[Illustration: 9153]
QUOTE from two more letters, and then I have done with this stock
company. The first was written just after our star had set--or rather
gone to the next town--the second about a fortnight later:
“... ------ ------- left on Saturday. We had crowded houses all the
time he was with us, and I’m not surprised. It must have been a treat
to these benighted provincials to see real acting. No wonder country
people don’t care much for theaters, seeing the wretched horse-play
presented to them under the name of acting. It does exasperate me to
hear people talking all that thundering nonsense about the provinces
being such a splendid school for young actors. Why, a couple of months
of it is enough to kill any idea of acting a man may have started
with. Even if you had time to think of anything but how to gabble
through your lines, it would be of no use. You would never be allowed
to carry out any ideas of your own. If you attempted to _think_,
you would be requested to look out for, another shop at once. The
slightest naturalness or originality would be put down to ignorance.
You must walk through each part by the beaten track of rule and
tradition--and such rule and tradition! The rule of Richardson’s Show,
the tradition of some ranting inn-yard hack. To reach the standard of
dramatic art in the provinces, you have to climb down, not up. Comedy
consists in having a red nose, and tumbling about the stage; being
pathetic makes you hoarse for an hour after; and as for tragedy! no
one dare attempt that who hasn’t the lungs of a politician.
“But -------- changed all that for us. He infused a new spirit into
everybody, and, when he, was on the stage, the others acted better
than I should ever have thought they could have done. It is the first
time I have played with any one who can properly be called an actor,
and it was quite a new sensation. I could myself tell that I was
acting very differently to the way in which I usually act. I seemed
to catch his energy and earnestness; the scene grew almost real, and
I began to _feel_ my part. And that is the most any one can do on
the stage. As to ‘being the character you are representing,’ that
is absurd. I can hardly believe in any sane person seriously putting
forward such a suggestion. It is too ridiculous to argue against.
Picture to yourself a whole company forgetting they were
merely acting, and all fancying themselves the people they were
impersonating. Words and business would of course be out of the
question. They would all say and do just what came natural to them,
and just _when_ it came natural; so that sometimes everybody would
be talking at once, and at other times there would be nobody doing
anything. Such enthusiasm as theirs would never bow to the pitiful
requirements of stage illusion. They would walk over the footlights
on to the heads of the orchestra, and they would lean up against the
mountains in the background. It would be a grand performance, but it
wouldn’t last long. The police would have to be called in before the
first act was over. If they were not, the Leading Man would slaughter
half the other members of the company; the Juvenile Lead would run off
with the Walking Lady and the property jewels; and the First Old Man
would die of a broken heart. What the manager would do on the second
night I don’t know. If he opened at all, I suppose he would go in
front and explain matters by saying:
“‘Ladies and Gentlemen,--I must apologize for the incompleteness with
which the play will be presented to you this evening. The truth is,
the performance last night was so realistic all round, that there is
only the Low Comedy and a General Utility left. But we’ve a good many
corpses about the theater, and with these, and the assistance of the
two gentlemen mentioned, we will do what we can.’
“Even when studying in one’s own room, one cannot for a moment lose
sight of one’s identity. A great actor, creating a character, doesn’t
forget he’s himself, and think he’s somebody else. It’s only lunatics
who have those fancies. But he is a man of such vast sympathy that he
can understand and enter into all human thoughts and feelings; and,
having pictured to himself the character of the man he wishes to
represent, he can follow the workings of that supposed man’s mind
under all possible circumstances.
“But even this sympathy must be left outside the theater doors. Once
inside, the mind must be kept clear of all distracting thought. What
is gone through on the stage is merely an exact repetition of what is
conceived in the study, and a cool head and a good memory are the only
reliable servants when once the curtain is up. Of course a man should
_feel_ what he is acting. Feeling is the breath of acting. It is to
the actor what Aphrodite’s gift was to Pygmalion--it gives life to his
statue. But this feeling is as much a matter of memory as the
rest. The actual stage is too artificial for emotion to come to one
naturally while there. Each passion is assumed and dropped by force of
will, together with the words and action which accompany it.
“...I made a sensation here last Tuesday. I was playing the very
part in which our Walking Gentleman met with his accident, and he
was playing the villain, who tries to stab me while I am asleep. (The
Heavy Man has left. He went soon after he had done the mischief.)
Well, everything had gone very smoothly so far, and I was lying there
on the couch at the back of the darkened stage, and he was leaning
over me with the knife in his hand. I was quite still, waiting for
my cue to awake, and wondering if I could manage to start up quickly,
when I raised my eyes and caught sight of R----‘s face. I may have
done him an injustice. His expression may have been mere acting. The
whole idea was, perhaps, due to nothing but my own imagination. I have
thought this since. At the time it flashed across me: ‘He means to
revenge himself on me for having taken his place. He is going to
disfigure me just as he was disfigured.’ In an instant I sprung up and
wrested the knife from his hand.
“We stood there looking at one another, and neither of us moved or
spoke; he, livid underneath his color, and trembling from head to
foot. How long we kept in that position I do not know, for the thud
of the curtain upon the stage was the first thing that recalled me to
myself. Up to when I had snatched the knife from him, all had been
in exact accordance with the book. After that, I should have held him
down by the throat, and made a speech of about eight lines. I think
our impromptu tableau was more effective.
“There was immense applause, and everybody congratulated me on my
success. ‘I suppose you know you cut out the end,’ said the manager;
‘but never mind that. I daresay you were a little nervous, and you
acted splendidly, my boy.’”
“I didn’t say it wasn’t acting, and neither did R--------....”
I left here to join a small touring company as Juvenile Lead. I looked
upon the offer as a grand opportunity at the time, and following
Horace’s * advice, grasped it by the forelock. I therefore, one Sunday
morning packed my basket, went round the town and shook hands with
everybody--not without a pang of regret, for there are few human
beings we can be with for any length of time and not be sorry to say
good-by to--and then, as the bright summer’s sun was setting and the
church bells beginning to peal, I steamed away, or rather the engine
did, and the city and its people faded out of my sight and out of my
life.
* Not quite sure whose advice this is. Have put it down to Horace to
avoid contradiction.
Sunday is the great traveling day for actors. It loses them no time.
A company can finish at one town on the Saturday night, and wake up on
Monday morning in the next, ready to get everything ship-shape for the
evening. Or an actor can leave one show and join another at the other
end of the kingdom without missing a single performance. I have
known a man play in Cornwall on the Saturday, and at Inverness on
the following Monday. But convenient though it is in this respect,
in every other, Sunday traveling is most unpleasant, and, for their
gratification, I can assure strict Sabbatarians that it brings with it
its own punishment.
Especially to a man with a conscience--an article which, in those
early days, I was unfortunate enough to possess. A conscience is a
disagreeable sort of thing to have with one at any time. It has
a nasty disposition--a cantankerous, fault-finding, interfering
disposition. There is nothing sociable about it. It seems to take a
pleasure in making itself objectionable, and in rendering its owner
as uncomfortable as possible. During these Sunday journeys, it used to
vex me by every means in its power. If any mild old gentleman, sitting
opposite me in the carriage, raised his eyes and looked at me, I
immediately fancied he was silently reproaching me, and I felt ashamed
and miserable. It never occurred to me at the time that he was every
bit as bad as I was, and that I had as much right to be shocked at him
as he to be horrified at me. Then I used to ask myself what my poor
aunt would say if she could see me. Not that it was of the slightest
consequence what the old lady would have said, but the question was
just one of those petty annoyances in which a mean-spirited conscience
delights. I was firmly convinced that everybody was pointing the
finger of scorn at me. I don’t know which particular finger is the
finger of scorn: whichever it is, that, I felt, was the one that was
pointed at me. At every station, my exasperating inward monitor would
whisper to me: “But for such abandoned wretches as you, all those
porters and guards would be sleeping peacefully in the village
church.” When the whistle sounded, my tormentor would add; “But for
you and other such despicable scoundrels, that grimy, toil-stained
engine-driver would be dressed in his best clothes, lounging up
against a post at his own street corner.” Such thoughts maddened me.
My fellow-passengers generally let on that they were going to see sick
relatives, and I would have done the same if it hadn’t been for
that awful basket of mine. But the inventive faculty of a newspaper
reporter couldn’t have explained away a basket the size of an average
chest of drawers. I might have said that it contained a few delicacies
for the invalid, but nobody would have believed me, and there would
have been a good lie wasted.
But it is not only to people with consciences that Sunday traveling
presents vexations. Even you, my dear reader, would find it
unpleasant. There is a subdued going-to-a-funeral air about the whole
proceeding, which makes you melancholy in spite of yourself. You
miss the usual bustling attributes of railway traveling. No crowded
platforms! no piles of luggage! no newspaper boys! The refreshment
rooms don’t seem the same places at all, and the damsels there are
haughtier then ever. When you arrive at your destination, you seem to
have come to a city of the dead. You pass through deserted streets to
your hotel. Nobody is about. You go into the coffee-room and sit down
there by yourself. After a while the boots looks in. You yearn toward
him as toward a fellow-creature. You would fall upon his neck, and
tell him all your troubles. You try to engage him in conversation, so
as to detain him in the room, for you dread to be left alone again.
But he doesn’t enter into your feelings: he answers all questions by
monosyllables, and gets away as quickly as possible. You go out for
a walk. The streets are dark and silent, and you come back more
miserable than you started. You order supper, but have no appetite,
and cannot eat it when it comes. You retire to your room early, but
cannot go to sleep. You lie there and wonder what the bill will come
to, and, while thinking of this, you are softly borne away into the
land of dreams, and fancy that the proprietor has asked you for a
hundred and eighty-seven pounds nine and fourpence ha’penny, and that
you have killed him on the spot, and left the house in your nightshirt
without paying.
[Illustration: 9163]
HE show which I now graced with my presence was a “fit-up.” I didn’t
know this beforehand, or I should never have engaged myself. A
“fit-up” is only one grade higher than a booth, which latter branch
of the profession, by the way, I have always regretted never having
explored. I missed the most picturesque and romantic portion of the
theatrical world by not penetrating into that time-forsaken corner.
Booth life is a Bohemia within a Bohemia. So far as social and
artistic position is concerned, it is at the bottom of the dramatic
ladder; but for interest and adventure, it stands at the very top.
However, I never did join a booth, so there is an end of the matter.
The nearest I approached to anything of the kind was this fit-up,
and that I didn’t like at all. We kept to the very small towns, where
there was no theater, and fitted up an apology for a stage in any
hall or room we could hire for the purpose. The town-hall was what we
generally tried for, but we were not too particular; any large room
did, and we would even put up with a conveniently situated barn. We
carried our own props, scenery, and proscenium, and trusted for the
wood work to some local carpenter. A row of candles did duty for
footlights, and a piano, hired in the town, represented the orchestra.
We couldn’t get a piano on one occasion, so the proprietor of the hall
lent us his harmonium.
I will not linger over my experience with this company; they were not
pleasant ones. Short extracts from two letters, one written just
after joining, and the other sent off just before I left, will be
sufficient:
“Dear Jim: I find I’ve dropped the substance and grasped the shadow (I
pride myself not so much on the originality of this remark as on its
applicability). I shall leave as soon as possible, and try my luck in
London. My ambition to play Juvenile Lead vanished the moment I saw
the Leading Lady, who is, as usual, the manager’s wife. She is a fat
greasy old woman. She has dirty hands and finger nails, and perspires
freely during the course of the performance. She is about three times
my size, and if the audiences to which we play have the slightest
sense of humor--which, from what I have seen of them, I think
extremely doubtful--our love-making must be a rare treat to them. How
a London first-night gallery would enjoy it! I’m afraid, though, it’s
only wasted down here. My arm, when I try to clasp her waist, reaches
to about the middle of her back; and, when we embrace, the house can’t
see me at all. I have to carry her half-way across the stage in one
part! By Jove! I’m glad we don’t play that piece often.
“She says I shall never make a good ‘lover’ unless I throw more ardor
[‘harder,’ she calls it) into my acting....”
“... Shall be with you on Monday next. Can’t stand this any longer.
It’s ruining me. Seven-and-six was all I could get last week, and
eleven shillings the week before. We are not doing bad business by any
means. Indeed, we have very good houses. The old man has got the knack
of making out good gag bills, and that pulls ‘em in for the two or
three nights we stay at each place. You know what I mean by a ‘gag’
bill: ‘The Ruined Mill by Dead Man’s Pool. Grace Mervin thinks to meet
a friend, but finds a foe. Harry Baddun recalls old days.
“Why do you not love me?”
“Because you are a bad man.”
“Then die!” The struggle on the brink!! “Help!!” “There is none to
help you here.”
“You lie, Harry Baddun; _I_ am here.” A hand from the grave!! Harry
Baddun meets his doom!!!
“That’s what I mean by a gag bill.
“Whatever money is made, however, he takes care to keep for himself.
He can always put up at the best hotel in the place, while we have to
pawn our things to pay for the meanest of lodgings.
“It isn’t only actors who get robbed by these managers: authors also
suffer pretty considerably. We have two copyright pieces in our list,
both of which draw very well, but not a penny is paid for performing
them. To avoid any chance of unpleasantness, the titles of the pieces
and the names of the chief characters are altered. So that even if the
author or his friends (supposing it possible for any author to have
any friends) were on the lookout, they would never know anything about
it. And, if they did, it would be of no use. It would be throwing good
money after bad to attempt to enforce payment from the men who do
this sort of thing,--and I hear that it is done all over the
provinces,--they have no money and none can be got out of them. Your
penniless man can comfortably defy half the laws in the statute book.
“What a nuisance firearms are on the stage! I thought I was blinded
the other night, and my eyes are painful even now. The fellow should
have fired up in the air. It is the only safe rule on a small stage,
though it does look highly ridiculous to see a man drop down dead
because another man fires a pistol at the moon. But there is always
some mishap with them. They either don’t go off at all, or else
they go off in the wrong place, and, when they do go off, there is
generally an accident. They can never be depended upon. You rush on
to the stage, present a pistol at somebody’s head, and say, ‘Die!’ but
the pistol only goes click, and the man doesn’t know whether to die or
not. He waits while you have another try at him, and the thing clicks
again; and then you find out that the property man hasn’t put a cap on
it, and you turn round to get one. But the other man, thinking it
is all over, makes up his mind to die at once from nothing else but
fright, and, when you come back to kill him for the last time, you
find he’s already dead.
“We have recourse to some rum makeshifts here, to eke out our
wardrobes. My old frock coat, with a little cloth cape which one of
the girls has cutout for me pinned on underneath the collar, and with
a bit of lace round the cuffs, does for the gallant of half the old
comedies; and, when I pin the front corners back and cover them with
red calico, I’m a French soldier. A pair of white thingumies does
admirably for buckskin riding breeches, and for the part of a Spanish
conspirator, I generally borrow my landlady’s tablecloth....”
It was about the end of October when I found myself once more in
London. The first thing I then did was to go to my old shop on the
Surrey-side. Another company and another manager were there, but the
latter knew me, and, as I owned a dress suit, engaged me at a salary
of twelve shillings weekly to play the part of a swell. When I had
been there just one week, he closed. Whether it was paying me that
twelve shillings that broke him, I cannot say; but on Monday morning
some men came and cut the gas off, and then he said he shouldn’t go on
any longer, and that we must all do the best we could for ourselves.
I, with two or three others, thereupon started off for a theater at
the East End, which was about to be opened for a limited number of
nights by some great world-renowned actor. This was about the fortieth
world-renowned party. I had heard of for the first time within the
last twelvemonth. My education in the matter of world-renowned people
had evidently been shamefully neglected.
The theater was cunningly contrived, so that one had to pass through
the bar of the adjoining public-house--to the landlord of which
it belonged--to get to the stage. Our little party was saved from
temptation, however, for I don’t think we could have mustered
a shilling among the lot of us that morning. I was getting most
seriously hard up at this time. The few pounds I had had left, after
purchasing my wardrobe and paying my railway fares, etc., had now
dwindled down to shillings, and, unless things mended, I felt I
should have to throw up the sponge and retire from the stage. I was
determined not to do this though, till the very last, for I dreaded
the chorus of “I told you so’s,” and “I knew very well how ‘twould
be’s,” and such like well-known and exasperating crows of triumph,
with which, in these cases, our delighted friends glorify themselves
and crush us.
The East End theater proved a stop-gap for a while. I was fortunate
enough to be one of those engaged out of the crowd of eager and
anxious applicants, among whom I met a couple from the fit-up company
I had lately left, they having come to the same conclusion as myself,
viz., that it was impossible to live well and “dress respectably on
and off the stage” upon an average salary of ten shillings weekly. The
engagement was only for a fortnight, and there is only one incident
connected with it that I particularly remember. That was my being
“guyed” on one occasion. We were playing a melodrama, the scene
of which was laid in some outlandish place or other, and the stage
manager insisted on my wearing a most outrageous costume. I knew
it would be laughed at, especially in that neighborhood, and my
expectations were more than fulfilled. I hadn’t been on the stage
five seconds before I heard a voice from the gallery hoarsely inquire:
“What is it, Bill?” And then another voice added: “Tell us what it is,
and you shall have it.”
A good deal of laughter followed these speeches. I got hot all over,
and felt exceedingly uncomfortable and nervous. It was as much as I
could do to recollect my part, and it was with a great effort that I
began my first line. No sooner had I opened my mouth, however, than
somebody in the pit exclaimed, in tones of the utmost surprise,
“Blowed if it ain’t alive!”
After that, the remarks on my personal appearance fell thick and fast:
“Look well in a shop window, that bloke!” “Nice suit to take your gal
out on a Sunday in!”
“This style, thirty shillings,” etc.; while one good-natured man
sought to put me at my ease by roaring out in a stentorian voice,
“Never you mind, old man; you go on. They’re jealous ‘cos you’ve got
nice clothes on.” How I managed to get through the part I don’t know.
I became more nervous and awkward every minute, and, of course, the
more I bungled, the more the house jeered. I gained a good deal of
sympathy behind, for most of them had had similar experiences of their
own; but I was most intensely miserable all that evening, and, for the
next night or two, quite dreaded to face the audience. Making game of
any one is a very amusing occupation, but the “game” doesn’t see
the fun till a long while afterward. I can’t bear to hear any of the
performers chaffed when I’m at a theater. Actors are necessarily a
sensitive class of people, and I don’t think those who make fun of
them, when any little thing goes wrong, have any idea of the pain they
are inflicting. It is quite right, and quite necessary sometimes,
that disapprobation should be expressed, and that unmistakably, but it
should be for the purpose of correcting real faults. “Guying” is, as
a rule, indulged in only by the silliest portion of the audience, and
for no other object but to display their own vulgar wit.
After my fortnight at the East End, I went as one of the chorus in a
new opera-bouffe to be brought out at a West End theater. We rehearsed
for three weeks, the piece ran for one, and then I again took a
provincial engagement, which, as it was now close upon Christmas, was
easy enough to obtain.
My stay in London had not been very profitable to me, but it had
given my friends a treat, as they had been able to come and see me act
again. At least, I suppose it was a treat to them, though they did not
say so. My friends are always most careful never to overdo the thing
in the matter of praise. I cannot accuse them of sycophancy. They
scorn to say pleasant things that they don’t mean. They prefer saying
unpleasant things that they do mean. There’s no humbug about them;
they never hesitate to tell me just exactly what they think of me.
This is good of them. I respect them for saying what they think; but
if they would think a little differently, I should respect them still
more. I wonder if everybody’s friends are as conscientious? I’ve heard
of people having “admiring friends,” and “flattering friends,” and
“over-indulgent friends,” but I’ve never had any of that sort myself.
I’ve often thought I should rather like to, though, and if any
gentleman has more friends of that kind than he wants, and would care
to have a few of the opposite stamp, I am quite ready to swop
with him. I can warrant mine never to admire or flatter under any
circumstances whatsoever; neither will he find them over-indulgent.
To a man who really wishes to be told of his faults, they would be
invaluable; on this point they are candor itself. A conceited man
would also derive much benefit from their society. I have myself.