_The tragedy of the smiling face--Starving at their work--From manager
to super--A fallen star--A terrible life drama--The brighter side of the
profession._
|Fortune has smiled upon the happy favourites of the footlights. Never
was the glamour of the stage more powerful than it is to-day; never were
young men and young women more eager to revel in the limelight and leave
the dull duties of everyday life for the gay Bohemianism of the boards.
The world, that judges only by what it sees, looks upon the life of the
fortunate few as typical of the theatrical life generally. Of the hidden
mysteries of the player-folk's pilgrimage it knows nothing. It hears of
the magnificent salaries of the stars, it sees the portraits of pretty
actresses week after week in the illustrated papers, it is led to
believe that every girl who joins the chorus of certain theatres has the
chance of marrying a millionaire, and it understands that the members of
touring companies go gaily about the world on a picnic arrangement and
have all their expenses paid.
It is not upon the parade-ground that one learns what the life of a
soldier means; it is upon the battlefield. We see our actors and our
actresses and the merry entertainers of the variety halls and palaces on
the parade-ground. Very few of us see them upon the battlefield, in the
time of storm and stress, when the issue of the struggle is one of life
and death.
The hidden mysteries of the stage it is not permitted to the outside
world to penetrate.
Kings and queens in historical romance, princes and princesses in
pantomime, duchesses in society comedy, of my working life in close
communion with the warm-hearted children of Thespis, lift a corner of the
veil, it will be but to show how much there is to admire in the men
and women who, out of the rays of the limelight, often lead brave,
self-sacrificing, and very human lives.
Let us sit for a while in the waiting-room of a well-known London agent,
and listen to the boys and girls who come there day after day in the
hope of getting an engagement.
There are no anxious faces. The young actor does not wear his heart upon
his sleeve. The young actress does not let her professional sisters see
that she is breaking down under the strain of hope deferred.
The conversation is light, almost frivolous. It is a merry world for
everybody in theatre land, and even when four o'clock comes, and the
hope of the day is over, the boys and girls will go chattering out into
the street and bid each other a smiling good-day.
But there is a change in many of the faces when the Strand is left
behind. There are tears in the eyes of the girl who was smiling so
brightly a few minutes ago. The man who stepped with such a jaunty air
along Garrick Street drops his chin, and his face grows stem.
There are people at home--a mother and a sister, perhaps--dependent
upon the actress, and she has been out of an engagement for a couple
of months. But the girl must keep up appearances. She must be neatly
dressed and look happy. To acknowledge defeat, to dress poorly, would
"let her down" and injure her prospects.
The young actor may be married. He has a wife and child at home. The
summer has gone--how he got through it he hardly knows himself. Now the
autumn has come, and he is still out of an engagement. If he could sing,
he would do what many another young actor does. He would join a troupe
of pierrots--of seaside minstrels. He would sing on the beach, in the
streets, anywhere, to keep the wolf from the door. But he is only an
earnest and capable young actor, and he can't get an engagement.
These unlucky ones are young, and hope will buoy them up for a time.
They will weather the storm, and presently they will be rehearsing, and
the stress will be lighter.
But even when the engagement is secured and the rehearsals begin, there
is a terrible time to get through.
Many pieces are rehearsed for six or seven weeks, and during that time
there may be no salary. However distant from the theatre the actor and
actress live, they may have to walk--'buses cost money.
I have known an actor and his wife, who were compelled to ride because
the distance was too great to walk, go for days with only two pennyworth
of food each in order to pay the train fare. But they were both capable
and conscientious artists, and had always had excellent notices. A
series of short runs had exhausted their resources. This is what had
happened to them in one year. An engagement and a month's rehearsal. The
play ran a fortnight. They were out for three weeks. An engagement and
six weeks' rehearsal. The play ran a month, then they were two months
out. Then an engagement in the provinces. The tour, owing to bad
business, terminated earlier than was expected. Then out at Whitsuntide
and out all the summer. At the end of August came an engagement to open
at the end of September, and a month's rehearsal before a farthing of
salary was touched.
But if you meet these unfortunate Thespians they will be bright and
cheery, and never let you see a sign of the care that is gnawing at
their heart-strings.
Years ago I met a brother dramatist on the morning that the news reached
England of the suicide under terrible circumstances of an actor whose
name was well known in the West for many years. I said that I feared
things had been going badly with the poor fellow for some time. Then my
friend told me of a pathetic incident.
A year previously the actor came to lunch with him one Sunday by
invitation. A joint of roast beef was the principal item, and the guest
excused himself for having a second helping. He had had a long walk, and
it had given him an appetite.
The host turned his head a little to look out of the window at something
that was passing. But there was a mirror that reflected the guest. In
the mirror the host saw the poor fellow slip a slice of beef from his
plate into the folds of a handkerchief he had in his hand. He was taking
the meat home to his wife.
In the days of their vogue the couple had drawn a joint salary of £50
a week. But something happened. Their vogue passed, and for three years
they did nothing, sinking gradually into something akin to absolute
want, but hiding it from all the world.
"Fifty pounds a week, and come to that!" the prudent may exclaim. But
there are plenty of expenses to eat up salaries at the best of times,
and the thrift must be great that can enable comparatively young
professionals to stand the strain of no income for three years.
If these are the vicissitudes of an actor's life while youth and
strength are assets, it is not difficult to imagine how terrible must be
the struggle for existence when age comes to those who have been unable
to provide for it.
It is then that the problem faces most workers, but there is not in
ordinary callings the sharp contrast that exists among the unfortunate
of the theatre world.
To have money, friends, fame, and public favour at one period of
your life, and then to know poverty, loneliness, neglect--that is
the experience that adds bitterness to the cup of sorrow many an old
favourite has to drain to the dregs before the merciful curtain falls.
It happened to me once, behind the scenes, to find lying on the
mimic battlefield of a Drury Lane drama three corpses, and each of the
"supers" who impersonated a soldier, with nothing to say and nothing
to do but fall down at a given cue, had been a popular actor, and
the lessee and manager of a London theatre. On the stage of the great
national theatre I saw in a pantomime procession of Shakespearean
characters King Lear represented by an actor who had once played the
part on those very boards as the bright particular star of the evening.
The theatrical profession is the most generous in the world. When it
hears of a sad case, the more fortunate comrades of one who has fallen
by the way come to the rescue. A private subscription is made; a
benefit is organized; the sympathy shown is whole-hearted, generous, and
practical. But it often happens that the tragedy is only discovered by
accident. The wounded comrade has hidden himself away and suffered in
silence, too proud to let his pitiable condition be known.
In my wanderings along the shores on which our social wreckage is cast,
I come frequently upon men and women who have strutted their hour upon
the stage--men and women who had at one time fortune at their feet in
the entertainment world, and have come to the workhouse or the common
lodging-house.
To the people with whom they associate they are unknown. When they have
their day out from the workhouse, when they come ragged and wretched
from the lodging-house, and pass the hours as best they can, they
attract no attention.
A woman in weather-stained clothes, with a battered hat on her unkempt
hair, with the skirts of her dress caked with the mud of the streets,
does not appeal to the curiosity of the well-to-do people who pass her
by. They do not imagine that there is any mystery about this woman,
still young, still good-looking, who has sunk so low. They let her go
by, and if they think about her at all, it is as a tramp--a homeless
vagabond who sleeps in the parks or on the Embankment.
But if they had known when she had passed them who this woman was,
everyone would have turned to look after her. For her portrait was
for years in the illustrated papers, the dramatic critics wrote of her
enthusiastically, and the leading managers competed for her services.
She was found one evening in the park, ill, dazed, apparently dying.
She had crawled under a hedge to sleep, and there she had attracted the
attention of some tramps who were "camping" near at hand. One of them
went and found a policeman, and the poor woman was carried to the
workhouse infirmary. There, by certain old letters found upon her, her
identity was revealed, and presently it became known to the profession
that one whom they had all regarded with affection and esteem was
homeless, penniless, starving.
The response to an appeal was generous; everything that sympathy and
help and skilful treatment could do was done; but the once famous
actress only recovered a little of her strength to pass away soon
afterwards in an asylum.
The life dramas in which the dwellers in limelight-land play a part are
often stranger, more romantic, more pathetic, than any written play
in which they simulate the human emotions for the entertainment of the
public.
The causes of catastrophe are many, and are often obscure. There came to
me a year or two ago two sisters. They were young actresses, and wanted
parts in a forthcoming play with which I wat associated. They stayed for
a few minutes after I had told them that all the parts were filled; they
patted my little dog, and asked to see a little white cat of which I had
occasionally written in the "Referee."
They bade me a smiling good-bye, and went out, apparently in the best of
spirits. A few days afterwards they were found lying dead side by
side in their lodgings. They had agreed to die together, and had taken
poison. Young and beautiful, with the world all before them, they had
broken down almost at the outset of their career under the strain of
professional disappointment.
In the days of my youth I knew intimately a famous manager in the
entertainment world. He was originally a waiter in a well-known
restaurant, but he had ability and pluck, and he became in time the
proprietor of a famous variety palace, and some equally famous pleasure
gardens. He was also a caterer and contractor on a large scale.
In the days of his prosperity he drove a six-hundred-guinea pair of
horses in his phaeton, and the brougham in which he was whirled about in
the evening was as well known to the public as that in which Adah Isaacs
Menken drove nightly to Astley's when she was drawing all London over
Westminster Bridge to see her in "Mazeppa."
Many years afterwards, when the brilliant star of the variety firmament
had disappeared, and no one knew what had become of him, I was on a
penny steamer on the Thames. A poor old fellow with a greasy cap on
his head was waiting about and taking orders for any refreshments the
passengers might require. He passed me once and looked at me earnestly.
Presently he brought a bottle of beer to two men sitting by me, and then
I recognized him. The man, whose name had been one to conjure with in
connection with variety enterprise, was the steward of a penny steamer
on the Thames.
But when we look behind the scenes of theatrical life it is not always
the note of tragedy that greets us. There is a fairer and a sunnier
side.
Ten years ago a young girl determined to be an actress--had made her way
to London--the city of her dreams. It had been a rough journey. In the
provinces she had joined a small opera company. When there was any money
taken the manager obligingly gave some of it on account of salaries to
the artists. When times were bad they had to go without. So it came that
the finding of lodgings was a terrible task. When you have no money--and
you can't take your luggage into apartments, for fear it should be kept
for the rent--very few doors are open to you. In one country town the
little girl, failing to get a room, went and sat in a shed in a field
and cried herself to sleep there. She woke up at one in the morning with
a thunder and lightning storm raging. She ran out into the roadway, and
a kind policeman took her to his wife, who gave her a bed for the night.
One day, the company being near London, she left it, and, having a few
shillings in her pocket, took a train which landed her at Liverpool
Street. She found lodgings in the Whitechapel Road, and thought that
London was a very busy place, but she didn't think the people dressed
very grandly.
In the Whitechapel Reading Room she read the "Era," and saw an
advertisement for chorus ladies at Earl's Court. She walked from
Whitechapel to Earl's Court, and failed to see the manager. Then she
walked back again, and, passing Hyde Park, went into it, and, tired and
hungry and broken-hearted, sat down on a seat.
It was the fashionable hour of the afternoon, and the Park was crowded
with carriages and elegantly dressed people. The young actress, with
nothing in her pocket, and terror of the future in her heart, sat and
watched the wealth and luxury of London for a little while. In the
bitterness of her despair she almost _hated_ the people for being so
prosperous and so happy. She burst into tears, and, unable to look any
longer at a scene which only emphasized her own misery, she rose and
walked, weary and footsore, back to the Whitechapel Road.
That was ten years ago. To-day it is again the fashionable hour, and
the Park is crowded. In an elegant victoria sits a charming young lady,
daintily dressed, smiling and happy. Every now and then she smiles and
bows, and returns the salutation of someone who knows her.
This happy young lady in the victoria is the little actress who sat in
the Park and cried because she had not even the money for a 'bus to take
her back to the Whitechapel lodging from which she had set out in the
morning to walk to Earl's Court.
Twelve years ago a girl of eighteen, thin, white-faced, and none too
warmly clad for the bitter winter day, came back wearily to her home.
Her father, an actor, had been dead six months. When his affairs were
settled, it was found that there was nothing for his wife and daughter.
What little he had left was not sufficient to pay his creditors. So the
widow made a struggle to keep a home for herself and child. Two rooms
were furnished, and the girl looked about for work on the stage. She got
a small engagement, then her mother fell ill, and the situation became
serious. Then she was out of work again, and the rent had been unpaid
for six weeks. The landlord would give only a few days' further grace,
and then----
The girl went to her mother's room and fell on a chair by the sick
woman's bed. "Nothing yet, mother--nothing yet," she wailed. "What will
become of us?"
To-day! A stately house in the fairest English county. It stands in
magnificent grounds. If you peer through the gates of the park that
lies around it you will see the fine old mansion grandly grey against a
background of noble trees.
Presently the park gates open and a carriage comes through them. There
are a few villagers in the roadway, and as the carriage passes the women
curtsey and the men raise their hats.
The young lady in the carriage is the Lady Bountiful of the place. All
the tenants love her, and have loved her from the day she left the
stage to come as the new mistress of the Hall to live among them. The
middle-aged lady sitting by her side is her mother. They are driving to
the station to meet the Lady Bountiful's husband. He has been in London
to take part in a debate in the House of Lords.
When last we saw the Lady Bountiful and her companion they were in
two furnished rooms, and the girl, terrified at the thought of being
homeless, was weeping by her mother's bedside, and wailing, "What will
become of us?"