THE DIORAMA
Mr. Blundell did not believe in allowing the public to suffer in
ignorance of who he was. This was not merely due to a desire to
advertise himself and his goods. He was genuinely anxious to give
the public a treat, and his progress from town to town was a kind of
unlimited extension of the free-list. There he sat opposite Bram as if
the wooden seat of the third-class compartment were a Mexican saddle,
the train a bronco. On the other hand, the Sisters Garibaldi had lost
most of their exotic charm now that they were dressed like other women
in panniers and bustles instead of the ribbons and sequins of Southern
romance. What was left of it vanished for Bram when he heard one of
them say to the other in an unmistakably cockney accent:
“Did that masher in front send you the chocolates he promised, dear?”
“No, he didn’t, the wretch.”
“I told you he’d have to pawn his trousers before you ever saw those
chocolates, didn’t I, dear?”
“I wouldn’t like to say what you’ve told me and what you haven’t told
me, dear. You wag your tongue a good deal faster than what a dog wags
its tail.”
Mr. Blundell doffed his sombrero and revealed a head of hair that was
ridiculously out of keeping with that haystack of a moustache, for it
looked as if somebody had unwound the shining black twine from the
handle of a cricket bat and tried to wind it again with less than half
the quantity.
“Now, girlies,” he remonstrated in a fruity voice, “don’t make things
uncomfortable all around by arguing. Us men don’t like to see little
birdies pecking at one another. That’s right, isn’t it?”
This appeal was addressed to Bram, who smiled as politely as he knew
how and received in exchange a wink from Mr. Blundell so tremendous as
almost to give the impression that he had pulled down the curtain of
the compartment window and let it go up again with a snap.
“Going far?” he continued genially.
“Liverpool.”
“By thunder, so are we. The long arm again! You can’t get away from it
in this world. My name’s Blundell.”
This information was vouchsafed with an elaborate nonchalance.
“Unwin U. Blundell,” he added.
“I was enjoying the Diorama last night,” Bram said. “It was simply
splendid.”
“Ah, you were in front? Dainty little show, isn’t it? Instructive, yet
at the same time trees amusong as the Froggies say. Bright, but never
coarse. Rich, but never ostentatious. Funny thing, I suppose I’ve
knocked about the world more than most of us have, and yet I’ve always
set my face against anything the teeniest tottiest little bit coarse.
Did you notice I said my name was Unwin U. Blundell? Got me, as our
cousins the Americanos say? The initials by themselves would be coarse,
and my entertainment is refined from start to finish.”
One of the Sisters Garibaldi giggled.
“Now, Clara,” he said severely. “By the way, permit me, Miss Clara
Garibaldi, Miss Mona Garibaldi, Mr....”
“Bram Fuller.”
“No relation to Fuller’s Fireworks, I suppose?”
Bram explained that he was.
“By Jenkins, the long arm again! Why, only last week at Burton-on-Trent
I used a packet of Fuller’s squibs for the eruption of Mount Vesuvius.
But I had to give it up. Yes, I found it frightened the women and
children too much. They were so shook by the effect that when the moon
rose behind the Alhambra they thought _that_ was going off with a bang
and started screaming again, so the fandango went rotten.”
“It certainly did,” the Sisters Garibaldi agreed in a huffy chorus.
“Coming back to my name,” said Mr. Blundell. “What do you think my
second name is? I’ll give you a sovereign if you can guess it in three.
That offer’s on tap to any stranger with who I have the pleasure of a
heart to heart. Give it up? I thought you would. Ursula!”
“But that’s a girl’s name, isn’t it?” Bram said in astonishment.
“Of course it is. But my dear old mother got it into her head that it
was a boy’s name. The parson argued with her. The sexton argued. The
godfathers and godmothers argued. The only one that didn’t argue was my
poor old dad, who knew better. So, Ursula I was christened, by thunder.
Unwin Ursula Blundell.”
The confidential manner of the showman invited confidence in return,
and before the train had puffed out of more than two of the stations
between Brigham and Liverpool he was in possession of Bram’s history.
“So you’re thinking of going to sea? It’s a hard life, my young friend.
Can’t you think of a better way of earning a living than rolling down
to Rio? What about the boards?”
Bram looked puzzled.
“The stage. The profession. Tragedy! Drama! Comedy! Farce!”
“Well, I’d like to be an actor,” said Bram eagerly. “But could I act?
My grandmater said I was a jolly good mimic.”
“There you are! What more do you want?”
“But aren’t I rather young?” Bram asked, in a sudden panic that he was
making a fool of himself. “I mean, who would give me anything to act?”
“That’s where Unwin U. Blundell enters, my young friend. Let’s figure
out your case. You want to keep out of the way of your father. You
don’t want to be hauled back to Brigham and set to work in an office.
Am I right?”
Bram nodded.
“So far, so good. Now we’re up against the long arm again. _I_ want
a young cannibal chief as an extra attraction for the Diorama. Why
shouldn’t you take on the job? It’ll mean staining yourself brown and
talking some kind of gibberish when I give the cue. I’ll stand you
in board and lodging and pay you five shillings a week for yourself.
What’s more, I’ll teach you how to look like a cannibal chief, and how
to act like a cannibal chief. I’d want a short war dance every night.
The girls will fake up something tasty there. Then before the show
begins you could shake hands with the audience at twopence a head.
Mind you don’t forget to shiver all the time. That’ll make the women
take an interest in you. But you mustn’t forget you’re a cannibal. If
anybody with a bit of ombongpong comes in to take a peep at you, you’ll
want to gloat some. You know what I mean? Look as if you was thinking
which was the best slice. That’ll go great. I _was_ thinking of touring
a big baboon, but a cannibal chief’s worth two baboons. Nothing
derogatory, if you follow my meaning. We’ll make you a prince, so as
you’ll be treated with respect. Prince Boo Boo. You want to give ’em a
nice easy name so as they can talk about it to their friends without
thinking that some Mr. Knowall in the corner’s going to jump up and
correct them all the time. Nobody could go wrong over a name like Boo
Boo. An infant in arms could say it. Prince Boo Boo, the world-famous
cannibal chief from the savage Solomon Islands. The youngest son of
the world-famous King Noo Noo who boasts of having eaten twenty-three
missionaries, nine traders, and fourteen shipwrecked mariners since he
ascended the throne. Prince Boo Boo himself was taken as a hostage for
the lives of three French sailors who had been captured by his father.
Unfortunately the king’s appetite was so ferocious and the sailors were
so fat that without thinking about his youngest son he went and ate the
lot. Prince Boo Boo was carried off to Europe where Unwin U. Blundell,
always on the quee vyve for novelties that will attract his many
patrons all over the civilised world, secured his exclusive services.
Come on, say the word, and we’ll get the bills printed and the costume
made in Liverpool, and on Monday week we’ll show ’em what’s what when
we open in St. Helens.”
The runaway did not hesitate. Mr. Blundell’s offer solved the problem
of his immediate future far more swiftly and far more easily than he
would ever have dared to hope.
Bram was a great success as a young cannibal chief. His natural shivers
during the excesses of an English summer filled the hearts of all
the women with the warmest sympathy, and a moment later the way he
gloated over imagined titbits of their anatomy made them shiver as
realistically as himself.
“It’s going great, laddie,” Unwin U. Blundell declared. “To rights,
it’s going. Props at the Royalty, Blackburn, who’s an old pal of mine,
is making me a two-pronged wooden fork, which was used by your dad,
King Noo Noo. With a bit of bullock’s blood we’ll have the ladies of
Bolton in a state of blue horrors next week. And if one of ’em faints,
laddie, there’s a shilling onto your salary when the ghost walks next
Friday night.”
The Sisters Garibaldi were inclined to be jealous of Bram at first,
but their feelings were appeased by being given a special new dance
in which they were dressed in costumes that looked like rag mats
trimmed with feather dusters, a dance that began with a seated swaying
movement and ended with wild leaps into the air to the accompaniment of
cannibalistic whoops.
Bram stayed with Unwin U. Blundell for nearly two years; but he did not
remain a young cannibal chief to the exclusion of everything else.
“It’s not good for any actor to play one part too long. My old granddad
was considered the finest Hamlet ever seen on the Doncaster circuit.
Well, I give you my word, after you’d heard him in ‘To be or not to
be,’ you didn’t know yourself if you were or if you weren’t. But he
played it too often, and he thought he’d vary things a bit by playing
Richard III and Macbeth on the Shakespeare nights. But it was too late.
He knew he’d waited too long the very first night he played Macbeth,
because instead of saying ‘Is this a dagger that I see before me?’ he
started off ‘Is this a bodkin that I see before me?’ It humiliated
him, poor old chap, and he gave up tragedy and took to farce, and that
killed him. Yes, it’s a mistake to get into a groove.”
So one day Prince Boo Boo disappeared from the programme of Blundell’s
Diorama and was succeeded by Wo Ho Wo, a Chinese philosopher. The
Celestial did not prove an attraction, and Wo Ho Wo soon gave place to
Carlo Marsala, the boy brigand of Sicily, a part which suited Bram to
perfection, so well indeed that the Sisters Garibaldi could not bear
it and were only persuaded to stay on with the Diorama by turning Bram
into a young Red Indian brave, and featuring him in a dance with his
two squaws before the tableau of Niagara.
In addition to the various geographical rôles he enacted with Unwin
U. Blundell, Bram learnt something about theatrical publicity, and
no doubt, if he had cared, he might have learnt from Mona and Clara
Garibaldi a good deal about love. Although their obvious inclination
to make him a bone of contention did not give Bram the least pleasure
or even afford him the slightest amusement, Mr. Blundell, who had
evidently been observing the pseudo-sisters becoming quite like real
sisters in the fierceness of their growing rivalry, ventured to utter a
few words of worldly admonition to the endangered swain.
“Don’t think I’m trying to interfere with you, laddie. But I’ve had so
much of that kind of thing myself, and I’d like to give you the benefit
of my experience. Never try and drive women in double harness. You
might as well try and drive tigers. They’ll start in fighting with each
other, but it’s _your_ head that’ll get bit off, that’s a cinch. I
wouldn’t be what I am now—Unwin U. Blundell of Blundell’s world-famous
Diorama—if I’d have let myself go galloping after the ladies. Two
whiskies, and a man’s a man. Two women, and he’s a miserable slave.
What does Bill Shakespeare say? ‘Give me the man that is not passion’s
slave.’ Take it from me, laddie, if Bill said that, he meant it. He’d
had some. That’s what I like about the One and Only. He’s had some of
everything.”
Bram assured Mr. Blundell that he well understood how easily a
young man could make a fool of himself and thanked him for his good
advice, which he followed so well during the whole of the time he was
travelling round Great Britain with the Diorama, that when at the end
of it he left to tread the legitimate boards he found that the Sisters
Garibaldi, if not sisters to each other, were wonderful sisters to him.
“I’m sorry to lose you, Bram,” said the showman when he was told of his
assistant’s engagement in a melodrama called _Secrets of a Great City_.
“But I won’t try and persuade you to stop. You’ve got the sawdust in
you, laddie. You’re likely to go far, if you stick to your work.”
“You’ve been a good friend to me, Mr. Blundell,” said Bram warmly.
“No man can wish to hear sweeter words than those,” the showman
replied: “You’ve listened to me every night spouting on antiquities,
old man. But the best antiquities in the whole blooming world are old
friends.”
The Sisters Garibaldi wept; Mr. Blundell blew his nose very hard; the
young actor passed into another sphere of theatrical life.
During the last two years Bram had written to his grandmother from
time to time, and had had from her an occasional letter in return, in
which he heard no news of Lebanon House beyond an occasional assurance
of its eternal sameness. However, just before he left Blundell to
join the melodrama company he did receive a letter, in which her large
spidery handwriting crossed and sometimes recrossed was spread over
several sheets of notepaper.
Lebanon House
Brigham.
April 20th, 1884.
Dear Bram,
I thought it might interest you to hear that your grandfather died
last week. Please don’t write and tell me that you are sorry,
because that would not be true and there is no need to make
the death of a relation an occasion for an insincere piece of
politeness. You will notice that there is no black edge to this
notepaper. Remember that, when you next write to me. What is more,
if there were any red ink in the house I would use it. Your brother
is leaving school to take up a chair in your father’s office. There
will not be room on the seat of that chair for anybody else. You
need not worry that anybody in this house will ever try to kill the
fatted calf for you. They wouldn’t give you a slice of cold mutton
if you came back to-morrow. They wouldn’t give you a pickled onion.
So stay where you are, and write sometimes to that withered leaf,
Your loving
Grandmother.
Bram made rapid strides in his profession—too rapid really, for by the
time he was twenty-three he already had a reputation in the provinces
as what was, and no doubt still is, known as a utility man. Such a
reputation, serviceable enough in the provinces, is likely to prove a
barrier to ultimate success. Paradox though it be, the better actor all
round a man is, the less likely he will be ever to achieve success in
London. It is the old tale of the general practitioner and the Harley
Street specialist. However, to be playing good parts at so early an age
was enough for Bram. He had no ambition to become famous for a novel
mannerism, and he was always ready to act anything—low comedy, light
comedy, heroes, villains, heavy fathers, and walking gentlemen. He was
never out of an engagement, and as he would have starved rather than
ask help of his relations, this was his chief concern. To fame and
fortune on a grand scale he did not aspire.