HOW WE AMUSED OURSELVES
§ 1
In only one province did Colonel Westcott, our genial factotum, place a
voluntary check upon his own activities. His sphere, he decided, was
confined within the elastic boundaries of education, moral conduct and
Pan-Saxon philosophy. And he accepted these limitations with the quiet
resignation of one who owns three-quarters of the globe, and deems the
remainder to be a land of frost and snow. In other hands he laid the
responsibilities of the sports and entertainments committees. And for
this reason, perhaps, they were the two most productive bodies.
For the average _Gefangener_, however, games were hard to get. Germany
is not athletic in the sense that we are. Militarism has made muscular
development the supreme good of all outdoor exercises, and in
consequence the authorities thought they had sufficiently catered for
our physical propensities by the erection of a horizontal bar, and the
largess of some iron weights. Well, that is hardly our idea of sport;
and as a nation I do not think we shall ever show much enthusiasm for
Swedish drill, P.T., trapezes, and the various devices of a gymnasium,
that leave so little room for individuality. The allegiance to a green
field and a leather ball, small or big as the season demands, will not
be shaken. And at Mainz there were neither green fields nor leather
balls.
The gravel square was the only open space we had, and it was uncommonly
hard to fall on. There was one football in the camp, belonging to an
orderly, that was from time to time the centre of an exhilarating
display. But it was a dangerous pastime; every game resulted in at least
three injuries, and a scraped elbow was no joke in a country
[Illustration: OUR PRISON SQUARE.
[_To face page 194._
]
devoid of medicine. Only the very daring played, and soon most of them
were “crocked.”
For a month hockey enjoyed an ephemeral popularity, and a league was
arranged, in which nearly every room entered a side. While they lasted
those games were great fun, and they were capital exercise. But before
very long all the sticks had been smashed, and all efforts to replace
them were unavailing, and though a few individuals who had had sticks
sent out from England were able to get an occasional game, for the great
mass of us hockey ceased almost as soon as it had begun.
The only other game was tennis. As there is no rubber in Germany, this
had to be delayed till the late summer, by which time balls and racquets
had arrived from England. But what is one court among six hundred? Only
a very limited section of the camp could play, and those whose abilities
were slight did not feel themselves justified in engaging the court to
the exclusion of their more able brethren. And the whole business
really amounted to this: that although a newcomer to the camp would see
the square at nearly all moments of the day occupied by some game or
other, for the average _Gefangener_ the athletic world did not exist.
His sole form of exercise was the grey constitutional round the square;
and just before the closing of the gates at night, it was as if a living
tube was being moved round within the wire. Five hundred odd officers
were walking in couples round a square, with a circumference of four
hundred yards; words cannot give an impression which can only be caught
in terms of paint. For the populace billiards was the one athletic
outlet.
And as the two chief resources of the average subaltern are athletics
and the theatre, this suppression of one channel, diverted to the stage
the entire enthusiasm of the camp. Of course each of us thinks his own
little part of the world the best: our school, our company, our
battalion, they seem to each individual one of us perfect
[Illustration: “FIVE HUNDRED ODD OFFICERS WALKING ROUND THE SQUARE.”
[_To face page 196._
]
and unique. It is only natural that we should think the P.O.W. Theatre,
Mainz, the absolute Alhambra of the _Gefangenenlagers_. However bad our
shows had been we should have thought them supreme. But really,
considering that every costume had to be improvised, every piece of
scenery painted on flimsy paper, and that female attire was
unpurchasable, I do not think that its shows could have been better
staged. Certainly the scenic effects towards the end of our captivity
were better than anything one would have seen at a provincial pantomime,
though that is in itself hardly a recommendation.
Programmes began modestly enough in the days of soup and sauerkraut. We
were hungry then and had little spare vitality. But a concert party was
formed that called itself the “Pows,” and which gave performances every
Saturday. There were many difficulties, the chief one being an entire
lack of revue music. In order to get a song the aid of many had to be
invoked. A committee of six would sit round a table trying to remember
the words of “We’ve got a little Cottage” or “When Paderewski plays.”
Each person remembered a stray line or phrase, and gradually like a
jigsaw puzzle the fabric was completed. And then the music had to be
written, and luckily the “Pows” possessed in Aubrey Dowdon a musical
director who could write music as fast as he could write a letter. He
scored the parts, and the musician strummed them out. The result was a
most amusing vaudeville performance. There were some excellent voices,
romantic and humorous; Aubrey Dowdon was himself no mean vocalist, and
there was Milton Hayes.
Indeed it is hard not to make the account of those early performances a
mere chronicle of Milton Hayes. He was the supreme humorist. All he had
to do was to stand on the stage and smile, and the audience was happy.
It was a wonderful smile, that unconscious innocent affair that only
childhood is supposed to know. And to watch Hayes perform was like
watching a child play with bricks. It was as if he were making his jokes
simply for his own pleasure, building up his toy palace of fun, and then
turning to his audience to ask them how they liked it. A small stage and
a small room give scope for a far deeper intimacy than is possible in
the large proscenium of a London hall, where the artist can see before
him only a dull blur of faces through the dusk. At Mainz Milton Hayes
could see and, as it were, speak to each individual present, and before
he had been on the stage five minutes one felt as if he were an old
friend that one had known all one’s life. He caught the true spirit of
intimacy, the kindredship with his audience, that is the whole secret of
the music-hall profession.
* * * * *
During the first two months the programme did not change much. There
would be always some slight variety in a new stunt by Hayes, a new tune
by Dowdon, or a topical sketch. But the old numbers continually cropped
up. “The Money Moon” and “When you’re a long way from Home”--these never
left us. Still, they received a hearty welcome. The audience in an
_Offiziergefangenenlager_ is not too captious. It goes not to criticise
but to be amused. And so for the first two months the “Pows” continued
to entertain us every Saturday. After a while the stress of private
composition caused Milton Hayes to drop out more or less, but the
company went on with an undiminished vigour. And then suddenly a rumour
went round the camp that a rival company was being formed, and that in a
fortnight’s time the “Shivers” would start their continental tour.
The general good being the one standard by which to judge any collective
innovation, the enterprise of the “Shivers” must be considered the
greatest benefit the camp received. Competition roused the ambition of
the “Pows.” Each party swore to outdo the other. There ensued a race of
progressive excellence. Each performance was produced with a more
lavish outlay of the public funds; each time the curtain rose a deeper
gasp paid homage to scenic artists; and the composers ceased to rely for
their material on the work of other men. They began to write their own
songs and their own music; the old ragtime and coon melodies
disappeared, and instead we had original airs and topical numbers. And
here the “Pows” had a great advantage, for their musical director, who
in these pages shelters himself beneath the pseudonym of Aubrey Dowdon,
had a gift for libretto that we soon expect to see on the playbills of
the Alhambra, and his company finally beat all records with a musical
operetta entitled _The Girl on the Stairs_. All the songs were original,
and it was marvellously staged. There were eastern grottos, and the
gleam of white shoulders through the dusk. There was a long serenade to
the Jehlum River girl, in which brown tanned slaves prostrated
themselves before the half-naked form of a sylph arrayed in veils. There
were humour and naughtiness, horseplay and burlesque. It was a triumph
of impromptu and ingenuity, after which the activities of the “Shivers”
fell woefully flat.
From the psychological standpoint the professional jealousy of those
weeks of hectic rivalry provided food for much deliberation. The rivalry
once definitely acknowledged, the camp did its best to foment
contention. The manager of the “Shivers” would be told that, unless he
was careful, he would be absolutely washed out by the “Pows,” and the
same story was carried to Dowdon. There were few things more amusing
than to sit behind either party during a rival performance. They would
simulate great enthusiasm, but all the time they would be exchanging shy
and nervous glances. There would be whispers of--
“Do you think it’s good?”
“Rather cheap that, isn’t it?”
“What a chestnut!”
And if the piece did make a hit, what colossal “wind-up,” what profound
trepidation! And with what eager haste was the next show rehearsed.
From the point of view of the public, this was entirely excellent. We
got excellent shows, for there is no goad like jealousy.
But competition is a dangerous tool, and I often used to wonder where
all this frenzy would end, and to what point it was leading. It had got
beyond the well-defined limits of a good-humoured race. If it had been a
case of nations, it is quite plain what the result would have been.
Competition would have become contention, jealousy would have bred
hatred, and there would have been a war, of which the real issue would
have been, shall we say, the prop-box. But of course the companies
themselves would not have fought; they had started the war, that would
have been enough for them. And the ordinary _Gefangener_, who had quite
unconsciously fanned this flame, by scratching at the sore place and
aggravating the little itch, would find himself enrolled under one
standard or the other, and involved in a war of which he was the
unwitting cause.
And he would be told--well, what would he be told? That he was fighting
for a prop-box? That would never do. There might come a time when he
would not consider a prop-box worth the surrender of his liberty. No,
the manager would have to find some striking and impersonal cause, “not
for passion, or for power.” A theme must be found fitting for high
oratory, a framework constructed that would bear the weight of many
sounding phrases. Let the poor _Gefangener_ believe that he is fighting
for the freedom of the English stage; let the old catchwords rip, “Art
against Vulgarity,” “The Drama against the Vaudeville,” “Shakespeare
against A Little Bit of Fluff.” And then....
But fortunately we were not nations armed with a pulpit and a Press, we
were simply prisoners of war, and this competition produced some very
delightful entertainment. But all the same, I still wonder where things
would have ended, if we had stayed there much longer. We were riding for
a smash. We had exhausted our limited resources; for one man cannot
compose, stage and produce a new musical comedy every fortnight, and the
rivalry of the two parties had developed at such an alarming pace that
we were faced with the prospect of a return to “The Money Moon,” when
Milton Hayes returned to the stage, and, in his own phrase, “let loose
the light that set the vault of heaven on fire.”
§ 2
For some weeks Milton Hayes had been living the retired life of an
author, architect or other student. For he had found the effort of
repeated performances in an unnatural atmosphere a very real strain on
his nerves.
“No Sanatogen,” he said, “that’s what does it. I can’t act without
Sanatogen. I used to try champagne once, but it left me like a rag
afterwards. Sanatogen’s the stuff.”
As a traveller in this commodity he would have made quite a hit. He
never wearied of singing its praises, and we used to ask him why he did
not forward to the firm one of those credentials that begin, “Since
using your admirable tonic....”
“Why don’t you try it, Milton?” we used to say. “It would be a jolly
good advertisement. ‘Milton Hayes, the author of the _Green Eye_,
says....’ You’d have your name placarded all over the kingdom.”
But he would none of it.
“No,” he said, “that’s far too obvious. Any beginner tries that stunt,
or men that are ‘has beens.’ I might invent a mixture. But no, not the
other thing. It’s not the sort of publicity one wants.”
But whatever commercial advantage Sanatogen may have lacked as an
advertising agent, its absence in Hayes’s life certainly affected his
nerves. It is a compound that he found palatable only in milk, and even
condensed milk was a rare commodity. The result was that Milton Hayes
joined the band of Wordsmiths in the Alcove, and spent his time working
on his lyrics and on a musical comedy.
This programme satisfied him well enough for a couple of months. In
France he had spent much of his time organising concert parties, and in
his heart of hearts he was not sorry to be quit for a time of grease
paints and the greenroom. But it could not last; and within a short time
he was longing for fresh worlds to conquer. And, at the suggestion of a
friend, he altered and abbreviated his musical comedy into a farcical
libretto calculated to run for about a hundred minutes. This composition
he laid in all good faith before the Entertainments Committee,
suggesting that he should choose his cast from the pick of the “Pows”
and the “Shivers,” and should himself produce the show. It was a simple
proposal; but he had not calculated upon the extent to which
professional rivalry had imprisoned the dramatic activities of the camp.
While all the world slept momentous things had happened. A scheme of
regulations had been drawn up for the guidance of the managing
directors, which in a way resembled the qualifications of League
Football. To prevent poaching it had been decided that, once a performer
had figured on the playbills of one company, he could not transfer his
allegiance elsewhere. No assistance was to be given by one party to
another; only the piano, the orchestra and the prop-box were common
property. There was a sort of trade boycott afoot in which only neutral
waters were free from tariff.
And then into this world of regulated commerce Milton Hayes entered like
the bold bad buccaneer of Romance, demanding free ports and free
transport, the very pirate of legality.
Well, what the committee’s opinion on this subject was, we can only
conjecture. What it did is a matter of common knowledge. It absolutely
refused to lend its support: why, we can but guess. Perhaps they were a
little piqued at the infrequency of Hayes’s appearance on the
vaudeville stage; perhaps they had advanced so far into the land of
tabulated orders that they could see no safe withdrawal. Perhaps.... But
it is unfair to impute motives to any one. One can merely state facts,
and register one’s personal opinion that collectively humanity is rather
stupid, and that if committees are allowed a free hand, they usually do
manage to mess things up somehow; and that the conclusions at which they
arrive do not at all represent the opinions of those individuals framing
them.
I remember that some four and a half years ago I received a sufficiently
severe beating from the School’s Games Committee, on the ground that I
had played roughly in a house match; and that within a week six of the
seven members of that committee had apologised to me in person for their
assault. This, as a testimonial to my moral worth, was no doubt
comforting; but as an alleviation for the pain of those fourteen
strokes, it was an inadequate recompense. And the treatment of Milton
was not very different.
The committee, which consisted of ten officers, refused him their
support; but each individual member of the community considered it a
grave injustice, and one and all they came up to Hayes with apologies to
the tune of--
“Awfully sorry, old man, about this show of yours. I wish we could have
helped you. I’d love to myself, only the committee won’t let me. Beastly
nuisance I call it, a man isn’t his own master any longer. Awfully
sorry, old man.”
By the time the tenth member had expressed a similar regret, Milton
Hayes began to wonder whether the committee was a blind force, with a
will independent of its component parts. He was naturally gratified to
receive so many sympathetic condolences, but they did not materially
assist him in his task of finding a company to produce his libretto.
However, he beat the by-ways and hedges, and finally amassed a
nondescript community, which for want of a better name he called the
“Buckshees.”
The company numbered thirty-two, and was supported by voluntary
contribution. The “Pows” and the “Shivers” had drawn within their folds
the pick of the vocalists and humorists; two dramatic societies had
gleaned after them. The remaining stubble was a sorry sight, and as an
insignificant member of that distinguished caste, I must confess that I
viewed the first mustering of the “Buckshees” with an eye of profound
misgiving. All of them were strangers to one another; and though it is
easy to talk of flowers “that blow unseen,” in a community such as a
prison camp one is usually aware pretty early of those whom the Fates
have endowed with talents. There had been little selection. Affairs had
taken a course something like this. Hayes had been walking across the
square when he had been accosted by a total stranger.
“I say, Hayes,” he would say, “you are getting up a show or something,
aren’t you?”
“Yes; like a part in it?”
“Well, that’s what I really came up for.”
“Done any acting?”
“Oh, not much, you know, a few charades.”
“Well, what do you fancy?”
“Low comedy.”
“Right, then I’ll put you down for the drunken slaveboy. First rehearsal
to-morrow at ten in the lecture hall; thanks so much. Cheerioh.”
And so the “Buckshees” were formed.
But the difficulties did not lie merely in the calibre of the artists.
There was the staging, the scenery, the music. Hayes had written the
songs, but who was to score the melodies? The versatile Dowdon had
promised to overrule the committee and orchestrate the parts, but what
of the piano? For the only two musicians had been collared by the “Pows”
and the “Shivers.” There were, of course, numerous strummers, but there
was no composer. And it was amusing to watch the way Hayes set to work.
First of all he would write the lyric, and beat out a rhythm. He would
then go and recite his composition to one Radcliffe, who could play the
piano, but could not score a part; Radcliffe would get the drift of
Hayes’s idea, and would in the course of hours compose a harmony of
sorts, which he would play to his friend Gladstone, who could score a
part but could not play a piano. Gladstone would jot down the notes; and
behold a finished song, the result of a sort of Progressive Whist.
The troubles of staging were less difficult. The experts had, it is
true, been already commandeered by the other societies. But a
serviceable quartet of carpenters was discovered, and some decorative
artists procured. All these arrangements Hayes left in charge of others.
He knew the art of delegating responsibility, and he certainly had his
hands full with his cast. For he relied for his success on vitality,
innovations, and the quality which he always dubbed as “punch.” He did
not ask for elaborate scenery. He knew he could not expect to equal
effect of _The Girl on the Stairs_. He simply demanded an adequate
setting. He would do the rest.
§ 3
With a company endowed with mediocre ability Hayes did wonders. He
decided to have a beauty chorus, and with curses and entreaties he beat
sixteen ungainly males into a semblance of the charm and delicacy of an
Empire revue. It suffered a great deal, that chorus; it was cursed, and
excommunicated. It was made a target for all the unmentionable swears.
If it had been composed of girls, it would have spent half its time in
tears. But eventually it emerged, in all its nudity, a machine. There
was a big joyboard, running well into the auditorium; and on this it
affected all the airs and graces of the courtesan. It cajoled and
pleaded; it undulated with emotion. It swayed to each breath of melody,
and it was not too unpleasant a sight, for Hayes had wisely transported
it to an Eastern
[Illustration: OUR LEADING LADY.
[_To face page 214._
]
island, to a harem, and the kindly veils of Ethiopian modesty. Through a
mist of white calico it was impossible to discern the razored roughness
of a cheek, and the unrazored blackness of an upper lip. The chorus was
a triumph.
And the same tribute must be accorded to the leading ladies. Nature had
provided them with pleasing features. Under Hayes’s tuition they learnt
the art of the glad eye and the droop of the lower lip. To see those
beauties was to be back again in the gay world of colour and revue. A
breath of femininity quivered about the rough-cast masculinity of Mainz.
So much so, indeed, that on the night of the first performance a
distinguished field officer, who had drunk deeply not only of romance,
was observed chasing round the corridor behind the flying feet of an
inclement Venus, and murmuring between his gasps, “Don’t call me Major,
call me Jim”; and even the most hardened misogynists were not
unconscious of a thrill when “Leola,” the daughter of the Hesperides,
tripped down the joyboard, and sang with outspread, enticing arms, that
beckoned to the audience--
“Come to Sonalia with me.”
The plot of the play was extravagantly simple. The curtain went up,
revealing a harassed author searching among his papers for a hidden
plot. The show was billed to start at two o’clock, but the play was
lost, what should he do? And then the machinery of Romance began. An
Arabic inscription gave the key. “Why should they not wish for the
plot?” Faith would remove mountains, and Faith caused to emerge from the
back of the stage a green-faced being, who called himself “The King of
Wishland.”
From then onwards it was plain sailing: the barrier between the
phenomenal and the real was torn aside, and we were in the world of
fancy. And it was no surprise when this obliging monarch produced a
strange device which he called a “thoughtoscope,” through which could be
observed the hurried arrival from New York of the Financier who was to
find a plot. Through this mendacious lens we saw him cross from Halifax
to London. He was in an aeroplane, he was over Holland, he was coming
down the Rhine, he had landed in Mainz, and look, amid gigantic
enthusiasm the gates of the theatre were flung open and Milton Hayes,
disguised as Silas P. Hawkshaw, was observed charging across the square,
waving a stick and a suitcase.
What followed was sheer joy. The company rose to the occasion. With
perfect equanimity we received the news that, in order to find the plot,
we should have to be transported to Wishland. In Silas P. Hawkshaw we
placed a blind unquestioning trust, and before we knew where we were,
the curtain was down, and the chorus was regaling the audience, while
the scene-shifters did their noble work.
When next the curtain rose it revealed a tropical island splashed in
sunshine. Through a vista of palms gleamed the azure stretches of some
ultimate shoreless sea. But no one would have willingly set sail. The
island was too full of charm. There were singing girls and dancing
girls, a sultan’s harem, and an American bar, and the story lost itself
in a riot of intrigue. The plot abandoned all coherence. It was a fairy
dream, in which a magic ring changed hands innumerable times, involving
disastrous loves and deserted widows.
And through all this medley of incidents Hayes wandered, first in one
garb, then in another. As a Scotsman he swallowed whisky, as a Welshman
took two wives, as a padre wandered into a harem, and as “Leda was the
mother of Helen of Troy, and all this was to him but as the sound of
lyres and flutes.” It was for him a great triumph, and perhaps the most
supreme moment was, when he proffered marriage to a much-married widow,
and suggested that they should spend their holiday in a bungalow, in a
duet of which the first verse is too good to be forgotten--
[Illustration: LIEUT. MILTON HAYES, M.C. AS SILAS P. HAWKSHAW.
[_To face page 218._]
“_He._ How’d you like a Bungalow for two, dear?
_She._ How’d you like to furnish it complete?
_He._ It would be a cosy nest, dear.
Like the grey home in the west, dear.
_She._ And on Sunday I should let you cook the meat,
_He._ We’d have a little bedroom made for two, dear,
_She._ A little bed, a little chair or so;
_He._ And in a month or two, it maybe,
We should have a little baby
_Both._ Grand piano in our Bungalow.”
There were four more verses, in the main topical, and the play ran its
way through the complete gamut of upheavals, matrimonial and domestic.
It was impossible to tell who was allied to whom. It was a complete and
utter socialism, and even the great Plato himself would have been
satisfied with that community of wives.
But it had to end; and, to carry the spirit of burlesque to its
conclusion, we finished with a pantomime procession. The chorus came on,
as choruses always do, in couples beating time with their heels. And in
their hands they brandished banners on which were inscribed the names
nearest to the northern heart, “Preston,” “Wigan,” “Johnnie Walker,”
“Steve Bloomer.” Then the protagonists appeared, each with an
appropriate tag, the lovers with a curtsey and a bow--
“And so through every kind of weather
We two will always cling together.”
The gay lady still naughtily impenitent--
“Although I haven’t chanced to find a feller,
I crave your pity; pity poor Finella.”
The evil genie of the piece, his brows wrinkled with gloom--
“You see my work I never shirk,
For I’ve done all the dirty work.”
And, last of all, Milton Hayes with a wand, a simper and a skirt--
“Without my aid where would poor Jack have been?
So please reward the little fairy queen.”
And after that was sung once again the opening chorus, and the curtain
was rung down on the most enjoyable show of the P.O.W. Theatre, Mainz,
which by a strange and lucky coincidence also happened to be the last.
For within a day or two the armistice was signed, and the companies and
committees were scattered. It remains now for Milton Hayes to give once
more to London audiences the pleasure that he gave to us. But because
sentiment lies so near to the human heart, I think his association with
the “Buckshees” will recall to Milton Hayes more pleasant memories than
those of his other and perhaps more universal successes. At a time when
life was grey and tedious, he provided us with interest, with employment
and amusement. We can only hope that he enjoyed himself as much as we
did.