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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.
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!
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.
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.
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 _promised._
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 _regularly
and in full!_ 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.
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.
“That makes one-and-four you’ve had to-night, and two-and-sixpence
last night makes three-and-ten, mind.”
“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.”
“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.”
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.
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.
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.
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.
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.
“This won’t do for me,” says the other, first pocketing the money; “I
can’t live for four days on half a crown.”
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.
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?”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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:
“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 _must_ 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. _But you
needn’t pay any one else_. 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.
“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.
“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.”
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.
“A pretty pass the stage will come to,” said they, “if this sort of
thing is to become common.”
And the newspapers observed, it was a pity that he (the actor) should
wash his dirty linen in public.
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.