[Illustration: 9076]
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.
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.
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.
“Don’t talk about dress rehearsals, my boy,” was the reply; “think
yourself lucky if you get your dress all right by the night.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 _Silver King_ 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.
Maybe I’m wrong, though.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.