"An excellent play."
Such things as dinners to Literature were the relaxations of Gilead
Beck's serious life. His real business was to find an object worthy of
that enormous income of which he found himself the trustee. The most
sympathetic man of his acquaintance, although it was difficult to make
him regard any subject seriously, was Jack Dunquerque, and to him he
confided his anxieties and difficulties.
"I can't fix it," he groaned. "I can't fix it anyhow."
Jack knew what he meant, but waited for further light, like him who
readeth an acrostic.
"The more I look at that growin' pile--there's enough now to build the
White House over again--the more I misdoubt myself."
"Where have you got it all?"
"In Government Stocks--by the help of Mr. Cassilis. No more of the
unholy traffic in shares which you buy to sell again. No, sir. That
means makin' the widow weep and the minister swear; an' I don't know
which spectacle of those two is the more melancholy for a Christian
man. All in stocks--Government Stocks, safe and easy to draw out, with
the interest comin' in regular as the chant of the cuckoo-clock."
"Well, can't you let it stay there?"
"No, Mr. Dunquerque, I can't. There's the voice of that blessed Inseck
in the box there, night and day in my ears. And it says, plain as
speech can make it, 'Do something with the money.'"
"You have bought a few pictures."
"Yes, sir: I have begun the great Gilead P. Beck collection. And when
that is finished, I guess there'll be no collection on this airth to
show a candle to it. But that's personal vanity. That's not what the
Golden Butterfly wants."
"Would he like you to have a yacht? A good deal may be chucked over a
yacht. That is, a good deal for what we Englishmen call a rich man."
"When I go home again I mean to build a yacht, and sail her over here
and race you people at Cowes--all the same as the America, twenty
years ago. But not yet."
"There are a few trifles going about which run away with money. Polo,
now. If you play polo hard enough, you may knock up a pony every game.
But I suppose that would not be expensive enough for you. You couldn't
ride two ponies at once, I suppose, like a circus fellow."
"Selfish luxury, Mr. Dunquerque," said Gilead, with an almost
prayerful twang, "is not the platform of the Golden Butterfly. I
should like to ride two ponies at once, but it's not to be thought of.
And my legs are too long for any but a Kentucky pony."
"Is the Turf selfish luxury, I wonder?" asked Jack. "A good deal of
money can be got through on the Turf. Nothing, of course, compared
with your pile; but still, you might make a sensible hole in it by
judicious backing."
Gilead Beck was as free from ostentation, vanity, and the desire to
have his ears tickled as any man. But still he did like to feel that
by the act of Providence, he was separated from other men. An income
of fifteen hundred pounds a day, which does not depend upon harvests,
or on coal, or on iron, or anything to eat and drink, but only on the
demand for rock-oil, which increases, as he often said, with the march
of civilisation, does certainly separate a man from his fellows. This
feeling of division saddened him; it imparted something of the
greatness of soul which belongs even to the most unworthy emperors; he
felt himself bound to do something for the good of mankind while life
and strength were in him. And it was not unpleasant to know that
others recognised the vastness of his Luck. Therefore, when Jack
Dunquerque spoke as if the Turf were a gulf which might be filled up
with his fortune, while it swallowed, without growing sensibly more
shallow, all the smaller fortunes yearly shot into it like the rubbish
on the future site of a suburban villa, Gilead Beck smiled. Such
recognition from this young man was doubly pleasant to him on account
of his unbounded affection for him. Jack Dunquerque had saved his
life. Jack Dunquerque treated him as an equal and a friend. Jack
Dunquerque wanted nothing of him, and, poor as he was, would accept
nothing of him. Jack Dunquerque was the first, as he was also the most
favourable, specimen he had met of the class which may be poor, but
does not seem to care for more money; the class which no longer works
for increase of fortune.
"No, sir," said Gilead. "I do not understand the Turf. When I go home
I shall rear horses and improve the breed. Maybe I may run a horse in
a trotting-match at Saratoga."
In the mornings this American, in search of a Worthy Object, devoted
his time to making the round of hospitals, London societies, and
charities of all kinds. He asked what they did, and why they did it.
He made remarks which were generally unpleasant to the employés of the
societies; he went away without offering the smallest donation; and he
returned moodily to the Langham Hotel.
"The English," he said, after a fortnight of these investigations,
"air the most kind-hearted people in the hull world. We are
charitable, and I believe the Germans, when they are not officers in
their own army, are a well-disposed folk. But in America, when a man
tumbles down the ladder, he falls hard. Here there's every contrivance
for makin' him fall soft. A man don't feel handsome when he's on the
broad of his back, but it must be a comfort for him to feel that his
backbone isn't broke. Lord, Mr. Dunquerque! to look at the hospitals
and refuges, one would think the hull Bible had got nothin' but the
story of the Prodigal Son, and that every other Englishman was that
misbehaved boy. I reckon if the young man had lived in London, he'd
have gone home very slow--most as slow as ever he could travel.
There'd be the hospitals, comfortable and warm, when his constitootion
had broke down with too many drinks: there'd have been the
convalescent home for him to enjoy six months of happy meditation by
the seaside when he was pickin' up again; and when he got well, would
he take to the swine-herdin', or would he tramp it home to the old
man? Not he, sir; he would go back to the old courses and become a
Roper. Then more hospitals. P'r'aps when he'd got quite tired, and
seen the inside of a State prison, and been without his little
comforts for a spell, he'd have gone home at last--just as I did, for
I was the prodigal son without the riotous livin'--and found the old
man gone, leavin' him his blessin'. The elder one would hand him the
blessin' cheerfully, and stick to the old man's farm. Then the poor
broken down sportsman--he'd tramp it back to London, get into an
almshouse, with an allowance from a City charity, and die happy.
"There's another kind o' prodigal," Mr. Beck went on, being in a mood
for moralising. "She's of the other sex. Formerly she used to repent
when she thought of what was before her. There's a refuge before her
now, and kind women to take her by the hand and cry over her. She
isn't in any hurry for the cryin' to begin, but it's comfortable to
look forward to; and so she goes on until she's ready. Twenty years
fling, maybe, with nothing to do for her daily bread; and then to
start fair on the same level as the woman who has kept her
self-respect and worked.
"I can't see my way clear, Mr. Dunquerque; I can't. It wouldn't do any
kind of honour to the Golden Butterfly to lay out all of these dollars
in helpin' up them who are bound to fall--bound to fall. There's only
two classes of people in this world--those who are goin' up, and those
who are goin' down. It's no use tryin' to stop those who are on their
way down. Let them go; let them slide; give them a shove down, if you
like, and all the better, because they will the sooner get to the
bottom, and then go up again till they find their own level."
It was in the evening, at nine o'clock, when Gilead Beck made the
oration. He was in his smaller room, which was lit only by the
twilight of the May evening and by the gas-lamp in the street below.
He walked up and down, talking with his hands in his pockets, and
silencing Jack Dunquerque, who had never thought seriously about these
or any other things, by his earnestness. Every now and then he went to
the window and looked into the street below. The cabs rattled up and
down, and on the pavement the customary sight of a West-end street
after dark perhaps gave him inspiration.
"Their own level," he repeated it. "Yes, sir, there's a proper level
for every one of us somewhere, if only we can find it. At the lowest
depth of all, there's the airth to be ploughed, the hogs to be drove,
and the corn to be reaped. I read the other day, when I was studying
for the great dinner, that formerly, if a man took refuge in a town,
he might stay there for a year and a day. If then he could not keep
himself, they opened the gates and they ran him out on a plank; same
way as I left Clearville City. Back to the soil he went--back to the
plough. Let those who are going down hill get down as fast as they
can, and go back to the soil.
"I've sometimes thought," he went on, "that there's a kind of work
lower than agriculture. It is to wear a black coat and do copying. You
take a boy and you make him a machine; tell him to copy, that is all.
Why, sir, the rustic who feeds the pigs is a Solomon beside that poor
critter. Make your poor helpless paupers into clerks, and make the men
who've got arms and legs and no brains into farm labourers. Perhaps I
shall build a city and conduct it on those principles."
Then he stopped because he had run himself down, and they began to
talk of Phillis.
But it seemed to Jack a new and singular idea. The weak must go to the
wall; but they might be helped to find their level. He was glad for
once that he had that small four hundred a year of his own, because,
as he reflected, his own level might be somewhere on the stage where
the manufacture by hand, say, of upper leathers, represents the proper
occupation of the class. A good many other fellows, he thought, among
his own acquaintance, might find themselves accommodated with boards
for the cobbling business near himself. And he looked at Gilead Beck
with increased admiration as a man who had struck all this, as well as
Ile, out of his own head.
Jack Dunquerque suggested educational endowments. Mr. Beck made
deliberate inquiries into the endowments of Oxford and Cambridge, with
a view of founding a grand National American University on the old
lines, to be endowed in perpetuity with the proceeds of his perennial
oil-fountains. But there were things about these ancient seats of
learning which did not commend themselves to him. In his unscholastic
ignorance he asked what was the good of pitting young men against each
other, like the gladiators in the arena, to fight, like them, with
weapons of no earthly modern use. And when he was told of fellowships
given to men for life as a prize for a single battle, he laughed
aloud.
He went down to Eton. He was mean enough to say of the masters that
they made their incomes by over-charging the butchers' and the
grocers' bills, and he said that ministers, as he called them, ought
not to be grocers; and of the boys he said that he thought it
unwholesome for them that some should have unlimited pocket-money, and
all should have unlimited tick. Also some one told him that Eton boys
no longer fight, because they funk one another. So that he came home
sorrowful and scornful.
"In my country," he said, "we have got no scholarships, and if the
young men can't pay their professors they do without them and educate
themselves. And in my country the boys fight. Yes, Mr. Dunquerque, you
bet they do fight."
It was after an evening at the Lyceum that Gilead Beck hit upon the
grand idea of his life.
The idea struck him as they walked home. It fell upon him like an
inspiration, and for the moment stunned him. He was silent until he
reached the hotel. Then he called a waiter.
"Get Mr. Dunquerque a key," he said. "He will sleep here. That means,
Mr. Dunquerque, that we can talk all night if you please. I want
advice."
Jack laughed. He always did laugh.
"It is a great privilege," he said, "advising Fortunatus."
"It is a great privilege, Mr. Dunquerque," returned Fortunatus,
"having an adviser who wants nothing for himself. See that pile of
letters. Every one a begging-letter, except that blue one on the top,
which is from a clergyman. He's a powerful generous man, sir. He
offers to conduct my charities at a salary of three hundred pounds a
year."
Mr. Beck then proceeded to unfold the great idea which had sprung up,
full grown, in his brain.
"That man, sir," he said, meaning Henry Irving, "is a grand actor. And
they are using him up. He wants rest."
"I was an actor myself once, and I've loved the boards ever since. I
was not a great actor. I am bound to say that I did not act like Mr.
Henry Irving. Quite the contrary. Once I was the hind legs of an
elephant. Perhaps Mr. Irving himself, when he was a 'prentice, was the
fore legs. I was on the boards for a month, when the company busted
up. Most things did bust up that I had to do with in those days. I was
the lawyer in _Flowers of the Forest_. I was the demon with the keg to
Mr. Jefferson's Rip Van Winkle. Once I played Horatio. That was when
the Mayor of Constantinople City inaugurated his year of office by
playin' Hamlet. He'd always been fond of the stage, that Mayor, but
through bein' in the soft-goods line never could find time to go on.
So when he got the chance, bein' then a matter of four-and-fifty, of
course he took it. And he elected to play Hamlet, just to show the
citizens what a whole-souled Mayor they'd got, and the people in
general what good play-actin' meant. The corporation attended in a
body, and sat in the front row of what you would call the dress
circle. All in store clothes and go-to-meetin' gloves. It was a
majestic and an imposing spectacle. Behind them was the fire brigade
in uniform. The citizens of Constantinople and their wives and
daughters crowded out the house.
"Wal, sir, we began. Whether it was they felt jealous or whether they
felt envious, that corporation laughed. They laughed at the sentinels,
and they laughed at the moon. They laughed at the Ghost, and they
laughed at me--Horatio. And then they laughed at Hamlet.
"I watched the Mayor gettin' gradually riz. Any man's dander would.
Presently he rose to that height that he went to the footlights, and
stood there facin' his own town council like a bull behind a gate.
"They left off laughing for a minute, and then they began again. We
are a grave people, Mr. Dunquerque, I am told, and the sight of those
town councillors all laughin' together like so many free niggers
before the war was most too much for any one.
"The Mayor made a speech that wasn't in the play.
"'Hyar,' he said, lookin' solemn. 'You jest gether up your traps and
skin out of this. I've got the say about this house, and I arn't a
goin' to have the folks incited to make game of their Mayor.
So--you--kin--jist--light.'
"They hesitated.
"The Mayor pointed to the back of the theatre.
"'Git,' he said again.
"One of the town councillors rose and spoke.
"'Mr. Mayor,' he began, 'or Hamlet, Prince of Denmark'----
"'Wal, sir,' said the Mayor, 'didn't Nero play in his own theaytre?'
"'Mr. Mayor, or Hamlet, or Nero,' e went on, 'we came here on the
presumption that we were paying for our places, and bound to laugh if
we were amused at the performance. Now, sir, this performance does
amuse us considerable.'
"'You may presump,' said the Mayor, 'what you dam please. But git. Git
at once, or I'll turn on the pumps.'
"It was the Ghost who came to the front with the hose in his hands
ready to begin.
"The town council disappeared before he had time to play on them and
we went on with the tragedy.
"But it was spoiled, sir, completely spoiled. And I have never acted
since then.
"So you see Mr. Dunquerque, I know somethin' about actin. 'Tisn't as
if I was a raw youngster starting a theatrical idea all at once. I
thought of it to-night, while I saw a man actin who has the real stuff
in him, and only wants rest. I mean to try an experiment in London,
and if it succeeds I shall take it to New York, and make the American
Drama the greatest in all the world."
"What will you do?"
"I said to myself in that theatre: 'We want a place where we can have
a different piece acted every week; we want to give time for
rehearsals and for alteration; we want to bring up the level of the
second-rate actors; we want more intelligence; and we want more care.'
Now, Mr. Dunquerque, how would you tackle that problem?"
"I cannot say."
"Then I will tell you, sir. You must have three full companies. You
must give up expecting that Theatre to pay its expenses; you must find
a rich man to pay for that Theatre; and he must pay up pretty
handsome."
"Lord de Molleteste took the Royal Hemisphere last year."
"Had he three companies, sir?"
"No; he only had one; and that was a bad one. Wanted to bring out a
new actress, and no one went to see her. Cost him a hundred pounds a
week till he shut it up."
"Well, we will bring along new actresses too, but in a different
fashion. They will have to work their way up from the bottom of the
ladder. My Theatre will cost me a good deal more than a hundred pounds
a week, I expect. But I am bound to run it. The idea's in my head
strong. It's the thing to do. A year or two in London, and then for
the States. We shall have a Grand National Drama, and the Ile shall
pay for it."
He took paper and pen, and began to write.
"Three companies, all complete, for tragedy and comedy. I've been to
every theatre in London, and I'm ready with my list. Now, Mr.
Dunquerque, you listen while I write them down.
"I say first company; not that there's any better or worse, but
because one must begin with something.
"In the first I will have Mr. Irving, Mr. Henry Neville, Mr. William
Farren, Mr. Toole, Mr. Emery, Miss Bateman, and Miss Nelly Farren.
"In the second, Mr. George Rignold--I saw him in _Henry V._ last
winter in the States--Mr. Hare, Mr. Kendal, Mr. Lionel Brough, Mrs.
Kendal, and that clever little lady, Miss Angelina Claude.
"In the third I will have Mr. Phelps, Mr. Charles Matthews, Mr. W. J.
Hill, Mr. Arthur Cecil, Mr. Kelly, Mr. and Mrs. Bancroft, and Mrs.
Scott-Siddons, if you could only get her.
"I should ask Mr. Alfred Wigan to be a stage-manager and general
director, and I would give him absolute power.
"Every company will play for a week and rehearse for a fortnight. The
principal parts shall not always be played by the best actors. And I
will not have any piece run for more than a week at a time."
"And how do you think your teams would run together?"
"Sir, it would be a distinction to belong to that Theatre. And they
would be well paid. They will run together just for the very same
reason as everybody runs together--for their own interest."
"I believe," said Jack, "that you have at last hit upon a plan for
getting rid even of your superfluous cash."
"It will cost a powerful lot, I believe. But Lord, Mr. Dunquerque!
what better object can there be than to improve the Stage? Think what
it would mean. The House properly managed; no loafin' around behind
the scenes; every actor doing his darn best, and taking time for study
and rehearsal; people comin' down to a quiet evening, with the best
artists to entertain them, and the best pieces to play. The Stage
would revive, sir. We should hear no more about the decay of the
Drama. The Drama decay! That's bunkum, sir. That's the invention of
the priests and the ministers, who go about down-cryin' what they
can't have their own fingers in."
"But I don't see how your scheme will encourage authors."
"I shall pay them too, sir. I should say to Mr. Byron: 'Sir, you air a
clever and a witty man. Go right away, sir. Sit down for a
twelvemonth, and do nothin' at all. Then write me a play; put your own
situations in it, not old jokes; put your own situations in it, not
old ones. Give me somethin' better.' Then I should say to Mr. Gilbert:
'Your pieces have got the real grit, young gentleman; but you write
too fast. Go away too for six months and do nothin'. Then sit down for
six months more, and write a piece that will be pretty and sweet, and
won't be thin.' And there's more dramatists behind--only give them a
chance. They shall have it at my house."
"And what will the other houses do?"
"The other houses, sir, may go on playing pieces for four hundred
nights if they like. I leave them plenty of men to stump their boards,
and my Theatre won't hold more than a certain number. I shall only
take a small house to begin with, such a house as the Lyceum, and we
shall gradually get along. But no profit can be made by such a Stage,
and I am ready to give half my Ile to keep it goin'. Of course," he
added, "when it is a success in London I shall carry it away, company
and all, to New York."
He rose in a burst of enthusiasm.
"Gilead P. Beck shall be known for his collection of pictures. He
shall be known for his Golden Butterfly, and the Luck it brought him.
But he shall be best known, Mr. Dunquerque, because he will be the
first man to take the Stage out of the mud of commercial enterprise,
and raise it to be the great educator of the people. He shall be known
as the founder of the Grand National American Drama. And his bust
shall be planted on the top of every American stage."