[Illustration: 9126]
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.
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:
“Theater Royal,” and setting forth that “------ --------, the
World-Renowned Tragedian from Drury Lane,” would give his magnificent
impersonations of _Richard III._ and _The Idiot Witness_ 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.
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.
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.
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, _had_ 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--
“Could the owner of the pleasant face recommend me to any lodgings?”
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.”
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.
Madame then stated her intention to go to the theater that very
evening, and requested to know what was to be played.
On Monsieur informing her that “--------, the World-Renowned Tragedian
from Drury Lane, would give his magnificent impersonations of _Richard
III._ and _The Idiot Witness_,” 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.
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.
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.
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.
“No,” I replied, “I had come to play. I was an actor.”
“Oh,” said Miss Kemp. Then added severely, “You’re married.”
I repudiated the insinuation with scorn.
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.
“Bless the child,” said she, “do run and take off those wet boots.
I’ll send some one for your luggage.”
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.
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.
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.