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WAS most miserable with the company I had now joined. What it was like
may be gathered from the following:
“Dear Jim: If I stop long with this company I shall go mad (not very
far to go, perhaps you’ll say!). I must get out of it soon. It’s the
most wretched affair you could possibly imagine. Crummies’s show was
a _Comédie Française_ in its arrangements compared with this. We
have neither stage-manager nor acting-manager. If this were all, I
shouldn’t grumble; but we have to do our own bill posting, help work
the scenes, and take the money at the doors--not an arduous task this
last. There are no ‘lines.’ We are all ‘responsibles,’ and the parts
are distributed among us with the utmost impartiality. In the matter
of salary, too, there is the same charming equality; we all get a
guinea. In theory, that is: in reality, our salaries vary according
to our powers of nagging; the maximum ever attained by any one having
been fifteen shillings. I wonder we got any, though, considering
the audiences we play to. The mere sight of the house gives one the
horrors every night. It is so dimly lighted (for, to save expense,
the gas is only turned a quarter on) that you can hardly see your way
about, and so empty, that every sound echoes and re-echoes through the
place, till it seems as though a dozen people are talking in a scene
where there are only two. You walk on the stage, and there in front
of you are, say, twenty people dotted about the pit, a few more are
lolling listlessly over the gallery rails, and there are two or three
little groups in the boxes, while, as a background to these patches
of unhappy humanity, there stares out the bare boards and the dingy
upholstery. It is impossible to act among such surroundings as these.
All you can do#is to just drag through your part, and the audience,
who one and all have evidently been regretting from the very first
that they ever came--a fact they do not even attempt to disguise--are
as glad when it is over as you are. We stop a week in each town and
play the same pieces, so, of course, there is no study or rehearsal
now. But I wish there were; anything would be better than this
depressing monotony.
“I might have guessed what sort of a company it was by his sending
me the parts he did. I play Duncan, Banquo, Seyton, and a murderer
in _Macbeth_; Tybalt and the Apothecary in _Romeo and Juliet_; and
Laertes, Osric, and the Second Player in _Hamlet_--and so on all
through. None of us play less than two parts in the same piece. No
sooner are we killed or otherwise disposed of as one person, than we
are up again as somebody else, and that, almost before we have time
to change our clothes. I sometimes have to come on as an entirely new
party with no other change than the addition of a beard. It puts me
in mind of the nigger who borrowed his master’s hat with the idea of
passing himself off as ‘one of them white folks.’ I should think that
if the audience--when there are any--attempt to understand the play,
they must have a lively time of it; and if they are at all acquainted
with our National Bard, they must be still more puzzled. We have
improved so on the originals, that the old gentleman himself would
never recognize them. They are one-third Shakespeare, and two-thirds
the Renowned Tragedian from Drury Lane.
“Of course, I have not had my railway fare, which I was promised after
joining, and I’ve given up asking for it now.
“I got a chance of changing my quarters after a few weeks, and I need
scarcely say I jumped at it. We passed through a big town that was the
headquarters of an established circuit company, and, hearing that one
of their ‘responsibles’ had just left, I went straight to the manager,
offered myself, and was accepted. Of course, in the usual way, I ought
to have given a fortnight’s notice to the other manager, but, under
the circumstances, this could hardly have been insisted upon. So
I made the Renowned Tragedian from Drury Lane a present of all the
arrears of salary he owed me--at which generosity on my part we both
grinned--and left him at once. I don’t think he was very sorry. It
saved him a few shillings weekly, for my place was filled by one of
the orchestra, that body being thereby reduced to two.”
The company of which I was now a member was one of the very few stock
companies then remaining in the provinces. The touring system had
fairly set in by this time, and had, as a consequence, driven out the
old theatrical troupes that used to act on from year to year
within the same narrow circle, and were looked upon as one of the
institutions of the half-dozen towns they visited.
I am not going to discuss here the rival merits or demerits of the two
systems. There are advantages and disadvantages to be urged on both
sides, not only from the “school” point of view, but also as regards
the personal interests and comfort of the actor. I will merely say,
with reference to the latter part of the question, that I myself
preferred the bustle and change of touring. Indeed, in spite of
all the attending anxieties and troubles, it was in this constant
change--this continual shifting of the panorama of scenes and
circumstances by which I was surrounded--that, for me, the chief charm
of stage-life lay. Change of any kind is always delightful to youth;
whether in big things or in little ones. We have not been sufficiently
seasoned by disappointment in the past, then, to be skeptical as to
all favors the Future may be holding for us in her hand. A young man
looks upon every change as a fresh chance. Fancy points a more glowing
fortune for each new departure, and at every turn in the road he hopes
to burst upon his goal.
At each new town I went to, and with each new company I joined, new
opportunities for the display of my talents would arise. The genius
that one public had ignored, another would recognize and honor. In
minor matters, too, there was always pleasant expectation. Agreeable
companions and warm friends might be awaiting me in a new company,
the lady members might be extraordinarily lovely, and money might be
surer. The mere traveling, the seeing strange towns and country, the
playing in different theaters, the staying in different lodgings, the
occasional passing through London and looking in at home, all added
to the undoubted delight I felt in this sort of life, and fully
reconciled me to its many annoyances.
But being fixed in a dull country town for about six months at a
stretch, with no other recreation than a game of cards, or a gossip in
an inn parlor, I didn’t find at all pleasant. To the staid, or to the
married members, I daresay it was satisfactory enough. They had,
some of them, been born in the company, and had been married in
the company, and they hoped to die in the company. They were known
throughout the circuit. They took an interest in the towns, and the
towns took an interest in them, and came to their benefits. They
returned again and again to the same lodgings. There was no fear of
their forgetting where they lived, as sometimes happened to a touring
actor on his first day in a new town. They were not unknown vagabonds
wandering houseless from place to place; they were citizens and
townsmen, living among their friends and relations. Every stick of
furniture-in their rooms was familiar to them. Their lodgings were
not mere furnished apartments, but “home,” or as near to a home as a
country player could ever expect to get No doubt they, as madame
would have said, “did love the sleepiness”; but I, an energetic young
bachelor, found it “oh! so sad.” Sad as I might have thought it,
though, I stayed there five months, during which time I seem to have
written an immense number of letters to the long-suffering Jim. All
that is worth recording here, however, is contained in the following
extracts:
“.....The work is not so hard now. It was very stiff at first, as
we changed the bill about every other night, but I got hold of the
_répertoire_ and studied up all the parts I knew I should have to
play. It still comes heavy when there is a benefit, especially
when anything modern is put up, as, then, having a good wardrobe, I
generally get cast for the ‘gentlemanly party,’ and that is always
a lengthy part. But what makes it still more difficult, is the way
everybody gags. Nobody speaks by the book here. They equivocate, and
then I am undone. I never know where I am. The other day, I had a
particularly long part given me to play the next evening. I stayed
up nearly all night over it. At rehearsal in the morning, the light
comedy, with whom I was principally concerned, asked me how I’d got
on. ‘Well, I think I shall know something about it,’ I answered. ‘At
all events, I’ve got the cues perfect.’ ‘Oh! don’t bother yourself
about cues,’ replied he cheerfully. ‘You won’t get a blessed cue from
me. I use my own words now. Just you look out for the sense.’
“I did look out for the sense, but I’ll be hanged if I could see any
in what he said. There was no doubt as to the words being his own. How
I got through with it I don’t know. He helped me with suggestions when
I stuck, such as: ‘Go on, let off your bit about a father,’ or ‘Have
you told me what Sarah said?’
“Get me a pair of second-hand tights at Stinchcombe’s, will you, and
have them washed and sent down. Any old things will do. I only want
them to wear underneath others. I have to appear in black tights next
Monday. They make your legs look so awfully thin, and I’m not too
stout in those parts as it is.
“I have got hold of an invaluable pair of boots (well, so they ought
to be, I paid fifteen shillings for them). Pulled up to their full
height, they reach nearly to the waist, and are a pair of American
jack-boots; doubled in round the calf, and with a bit of gold lace and
a tassel pinned on, they are hessians; with painted tops instead of
the gold lace and tassel, they are hunting boots; and wrinkled down
about the ankle, and stuck out round the top, they are either Charles
or Cromwell, according to whether they are ornamented with lace and a
bow, or left plain. You have to keep a sharp eye on them, though, for
they have a habit of executing changes on their own account unbeknown
to you, so that while one of your legs is swaggering about as a
highwayman, the other is masquerading as a cavalier. We dress the
pieces very well indeed here. There is an excellent wardrobe belonging
to the theater.
“I do wish it were possible to get the programmes made out by
intelligent men, instead of by acting-managers. If they do ever
happen, by some strange accident, not to place your name opposite the
wrong character, they put you down for a part that never existed; and
if they get the other things right, they spell your name wrong.
“I say, here’s a jolly nice thing, you know; they’ve fined me half
a crown for not attending rehearsal. Why, I was there all the while,
only I was over the way, and when I came back they had finished.
That’s our fool of a prompter, that is; he knew where I was. I’ll
serve him out.”