did, he
+ might just as well have been a kitchen one. He got a dressing himself once
+ for upsetting a pot of paint over Jim’s supper; but that was the only one
+ he ever, to my knowledge, assisted at. However, he came in handy to go out
+ for sheep’s head and porter.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ But although the dressing-rooms surprised me somewhat, they did not
+ disappoint me. I had built no expectations upon them. I had conjured up no
+ airy visions concerning them. Mine eyes had not hungered to gaze upon
+ their imagined glories. No, the dressing-rooms I bore up under; it was the
+ green room that crushed me. It was about the green room that my brightest
+ hopes had been centered. It was there that I was to flirt with Beauty, and
+ converse with Intellect. I had pictured a brilliantly lighted and spacious
+ apartment with a polished oak floor, strewn with costly rugs; gilded
+ walls, hung with choicest gems of art; and a lofty, painted ceiling. There
+ would be luxurious easy-chairs and couches, upon which to rest ourselves
+ between our artistic labors; a piano, from which fairy fingers would draw
+ forth rapturous strains, while I turned over the music; and carved
+ cabinets, filled with old china, and other rare and precious knickknacks.
+ Heavy curtains, over the door, would deaden the outside din to a droning
+ murmur, which would mingle pleasantly with the low hum of cheerful
+ conversation within; whilst the flickering firelight, flashing upon the
+ Spanish mahogany furniture, and glittering reflected in the many mirrors
+ round the room, would throw a touch of homeliness over what might
+ otherwise have been the almost too dazzling splendor of the place.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ There was no green room. There never had been a green room, I never saw a
+ green room, except in a play, though I was always on the lookout for it. I
+ met an old actor once who had actually been in one, and I used to get him
+ to come and tell me all about it. But even his recollections were tinged
+ with a certain vagueness. He was not quite sure whether it had been at
+ Liverpool or at Newcastle that he had come across it, and at other times
+ he thought it must have been at Exeter. But wherever it was, the theater
+ had been burnt down a good many years ago—about that he was
+ positive.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ On one occasion, I went specially to a big London theater where, I was
+ assured, there really was one, and it cost me four-and-sevenpence in
+ drinks. I found the green room all right, but they said I had better not
+ go in, because it was chock full of properties, and I might break
+ something in the dark.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The truth is that where a green room was originally provided, it has been
+ taken by the star or the manager, as his or her private room, and the rest
+ of the company, are left to spend their off time either in their own
+ dressing-rooms, where they are always in each other’s way, or at the
+ wings, where they catch cold, and are hustled by the scene-shifters.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <br /><br />
+ </p>
+ <hr />
+ <p>
+ <a name="link2HCH0008" id="link2HCH0008"> </a>
+ </p>
+ <div style="height: 4em;">
+ <br /><br /><br /><br />
+ </div>
+ <h2>
+ CHAPTER VIII. My “First Deboo”
+ </h2>
+ <p>
+ <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0008" id="linkimage-0008"> </a>
+ </p>
+ <div class="figleft" style="width:20%;">
+ <img src="images/9086.jpg" alt="9086 " width="100%" /><br /><a
+ href="images/9086.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
+ </div>
+ <p>
+ N Saturday came the opening night, and with it my first appearance before
+ the British public—my “first deboo” as our perruquier called it. In
+ thinking about it beforehand, I had been very much afraid lest I should be
+ nervous; but strange to say, I never experienced stage-fright at any time.
+ I say strange, because, at that period of my life at all events, I was—as
+ true greatness generally is—of a modest and retiring disposition. In
+ my very early youth, I believe, I was not so. I am told that in my frock
+ and pinafore days, I used to stand upon the table, and recite poetry, to
+ the intense gratification of my elderly relatives (ah, the old folks knew
+ how to enjoy themselves, when I was a boy!); and an old nurse of mine
+ always insisted that on one occasion I collected half a crown in an
+ omnibus by my spirited rendering of “Baa, baa, black sheep.” I have no
+ recollection of this performance myself though, and, if it really did take
+ place, where’s the money? This part of the question has never, to my mind,
+ been satisfactorily cleared up.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ But however self-possessed I may have been at eight, I was anything but so
+ at eighteen. Even now, I would not act to a drawing-room full of people
+ for a thousand pounds—supposing the company considered the effort
+ worth that sum. But before a public audience, I was all right, and
+ entirely free from that shyness about which, in private life, my lady
+ friends so bitterly complain. I could not see the people for one thing—at
+ all events, not those beyond the third row of stalls. The blaze of light
+ surrounding one on the stage, and the dimness of the rest of the house,
+ give the audience a shadowy and ghost-like appearance, and make it
+ impossible to see more than a general mass of white faces. As I never
+ noticed the “hundreds upon hundreds of glaring eyes,” they did not trouble
+ me, and I let ‘em glare. The most withering glance in the world won’t
+ crush a blind man.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ If I had been nervous on the first night, I think I should have had a good
+ excuse for it, knowing, as I did, that a select party of my most
+ particular friends, including a few medical students and clergymen’s sons,
+ were somewhere in the theater; having come down, in a body with the
+ intention of giving me a fair start, as they said. They had insisted on coming. I
+ had begged them not to trouble themselves on my account, but they wouldn’t
+ hear of it. They said it would be such a comfort to me to know that they
+ were there. That was their thoughtful kindness. It touched me.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I said: “Look here, you know, if you fellows are going to play the fool,
+ I’ll chuck the whole blessed thing up.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ They said they were not going to play the fool they were coming to see me.
+ I raised no further objections.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ But I checkmated them. I lied to those confiding young men with such an
+ air of simple truthfulness, that they believed me, though they had known
+ me for years. Even now, after all this time, I feel a glow of pride when I
+ think how consummately I deceived them. They knew nothing of the theaters
+ or actors over the water so I just gave them the name of our first old
+ man, and told them that that was the name I had taken. I exaggerated the
+ effect of making-up, and impressed upon them the idea that I should be so
+ changed that they would never believe it was I; and I requested them
+ especially to note my assumed voice. I did not say what character I was
+ going to play, but I let slip a word now and then implying that my mind
+ was running on gray hairs and long-lost children, and I bought a stick
+ exactly similar to the one the poor old gentleman was going to use in the
+ part, and let it lie about.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ So far as I was concerned, the plan was a glorious success, but the effect
+ upon the old man was remarkable. He was too deaf to hear exactly what was
+ going on, but he gathered enough to be aware that he was the object of a
+ certain amount of attention, and that he was evidently giving great
+ satisfaction to a portion of the audience; which latter circumstance
+ apparently surprised him. The dear fellows gave him a splendid reception
+ when he first appeared. They applauded everything he said or did
+ throughout the play, and called for him after every act. They encored his
+ defiance of the villain, and, when he came on without his hat in a snow
+ scene, they all pulled out their pocket handkerchiefs and sobbed aloud. At
+ the end they sent a message round to tell him to hurry up, as they were
+ waiting for him at the stage door, an announcement that had the effect of
+ sending him out by the front way in wonderfully quick time.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ On the whole, that first night passed off pretty well. First nights are
+ trying times at all theaters. The state of excitement behind the scenes is
+ at fever heat, and the stage manager and the head carpenter become
+ positively dangerous. In sensation pieces, where the author plays second
+ fiddle to the scene-shifter, this, of course, is especially the case.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Now—as all modern playgoers know—there are never any hitches
+ or delays on first nights. At all events, not at any of the West-end
+ houses, where everything is always a “triumph of stage management!” But in
+ my time, hitches on first nights were the rule rather than the exception,
+ and when a scene was got through without any special mishap, we felt we
+ were entitled to shake hands with one another. I remember one first night
+ at a London theater where the sensation was to be the fall of a house,
+ crushing the villain (<i>literally</i>) at the end of the fourth act.
+ Great expectations were entertained about this “effect.” It was
+ confidently calculated that the collapse of this building would bring down
+ the house, and so no doubt it would have done, if, owing to a mistake in
+ the cues, the curtain had not come down first. The house fell beautifully,
+ the dummy villain was killed on the spot, and the heroine saved in the
+ nick of time by the hero (who, in these plays, is always just round the
+ corner), but the audience only wondered what all the noise was about, and
+ why no one had struck an attitude at the end of the act.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ But however flat things fell in front, the sensation behind was undoubted.
+ When the excitement had partially subsided, there was an energetic inquiry
+ for the man who had let down the curtain, but it appeared that he had left
+ without stopping even to put on his hat. This did not transpire at the
+ time, however, and, for half an hour afterward, the manager was observed
+ to be wandering about with a crowbar, apparently looking for some one.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The premature rise of curtains is attended with still more ludicrous
+ results. On one occasion, I call to mind, the “rag” went up unexpectedly,
+ and discovered the following scene:
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The king of the country, sitting by the side of his dying son. He is
+ drinking beer out of a bottle. His wig and beard lie beside him on the
+ floor.—The dying son, touching herself up by the aid of a
+ powder-puff and a hand-glass.—The chief priest of the country
+ (myself) eating a Bath bun, while a friendly super buttons him up the
+ back.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Another time I recollect was at a very small provincial theater. There was
+ only one dressing-room in the whole place, and that the ladies had of
+ course. We men had to dress on the stage itself. You can imagine the rest—the
+ yell, the confusion; the wild stampede; the stage looking like the south
+ bank of the Serpentine after 8 P. M.; the rapid descent of the curtain;
+ the enthusiastic delight of the audience. It was the greatest success we
+ had during our stay.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I have a strong opinion, however, that this latter catastrophe was not due
+ so much to accident as to a certain mean villain among the company, whose
+ name, in consideration of his family, I refrain from mentioning.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <br /><br />
+ </p>
+ <hr />
+ <p>
+ <a name="link2HCH0009" id="link2HCH0009"> </a>
+ </p>
+ <div style="height: 4em;">
+ <br /><br /><br /><br />
+ </div>
+ <h2>
+ CHAPTER IX. Birds of Prey.
+ </h2>
+ <p>
+ <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0009" id="linkimage-0009"> </a>
+ </p>
+ <div class="figleft" style="width:20%;">
+ <img src="images/9092.jpg" alt="9092 " width="100%" /><br /><a
+ href="images/9092.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
+ </div>
+ <p>
+ REMAINED in London with my first manager during the whole summer season,
+ which lasted about nine months, and I think that, altogether, it was the
+ happiest period of my stage career. The company was a thoroughly agreeable
+ one. It was a genial, jovial company—a “Here you are, my boy; just
+ in time for a pull” sort of company—a “Hail fellow well met” with
+ everybody else sort of company. Among players, there are none of those
+ caste distinctions such as put an insurmountable barrier between the man
+ who sells coal by the ton and the man who sells it by the hundredweight.
+ “The Profession” is a Republic. Lead and Utility walk about arm-in-arm,
+ and the Star and the Singing Chambermaid drink out of the same pewter. We
+ were all as friendly and sociable together as brothers and sisters—perhaps
+ even more so—and the evening spent in those bare dressing-rooms was
+ the pleasantest part of the day. There was never a dull moment, but always
+ plenty of bustle and fun, plenty of anecdotes, plenty of good stories—ah,
+ they could tell ‘em!—plenty of flirting, and talking, and joking,
+ and laughing.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ What jolly little suppers they were, too, brought in smoking hot from the
+ cook-shop over the way, and in the middle of which we had to be constantly
+ rushing off with our mouths full to rescue some unfortunate female who was
+ always getting into trouble, or to murder an uncle; and how wide we had to
+ open our lips, when eating, lest we should rub the carmine off! How
+ delicious a quart of six ale was after a row with the police, or a
+ struggle with the man who had carried off the girl! How enjoyable a smoke
+ when you had to hide your pipe in your boot each time you heard a
+ footstep, because smoking was strictly prohibited!
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I was not so contented at first as I might have been. I expected about
+ three pounds a week salary after giving my one month gratis, and I did not
+ get it. My agreement, it may be remembered, stipulated that I should
+ receive a “salary according to ability” at the end of that time, but the
+ manager said he did not think there would ever be enough money in the
+ house to pay me at that scale, and suggested nine shillings a week
+ instead, generously giving me the option of either taking it or leaving
+ it. I took it.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I took it because I saw plainly enough that if I didn’t I should get
+ nothing, that he could find twenty other young fellows as good as I to
+ come without any salary at all, and that the agreement was not worth the
+ paper it was written on. I was wroth at the time, but, seeing that the
+ nine shillings was soon raised to twelve, and afterward to fifteen and
+ eighteen, I had really, taking things as they were, nothing to grumble at;
+ and, when I came to know a little more about, professional salaries, and
+ learnt what even the old hands were glad to get, I was very well
+ satisfied.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The company was engaged at summer prices, which are a good deal less than
+ winter ones, and these latter average something less than the wages of an
+ industrious sweep. The public, who read of this actor receiving a hundred
+ and twenty pounds a night, of that actress making eight hundred pounds a
+ week, of a low comedian’s yearly income being somewhere about six thousand
+ pounds, and of a London manager who has actually paid his rates and taxes
+ (so he says), can scarcely have any idea of what existence at the bottom
+ of the stage ladder is like. It is a long ladder, and there are very few
+ who possess a personal experience of both ends. Those who do, however,
+ must appreciate the contrast. Mr. Henry Irving, speaking somewhere of his
+ early days, mentions his weekly salary, I think, as having been
+ twenty-five shillings; and no doubt, at the time, he thought that very
+ good, and can most likely remember when he got less. In the provinces,
+ thirty shillings is a high figure for a good all-round “responsibles,” and
+ for that amount he is expected to be equal to Othello or Sir Peter Teazle
+ at a moment’s notice, and to find his own dress. A “lead” may get three
+ pounds in the winter, and a young “utility” thinks himself very well off
+ indeed on a guinea. Now and again, the latter will get twenty-two or three
+ shillings, but this only leads him into habits of extravagance, and he
+ suffers for it afterward. At the minor London theaters, there being no
+ expenses connected with traveling, etc., the salaries are even less, and
+ from eighteen shillings to two pounds are about the sums <i>promised.</i>
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I do not believe I should ever have got even the salary I did, if it had
+ not been for the extraordinary circumstance of a really successful season,
+ so successful, indeed, that the fact could not be disguised, and, for the
+ last three or four months—excess of good fortune having evidently
+ turned the manager’s head—salaries were paid <i>regularly and in
+ full!</i> This is not romancing, it is plain, sober truth. Such a thing
+ may surprise my readers, especially those who know much about the stage,
+ but it cannot surprise them one fiftieth part so much as it surprised us.
+ It completely bewildered the majority of the company. To have anything
+ more than five shillings paid to them at one time seemed to confuse them,
+ and, on treasury days, they went away from the theater with a puzzled air
+ of affluence and responsibility.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ They had not been accustomed to receiving salaries in that way. What they
+ had been used to was, say, two-and-sixpence one day, sixpence at the
+ beginning of the next night, another twopence after the first act, and
+ eightpence as they were going away.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “That makes one-and-four you’ve had to-night, and two-and-sixpence last
+ night makes three-and-ten, mind.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Yes, but, hang it all, you know, there was four shillings owing from last
+ week, and five-and-sixpence from the week before, that I’ve never had
+ yet.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “My dear boy, for Heaven’s sake don’t talk about last week and the week
+ before. Do let’s keep to one week at a time. We can’t go back to the
+ Flood.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ They had been accustomed to haggle and fight for every penny they got; to
+ dodge and trick and bully for their money in a way that a sixty-percent.
+ money-lender would rather lose principal and interest than resort to; to
+ entreat and clamor for it like Italian beggar children; to hang about
+ after the acting manager like hungry dogs after a cat’s-meat man; to come
+ down to the theater early in the morning and wait all day for him; to
+ watch outside his room by the hour together, so as to rush in the moment
+ the door was opened, and stick there till he threw them, a shilling; to
+ lie in wait at dark corners and spring out upon him as he passed; to run
+ after him upstairs and downstairs; to sneak after him into public-house
+ bars; or to drive him into a corner and threaten to punch his head unless
+ he gave them another sixpence—this last expedient, of course, being
+ possible only when the actor was big and the acting manager little.
+ Fortunately acting managers mostly were little, otherwise the profession
+ would have died of starvation.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ If, as sometimes happened, they left the acting manager alone, and went
+ for the lessee himself, the latter would always refer them to the former,
+ assuming for himself a magnificent indifference about such trivial things
+ as money matters; and he would even play out the farce to the length of
+ sending for the acting manager, and begging that gentleman, as a personal
+ favor to himself, to let Mr. So-and-So be paid without further delay,
+ which the acting manager would gravely promise should be done.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ If it had not filled one with shame for one’s profession, it would have
+ been amusing to listen to some of the comedies nightly played behind the
+ scenes.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Look here,” says the ghost of Hamlet’s father, suddenly darting out of
+ its dressing-room, and confronting the acting manager, who, thinking the
+ coast was clear, has made a dash down the passage; “look here, if I don’t
+ have something, I don’t go on.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “My dear boy,” replies the acting manager, in a tone of suppressed
+ exasperation mingled with assumed sympathy, and glancing furtively about
+ for a chance of escape, “I really cannot. I have not got a penny. I will
+ see you later on, when I shall have some money. I must go now. There’s
+ somebody waiting for me in front.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “I don’t care who is waiting for you in front. I’ve been waiting for you
+ behind for two nights, and I mean to have some money.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “How can I give you any money, when I haven’t got any!” This is the gist
+ of what he says. The embellishments had better not be added here. Realism
+ is an excellent thing in its way, but a Zola must draw the line somewhere.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ After this, seeing that the actor looks determined, he begins to fumble in
+ his pocket, and at last brings out half a crown, and presents it—without
+ compliments.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “This won’t do for me,” says the other, first pocketing the money; “I
+ can’t live for four days on half a crown.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Then the acting manager, with a further string of needless comments,
+ thrusts five shillings into his hand, and rushes past, for he hears a
+ footstep on the stairs, and fears another onslaught.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ It is one of the chief characteristics of both managers and acting
+ managers that they never do have any money. If caught holding it open in
+ their hands, they always, from mere force of habit, say they haven’t got
+ any. A common answer to an appeal is: “I really haven’t got any money at
+ all, my boy; how much do you want?”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The women, of course, could not bully for their money, but they showed a
+ quiet, never-tiring persistence, more effective perhaps than all our
+ storming. Certain it is that on the whole they were more successful than
+ the men, and this might have been attributed to their sex’s irresistible
+ wheedling powers, if one could possibly have imagined such a thing as an
+ acting manager open to humanizing influences.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Nobody grumbled at this state of things. The pleasure and surprise of
+ getting any money at all was so great that the trouble of getting it was
+ forgotten. They were too used to being robbed of all their earnings to
+ mind being defrauded of only a part. An absconding manager was so common a
+ thing that he did not even excite remark. He was regarded as something in
+ the ordinary way of business, and his victims only sighed, when he was
+ gone, and proceeded to look out for somebody else to cheat them.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ And such another was by no means difficult to find in my time: the roll of
+ theatrical managers teemed with thieves. It seemed to me that whenever a
+ man got kicked out of everything else, he engaged as big a blackguard as
+ himself for his acting manager and started a show. It must have been a
+ profitable game, that played by these swindling managers, and there was no
+ risk of any kind attending it. Nobody ever thought of interfering with
+ them. If, by any clumsy accident on their own part, they did get within
+ the clutches of the law, no harm came to them. County Court judges
+ appeared to regard their frauds as mere practical jokes, and the worst
+ they had to fear was a playful admonition of the “Ah well, you mustn’t do
+ it again, you know,” kind.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ In the profession itself, they were received with respect, as men of
+ decided talent in their way. Even the most notorious of them were treated
+ with civility, and care was taken never to mention before them such
+ subjects as dishonesty and knavery, for fear of hurting their feelings.
+ When actors and actresses went from London to Aberdeen to join Mr. Smith’s
+ company, and found on arriving that Mr. Smith was the same man who had
+ already swindled them under half a dozen different names at half a dozen
+ different times and places, what do you think they did? Shook hands
+ cordially with the gentleman, made some pleasant observations about having
+ met before, and hoped, in whispers among themselves, that he would not
+ serve them the same this time! Of course, on the first Saturday night,
+ while they were on the stage, he would run off with all the week’s
+ takings, go to the next town, and advertise for another company under the
+ name of Jones.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ It was no light matter for a man—and worse still for a poor girl—to
+ be left without a penny or a friend in a strange town hundreds of miles
+ from home. The poor players helped each other as well as they could, but
+ provincial Pros, are—or, at least were—not a wealthy class,
+ and, after having paid their fares down, and kept themselves for a week or
+ a fortnight, the most bloated capitalists among them rarely had more than
+ a few shillings remaining in their pockets. Wardrobes had to be left as
+ security with irate landladies, and, until they were redeemed or replaced,
+ no other engagement was possible. Friends, poor enough themselves,
+ goodness knows, had to be begged of. Every kind of valuable, even the
+ wedding ring, had to be pawned, and the return home was made with troubled
+ faces and empty hands.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The misery caused by these scoundrels makes one’s blood boil to think of.
+ I have known men and women forced to tramp home again half across the
+ kingdom, seeking shelter in casual wards when the nights were too cold or
+ wet to sleep under a haystack. I have known actors and actresses obliged
+ to sell the clothes off their backs in order to get fresh stage wardrobes.
+ I have known whole families, after having scraped together every penny
+ they could get, so as to be able to join one of these companies, come back
+ again a few days afterward, utterly destitute, and compelled to sell the
+ few sticks of furniture they had about the place before making another
+ start. I knew one poor fellow, left penniless in Glasgow, with a delicate
+ young wife near her confinement, and they had to come back to London by
+ boat—steerage passage—for, after pledging everything, that was
+ all they had money enough for. It was fearful weather in the middle of
+ January, and the vessel tossed about in the Channel for over a week,
+ landing them just in time for the woman to die at home.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Some managers saved themselves the trouble of running away, and attempted
+ to throw an air of respectability over the proceeding, by paying their
+ company about one-and-sixpence apiece on treasury day, stating that they
+ were very sorry, but that the thing had been a failure; that the houses
+ had been all paper, the expenses unusually heavy, or any other of the
+ stock lies always on hand. And he would think to comfort them by telling
+ them that he himself had lost money, as though that were an unanswerable
+ reason for their losing all theirs!
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ As to these men losing money of their own, that was impossible. They had
+ not any to lose. Whatever they lost was somebody else’s; of that you may
+ be sure. They were men without any capital whatever, and they made use of
+ actors merely as cat’s paws in a speculation where all the risks were with
+ the company, and all the advantages with themselves.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The “share” system was worse even than this. It meant, in plain language,
+ that, if the undertaking failed, the actors shared the losses amongst
+ them, and, if it succeeded, the manager pocketed the profits.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ As a matter of fact, actors were then the least considered, and the most
+ imposed upon of any people connected with the stage. If, at that time, one
+ of my friends had started as a theatrical manager, I might, with a view of
+ saving him unnecessary expense, have given him the following hints:
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “You must pay your bill-poster, or he won’t stick up your bills, or, if he
+ does, it will be topsyturvy. Pay for your advertisements, or they won’t
+ get inserted. Pay your carpenters and sceneshifters, or they’ll make it
+ decidedly uncomfortable for you. Pay your money-takers or they’ll pay
+ themselves; your gas, or it will be cut off; your rent, or you will be
+ turned into the street. Be careful to pay the supers, too, or you’ll find
+ when it is time for them to go on that they’ve all gone off. For goodness
+ sake, don’t keep your charwoman waiting for her wages; you’ll not have
+ five minutes’ quiet until she is satisfied. And if you don’t wish to find
+ yourself in the County Court on Monday morning, pay your call boy on
+ Saturday night. You <i>must</i> pay these people. It is not a case of
+ choice, there is simply no help for you; if you don’t you’ll have to shut
+ up shop in a couple of days. <i>But you needn’t pay any one else</i>. If
+ you have a few shillings left that you really don’t know what to do with,
+ you might divide it among the actors and actresses; but you can please
+ yourself entirely about this. They work just the same whether they are
+ paid or not.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Your author, by the by, is another person you never need pay. Indeed, in
+ his case, it would be positively dangerous to do so. There is no telling
+ what effect such a shock might have upon him.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Your company will, it is true, pester you a good deal for their money,
+ and grumble and threaten, but it never comes to anything, and, after a
+ while, you get used to it, and don’t mind.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ As to actors and actresses taking any actual measures for their own
+ protection, the idea never occurred to them in their wildest dreams. If
+ you suggested such a thing to them, it took their breath away, and you
+ were looked upon as a young man with dangerous revolutionary tendencies
+ that would some day get you into trouble. It was useless for one man to
+ attempt to do anything by himself. I remember an actor summoning a manager
+ who had cheated him out of seven pounds, and, after spending about ten
+ pounds in costs, he got an order for payment by monthly instalments of ten
+ shillings, not one of which, of course, he ever saw. After that, it was
+ next to impossible for him to get a shop (this expression is not slang, it
+ is a bit of local color). No manager who had heard of the affair would
+ engage him.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “A pretty pass the stage will come to,” said they, “if this sort of thing
+ is to become common.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ And the newspapers observed, it was a pity that he (the actor) should wash
+ his dirty linen in public.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I have been careful to use the past tense all through these remarks. Some
+ of them would apply very well to the present time, but on the whole,
+ things have improved since I was on the stage. I am glad of it.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <br /><br />
+ </p>
+ <hr />
+ <p>
+ <a name="link2HCH0010" id="link2HCH0010"> </a>
+ </p>
+ <div style="height: 4em;">
+ <br /><br /><br /><br />
+ </div>
+ <h2>
+ CHAPTER X. I Buy a Basket, and go into the Provinces.
+ </h2>
+ <p>
+ <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0010" id="linkimage-0010"> </a>
+ </p>
+ <div class="figleft" style="width:20%;">
+ <img src="images/9106.jpg" alt="9106 " width="100%" /><br /><a
+ href="images/9106.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
+ </div>
+ <p>
+ UR season at the London theater came to a close early in December, and,
+ about the end of November, we all be gan to take a great interest in the
+ last page but one of “The Actor’s Bible.” Being just before Christmas,
+ which is the busiest period of the theatrical year, there was no
+ difficulty in getting another shop, for “Useful people,” “Clever people,”
+ “Talented people,” “Knockabout people,” “First-class High Kickers,” and
+ “Entire Dramatic Companies,” were wanted here, there, and everywhere. I
+ only answered one advertisement, and was engaged at once; but this, no
+ doubt, was owing to my having taken the precaution, when applying, of
+ enclosing my photograph.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I was to join the company a week before Christmas, at a town in the west
+ of England, where we were to open with pantomine. I was to give the first
+ week for rehearsals at half salary, afterward receiving a guinea a week
+ for “responsibles,” traveling expenses, when we went on tour, being paid
+ by the management.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ And here let me say that a more honorable and courteous gentleman than the
+ manager of this company I never met. We did not even have to ask for our
+ money; we were paid regularly, and to the last farthing, no matter whether
+ business was good or bad. In short, he was an honest man, and as such held
+ a conspicuous position among the theatrical managers of that day.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Previous to leaving London, I got together a small wardrobe. I already had
+ a stock of boots and shoes, and tights, but these were only a few of the
+ things required, and I found it rather an expensive matter before I had
+ done. Varying in price from seven shillings to two pounds, wigs cost the
+ most of anything, and I had to buy seven or eight of these—a “white
+ Court,” a “brown George,” a “flowing ringlets,” a “scratch” (why called
+ scratch I haven’t the faintest notion), a “comic oldman,” a “bald,” and a
+ “flow” for everything that one was not quite sure about.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I picked up a good many odds and ends of costume in Petticoat Lane one
+ Sunday morning. It is a famous place for theatrical wardrobes. I got a
+ complete sailor’s suit for five shillings, and a suit of livery for
+ sixteen. Old-fashioned swallowtails and embroidered waistcoats, knee
+ breeches, blouses, pants, hats, cloaks, and swords were also to be had
+ there in plenty, and at very small cost. My sisters made me some more
+ things (they had become reconciled to my “mad trick” by this time, and had
+ even got to rather like the idea of having an actor in the family), and
+ for the rest I had to go to a regular costumier’s. All these articles,
+ together with a pretty complete modern wardrobe, a bundle of acting
+ editions and other books, a “make-up” box, a dressing-case, writing-case,
+ etc., etc., made a pretty big pile, and, as this pile would be increased
+ rather than diminished as time went on, I determined to get one big
+ traveling basket to hold everything, and have done with it.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I did get a big one. I’ve got it now. It’s downstairs in the washhouse.
+ I’ve never been able to get rid of it from that day to this. I’ve tried
+ leaving it behind when removing into new lodgings, but it has always been
+ sent on after me, generally in a wagon with a couple of men, who,
+ evidently imagining they were restoring me a treasured heirloom, have been
+ disappointed at my complete absence of enthusiasm. I have lured stray boys
+ into the house, and offered them half a crown to take it away and lose it,
+ but they have become frightened, and gone home and told their mothers,
+ and, after that, it has got about in the neighborhood that I have
+ committed a murder. It isn’t the sort of thing you can take out with you
+ on a dark night, and drop down somebody else’s area.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ When I used it, I had to do all my packing in the hall, for it was
+ impossible to get the thing up and down stairs. It always stood just
+ behind the front door, which left about six inches of space for people to
+ squeeze past, and every one that came in got more or less injured. The
+ owner of the house, returning home late at night, would pitch head
+ foremost over it, and begin yelling murder and police, under the
+ impression it was burglars. The girl, coming in with the beer, would bang
+ up against it, and upset the jug over it, when the whole contents would
+ become saturated, and smell like a public-house.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The language used in connection with that basket was simply appalling. It
+ roused railway porters and cabmen to madness, and the savage way in which
+ they rushed upon it used to make my blood run cold. Landladies, who upon
+ my first call had welcomed me with effusion, grew cool and distant when
+ the basket arrived. Nobody had a good word for it. Everywhere, it was
+ hated and despised. I even feared that some day its victims would rise up
+ and sweep it from the face of the earth. But no, it has survived both
+ curses and kicks, and feeling it is hopeless ever to expect to get rid of
+ it, I have made up my mind to be buried in it.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Faithful old basket! it is a good many years since you and I started on
+ our travels that snowy seventeenth of December, and what a row we had with
+ the cabman, ah me! But why did you desert me at Bristol? Why did you———
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ But stay, wherefore should I go on apostrophizing the miserable old thing
+ in this imbecile manner, And now I come to think of it, why too should I
+ sit here sucking the end of my pen and scowling savagely at the lamp, in
+ the agonies of composition, when “copy,” which one of Field & Tuer’s
+ devils is plaguing me for (I do wish they’d send a boy who couldn’t
+ whistle), is lying ready to my hand?
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Before me, borrowed for reference in penning these reminiscences, is a
+ pile of letters, written during my travels to my old pal, Jim. Here’s one:
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Dear Jim:
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “We (the basket and I) had a terribly cold journey down. Lost the basket
+ at Bristol and had to telegraph after it. That basket will be the death of
+ me, I know. There is one advantage, though; it stamps you as an actor at
+ once, and the porters don’t expect any gratuities. Got jolly lodgings
+ here. Nice, big bedroom, use of sitting-room, full attendance, and cooking
+ for four bob a week. Pleasant, homely people, everything as clean as a new
+ pin, and daughter rather pretty.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “I should have written before, but we have been so busy. Two and sometimes
+ three rehearsals a day, to say nothing of painting the scenery, at which
+ we all assisted. We had a crowded house for the opening on Boxing night,
+ and have had very fair ones ever since—all over fifteen pounds.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Sergeant Parry was in the stalls the other night, and a big London actor,
+ whose name I forget just now. We (I say ‘we’ because we all help in
+ everything—two of us went out early a morning or two ago
+ bill-posting: we’ve got a regular billposter, but it’s his week for being
+ drunk)—we, then, had a good deal of trouble training the supers and
+ ballet. You should hear the supers dance: you can do so easily a mile off.
+ They shake the whole building. Both they and the ballet are drawn from the
+ fishing population of the town, and this is their first appearance on any
+ stage. The ballet consists of eight at present, but that is only for the
+ first go off, we shall reduce it to six in a little while. We have also
+ got about a dozen children to do a May-pole dance. It’s a treat to see
+ them. They are paid threepence a night, but they get three shillings’
+ worth of enjoyment out of it for themselves. There is one little girl with
+ the face of an angel—I honestly confess I’ve never seen an angel’s
+ face, and don’t suppose I ever shall till I die, but I think it is that
+ sort of face. She is dressed by seven every evening, and, from then, till
+ she goes on the stage at ten, she is dancing and singing on her own
+ account all over the place. When the May-pole is at last set up, she
+ stands and gazes at it open-mouthed, and laughs to herself with glee. In
+ her excitement, she always dances round the wrong way, and with the wrong
+ boy—but it’s always the same wrong boy, that is what makes it
+ extraordinary. Happy wrong boy, only he doesn’t know he’s happy; he is so
+ small. After the dance, the little boys kiss the little girls. You ought
+ to see this little fairy turn aside and giggle, and push her little lover
+ away. The boys are awfully shy over the business, but the little girls
+ don’t seem a bit afraid. Such is the superiority of woman over man?
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “The pantomime dresses all come from London, and are quite handsome and
+ costly. The piece is <i>Whittington and his Cat</i>, written by the stage
+ manager here, but it is nearly all songs and dances, and what little is
+ spoken is more gag than book. I’ve two songs in one of my parts, and one
+ in the other. I suppose singing is easy enough when you are used to it. It
+ is the orchestra that puts me out, though. I should feel much freer
+ without the music. We give them plenty of topical allusions on burning
+ local questions, being careful, of course, to follow Mr. Pickwick’s
+ advice, and ‘shout with the crowd.’ It fetches them immensely. The
+ enthusiasm created nightly by a reference to the new lamp-post in the High
+ Street is tremendous.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Our low comedian is teaching me dancing, and I practice for about an hour
+ a day. It’s terribly hard work, but I can nearly do a hornpipe already. I
+ want to do that: there is nothing knocks a country audience like a
+ hornpipe.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “The stage manager is a surly fellow, of course: but the manager himself
+ is a brick, and treats us—the actors—with as much respect as
+ if we were stage carpenters; and money is safe. Our leading man has never
+ turned up, so his part has been cut out, and this has not improved the
+ plot. I play a lazy clerk in the opening (it’s like going back to the old
+ Civil Service days), and also prime minister of Tittattoo; having only
+ three minutes for change. I get some legitimate fun out of the prime
+ minister, but the clerk does not require artistic acting. I pretend to go
+ to sleep, and then the clown, who plays another clerk catches me over the
+ head with a clapper, and then I wake up and catch him over the head with
+ the clapper, and then he rushes at me and hits me, and I take the nap from
+ him, and then he takes a nap from me (it wakes you up, this sort of nap, I
+ tell you), after which, we both have a grand struggle with the cat. I fell
+ on my head the other night (lucky it wasn’t any other part of me), and
+ broke a chair in the course of this struggle. I got an encore for that,
+ but didn’t take it. I suppose you might call this knockabout business. I’m
+ glad there are none of my friends here to see me. Acting isn’t all making
+ love in tights, and fighting with a real sword.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “We play a drama before the Panto, on Saturday next. Fancy me as the heavy
+ father, blessing the stage manager and the leading lady, whose united ages
+ amount to about eighty. That is what I am going to do.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “We all dined with the manager on Christmas Day at his hotel, and had a
+ very pleasant evening, keeping it up till four. We are each of us to have
+ a ‘ben.’ before leaving here. I was rather pleased at this when I heard
+ it, but the others displayed no rapture. Our walking gent, told me he
+ never lost less than thirty shillings at his benefits. I don’t think I
+ shall take one. You pay all expenses, and have half the receipts. The
+ attraction about it to my mind, though, is that you can put up what you
+ like, and choose your own parts. I should like to have a try at Romeo.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “I have tasted fame and don’t like it. I have been recognized in the
+ street, and followed by a small crowd of children. They evidently expected
+ me to stop at some corner and sing.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “The men’s dressing-room at the theater is up in the flies, and the only
+ means of communication with it is by a ladder. This got removed the other
+ night, so that our low comedian couldn’t get down. We didn’t know this,
+ however, so the Lord Chamberlain went on and said, ‘Behold your Prince
+ approaches,’ and of course he didn’t come. So the Lord Chamberlain said it
+ again, and the house began to laugh; and then an excited voice from above
+ cried out, ‘Shut up, you fool. Where’s the ladder?’
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Must ‘shut up’ myself now, for it’s half-past seven, and I’m on at eight.
+ I’m very comfortable down here. Write soon, old chap, and give us all the
+ news. Have you seen dear little ————?”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Oh! the rest has nothing to do with theatrical matters.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <br /><br />
+ </p>
+ <hr />
+ <p>
+ <a name="link2HCH0011" id="link2HCH0011"> </a>
+ </p>
+ <div style="height: 4em;">
+ <br /><br /><br /><br />
+ </div>
+ <h2>
+ CHAPTER XI. First Provincial Experiences
+ </h2>
+ <p>
+ <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0011" id="linkimage-0011"> </a>
+ </p>
+ <div class="figleft" style="width:20%;">
+ <img src="images/9116.jpg" alt="9116 " width="100%" /><br /><a
+ href="images/9116.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
+ </div>
+ <p>
+ THOUGHT I was safe for the summer with this company, and congratulated
+ myself upon having found such good quarters. The glorious uncertainty of
+ the boards, however, almost rivals that of the turf. From one reason and
+ another, we broke up without ever going on tour, so that, two months after
+ leaving London, I found myself back there again on my way to the opposite
+ side of the kingdom to join another company.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ But, short as was my first country engagement, it gave me a pretty good
+ insight into what provincial work was like. The following is from one of
+ my letters, written after about a fortnight’s experience of this work,
+ which did not begin until the pantomime was withdrawn:
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “The panto, is over. I wasn’t by any means fond of it, but I’m sorry for
+ one thing. While it was running, you see, there was no study or rehearsal,
+ and we had the whole day free, and could—and did—enjoy
+ ourselves. But no skating parties now! no long walks! no drives! no
+ getting through a novel in one day! We play at least two fresh pieces
+ every night and sometimes three. Most of them here already know their
+ parts as well as they know their alphabet, but everything is new to me,
+ and it is an awful grind. I can never tell until one night what I’m going
+ to play the next. The cast is stuck up by the stage door every evening,
+ and then, unless you happen to have the book yourself, you must borrow the
+ stage manager’s copy, and write out your part. If somebody else wants it,
+ too, and is before you, you don’t get hold of it till the next morning
+ perhaps, and that gives you about eight hours in which to work up a part
+ of say six or seven lengths (a ‘length’ is forty-two lines).
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Sometimes there’s a row over the cast. Second Low Comedy isn’t going to
+ play old men. That’s not his line; he was not engaged to play old men.
+ He’ll see everybody somethinged first.—First Old Man wants to know
+ what they mean by expecting him to play Second Old Man’s part. He has
+ never been so insulted in his life. He has played with Kean and Macready
+ and Phelps and Matthews, and they would none of them have dreamt of asking
+ him to do such a thing.—Juvenile Lead has seen some rum things, but
+ he is blowed if ever he saw the light comedy part given to the Walking
+ Gentleman before. Anyhow he shall decline to play the part given him, it’s
+ mere utility.—Walking Gent, says, well it really isn’t his fault; he
+ doesn’t care one way or the other. He was cast for the part, and took it.—Juvenile
+ Lead knows it isn’t his fault—doesn’t blame him at all—it’s
+ the stage manager he blames. Juvenile Lead’s opinion is that the stage
+ manager is a fool. Everybody agrees with him here; it is our rallying
+ point.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “The general result, when this sort of thing occurs, is that the part in
+ dispute, no matter what it is, gets pitched on to me as ‘Responsibles.’
+ There’s a little too much responsibility about my line. I like the way
+ they put it, too, when they want me to take a particularly heavy part.
+ They call it ‘giving me an opportunity!’ If they mean an opportunity to
+ stop up all night, I agree with them. That is the only opportunity I see
+ about it. Do they suppose you are going to come out with an original and
+ scholarly conception of the character, when you see the part for the first
+ time the night before you play it? Why, you haven’t time to think of the
+ meaning of the words you repeat. But even if you had the chance of
+ studying a character, it would be no use. They won’t let you carry out
+ your own ideas. There seems to be a regular set of rules for each part,
+ and you are bound to follow them. Originality is at a discount in the
+ provinces.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “I have lived to see our stage manager snubbed—sat upon—crushed.
+ He has been carrying on down here, and swelling around to that extent
+ you’d have thought him a station-master at the very least. Now he’s like a
+ bladder with the air let out. His wife’s come.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “The company is really getting quite famili-fied. There are three married
+ couples in it now. Our Low Comedian’s wife is the Singing Chambermaid—an
+ awfully pretty little woman (why have ugly men always got pretty wives?).
+ I played her lover the other night, and we had to kiss two or three times.
+ I rather liked it, especially as she doesn’t make-up much. It isn’t at all
+ pleasant getting a mouthful of powder or carmine.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “I gained my first ‘call’ on Saturday, before a very full house. Of course
+ I was highly delighted, but I felt terribly nervous about stepping across
+ when the curtain was pulled back. I kept thinking, ‘Suppose it’s a
+ mistake, and they don’t want me.’ They applauded, though, the moment I
+ appeared, and then I was all right. It was for a low comedy part—Jacques
+ in <i>The Honeymoon</i>. I always do better in low comedy than in anything
+ else, and everybody tells me I ought to stick to it. But that is just what
+ I don’t want to do. It is high tragedy that I want to shine in. I don’t
+ like low comedy at all. I would rather make the people cry than laugh.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “There is one little difficulty that I have to contend with at present in
+ playing comedy, and that is a tendency to laugh myself when I hear the
+ house laughing. I suppose I shall get over this in time, but now, if I
+ succeed in being at all comical, it tickles me as much as it does the
+ audience, and, although I could keep grave enough if they didn’t laugh,
+ the moment they start I want to join in. But it is not only at my own
+ doings that I am inclined to laugh. Anything funny on the stage amuses me,
+ and being mixed up in it makes no difference. I played Frank to our Low
+ Comedian’s Major de Boots the other night. He was in extra good form and
+ very droll, and I could hardly go on with my part for laughing at him. Of
+ course, when a piece is played often, one soon ceases to be amused; but
+ here, where each production enjoys a run of one consecutive night only,
+ the joke does not pall.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “There is a man in the town who has been to the theater regularly every
+ night since we opened. The pantomime ran a month, and he came all through
+ that. I know I was sick enough of the thing before it was over, but what I
+ should have been sitting it out from beginning to end every evening, I do
+ not like to think. Most of our patrons, though, are pretty regular
+ customers. The theater-going population of the town is small but
+ determined. Well, you see, ours is the only amusement going. There was a
+ fat woman came last week, but she did not stay long. The people here are
+ all so fat themselves they thought nothing of her.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <br /><br />
+ </p>
+ <hr />
+ <p>
+ <a name="link2HCH0012" id="link2HCH0012"> </a>
+ </p>
+ <div style="height: 4em;">
+ <br /><br /><br /><br />
+ </div>
+ <h2>
+ CHAPTER XII. “Mad Mat” Takes Advantage of an Opportunity.
+ </h2>
+ <p>
+ <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0012" id="linkimage-0012"> </a>
+ </p>
+ <div class="figleft" style="width:20%;">
+ <img src="images/9121.jpg" alt="9121 " width="100%" /><br /><a
+ href="images/9121.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
+ </div>
+ <p>
+ HAD a day in London before starting off on my next venture, and so looked
+ in at my old theater. I knew none of the company, but the workmen and
+ supers were mostly the same that I had left there. Dear old Jim was in his
+ usual state and greeted me with a pleasant:
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Hulloa! you seem jolly fond of the place, <i>you</i> do. What the deuce
+ brings here?”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I explained that it was a hankering to see him once again.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Mad Mat” was there, too. The pantomime was still running, and Mat played
+ a demon with a pasteboard head. He was suffering great injustice nightly,
+ so it appeared from what he told me. He was recalled regularly at the end
+ of the scene in which he and his brother demons were knocked about by the
+ low comedian, but the management would not allow him to go on again and
+ bow.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “They are jealous,” whispered Mat to me, as we strolled into <i>The Rodney</i>
+ (it would be unprofessional for an actor to meet a human creature whose
+ swallowing organization was intact, and not propose a drink)—“jealous,
+ that’s what it is. I’m getting too popular, and they think I shall cut
+ them out.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The poor fellow was madder than ever, and I was just thinking so at the
+ very moment that he turned to me and said:
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Do you think I’m mad? candidly now.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ It’s a little awkward when a maniac asks you point-blank if you think he’s
+ mad. Before I could collect myself sufficiently to reply, he continued:
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “People often say I’m mad—<i>I’ve</i> heard them. Even if I am, it
+ isn’t the thing to throw in a gentleman’s teeth, but I’m not—I’m
+ not. <i>You</i> don’t think I am, do you?”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I was that “took aback,” as Mrs. Brown would put it, that, if I had not
+ had the presence of mind to gulp down a good mouthful of whisky and water,
+ I don’t know what I should have done. I then managed to get out something
+ about “a few slight eccentricities, perhaps, but——”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “That’s it,” he cried excitedly, “‘eccentricities ‘—and they call
+ that being mad. But they won’t call me mad long—wait till I’ve made
+ my name. They won’t call me mad then. Mad! It’s <i>they’re</i> the fools,
+ to think a man’s mad when he isn’t. Ha, ha, my boy, I’ll surprise ‘em one
+ day. I’ll show the fools—the dolts—the idiots, who’s been mad.
+ ‘Great genius is to madness close allied.’ Who said that, eh? <i>He</i>
+ was a genius, and they called <i>him</i> mad, perhaps. They’re fools—all
+ fools, I tell you. They can’t tell the difference between madness and
+ genius, but I’ll show them some day—some day.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Fortunately there was nobody else in the bar where we were, or his ravings
+ would have attracted an unpleasant amount of attention. He wanted to give
+ me a taste of his quality then and there in his favorite <i>rôle</i> of
+ Romeo, and I only kept him quiet by promising to call that night and hear
+ him rehearse the part.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ When we were ready to go out, I put my hand in my pocket to pay, but, to
+ my horror, Mat was before me, and laid down the money on the counter. Nor
+ would any argument induce him to take it up again. He was hurt at the
+ suggestion even, and reminded me that I had stood treat on the last
+ occasion—about three months ago. It was impossible to force the
+ money on him. He was as proud on his six shillings a week as Croesus on
+ sixty thousand a year, and I was compelled to let him have his way. So he
+ paid the eightpence, and then we parted on the understanding that I was to
+ see him later on at his “lodgings.”—“They are not what I could
+ wish,” he explained, “but you will, I am sure, overlook a few bachelor
+ inconveniences. The place suits me well enough—for the present.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Hearing a lunatic go through Romeo is not the pleasantest way of passing
+ the night, but I should not have had pluck enough to disappoint the poor
+ fellow, even if I had not promised, and, accordingly, after having spent
+ the evening enjoying the unusual luxury of sitting quiet, and seeing,
+ other people excite themselves for <i>my</i> amusement, I made my way to
+ the address Mat had given me.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The house was in a narrow court at the back of the New Cut. The front door
+ stood wide open, though it was twelve o’clock, and a bitterly cold night.
+ A child lay huddled up on the doorstep, and a woman was sleeping in the
+ passage. I stumbled over the woman, groping my way along in the dark. She
+ seemed used to being trodden upon though, for she only looked up
+ unconcernedly, and went to sleep again at once. Mat had told me his place
+ was at the very top, so I went on until there were no more stairs, and
+ then I looked round me. Seeing a light coming from one of the rooms, I
+ peered in through the halfopen door, and saw a fantastic object, decked in
+ gaudy colors and with long, flowing hair, sitting on the edge of a
+ broken-down bedstead. I didn’t know what to make of it at first, but it
+ soon occurred to me that it must be Mat, fully made-up as Romeo, and I
+ went in.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I thought, when I had seen him a few hours before, that he looked queer—even
+ for him—but now, his haggard face daubed with paint, and his great
+ eyes staring out of it more wildly than ever, he positively frightened me.
+ He held out his hand, which was thin and white, but remained seated.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Excuse my rising,” he said slowly, in a weak voice, “I feel so strange. I
+ don’t think I can go through the part to-night. So sorry to have brought
+ you here for nothing, but you must come and see me some other time.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I got him to lie down on the bed just as he was, and covered him with the
+ old rags that were on it. He lay still for a few minutes, then he looked
+ up and said:
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “I won’t forget you, L———, when I’m well off. You’ve
+ been friendly to me when I was poor: I shan’t forget it, my boy. My
+ opportunity will soon come now—very soon, and then———”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ He didn’t finish the sentence, but began to murmur bits of the part to
+ himself, and in a little while he dropped asleep. I stole softly out, and
+ went in search of a doctor. I got hold of one at last, and returned with
+ him to Mat’s attic. He was still asleep, and after arranging matters as
+ well as I could with the doctor, I left, for I had to-be on my way early
+ in the morning.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I never expected to see Mat again, and I never did. People who have lived
+ for any length of time on six shillings a week don’t take long to die when
+ they set about it, and two days after I had seen him, Mad Mat’s
+ opportunity came, and he took it.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <br /><br />
+ </p>
+ <hr />
+ <p>
+ <a name="link2HCH0013" id="link2HCH0013"> </a>
+ </p>
+ <div style="height: 4em;">
+ <br /><br /><br /><br />
+ </div>
+ <h2>
+ CHAPTER XIII. Lodgings and Landladies.
+ </h2>
+ <p>
+ <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0013" id="linkimage-0013"> </a>
+ </p>
+ <div class="figleft" style="width:20%;">
+ <img src="images/9126.jpg" alt="9126 " width="100%" /><br /><a
+ href="images/9126.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
+ </div>
+ <p>
+ HEY charged me extra for the basket on the Great Eastern Line, and I have
+ hated that company ever since. Of course it was over weight, but actors
+ are good customers to the railways, and a little excess luggage is not, as
+ a rule, too closely inquired into. The myrmidons at Bishopsgate, however,
+ were inexorable. It was in vain I tried to persuade them that the thing
+ was “as light as a feather.” They insisted on sticking it up edgeways on a
+ shaky iron plate, and wobbling something up and down a bar; afterward
+ giving me an absurd bit of paper with “4s. 4d.” on it, which, I explained,
+ I didn’t want, but which they charged me for just as though I had
+ specially ordered it.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ My destination was a small market-town in the eastern counties, where I
+ arrived about mid-day. It was the most dead and alive place I have ever
+ been to. All eastern county towns are more or less dead and alive—particularly
+ the former—but this one was dreariness personified. Not a soul was
+ to be seen outside the station. In the yard stood a solitary cab to which
+ was attached a limp horse that, with head hanging down and knees bent out,
+ looked the picture of resigned misery; but the driver had disappeared—washed
+ away by the rain, perhaps, which was pouring steadily down. I left my
+ belongings in the cloak room, and walked straight to the theater. I passed
+ two or three green posters on my way, headed:
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Theater Royal,” and setting forth that “——— ————,
+ the World-Renowned Tragedian from Drury Lane,” would give his magnificent
+ impersonations of <i>Richard III.</i> and <i>The Idiot Witness</i> that
+ night, and begging the inhabitants, for their own sakes, to “come early.”
+ I found the whole company assembled on the stage, and looking as dismal as
+ the town itself. They all had colds in the head, including the manager,
+ “the World-Renowned Tragedian from Drury Lane,” who had the face-ache into
+ the bargain.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ After a rough and ready rehearsal of the tragedy, melodrama, and burlesque
+ to be played that evening (I had had all my parts sent me by post before
+ joining), I started off by myself to look for lodgings, as I had come to
+ the conclusion that my own society would, on the whole, be less depressing
+ than that of any gentleman in the company.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Lodging hunting is by no means the most pleasant business connected with
+ touring. It always means an hour or two’s wandering up and down back
+ streets, squinting up at windows, knocking at doors, and waiting about on
+ doorsteps. You are under the impression, all the while that the entire
+ street is watching you, and that it has put you down as either a begging
+ letter impostor, or else as the water-rate man, and despises you
+ accordingly. You never find the place that suits you until you have been
+ everywhere else. If you could only begin at the end and work backwards,
+ the search would be over at once. But, somehow or other, you can never
+ manage to do this, and you have always to go through the same routine.
+ First of all, there are the places that ask about twice as much as you are
+ prepared to give, and at which you promise to call again when you have
+ seen your friend. Then there are the places that are just taken, or just
+ going to be taken, or just not to be taken. There are the places where you
+ can have half a bed with another gentleman, the other gentleman generally
+ being the billiard-marker at the hotel opposite, or some journeyman
+ photographer. There are the people who won’t take you because you are not
+ a married couple, and the people who won’t take you because you are a
+ play-actor, and the people who want you to be out all day, and the people
+ who want you to be in by ten. Added to these, there is the slatternly
+ woman, who comes to the door, followed by a mob of dirty children, that
+ cling to her skirts and regard you with silent horror, evidently thinking
+ that the “big ugly man,” so often threatened, has really come this time.
+ Or the fool of a husband, who scratches his head and says you had better
+ call again, when his “missus” is in. Or, most aggravating of all, the
+ woman who stands on the step, after you have gone, and watches you down
+ the street, so that you don’t like to knock anywhere else.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ All this I was prepared for when I started, but no such ordeal was in
+ store for me. The difficulty of selecting lodgings was got rid of
+ altogether in the present case by there simply being no lodgings of any
+ kind to be let. It had evidently never occurred to the inhabitants of this
+ delightful spot that any human being could possibly desire to lodge there,
+ and I don’t wonder at it. There were a couple of inns in the High Street,
+ but country actors cannot afford inns, however moderate, and of “Furnished
+ Apartments” or “Bed Rooms for Single Gentlemen” there were none. I
+ explored every street in the town without coming across a single bill, and
+ then, as a last resource, I went into a baker’s shop to inquire. I don’t
+ know why bakers should be better acquainted than any other tradesmen with
+ the private affairs of their neighbors, but that they are has always been
+ my impression, or, at least, <i>had</i> been up till then, when it
+ received a rude blow. I asked two bakers, and both of them shook their
+ heads, and knew of no one who let lodgings. I was in despair, and the High
+ Street, when I glanced up and saw a very pleasant face smiling at me from
+ the door of a milliner’s shop. Somehow, the sight of it inspired me with
+ hope. I smiled back, and—
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Could the owner of the pleasant face recommend me to any lodgings?”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The owner of the pleasant face looked surprised. “Was Monsieur going to
+ stop in the town?” On Monsieur explaining that he was an actor, Madame was
+ delighted, and smiled more pleasantly than ever. “Madame did so love the
+ theater. Had not been to one for, Oh! so long time; not since she did
+ leave Regent Street—the Regent Street that was in our London. Did
+ Monsieur know London? Had been to heaps and heaps of theaters then. And at
+ Paris! Ah! Paris! Ah, the theaters at Paris! Ah! But there was nothing to
+ go to here. It was so quiet, so stupid, this town. We English, we did seem
+ so dull. Monsieur, son mari, he did not mind it. He had been born here. He
+ did love the sleepiness—the what we did call the monotony. But
+ Madame, she did love the gayety. This place was, oh, so sad.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Here Madame clasped her hands—pretty little hands they were, too—and
+ looked so piteous, that Monsieur felt, strongly inclined to take her in
+ his arms and comfort her. He, however, on second thoughts, restrained his
+ generous impulse.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Madame then stated her intention to go to the theater that very evening,
+ and requested to know what was to be played.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ On Monsieur informing her that “————, the
+ World-Renowned Tragedian from Drury Lane, would give his magnificent
+ impersonations of <i>Richard III.</i> and <i>The Idiot Witness</i>,” she
+ seemed greatly impressed, and hoped it was a comedy. Madame loved
+ comedies. “To laugh at all the fun—to be made merry—that was
+ so good.” Monsieur thought that Madame would have plenty to laugh at in
+ the magnificent impersonations of Richard III. and The Idiot Witness, even
+ if she found the burlesque a little heavy, but he didn’t say so.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Then Madame remembered Monsieur was looking for lodgings. Madame put the
+ tip of her forefinger in her mouth, puckered her brows, and looked
+ serious. “Yes, there was Miss Kemp, she had sometimes taken a lodger. But
+ Miss Kemp was so strict, so particular. She did want every one to be so
+ good. Was Monsieur good?” This with a doubting smile.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Monsieur hazarded the opinion that having gazed into Madame’s eyes for
+ five minutes was enough to make a saint of any man. Monsieur’s opinion was
+ laughed at, but, nevertheless notwithstanding, Miss Kemp’s address was
+ given him, and thither he repaired, armed with the recommendation of his
+ charming little French friend.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Miss Kemp was an old maid, and lived by herself in a small three-cornered
+ house that stood in a grass-grown courtyard behind the church. She was a
+ prim old lady, with quick eyes and a sharp chin. She looked me up and down
+ with two jerks of her head, and then supposed that I had come to the town
+ to work.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “No,” I replied, “I had come to play. I was an actor.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Oh,” said Miss Kemp. Then added severely, “You’re married.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I repudiated the insinuation with scorn.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ After that, the old lady asked me inside, and we soon became friends. I
+ can always get on with old ladies. Next to young ones, I like them better
+ than any other class of the community. And Miss Kemp was a very nice old
+ lady. She was as motherly as a barnyard hen, though she was an old maid. I
+ suggested going out again to buy a chop for my tea, and to fetch my
+ basket, but she would not hear of it.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Bless the child,” said she, “do run and take off those wet boots. I’ll
+ send some one for your luggage.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ So I was made to take off my coat and boots, and to sit by the fire, with
+ my feet wrapped up in a shawl, while Miss Kemp bustled about with toast
+ and steaks, and rattled the tea things and chatted.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I only stopped a week with Miss Kemp, that being the length of time the
+ company remained in the town, but it will be a long while before I forget
+ the odd little old maid with her fussy ways and kindly heart. I can still
+ see, in memory, the neat kitchen with its cheerful fire in polished grate,
+ before which sleek purring Tom lies stretched. The old-fashioned lamp
+ burns brightly on the table, and, between it and the fire, sits the little
+ old lady herself in her high-backed chair, her knitting in her hands and
+ her open Bible on her knee. As I recall the picture, so may it still be
+ now, and so may it still remain for many a year to come.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I must have been singularly fortunate in regard to landladies, or else
+ they are a very much maligned class. I have had a good deal to do with
+ them, and, on the whole, I have found them kind, obliging, and the very
+ reverse of extortionate. With country landladies, especially, I have ever
+ been most comfortable, and even among London ones, who, as a class, are
+ not so pleasant as their provincial sisters, I have never, as yet, come
+ across a single specimen of that terrible she-dragon about which I have
+ heard so much. To champion the cause of landladies is rather an
+ extraordinary proceeding, but, as so much is said against them, I think it
+ only fair to state my own experience. They have their faults. They bully
+ the slavey (but then the slavey sauces them, so perhaps it is only tit for
+ tat), they will fry chops, and they talk enough for an Irish M. P. They
+ persist in telling you all their troubles, and they keep you waiting for
+ your breakfast while they do it. They never tire of recounting to you all
+ they have done for some ungrateful relative, and they bring down a
+ drawerful of letters on the subject, which they would like you to cast
+ your eye through. They bore you to death every day, too, with a complete
+ record of the sayings and doings of some immaculate young man lodger they
+ once had. This young man appears to have been quite overweighted with a
+ crushing sense of the goodness of the landlady in question. Many and many
+ a time has he said to her, with tears in his eyes: “Ah, Mrs. So-and-so,
+ you have been more than a mother to me”; and then he has pressed her hand,
+ and felt he could never repay her kindness. Which seems to have been the
+ fact, for he has generally gone off, in the end, owing a pretty
+ considerable sum.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <br /><br />
+ </p>
+ <hr />
+ <p>
+ <a name="link2HCH0014" id="link2HCH0014"> </a>
+ </p>
+ <div style="height: 4em;">
+ <br /><br /><br /><br />
+ </div>
+ <h2>
+ CHAPTER XIV. With a Stock Company,
+ </h2>
+ <p>
+ <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0014" id="linkimage-0014"> </a>
+ </p>
+ <div class="figleft" style="width:20%;">
+ <img src="images/9135.jpg" alt="9135 " width="100%" /><br /><a
+ href="images/9135.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
+ </div>
+ <p>
+ WAS most miserable with the company I had now joined. What it was like may
+ be gathered from the following:
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Dear Jim: If I stop long with this company I shall go mad (not very far
+ to go, perhaps you’ll say!). I must get out of it soon. It’s the most
+ wretched affair you could possibly imagine. Crummies’s show was a <i>Comédie
+ Française</i> in its arrangements compared with this. We have neither
+ stage-manager nor acting-manager. If this were all, I shouldn’t grumble;
+ but we have to do our own bill posting, help work the scenes, and take the
+ money at the doors—not an arduous task this last. There are no
+ ‘lines.’ We are all ‘responsibles,’ and the parts are distributed among us
+ with the utmost impartiality. In the matter of salary, too, there is the
+ same charming equality; we all get a guinea. In theory, that is: in
+ reality, our salaries vary according to our powers of nagging; the maximum
+ ever attained by any one having been fifteen shillings. I wonder we got
+ any, though, considering the audiences we play to. The mere sight of the
+ house gives one the horrors every night. It is so dimly lighted (for, to
+ save expense, the gas is only turned a quarter on) that you can hardly see
+ your way about, and so empty, that every sound echoes and re-echoes
+ through the place, till it seems as though a dozen people are talking in a
+ scene where there are only two. You walk on the stage, and there in front
+ of you are, say, twenty people dotted about the pit, a few more are
+ lolling listlessly over the gallery rails, and there are two or three
+ little groups in the boxes, while, as a background to these patches of
+ unhappy humanity, there stares out the bare boards and the dingy
+ upholstery. It is impossible to act among such surroundings as these. All
+ you can do#is to just drag through your part, and the audience, who one
+ and all have evidently been regretting from the very first that they ever
+ came—a fact they do not even attempt to disguise—are as glad
+ when it is over as you are. We stop a week in each town and play the same
+ pieces, so, of course, there is no study or rehearsal now. But I wish
+ there were; anything would be better than this depressing monotony.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “I might have guessed what sort of a company it was by his sending me the
+ parts he did. I play Duncan, Banquo, Seyton, and a murderer in <i>Macbeth</i>;
+ Tybalt and the Apothecary in <i>Romeo and Juliet</i>; and Laertes, Osric,
+ and the Second Player in <i>Hamlet</i>—and so on all through. None
+ of us play less than two parts in the same piece. No sooner are we killed
+ or otherwise disposed of as one person, than we are up again as somebody
+ else, and that, almost before we have time to change our clothes. I
+ sometimes have to come on as an entirely new party with no other change
+ than the addition of a beard. It puts me in mind of the nigger who
+ borrowed his master’s hat with the idea of passing himself off as ‘one of
+ them white folks.’ I should think that if the audience—when there
+ are any—attempt to understand the play, they must have a lively time
+ of it; and if they are at all acquainted with our National Bard, they must
+ be still more puzzled. We have improved so on the originals, that the old
+ gentleman himself would never recognize them. They are one-third
+ Shakespeare, and two-thirds the Renowned Tragedian from Drury Lane.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Of course, I have not had my railway fare, which I was promised after
+ joining, and I’ve given up asking for it now.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “I got a chance of changing my quarters after a few weeks, and I need
+ scarcely say I jumped at it. We passed through a big town that was the
+ headquarters of an established circuit company, and, hearing that one of
+ their ‘responsibles’ had just left, I went straight to the manager,
+ offered myself, and was accepted. Of course, in the usual way, I ought to
+ have given a fortnight’s notice to the other manager, but, under the
+ circumstances, this could hardly have been insisted upon. So I made the
+ Renowned Tragedian from Drury Lane a present of all the arrears of salary
+ he owed me—at which generosity on my part we both grinned—and
+ left him at once. I don’t think he was very sorry. It saved him a few
+ shillings weekly, for my place was filled by one of the orchestra, that
+ body being thereby reduced to two.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The company of which I was now a member was one of the very few stock
+ companies then remaining in the provinces. The touring system had fairly
+ set in by this time, and had, as a consequence, driven out the old
+ theatrical troupes that used to act on from year to year within the same
+ narrow circle, and were looked upon as one of the institutions of the
+ half-dozen towns they visited.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I am not going to discuss here the rival merits or demerits of the two
+ systems. There are advantages and disadvantages to be urged on both sides,
+ not only from the “school” point of view, but also as regards the personal
+ interests and comfort of the actor. I will merely say, with reference to
+ the latter part of the question, that I myself preferred the bustle and
+ change of touring. Indeed, in spite of all the attending anxieties and
+ troubles, it was in this constant change—this continual shifting of
+ the panorama of scenes and circumstances by which I was surrounded—that,
+ for me, the chief charm of stage-life lay. Change of any kind is always
+ delightful to youth; whether in big things or in little ones. We have not
+ been sufficiently seasoned by disappointment in the past, then, to be
+ skeptical as to all favors the Future may be holding for us in her hand. A
+ young man looks upon every change as a fresh chance. Fancy points a more
+ glowing fortune for each new departure, and at every turn in the road he
+ hopes to burst upon his goal.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ At each new town I went to, and with each new company I joined, new
+ opportunities for the display of my talents would arise. The genius that
+ one public had ignored, another would recognize and honor. In minor
+ matters, too, there was always pleasant expectation. Agreeable companions
+ and warm friends might be awaiting me in a new company, the lady members
+ might be extraordinarily lovely, and money might be surer. The mere
+ traveling, the seeing strange towns and country, the playing in different
+ theaters, the staying in different lodgings, the occasional passing
+ through London and looking in at home, all added to the undoubted delight
+ I felt in this sort of life, and fully reconciled me to its many
+ annoyances.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ But being fixed in a dull country town for about six months at a stretch,
+ with no other recreation than a game of cards, or a gossip in an inn
+ parlor, I didn’t find at all pleasant. To the staid, or to the married
+ members, I daresay it was satisfactory enough. They had, some of them,
+ been born in the company, and had been married in the company, and they
+ hoped to die in the company. They were known throughout the circuit. They
+ took an interest in the towns, and the towns took an interest in them, and
+ came to their benefits. They returned again and again to the same
+ lodgings. There was no fear of their forgetting where they lived, as
+ sometimes happened to a touring actor on his first day in a new town. They
+ were not unknown vagabonds wandering houseless from place to place; they
+ were citizens and townsmen, living among their friends and relations.
+ Every stick of furniture-in their rooms was familiar to them. Their
+ lodgings were not mere furnished apartments, but “home,” or as near to a
+ home as a country player could ever expect to get No doubt they, as madame
+ would have said, “did love the sleepiness”; but I, an energetic young
+ bachelor, found it “oh! so sad.” Sad as I might have thought it, though, I
+ stayed there five months, during which time I seem to have written an
+ immense number of letters to the long-suffering Jim. All that is worth
+ recording here, however, is contained in the following extracts:
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “.....The work is not so hard now. It was very stiff at first, as we
+ changed the bill about every other night, but I got hold of the <i>répertoire</i>
+ and studied up all the parts I knew I should have to play. It still comes
+ heavy when there is a benefit, especially when anything modern is put up,
+ as, then, having a good wardrobe, I generally get cast for the
+ ‘gentlemanly party,’ and that is always a lengthy part. But what makes it
+ still more difficult, is the way everybody gags. Nobody speaks by the book
+ here. They equivocate, and then I am undone. I never know where I am. The
+ other day, I had a particularly long part given me to play the next
+ evening. I stayed up nearly all night over it. At rehearsal in the
+ morning, the light comedy, with whom I was principally concerned, asked me
+ how I’d got on. ‘Well, I think I shall know something about it,’ I
+ answered. ‘At all events, I’ve got the cues perfect.’ ‘Oh! don’t bother
+ yourself about cues,’ replied he cheerfully. ‘You won’t get a blessed cue
+ from me. I use my own words now. Just you look out for the sense.’
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “I did look out for the sense, but I’ll be hanged if I could see any in
+ what he said. There was no doubt as to the words being his own. How I got
+ through with it I don’t know. He helped me with suggestions when I stuck,
+ such as: ‘Go on, let off your bit about a father,’ or ‘Have you told me
+ what Sarah said?’
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Get me a pair of second-hand tights at Stinchcombe’s, will you, and have
+ them washed and sent down. Any old things will do. I only want them to
+ wear underneath others. I have to appear in black tights next Monday. They
+ make your legs look so awfully thin, and I’m not too stout in those parts
+ as it is.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “I have got hold of an invaluable pair of boots (well, so they ought to
+ be, I paid fifteen shillings for them). Pulled up to their full height,
+ they reach nearly to the waist, and are a pair of American jack-boots;
+ doubled in round the calf, and with a bit of gold lace and a tassel pinned
+ on, they are hessians; with painted tops instead of the gold lace and
+ tassel, they are hunting boots; and wrinkled down about the ankle, and
+ stuck out round the top, they are either Charles or Cromwell, according to
+ whether they are ornamented with lace and a bow, or left plain. You have
+ to keep a sharp eye on them, though, for they have a habit of executing
+ changes on their own account unbeknown to you, so that while one of your
+ legs is swaggering about as a highwayman, the other is masquerading as a
+ cavalier. We dress the pieces very well indeed here. There is an excellent
+ wardrobe belonging to the theater.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “I do wish it were possible to get the programmes made out by intelligent
+ men, instead of by acting-managers. If they do ever happen, by some
+ strange accident, not to place your name opposite the wrong character,
+ they put you down for a part that never existed; and if they get the other
+ things right, they spell your name wrong.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “I say, here’s a jolly nice thing, you know; they’ve fined me half a crown
+ for not attending rehearsal. Why, I was there all the while, only I was
+ over the way, and when I came back they had finished. That’s our fool of a
+ prompter, that is; he knew where I was. I’ll serve him out.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <br /><br />
+ </p>
+ <hr />
+ <p>
+ <a name="link2HCH0015" id="link2HCH0015"> </a>
+ </p>
+ <div style="height: 4em;">
+ <br /><br /><br /><br />
+ </div>
+ <h2>
+ CHAPTER XV. Revenge
+ </h2>
+ <p>
+ <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0015" id="linkimage-0015"> </a>
+ </p>
+ <div class="figleft" style="width:20%;">
+ <img src="images/9144.jpg" alt="9144 " width="100%" /><br /><a
+ href="images/9144.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
+ </div>
+ <p>
+ ORE extracts:
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “... I’m afraid I shall have to trouble you to get me another wig. I
+ thought my own hair would do for modern juvenile parts, but it isn’t
+ considered light enough. ‘Be virtuous and you will have hair the color of
+ tow,’ seems to be the basis of the whole theatrical religion. I wish I
+ could be as economical in wigs as our First Old Man is. He makes one do
+ for everything. He wears it the right way when he is a serious old man,
+ and hind part foremost when he wants to be funny.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Talking of wigs puts me in mind of an accident our manager had the other
+ night. He is over fifty, but he fancies he is a sort of Charles Mathews,
+ and will play young parts. So on Saturday evening he came on as the lover
+ in an old English comedy, wearing one of those big three-cornered hats.
+ ‘Who is that handsome young man with the fair hair?’ says the heroine to
+ her confidante. ‘Oh, that, why that is Sir Harry Monfort, the gallant
+ young gentleman who saved the Prince’s life. He is the youngest officer in
+ the camp, but already the most famous.’ ‘Brave boy.’ murmurs the heroine;
+ ‘I would speak a word with him. Call him hither, Lenora.’ So Lenora called
+ him thither, and up he skipped. When the heroine spoke to him, he was
+ quite overcome with boyish bashfulness. ‘Ah, madam,’ sighed he, taking off
+ his hat and making a sweeping bow—‘What the devil’s the matter? What
+ are they laughing at? Oh my———’
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “He had taken his wig off with his hat, and there was the ‘brave boy’s’
+ poor old bald head exposed to the jeers of a ribald house.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “I’d half a mind to rush up to town last week. I was out of the bill for
+ three nights running. But the mere railway fare would have cost me nearly
+ half a week’s salary, so I contented myself with a trip over to R————
+ and a look in at the show there. I met W———. He’s
+ married little Polly ————, who was walking lady at———.
+ She is up at Aberdeen now, and he hasn’t seen her for over three months.
+ Rather rough on a young couple who haven’t been married a year. The old
+ ones bear up against this sort of thing very well indeed, but poor W————
+ is quite upset about it.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “They kept together as long as they could, but business got so bad that
+ they had to separate, and each take the first thing that offered.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “You remember my telling you how our prompter got me fined for not
+ attending a rehearsal some time ago. I said I would serve him out, and so
+ I have. Or rather <i>we</i> have—I and one of the others who had a
+ score against him—for he’s a bumptious, interfering sort of fellow,
+ and makes himself disagreeable to everybody. He is awful spoons on a Miss
+ Pinkeen, whose father keeps an ironmonger’s shop next door to the theater.
+ The old man knows nothing about it, and they are up to all kinds of dodges
+ to get a word with each other. Now, one of our dressing-room windows is
+ exactly opposite their staircase window, and he and the girl often talk
+ across; and, once or twice, he has placed a plank between the two windows,
+ and crawled along it into the house when her father has been away. Well,
+ we got hold of a bit of this girl’s writing the other day, and forged a
+ letter to him, saying that her father had gone out, and that she wanted to
+ see him very particularly, and that he was to come over through the window
+ and wait on the landing till she came upstairs. Then, just before
+ rehearsal, we went out and gave a stray boy twopence to take it in to him.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Of course no sooner did we see that he was fairly inside the house, and
+ out of sight, than we pulled the board in and shut our window. It got
+ quite exciting on the stage as time went by. ‘Where’s————?’
+ fumed the stage manager. ‘Where the devil’s———? It’s too
+ bad of him to keep us all waiting like this.’ And then the call-boy was
+ sent round to four public houses, and then to his lodgings; for he had got
+ the book in his pocket, and we couldn’t begin without him. ‘Oh, it’s too
+ bad of him to go away and stop like this,’ cried the stage manager again
+ at the end of half an hour. I’ll fine him five shillings for this. I won’t
+ be played the fool with.’ In about an hour, he came in looking thunder and
+ lightning. He wouldn’t give any explanation. All we could get out of him
+ was, that if he could find out who’d done it, he’d jolly well wring his
+ neck.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “From what the ironmonger’s boy told our call-boy, it seems that he waited
+ about three-quarters of an hour on the stairs, not daring to move, and
+ that then the old man came up and wanted to know what he was doing there.
+ There was a regular scene in the house, and the girl has sworn that she’ll
+ never speak to him again for getting her into a row, and about four of her
+ biggest male relatives have each expressed a firm determination to break
+ every bone in his body; and the boy adds, that from his knowledge of them
+ they are to be relied upon. We have thought it our duty to let him know
+ these things.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I find nothing further of any theatrical interest, until I come to the
+ following, written about four months after the date of my entering the
+ company:
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “I was far too busy to write last week. It’s been something awful. We’ve
+ got ———— * down here for a fortnight. His list
+ consists of eighteen pieces—eight ‘legitimate,’ five dramas, four
+ comedies, and a farce; and we only had a week in which to prepare. There
+ have been rehearsals at ten, and rehearsal at three, and rehearsals at
+ eleven, after the performance was over. First I took all the parts given
+ me, and studied them straight off one after the other. Then I found I’d
+ got them all jumbled up together in my head, and the more I tried to
+ remember what belonged to which, the more I forgot which belonged to what.
+ At rehearsal I talked Shakespeare in the farce, and put most of the farce
+ and a selection from all the five dramas into one of the comedies. And
+ then the stage manager went to put me right, and then <i>he</i> got mixed
+ up, and wanted to know if anybody could oblige him by informing him what
+ really was being rehearsed; and the Leading Lady and the First Low Comedy
+ said it was one of the dramas, but the Second Low Comedy, the Soubrette,
+ and the Leader of the Orchestra would have it was a comedy, while the rest
+ of us were too bewildered to be capable of forming any opinion on any
+ subject.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ *A “Star” from London,
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “The strain has so upset me, that I don’t even now know whether I’m
+ standing on my head or my heels; and, our First Old Man—but I’ll
+ come to him later on. My work has been particularly heavy, for, in
+ consequence of a serious accident that has happened to our Walking
+ Gentleman, I’ve had to take his place. He was playing a part in which
+ somebody—the Heavy Man—tries to stab him while he’s asleep.
+ But just when the would-be murderer has finished soliloquizing, and the
+ blow is about to fall, he starts up, and a grand struggle ensues. I think
+ the other fellow must have been drunk on the last occasion..Anyhow, the
+ business was most clumsily managed, and R————, our
+ Walking Gent, got his eye cut out, and is disfigured for life. It is quite
+ impossible for him now to play his old line, and he has to do heavies or
+ low comedy, or anything where appearance is of no importance. The poor
+ fellow is terribly cut up—don’t think I’m trying to make a ghastly
+ joke—and he seems to be especially bitter against me for having
+ slipped into his shoes. I’m sure he need not be; whatever good his ill
+ wind has blown me has brought with it more work than it’s worth; and I
+ think, on the whole, taking this star business into consideration, I would
+ rather have stopped where I was. I knew a good many of the parts I should
+ have had to play, but as it is, everything has been fresh study.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Well, I was going to tell you about our old man. He had always boasted
+ that he hadn’t studied for the last ten years. I don’t know what
+ particular merit there was in this, that he should have so prided himself
+ upon it, but that he considered it as highly clever on his part there
+ could not be the slightest doubt; and he had even got to quite despise any
+ one who did study. You can imagine his feelings, therefore, when sixteen
+ long parts, eleven at least of which he had never seen before, were placed
+ in his hand, with a request that he would be letter ‘perfect in all by the
+ following Thursday. It was observed that he didn’t say much at the time.
+ He was a garrulous old gentleman as a rule, but, after once glancing over
+ the bundle, he grew thoughtful and abstracted and did not join in the
+ chorus of curses loud and deep which was being sung with great vigor by
+ the rest of the company. The only person to whom he made any remark was
+ myself, who happened to be standing by the stage-door when he was going
+ out. He took the bundle of parts out of his pocket, and showed them to me.
+ ‘Nice little lot, that—ain’t it?’ he said. ‘I’ll just go home and
+ study them all up—that’s what I’ll do.’ Then he smiled—a sad,
+ wan smile—and went slowly out.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “That was on Saturday evening, and on Monday morning we met at ten for
+ rehearsal. We went on without the old man until eleven; and then, as he
+ hadn’t turned up, and was much wanted, the boy was despatched to his
+ lodgings to see if he was there. We waited patiently for another quarter
+ of an hour, and then the boy returned.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “The old man had not been seen since Sunday.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “His landlady had left him in the morning, looking over the ‘parts,’ and
+ when she returned in the evening, he was gone. A letter, addressed to her,
+ had been found in his room, and this she had given the boy to take back
+ with him.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “The stage manager took it and hurriedly opened it. At the first glance,
+ he started and uttered an exclamation of horror; and when he had finished
+ it, it dropped from his hand, and he sank down in the nearest chair, dazed
+ and bewildered, like a man who has heard, but cannot yet grasp, some
+ terrible news.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “A cold, sickly feeling came over me. The strange, far-away look, and the
+ quiet, sad smile that I had last seen on the old man’s face came back to
+ me with startling vividness, and with a new and awful meaning. He was old
+ and enfeebled. He had not the elastic vigor of youth that can bear up
+ under worry and work. His mind, to all seeming, had never at any time been
+ very powerful. Had the sudden and heavy call upon his energies actually
+ unhinged it? and had the poor old fellow in some mad moment taken up arms
+ against his sea of troubles, and by opposing ended them? Was he now lying
+ in some shady copse, with a gaping wound from ear to ear, or sleeping his
+ last sleep with the deep waters for a coverlet? Was what lay before me a
+ message from the grave? These thoughts flashed like lightning through my
+ brain as I darted forward and picked the letter up. It ran as follows:
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Dear Mrs. Hopsam,—I’m off to London by the 3.30, and shan’t come
+ back. I’ll write and let you know where to send my things. I left a pair
+ of boots at Jupp’s to have the toe-caps sewn—please get ‘em; and
+ there was a night-shirt short last week—it’s got a D on it. If they
+ send from the theater, tell them to go to the devil; and if they want
+ sixteen parts studied in a week, they’d better get a cast-iron actor.
+ Yours truly, D———.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “This was a great relief to me, but it didn’t seem to have soothed the
+ stage manager much. When he recovered from his amazement, he said what he
+ thought of the old man, which I will not repeat. There was a deuce of a
+ row, I can tell you. Our Leading Man, who had consoled himself for being
+ temporarily ousted from his proper position by the thought of having
+ nothing to do all the time, and being able to go in front each night and
+ sneer at the ‘star,’ had to take the First Old Man’s place, and a pretty
+ temper he’s in about it. It’s as much as one’s life’s worth now, even, to
+ sneak a bit of his color. Another old man joins us after next week, but of
+ course that is just too late for the hard work. ——— will
+ be gone then...”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <br /><br />
+ </p>
+ <hr />
+ <p>
+ <a name="link2HCH0016" id="link2HCH0016"> </a>
+ </p>
+ <div style="height: 4em;">
+ <br /><br /><br /><br />
+ </div>
+ <h2>
+ CHAPTER XVI. Views on Acting
+ </h2>
+ <p>
+ <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0016" id="linkimage-0016"> </a>
+ </p>
+ <div class="figleft" style="width:20%;">
+ <img src="images/9153.jpg" alt="9153 " width="100%" /><br /><a
+ href="images/9153.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
+ </div>
+ <p>
+ QUOTE from two more letters, and then I have done with this stock company.
+ The first was written just after our star had set—or rather gone to
+ the next town—the second about a fortnight later:
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “... ——— ———- left on Saturday. We had
+ crowded houses all the time he was with us, and I’m not surprised. It must
+ have been a treat to these benighted provincials to see real acting. No
+ wonder country people don’t care much for theaters, seeing the wretched
+ horse-play presented to them under the name of acting. It does exasperate
+ me to hear people talking all that thundering nonsense about the provinces
+ being such a splendid school for young actors. Why, a couple of months of
+ it is enough to kill any idea of acting a man may have started with. Even
+ if you had time to think of anything but how to gabble through your lines,
+ it would be of no use. You would never be allowed to carry out any ideas
+ of your own. If you attempted to <i>think</i>, you would be requested to
+ look out for, another shop at once. The slightest naturalness or
+ originality would be put down to ignorance. You must walk through each
+ part by the beaten track of rule and tradition—and such rule and
+ tradition! The rule of Richardson’s Show, the tradition of some ranting
+ inn-yard hack. To reach the standard of dramatic art in the provinces, you
+ have to climb down, not up. Comedy consists in having a red nose, and
+ tumbling about the stage; being pathetic makes you hoarse for an hour
+ after; and as for tragedy! no one dare attempt that who hasn’t the lungs
+ of a politician.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “But ———— changed all that for us. He infused a
+ new spirit into everybody, and, when he, was on the stage, the others
+ acted better than I should ever have thought they could have done. It is
+ the first time I have played with any one who can properly be called an
+ actor, and it was quite a new sensation. I could myself tell that I was
+ acting very differently to the way in which I usually act. I seemed to
+ catch his energy and earnestness; the scene grew almost real, and I began
+ to <i>feel</i> my part. And that is the most any one can do on the stage.
+ As to ‘being the character you are representing,’ that is absurd. I can
+ hardly believe in any sane person seriously putting forward such a
+ suggestion. It is too ridiculous to argue against. Picture to yourself a
+ whole company forgetting they were merely acting, and all fancying
+ themselves the people they were impersonating. Words and business would of
+ course be out of the question. They would all say and do just what came
+ natural to them, and just <i>when</i> it came natural; so that sometimes
+ everybody would be talking at once, and at other times there would be
+ nobody doing anything. Such enthusiasm as theirs would never bow to the
+ pitiful requirements of stage illusion. They would walk over the
+ footlights on to the heads of the orchestra, and they would lean up
+ against the mountains in the background. It would be a grand performance,
+ but it wouldn’t last long. The police would have to be called in before
+ the first act was over. If they were not, the Leading Man would slaughter
+ half the other members of the company; the Juvenile Lead would run off
+ with the Walking Lady and the property jewels; and the First Old Man would
+ die of a broken heart. What the manager would do on the second night I
+ don’t know. If he opened at all, I suppose he would go in front and
+ explain matters by saying:
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “‘Ladies and Gentlemen,—I must apologize for the incompleteness with
+ which the play will be presented to you this evening. The truth is, the
+ performance last night was so realistic all round, that there is only the
+ Low Comedy and a General Utility left. But we’ve a good many corpses about
+ the theater, and with these, and the assistance of the two gentlemen
+ mentioned, we will do what we can.’
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Even when studying in one’s own room, one cannot for a moment lose sight
+ of one’s identity. A great actor, creating a character, doesn’t forget
+ he’s himself, and think he’s somebody else. It’s only lunatics who have
+ those fancies. But he is a man of such vast sympathy that he can
+ understand and enter into all human thoughts and feelings; and, having
+ pictured to himself the character of the man he wishes to represent, he
+ can follow the workings of that supposed man’s mind under all possible
+ circumstances.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “But even this sympathy must be left outside the theater doors. Once
+ inside, the mind must be kept clear of all distracting thought. What is
+ gone through on the stage is merely an exact repetition of what is
+ conceived in the study, and a cool head and a good memory are the only
+ reliable servants when once the curtain is up. Of course a man should <i>feel</i>
+ what he is acting. Feeling is the breath of acting. It is to the actor
+ what Aphrodite’s gift was to Pygmalion—it gives life to his statue.
+ But this feeling is as much a matter of memory as the rest. The actual
+ stage is too artificial for emotion to come to one naturally while there.
+ Each passion is assumed and dropped by force of will, together with the
+ words and action which accompany it.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “...I made a sensation here last Tuesday. I was playing the very part in
+ which our Walking Gentleman met with his accident, and he was playing the
+ villain, who tries to stab me while I am asleep. (The Heavy Man has left.
+ He went soon after he had done the mischief.) Well, everything had gone
+ very smoothly so far, and I was lying there on the couch at the back of
+ the darkened stage, and he was leaning over me with the knife in his hand.
+ I was quite still, waiting for my cue to awake, and wondering if I could
+ manage to start up quickly, when I raised my eyes and caught sight of R——‘s
+ face. I may have done him an injustice. His expression may have been mere
+ acting. The whole idea was, perhaps, due to nothing but my own
+ imagination. I have thought this since. At the time it flashed across me:
+ ‘He means to revenge himself on me for having taken his place. He is going
+ to disfigure me just as he was disfigured.’ In an instant I sprung up and
+ wrested the knife from his hand.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “We stood there looking at one another, and neither of us moved or spoke;
+ he, livid underneath his color, and trembling from head to foot. How long
+ we kept in that position I do not know, for the thud of the curtain upon
+ the stage was the first thing that recalled me to myself. Up to when I had
+ snatched the knife from him, all had been in exact accordance with the
+ book. After that, I should have held him down by the throat, and made a
+ speech of about eight lines. I think our impromptu tableau was more
+ effective.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “There was immense applause, and everybody congratulated me on my success.
+ ‘I suppose you know you cut out the end,’ said the manager; ‘but never
+ mind that. I daresay you were a little nervous, and you acted splendidly,
+ my boy.’”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “I didn’t say it wasn’t acting, and neither did R————....”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I left here to join a small touring company as Juvenile Lead. I looked
+ upon the offer as a grand opportunity at the time, and following Horace’s
+ * advice, grasped it by the forelock. I therefore, one Sunday morning
+ packed my basket, went round the town and shook hands with everybody—not
+ without a pang of regret, for there are few human beings we can be with
+ for any length of time and not be sorry to say good-by to—and then,
+ as the bright summer’s sun was setting and the church bells beginning to
+ peal, I steamed away, or rather the engine did, and the city and its
+ people faded out of my sight and out of my life.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ * Not quite sure whose advice this is. Have put it down to Horace to avoid
+ contradiction.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Sunday is the great traveling day for actors. It loses them no time. A
+ company can finish at one town on the Saturday night, and wake up on
+ Monday morning in the next, ready to get everything ship-shape for the
+ evening. Or an actor can leave one show and join another at the other end
+ of the kingdom without missing a single performance. I have known a man
+ play in Cornwall on the Saturday, and at Inverness on the following
+ Monday. But convenient though it is in this respect, in every other,
+ Sunday traveling is most unpleasant, and, for their gratification, I can
+ assure strict Sabbatarians that it brings with it its own punishment.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Especially to a man with a conscience—an article which, in those
+ early days, I was unfortunate enough to possess. A conscience is a
+ disagreeable sort of thing to have with one at any time. It has a nasty
+ disposition—a cantankerous, fault-finding, interfering disposition.
+ There is nothing sociable about it. It seems to take a pleasure in making
+ itself objectionable, and in rendering its owner as uncomfortable as
+ possible. During these Sunday journeys, it used to vex me by every means
+ in its power. If any mild old gentleman, sitting opposite me in the
+ carriage, raised his eyes and looked at me, I immediately fancied he was
+ silently reproaching me, and I felt ashamed and miserable. It never
+ occurred to me at the time that he was every bit as bad as I was, and that
+ I had as much right to be shocked at him as he to be horrified at me. Then
+ I used to ask myself what my poor aunt would say if she could see me. Not
+ that it was of the slightest consequence what the old lady would have
+ said, but the question was just one of those petty annoyances in which a
+ mean-spirited conscience delights. I was firmly convinced that everybody
+ was pointing the finger of scorn at me. I don’t know which particular
+ finger is the finger of scorn: whichever it is, that, I felt, was the one
+ that was pointed at me. At every station, my exasperating inward monitor
+ would whisper to me: “But for such abandoned wretches as you, all those
+ porters and guards would be sleeping peacefully in the village church.”
+ When the whistle sounded, my tormentor would add; “But for you and other
+ such despicable scoundrels, that grimy, toil-stained engine-driver would
+ be dressed in his best clothes, lounging up against a post at his own
+ street corner.” Such thoughts maddened me.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ My fellow-passengers generally let on that they were going to see sick
+ relatives, and I would have done the same if it hadn’t been for that awful
+ basket of mine. But the inventive faculty of a newspaper reporter couldn’t
+ have explained away a basket the size of an average chest of drawers. I
+ might have said that it contained a few delicacies for the invalid, but
+ nobody would have believed me, and there would have been a good lie
+ wasted.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ But it is not only to people with consciences that Sunday traveling
+ presents vexations. Even you, my dear reader, would find it unpleasant.
+ There is a subdued going-to-a-funeral air about the whole proceeding,
+ which makes you melancholy in spite of yourself. You miss the usual
+ bustling attributes of railway traveling. No crowded platforms! no piles
+ of luggage! no newspaper boys! The refreshment rooms don’t seem the same
+ places at all, and the damsels there are haughtier then ever. When you
+ arrive at your destination, you seem to have come to a city of the dead.
+ You pass through deserted streets to your hotel. Nobody is about. You go
+ into the coffee-room and sit down there by yourself. After a while the
+ boots looks in. You yearn toward him as toward a fellow-creature. You
+ would fall upon his neck, and tell him all your troubles. You try to
+ engage him in conversation, so as to detain him in the room, for you dread
+ to be left alone again. But he doesn’t enter into your feelings: he
+ answers all questions by monosyllables, and gets away as quickly as
+ possible. You go out for a walk. The streets are dark and silent, and you
+ come back more miserable than you started. You order supper, but have no
+ appetite, and cannot eat it when it comes. You retire to your room early,
+ but cannot go to sleep. You lie there and wonder what the bill will come
+ to, and, while thinking of this, you are softly borne away into the land
+ of dreams, and fancy that the proprietor has asked you for a hundred and
+ eighty-seven pounds nine and fourpence ha’penny, and that you have killed
+ him on the spot, and left the house in your nightshirt without paying.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0017" id="linkimage-0017"> </a>
+ </p>
+ <div class="figleft" style="width:20%;">
+ <img src="images/9163.jpg" alt="9163 " width="100%" /><br /><a
+ href="images/9163.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
+ </div>
+ <p>
+ HE show which I now graced with my presence was a “fit-up.” I didn’t know
+ this beforehand, or I should never have engaged myself. A “fit-up” is only
+ one grade higher than a booth, which latter branch of the profession, by
+ the way, I have always regretted never having explored. I missed the most
+ picturesque and romantic portion of the theatrical world by not
+ penetrating into that time-forsaken corner. Booth life is a Bohemia within
+ a Bohemia. So far as social and artistic position is concerned, it is at
+ the bottom of the dramatic ladder; but for interest and adventure, it
+ stands at the very top.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ However, I never did join a booth, so there is an end of the matter. The
+ nearest I approached to anything of the kind was this fit-up, and that I
+ didn’t like at all. We kept to the very small towns, where there was no
+ theater, and fitted up an apology for a stage in any hall or room we could
+ hire for the purpose. The town-hall was what we generally tried for, but
+ we were not too particular; any large room did, and we would even put up
+ with a conveniently situated barn. We carried our own props, scenery, and
+ proscenium, and trusted for the wood work to some local carpenter. A row
+ of candles did duty for footlights, and a piano, hired in the town,
+ represented the orchestra. We couldn’t get a piano on one occasion, so the
+ proprietor of the hall lent us his harmonium.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I will not linger over my experience with this company; they were not
+ pleasant ones. Short extracts from two letters, one written just after
+ joining, and the other sent off just before I left, will be sufficient:
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Dear Jim: I find I’ve dropped the substance and grasped the shadow (I
+ pride myself not so much on the originality of this remark as on its
+ applicability). I shall leave as soon as possible, and try my luck in
+ London. My ambition to play Juvenile Lead vanished the moment I saw the
+ Leading Lady, who is, as usual, the manager’s wife. She is a fat greasy
+ old woman. She has dirty hands and finger nails, and perspires freely
+ during the course of the performance. She is about three times my size,
+ and if the audiences to which we play have the slightest sense of humor—which,
+ from what I have seen of them, I think extremely doubtful—our
+ love-making must be a rare treat to them. How a London first-night gallery
+ would enjoy it! I’m afraid, though, it’s only wasted down here. My arm,
+ when I try to clasp her waist, reaches to about the middle of her back;
+ and, when we embrace, the house can’t see me at all. I have to carry her
+ half-way across the stage in one part! By Jove! I’m glad we don’t play
+ that piece often.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “She says I shall never make a good ‘lover’ unless I throw more ardor
+ (‘harder,’ she calls it) into my acting....”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “... Shall be with you on Monday next. Can’t stand this any longer. It’s
+ ruining me. Seven-and-six was all I could get last week, and eleven
+ shillings the week before. We are not doing bad business by any means.
+ Indeed, we have very good houses. The old man has got the knack of making
+ out good gag bills, and that pulls ‘em in for the two or three nights we
+ stay at each place. You know what I mean by a ‘gag’ bill: ‘The Ruined Mill
+ by Dead Man’s Pool. Grace Mervin thinks to meet a friend, but finds a foe.
+ Harry Baddun recalls old days.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Why do you not love me?”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Because you are a bad man.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Then die!” The struggle on the brink!! “Help!!” “There is none to help
+ you here.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “You lie, Harry Baddun; <i>I</i> am here.” A hand from the grave!! Harry
+ Baddun meets his doom!!!
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “That’s what I mean by a gag bill.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Whatever money is made, however, he takes care to keep for himself. He
+ can always put up at the best hotel in the place, while we have to pawn
+ our things to pay for the meanest of lodgings.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “It isn’t only actors who get robbed by these managers: authors also
+ suffer pretty considerably. We have two copyright pieces in our list, both
+ of which draw very well, but not a penny is paid for performing them. To
+ avoid any chance of unpleasantness, the titles of the pieces and the names
+ of the chief characters are altered. So that even if the author or his
+ friends (supposing it possible for any author to have any friends) were on
+ the lookout, they would never know anything about it. And, if they did, it
+ would be of no use. It would be throwing good money after bad to attempt
+ to enforce payment from the men who do this sort of thing,—and I
+ hear that it is done all over the provinces,—they have no money and
+ none can be got out of them. Your penniless man can comfortably defy half
+ the laws in the statute book.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “What a nuisance firearms are on the stage! I thought I was blinded the
+ other night, and my eyes are painful even now. The fellow should have
+ fired up in the air. It is the only safe rule on a small stage, though it
+ does look highly ridiculous to see a man drop down dead because another
+ man fires a pistol at the moon. But there is always some mishap with them.
+ They either don’t go off at all, or else they go off in the wrong place,
+ and, when they do go off, there is generally an accident. They can never
+ be depended upon. You rush on to the stage, present a pistol at somebody’s
+ head, and say, ‘Die!’ but the pistol only goes click, and the man doesn’t
+ know whether to die or not. He waits while you have another try at him,
+ and the thing clicks again; and then you find out that the property man
+ hasn’t put a cap on it, and you turn round to get one. But the other man,
+ thinking it is all over, makes up his mind to die at once from nothing
+ else but fright, and, when you come back to kill him for the last time,
+ you find he’s already dead.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “We have recourse to some rum makeshifts here, to eke out our wardrobes.
+ My old frock coat, with a little cloth cape which one of the girls has
+ cutout for me pinned on underneath the collar, and with a bit of lace
+ round the cuffs, does for the gallant of half the old comedies; and, when
+ I pin the front corners back and cover them with red calico, I’m a French
+ soldier. A pair of white thingumies does admirably for buckskin riding
+ breeches, and for the part of a Spanish conspirator, I generally borrow my
+ landlady’s tablecloth....”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ It was about the end of October when I found myself once more in London.
+ The first thing I then did was to go to my old shop on the Surrey-side.
+ Another company and another manager were there, but the latter knew me,
+ and, as I owned a dress suit, engaged me at a salary of twelve shillings
+ weekly to play the part of a swell. When I had been there just one week,
+ he closed. Whether it was paying me that twelve shillings that broke him,
+ I cannot say; but on Monday morning some men came and cut the gas off, and
+ then he said he shouldn’t go on any longer, and that we must all do the
+ best we could for ourselves.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I, with two or three others, thereupon started off for a theater at the
+ East End, which was about to be opened for a limited number of nights by
+ some great world-renowned actor. This was about the fortieth
+ world-renowned party. I had heard of for the first time within the last
+ twelvemonth. My education in the matter of world-renowned people had
+ evidently been shamefully neglected.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The theater was cunningly contrived, so that one had to pass through the
+ bar of the adjoining public-house—to the landlord of which it
+ belonged—to get to the stage. Our little party was saved from
+ temptation, however, for I don’t think we could have mustered a shilling
+ among the lot of us that morning. I was getting most seriously hard up at
+ this time. The few pounds I had had left, after purchasing my wardrobe and
+ paying my railway fares, etc., had now dwindled down to shillings, and,
+ unless things mended, I felt I should have to throw up the sponge and
+ retire from the stage. I was determined not to do this though, till the
+ very last, for I dreaded the chorus of “I told you so’s,” and “I knew very
+ well how ‘twould be’s,” and such like well-known and exasperating crows of
+ triumph, with which, in these cases, our delighted friends glorify
+ themselves and crush us.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The East End theater proved a stop-gap for a while. I was fortunate enough
+ to be one of those engaged out of the crowd of eager and anxious
+ applicants, among whom I met a couple from the fit-up company I had lately
+ left, they having come to the same conclusion as myself, viz., that it was
+ impossible to live well and “dress respectably on and off the stage” upon
+ an average salary of ten shillings weekly. The engagement was only for a
+ fortnight, and there is only one incident connected with it that I
+ particularly remember. That was my being “guyed” on one occasion. We were
+ playing a melodrama, the scene of which was laid in some outlandish place
+ or other, and the stage manager insisted on my wearing a most outrageous
+ costume. I knew it would be laughed at, especially in that neighborhood,
+ and my expectations were more than fulfilled. I hadn’t been on the stage
+ five seconds before I heard a voice from the gallery hoarsely inquire:
+ “What is it, Bill?” And then another voice added: “Tell us what it is, and
+ you shall have it.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ A good deal of laughter followed these speeches. I got hot all over, and
+ felt exceedingly uncomfortable and nervous. It was as much as I could do
+ to recollect my part, and it was with a great effort that I began my first
+ line. No sooner had I opened my mouth, however, than somebody in the pit
+ exclaimed, in tones of the utmost surprise, “Blowed if it ain’t alive!”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ After that, the remarks on my personal appearance fell thick and fast:
+ “Look well in a shop window, that bloke!” “Nice suit to take your gal out
+ on a Sunday in!”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “This style, thirty shillings,” etc.; while one good-natured man sought to
+ put me at my ease by roaring out in a stentorian voice, “Never you mind,
+ old man; you go on. They’re jealous ‘cos you’ve got nice clothes on.” How
+ I managed to get through the part I don’t know. I became more nervous and
+ awkward every minute, and, of course, the more I bungled, the more the
+ house jeered. I gained a good deal of sympathy behind, for most of them
+ had had similar experiences of their own; but I was most intensely
+ miserable all that evening, and, for the next night or two, quite dreaded
+ to face the audience. Making game of any one is a very amusing occupation,
+ but the “game” doesn’t see the fun till a long while afterward. I can’t
+ bear to hear any of the performers chaffed when I’m at a theater. Actors
+ are necessarily a sensitive class of people, and I don’t think those who
+ make fun of them, when any little thing goes wrong, have any idea of the
+ pain they are inflicting. It is quite right, and quite necessary
+ sometimes, that disapprobation should be expressed, and that unmistakably,
+ but it should be for the purpose of correcting real faults. “Guying” is,
+ as a rule, indulged in only by the silliest portion of the audience, and
+ for no other object but to display their own vulgar wit.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ After my fortnight at the East End, I went as one of the chorus in a new
+ opera-bouffe to be brought out at a West End theater. We rehearsed for
+ three weeks, the piece ran for one, and then I again took a provincial
+ engagement, which, as it was now close upon Christmas, was easy enough to
+ obtain.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ My stay in London had not been very profitable to me, but it had given my
+ friends a treat, as they had been able to come and see me act again. At
+ least, I suppose it was a treat to them, though they did not say so. My
+ friends are always most careful never to overdo the thing in the matter of
+ praise. I cannot accuse them of sycophancy. They scorn to say pleasant
+ things that they don’t mean. They prefer saying unpleasant things that
+ they do mean. There’s no humbug about them; they never hesitate to tell me
+ just exactly what they think of me. This is good of them. I respect them
+ for saying what they think; but if they would think a little differently,
+ I should respect them still more. I wonder if everybody’s friends are as
+ conscientious? I’ve heard of people having “admiring friends,” and
+ “flattering friends,” and “over-indulgent friends,” but I’ve never had any
+ of that sort myself. I’ve often thought I should rather like to, though,
+ and if any gentleman has more friends of that kind than he wants, and
+ would care to have a few of the opposite stamp, I am quite ready to swop
+ with him. I can warrant mine never to admire or flatter under any
+ circumstances whatsoever; neither will he find them over-indulgent. To a
+ man who really wishes to be told of his faults, they would be invaluable;
+ on this point they are candor itself. A conceited man would also derive
+ much benefit from their society. I have myself.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <br /><br />
+ </p>
+ <hr />
+ <p>
+ <a name="link2HCH0017" id="link2HCH0017"> </a>
+ </p>
+ <div style="height: 4em;">
+ <br /><br /><br /><br />
+ </div>
+ <h2>
+ CHAPTER XVIII. My Last Appearance.
+ </h2>
+ <p>
+ <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0018" id="linkimage-0018"> </a>
+ </p>
+ <div class="figleft" style="width:20%;">
+ <img src="images/9173.jpg" alt="9173 " width="100%" /><br /><a
+ href="images/9173.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
+ </div>
+ <p>
+ LEFT London exactly twelve months from the day on which I had started to
+ fulfill my first provincial engagement, and I did not return to it again
+ while I was an actor. I left it with my baggage early in the morning by
+ the newspaper express from Euston; I returned to it late at night,
+ footsore and hungry, and with no other possessions than the clothes I
+ stood upright in.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Of the last few months of my professional life, the following brief
+ extracts will speak. A slightly bitter tone runs through some of them, but
+ at the time they were written I was suffering great disappointment, and
+ everything was going wrong with me—circumstances under which a man
+ is perhaps apt to look upon his surroundings through smoke-colored
+ glasses.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Three weeks after Christmas I write:
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “... good and money regular.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Business is almost always good, though, at pantomime time: the test will
+ come later on, when we begin to travel. How a provincial audience does
+ love a pantomime! and how I do hate it! I can’t say I think very highly of
+ provincial audiences. They need a lot of education in art. They roar over
+ coarse buffoonery, and applaud noisy rant to the echo. One might as well
+ go to Billingsgate to study English as to the provinces to learn acting.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “I played First Low Comedy on Saturday night at half an hour’s notice, the
+ real First Low Comedy being hopelessly intoxicated at the time. It’s a
+ pity, amidst all the talk about the elevation of the stage, that the
+ elevation of actors is not a less frequent occurrence. It can hardly
+ improve the reputation of the profession in the eyes of the public, when
+ they take up the <i>Era</i> and read advertisement after advertisement,
+ ending with such lines as, ‘None but sober people need apply,’ ‘Must
+ contrive to keep sober, at all events during the performance.’ ‘People who
+ are constantly getting drunk need not write.’ I’ve known some idiots
+ actually make themselves half tipsy on purpose before coming on the stage,
+ evidently thinking, because they can’t act when they’ve got all their few
+ wits about them, that they’ll manage better if they get rid of them
+ altogether. There is a host of wonderful traditions floating about the
+ theatrical world of this, that, and the other great actor having always
+ played this, that, and the other part while drunk; and so, when some
+ wretched little actor has to take one of these parts, he, fired by a noble
+ determination to follow in the footsteps of his famous predecessor, gets
+ drunk too.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Bad language is another thing that the profession might spare a lot of,
+ and still have enough remaining for all ordinary purposes. I remember a
+ penny each time we swore. We gave it up after two hours’ trial: none of us
+ had any money left.”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Six weeks later:
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “... Business gets worse instead of better. Our manager has behaved very
+ well indeed. He paid us our salaries right up to the end of last week,
+ though any one could see he was losing money every night; and then on
+ Saturday, after treasury, he called us all together, and put the case
+ frankly. He said he could not continue as he had been doing, but that, if
+ we liked, he was ready to keep on with us for a week or two longer upon
+ sharing terms, to see if the luck turned. We agreed to this, and so formed
+ ourselves into what is called a ‘commonwealth’—though common poverty
+ would be a more correct one night at ———— we all
+ agreed to fine ourselves term in my opinion, for the shares each night,
+ after deducting expenses, have been about eighteen-pence. The manager
+ takes three of these shares (one for being manager, one for acting, and
+ the other one to make up the three), and the rest of us have one each. I’m
+ getting awfully hard up, though I live for a week, now, on less than what
+ I’ve often given for a dinner.....”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ A week later, this company broke up, and I then joined another that was
+ close handy at the time. It is from this latter that the following is
+ written:
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “... I just manage to keep my head above water, and that is all. If things
+ get worse, I shall be done for. I’ve no money of my own left now.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “A very sad thing happened here last week. Our leading man died suddenly
+ from heart disease leaving his wife and two children totally destitute. If
+ he had been a big London actor, for half his life in receipt of a salary
+ of, say, three thousand a year, the theatrical press would have teemed
+ with piteous appeals to the public, all his friends would have written to
+ the papers generously offering to receive subscriptions on his behalf, and
+ all the theaters would have given performances at double prices to help
+ pay his debts and funeral expenses. As, however, he had never earned
+ anything higher than about two pounds a week, Charity could hardly be
+ expected to interest herself about the case; and so the wife supports
+ herself and her children by taking in washing. Not that I believe she
+ would ask for alms, even were there any chance of her getting them, for,
+ when the idea was only suggested to her, she quite fired up, and talked
+ some absurd nonsense about having too much respect for her husband’s
+ profession to degrade it into a mere excuse for begging....
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “This company also went wrong. It was a terrible year for theaters. Trade
+ was bad everywhere, and “amusements” was the very first item that people
+ with diminishing incomes struck out of the list of their expenditure. One
+ by one I parted with every valuable I had about me, and a visit to the
+ pawnshop, just before leaving each town, became as essential as packing. I
+ went through the country like a distressed ship through troubled waters,
+ marking my track by the riches I cast overboard to save myself. My watch I
+ left behind me in one town, my chain in another; a ring here, my dress
+ suit there; a writing-case I dropped at this place, and a pencil-case at
+ that. And so things went on—or, rather, off—till the beginning
+ of May, when this letter, the last of the series, was written:
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ “Dear Jim: Hurrah! I’ve struck oil at last. I think it was time I did
+ after what I’ve gone through. I was afraid the profession would have to do
+ without me, but it’s all safe now. I’m in a new company—joined last
+ Saturday, and we’re doing splendidly. Manager is a magnificent fellow, and
+ a good man of business. He understands how to make the donkey go. He
+ advertises and bills right and left, spares no expense, and does the thing
+ thoroughly well. He’s a jolly nice fellow, too, and evidently a man of
+ intelligence, for he appreciates me. He engaged me without my applying to
+ him at all, after seeing me act one night last week, when he was getting
+ his company together. I play First Walking Gent, at thirty-five shillings
+ a week. He has been a captain in the army, and is a thorough gentlemen. He
+ never bullies or interferes, and everybody likes him. He is going all
+ round the North of England, taking all the big Lancashire and Yorkshire
+ towns, and then going to bring us to London for the winter. He wants me to
+ sign an agreement for one year certain at two pounds five. I haven’t
+ appeared to be too anxious. It’s always best to hang back a bit in such
+ cases, so I told him I would think it over; but of course I shall accept.
+ Can’t write any more now. I’m just off to dine with him. We stop here
+ three weeks, and then go to ————. Very comfortable
+ lodgings. Yours, ———-”
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ That was written on Tuesday. On Saturday we came to the theater at twelve
+ for treasury. The Captain was not there. He had gone that morning to pay a
+ visit to Sir somebody or other, one of the neighboring gentry, who was a
+ great friend of his, and he had not yet returned. He would be back by the
+ evening—so the courteous acting manager assured us—and
+ treasury would take place after the performance.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ So in the evening, when the performance was over, we all assembled on the
+ stage, and waited. We waited about ten minutes, and then our Heavy Man,
+ who had gone across the way to get a glass before they shut up, came back
+ with a scared face to say that he’d just seen the booking clerk from the
+ station, who had told him that the “Captain” had left for London by an
+ early train that morning. And no sooner had the Heavy Man made this
+ announcement, than it occurred to the call boy that he had seen the
+ courteous acting manager leave the theater immediately after the play had
+ begun, carrying a small black bag.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ I went back to the dressing-room, gathered my things into a bundle, and
+ came down again with it. The others were standing about the stage, talking
+ low, with a weary, listless air. I passed through them without a word, and
+ reached the stage door. It was one of those doors that shut with a spring.
+ I pulled it open, and held it back with my foot, while I stood there on
+ the threshold for a moment, looking out at the night. Then I turned my
+ coat collar up, and stepped into the street: the stage door closed behind
+ me with a bang and a click, and I have never opened another one since.
+ </p>
+ <h3>
+ THE END.
+ </h3>
+ <div style="height: 6em;">
+ <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+ </div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg’s On The Stage-And Off, by Jerome K. Jerome
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+</pre>
+
+ </body>
+</html>
|
