I FOUND HIM GARRULOUSLY GIVEN.
The oldest inn in Seacomb was the ‘New London Inn,’ built upon the site
of a still more ancient hostelry, but itself nearly two hundred years
old. The quadrangular yard, in which the coaches were wont to stand, was
now embellished with a glazed roof, and served for the assembling of
farmers on market days. Here was held the corn exchange and samples of
grain were exhibited, and bargains made, amidst a lively hubbub, while
the odour of roast beef and pastry pervaded the atmosphere.
Here Maurice and Martin parted, the former telling his friend that he
had business to transact in Seacomb, the young Cornishman bidding his
companion a reluctant farewell.
As soon as the dog-cart had driven off, Maurice strolled into the bar,
called for soda and sherry, and surveyed his ground. On the other side
of the shining counter a comfortable-looking elderly matron, in a black
silk gown and a cap with rose-coloured ribbons was engaged in
conversation with a stalwart grey-coated farmer, who had been admitted
to the privileged sanctorum within. ‘The landlady, evidently,’ thought
Maurice.
He sipped his sherry and soda, and asked if he could be accommodated
with an airy bedroom.
‘Certainly, sir. You’d like a room on the first floor, perhaps,
overlooking the street?—Chambermaid, show Number 10.’
‘I won’t trouble to look at the room, thank you, ma’am. I’ve no doubt
it’s all that’s comfortable.’
‘There’s not much fear about that, sir. I look after my bedrooms myself,
and always have done so for the last thirty years. I go into every room
in the house every morning, after the chambermaids have done their
sweeping and dusting; and that’s neither more nor less than a
housekeeper’s duty, in my opinion.’
‘Just so, ma’am. It’s a pity that kind of housekeeping should ever go
out of fashion.’
‘It is indeed, sir. You intend staying for some days at Seacomb,
perhaps? There are a good many objects of interest in the
neighbourhood.’
‘I am sorry to say that I shall have to leave to-morrow.’
‘Well, good morning, Mrs. Chadwick,’ said the farmer, having drained his
glass, and wiped his lips with a flaming orange handkerchief.
Mrs. Chadwick opened the half-door of the bar for him to go out, and
then, holding it open politely, invited Mr. Clissold to enter.
‘You may as well sit down, sir, and take your soda and sherry,’ she
said, nothing averse from a little gossip with the stranger.
‘I shall be very glad to do so,’ answered Maurice. ‘The fact is, I want
a little friendly chat with some one who knows Seacomb, and I dare say
you know pretty well as much as any one else about the town and its
inhabitants.’
The landlady smiled, as with inward satisfaction.
‘It’s my native town, sir. I was born here, and brought up here, and
educated here, and I could count the months I’ve spent away from Seacomb
on my fingers. It isn’t everybody can say as much.’
‘You were educated at Seacomb,’ said Maurice. ‘Then perhaps you may
remember Miss Barlow’s school for young ladies?’
‘Yes, sir. I remember Miss Barlow well, but her school flourished after
my schooling days, and it was above my father’s station. No Seacomb
trades-people ever went to Miss Barlow’s. Their money might be good
enough for most people, but Miss Barlow wouldn’t have it. She set her
face against anything under a rich farmer’s daughter. She had a good
deal of pride—stuckupishness some people went so far as to call it—had
Miss Barlow. And a very pretty show she used to make with her young
ladies at the parish church, in the west gallery, on the left of the
organ.’
‘Do you happen to remember the daughter of a Mr. Trevanard, of Borcel
End?’
‘Remember Miss Trevanard! I should think I did. She was about the
prettiest girl I ever saw, and the Seacomb gentlemen would go out of
their way to get a look at her. I’ve seen them hanging about the church
door to watch Miss Barlow’s young ladies come out, and heard them
whisper, “That’s the belle of the school! That’s Trevanard’s daughter!”
I thought she’d have made a rare good match when she left school; but
she never married, and I believe she went a little queer in her head, or
was bedridden, or some affliction of that kind, while she was quite
young. I haven’t heard anybody mention her name for the last twenty
years—not her own father even, though he dines here every market day.
That was young Mr. Trevanard drove you here, wasn’t it? I just caught a
glimpse of him in the hall.’
‘Yes, Martin and I are great friends.’
‘A very nice young man he is too, and nice-looking, but not a patch upon
his sister.’
‘Do you know what became of Miss Barlow when she left Seacomb?’
‘Well, I’ve heard say that she went to the Continent to cultivate music.
She had a fine finger for the piano, and took a good deal of pride in
her playing, and after she’d lived abroad some years, studying in a
conservatory—I suppose they teach them that way on account of the
climate—I heard that she came back to England, and settled somewhere
near London, and gave lessons to the nobility and gentry, and stood very
high in that way. She had made a nice little fortune at Seacomb before
she retired, so she had no call to work unless she liked. But Miss
Barlow wasn’t the woman to be idle. She had a vast amount of energy.’
A musical professor, and residing in the neighbourhood of London. It
seemed to Maurice that, knowing this much, he ought to be able to find
Miss Barlow. There was only the question of time.
‘How long is it, do you imagine, since you last heard of this lady?’ he
asked, in a purely conversational tone.
‘Well, I can’t take upon myself to say very particularly for a year or
so. But I think it might be about eight or nine years since I heard Dr.
Dorlick, our organist, say that a friend of his in London had told him
Miss Barlow was residing in the neighbourhood of the parks, and doing
wonderfully well.’
‘Could I see Dr. Dorlick, do you think?’ asked Maurice eagerly.
‘Dr. Dorlick is in heaven,’ replied Mrs. Chadwick, with solemnity.
‘I’m sorry for that,’ said Maurice, with reference to his own
disappointment rather than Dr. Dorlick’s elevation.
He passed onto another subject, also an important one in his mind.
‘How is it that you managed to do away with your theatre in Seacomb?’ he
asked.
‘Well, you see, sir,’ returned Mrs. Chadwick, musingly, ‘I don’t think
the theatre ever fairly took with the Seacomb people. Ours is a serious
town, and though there’s plenty of spare room in our old parish church—a
very fine old church, as you may have seen with your own eyes, but
rather in want of repair—there’s always a run upon our chapels, revival
services, and tea meetings, and love feasts, and what not. People must
have excitement of some sort, no doubt, and the Seacomb people like
chapel-going better than play-going; besides which it costs them less.
I’ve no prejudices myself, and I know that a theatrical is a human being
like myself; but I can’t say that I’ve ever cared to see theatricals
inside my doors.’
‘But I suppose you used to go to the theatre sometimes, when there was
one?’
‘Once in a way I have gone to our theatre, when there was a Bespeak
night, or a London star performing, more to please my husband, who was
fond of anything in the way of an entertainment, than for my own
pleasure.’
‘Do you remember the names of the actors whom you saw there?’
‘No, I can’t call to mind one of them. But if you take any interest in
theatricals, go and see Mr. Clipcome, our hairdresser. He’ll talk to you
for the hour together of our theatre, and the people who’ve acted there.
He never cut my hair in his life that he didn’t tell me how he once
curled and powdered a wig for the celebrated Miss Foote to act Lady
Teazle in. It’s his ’obby.’
‘Indeed! Then I shall certainly look in upon Mr. Clipcome. Where does he
live?’
‘In a little court, by the side of Bethlehem Chapel, which was the
theatre.’
‘Thanks, Mrs. Chadwick,’ said Maurice, rising. ‘I’ll step round to Mr.
Clipcome at once, and get him to give me the county crop. I’ve been
running to seed lately. Perhaps you’ll be kind enough to order me a
little bit of dinner in the coffee-room at half-past six.’
‘With pleasure, sir. Any choice?’
‘None whatever. I shall walk about your town for a few hours, and get an
appetite for anything you like to set before me.’
‘A very agreeable gentleman,’ thought Mrs. Chadwick, as Maurice strolled
out of the bar, ‘so chatty and friendly. Doesn’t give himself half the
airs of your commercial gents, yet any one can see he’s altogether
superior to them.’
Mr. Clissold strolled through the quiet old town, with its long
straggling high street, graced here and there by a picturesque gable or
an ancient lattice, but, for the most part, somewhat commonplace. At one
point there was a kind of square, from which two lateral streets
diverged—a square with a pump and police office in the centre, and a
Methodist chapel on each side. One of these chapels, the newest and
smartest, was Bethlehem, as an inscription over its portal made known to
the world at large—Bethlehem, 1853,—and at the side of Bethlehem, once
the Temple of Thespis, there was a clean paved alley, leading to another
street; an alley with a public-house at one corner, and a few decent
shops on one side, facing the blank wall of the chapel. One of these
shops was the emporium of Mr. Clipcome, who was at once tobacconist,
hairdresser, and dealer in fancy and miscellaneous articles too numerous
to mention.
Maurice found Mr. Clipcome standing upon his threshold contemplating
life as exhibited in Playhouse Court, where a small child in a go-cart,
and a woman cheapening bloaters at the greengrocer’s were the only
objects that presented themselves at this particular time to the student
of humanity. But then Mr. Clipcome had an oblique view of the square,
town pump, and police station, and in a general way could see anything
that was going on from the vantage-ground of his door-step.
He was an elderly man, stout, and comfortable looking, but balder than
he ought to have been considering the resources of his art, and that he
was himself the inventor of an infallible cure for baldness. But he may
have preferred that smooth and shining surface as cooler and more
comfortable than capillary embellishment. He wore a clean linen apron,
with a comb or two stuck in the pocket thereof—an apron that was in
itself an invitation to the passing pedestrian to have his hair cut. On
seeing Mr. Clissold making for his door, Mr. Clipcome stepped aside with
a smile and a bow, and made way for the stranger to enter his abode.
It was a very small abode, consisting of a shop and a little slip of a
parlour behind it, both the pink of neatness, and both agreeably
perfumed with hair oil and lavender water. There was a shining arm-chair
with a high back, whereon the patient sat enthroned during the
hair-cutting process. A looking-glass squeezed into an angle of the
parlour reflected patient and operator. A pincushion hung beside it,
balanced by a smart chintz bag, containing a variety of implements. But
the object which most struck Maurice’s eye was an old playbill, smaller
than modern playbills, and yellow with age, framed and glazed, and
hanging against the wall, just as if it had been some choice work of
art.
It was the programme of a performance of ‘Othello’ that had taken place
early in the century. ‘Othello, the Moor of Venice, Mr. Kean.’
‘You remember the great Kean?’ said Maurice.
‘Yes, sir,’ answered Mr. Clipcome, with pride. ‘I remember Edmund Kean,
and I remember Charles Young, and Miss O’Neil, and Miss Foote, and Mrs.
Nesbitt, and Mr. Macready, and a good deal more talent such as you’re
not likely to see in these days. Seacomb Theatre was worth going to in
my boyhood.’
‘And you were an enthusiastic patron of the drama, I imagine?’
‘If spending every sixpence of my pocket-money upon admission to the pit
is a proof of enthusiasm, I was an enthusiast, sir,’ replied Mr.
Clipcome. ‘The sixpences which boys—well, I will venture to say boys of
an inferior mind—would have laid out upon cakes and apples, peg-tops,
and such like, I spent upon the drama. There’s hardly a line of
Shakespeare you could quote that I couldn’t cap with another line. I
used to go to the pit of that theatre twice a week while I was a
youngster, and three or four times a week after my father’s death, when
I was in business for myself and my own master, and used to get a weekly
order for exhibiting the bills. And though there were a good many
opposed to the closing of the theatre for ever, I don’t believe there
was any one in all Seacomb took it to heart as keenly as I did.
“Othello’s occupation was gone.”’
‘Why did they do away with your theatre at last?’ asked Maurice.
‘Well, you see, sir, the town had grown serious-minded, and for some
years before they turned it into a chapel the theatre had been going
down. The great actors and actresses were dead and gone, and the stars
that were left didn’t care about coming to Seacomb. Managers had been
doing worse and worse year after year, business dwindling down to next
to nothing, half salaries, or no salaries towards the end of every
season, and it became a recognised fact in the theatrical profession
that Seacomb was no go. The actors and actresses that came here were
sticks, or if not, they made up in rant what they wanted in talent. The
county families left off coming to the place—there were no Bespeaks, and
the poor old theatre got to have a dilapidated woe-begone look, so that
it gave one the horrors to sit out a play. The actors looked hungry and
out at elbows. It made one uncomfortable to see them. Many a time I
asked one of them in to share my one o’clock dinner, if it was but a
potato pasty, or a squab pie made with scrag of mutton. The stage door
used to be just opposite my shop. It’s walled up now, but you may see
the outline of it in the brickwork. The actors used to be always
lounging about that doorway of a morning, on and off, and whilst the
rehearsal was going on inside. And they were very fond of coming into my
shop for a gossip, or a peep at a newspaper. Papers were dear in those
days. No _Standard_ or _Telegraph_ with all the news of the world for a
penny. And the poor chaps couldn’t afford to lay out fivepence.’
‘You must have been on friendly terms with a good many of them,’ said
Maurice, feeling that from this loquacious barber, if from any one in
Seacomb, he was likely to obtain the information he sought. ‘Do you
happen to remember a man called Elgood?’
‘Elgood! Mat Elgood,’ cried the operator, dropping his scissors in the
vehemence of his exclamation, ‘I should think I did indeed! He was one
who hung on to our Theatre Royal to the very last,—stuck to it like a
barnacle, poor fellow,—when there was not enough sustenance to be got
out of it to keep body and soul together. He lodged in this very court,
the last house on the other side, next door but one to the Theatre—a
tailor’s it was then—and a good little man the tailor was, and a kind
friend to Mat Elgood—as long as he had a crust to share with him, or a
garret to shelter him. But one day, about a month after the theatre had
shut up shop altogether, the manager having bolted—the brokers walked
into poor Jones’s little place and took possession of everything, and
Jones went to prison, so Mat Elgood and his wife, a poor weak thing that
had lost her first baby only a few weeks before that time, were cast
loose upon the world, and what became of them from that hour to this I
never heard. If I’d had an empty room in my house I’d have given it
them, but I hadn’t, and my wife is a prudent woman, who never forgot to
remind me that my first duty was to her and my children, or, in other
words, that charity begins at home.’
‘Do you remember the date of this occurrence—the year and month in which
Matthew Elgood left Seacomb? I may as well tell you that I do not ask
these questions out of idle curiosity. I am personally interested in
knowing all about this Mr. Elgood.’
‘My dear sir,’ exclaimed the barber, swelling with importance at the
idea of giving valuable information, ‘you could not have come to a
better source. If I fail to remember the dates you require, I can
produce documentary evidence which will place the fact beyond all doubt.
For a period of ten years or upwards I made it a rule to keep a copy of
every playbill issued in our town. They were delivered at my door gratis
for exhibition in my window, and instead of throwing them aside as waste
paper, I filed them as interesting records for re-perusal in the leisure
of my later life. I am rather proud of that collection. It contains the
name of many a brilliant light in the dramatic hemisphere, and, indeed,
I look upon it as a history of dramatic art in little. My impression is
that Elgood and his wife left Seacomb nineteen years ago last winter,
but the bills will make matters certain. Matthew Elgood was among that
diminished band which trod the boards of our poor little theatre on that
final night when the green curtain descended on the Seacomb stage, never
to rise again. The theatre remained in abeyance for some two or three
years after that last performance, dismantled, shut up, a refuge for
rats and mice, and such small deer.’
‘Nineteen years ago, you say?’
‘Nor more nor less,’ returned Mr. Clipcome, who was wont to wax
Shakesperian. ‘I remember it was an extraordinary severe winter. We had
frost and snow, a great deal of snow, as late as the end of February,
and even into March. Some of the roads between Seacomb and neighbouring
villages were impassable, and there was a good deal of trouble
generally. I felt all the more for those unfortunate Elgoods on this
account,—it was a hard winter in which to be cast adrift.’
‘Thanks, Mr. Clipcome, you have given me really valuable information. I
should be glad to refer to that file of bills, so as to get the exact
date of the closing of the theatre.’
The hairdresser produced his collection, roughly bound in a ponderous
marble-paper covered tome, of his own manufacture, a triumph in amateur
book-binding. Here Maurice saw the last play bill that had ever been
issued by the manager of the Seacomb theatre. Its date was January 10th,
1849.
‘And Mr. Elgood stayed at the tailor’s for a month after the closing of
the theatre?’ interrogated Maurice.
‘About a month.’
Having jotted down dates and facts in his note-book, and reiterated his
thanks to the good-natured barber, Maurice felt that his business in
Playhouse Alley was concluded. He bought some trifles in the shop, on
his way out, an attention peculiarly pleasing to Mr. Clipcome, from the
rarity of the event, his trade being chiefly confined to
two-penny-worths of hair oil, or three-halfpenny cakes of brown Windsor.
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