big hit on the road but failed in New York. I left Gotham at the end of
two weeks and went to Boston where we did a tremendous week, continuing
on for the rest of the season to splendid business.
It was during this time that Klaw & Erlanger approached me with an
offer to open their new New Amsterdam Theatre. The bill was to be "A
Midsummer Night's Dream," my rôle Bottom. It sounded good to me and
I accepted. Erlanger gave it a most lavish production and announced
it for a long run. The opening house was $2700! But the next night
the receipts dropped to $1100. I have always believed it was due to
insufficient advertising and to the fact that the theatre was new
and in a strange locality (in those days Forty-second Street west of
Seventh Avenue was strange--theatrically!).
Erlanger was much annoyed. He was not very keen for Shakespeare anyway.
In his disappointment he rashly determined to end our engagement in
three weeks. I argued and pleaded in vain. I could not make him see it
was madness deliberately to kill all chances of our making any money
on the road. And to quit in three weeks in New York was admission of
failure beyond dispute.
It didn't take long for the trouble to start. Within a fortnight Alan
Dale got in his choicest work. An illustrated page in the Hearst Sunday
paper showed Maxine, costumed to represent Florence Nightingale,
standing Juno-like with outstretched hands as if she might be
Charity--or perhaps Hope! Below her was a caricature of Arthur Byron
who had just failed in a play called "Major André." Maxine had moved
into the Savoy Theatre as Byron was forced out. He was pictured running
up a hill with a valise in his hand, saying, "She saved me, Nat!" I was
down in the lower left hand corner at the back door of a theatre in a
beseeching attitude. Out of my mouth issued these words: "Won't you
please come in, Max?"
That alleged comic picture settled our road business once and for all.
To make matters worse, if that were possible, Klaw & Erlanger acted on
Dale's suggestion and insisted on Maxine's following my engagement at
the New Amsterdam. I knew this was the last straw and fatal to whatever
chances we might have had otherwise and I asked to be let out then and
there. But Erlanger insisted that we go to Boston.
Our company numbered one hundred and fifty people! Our weekly expenses
were $6,000!
Arrived in Boston I strolled into the Hollis Street Theatre where we
were to open. There wasn't a soul on Hollis Street as I turned the
corner from Washington Street. It was noon and I had expected to see
a line extending half way to the corner. I found the treasurer in the
box office smoking a cigarette. After the usual salutations I inquired
casually if we were sold out.
"Pipe that rack," quoth the treasurer laconically as he indicated a
forest of tickets arranged on a board.
"Are all those tickets for to-night?" I asked.
"Uh huh," grunted the treasurer and took a deep inhale of his cigarette.
We opened to less than $600. The performance made such a tremendous
hit that we were sold out the last three performances of the week and
the following week saw never an empty seat at any performance--and
for all that we made no money! From Boston we went to Brooklyn where
our opening house was $400. (Florence Nightingale was working her
influence!) We played to gradually increasing business--but not enough
to cover expenses--during the rest of the week. The next (and last)
stand was Newark where we opened to $200! Again business increased
with every performance but again we had a losing week. Then it was
I insisted on closing. Florence Nightingale was an advance agent no
attraction could hope to win out against. Thus Newark saw the last of
"A Midsummer Night's Dream."
And this is the record of a play which drew in two performances in
one day more than $5,000! The day was the last Saturday of our
three-weeks' run at the New Amsterdam!
Following this fiasco I entered into a contract with Charles Frohman
under which we produced "Beauty and the Barge," by Jacobs, the English
playwright. It should have run a year. It failed dismally. I knew it
would after witnessing the dress rehearsal. David Warfield, Frohman and
I sat out front at that rehearsal, my part being read so I could get
an idea of the ensembles. I discovered my two ingenues might have been
taken from the Forest Home! My two light comedians were so light I am
sure they could have walked on water! An old man character insisted
on hitting the hard stage with his cane--supposed to be a garden!
I begged Frohman to postpone the opening. These five people had a
twenty-two-minute scene before I came on. Warfield agreed with me.
A friend of Frohman's had come in meantime. He insisted that my
"marvelous" acting would carry the play.
"Marvelous acting be damned!" I cried. "No human being could succeed
with such incompetent surroundings."
I was voted down, however, and the next night we opened at the Lyceum
Theatre. The play was dead before I made my entrance, a score of men
leaving the house in the first fifteen minutes. My dressing-room was
within five feet of the stage and I could hear every sound, from front
and back. It wrung my heart as I heard the delicate, pretty little
scenes I had worshipped when I had seen Cyril Maude's company play it
in London just torn all to pieces! Point after point went for nothing.
All the humor disappeared. It was awful!
[Illustration: IN WHEN WE WERE TWENTY-ONE
_The biggest bit of any play I ever produced_]
Finally came my cue and I went on. My reception was vociferous
and brought me out of my slough of despair. I even got a scene
call after I made my exit. But the play was doomed. Afterwards I
commiserated with Mr. Jacobs in London and told him it was only the
acting that was to blame for its failure to run two years. It ran two
weeks.
"Wolfville," Clyde Fitch's dramatization of those excellent short
stories by Alfred Henry Lewis, was my next production. This time it
was not the fault of the actors. Fitch was to blame. He had taken all
of Lewis' characters and then tried to write an original story around
them. Fitch couldn't touch Lewis when it came to Western types--or
stories. Again, before the first performance, I told Frohman we would
fail--and we did, the piece dying at the end of six weeks.
Frohman was at a loss to provide me with another play. He suggested
that I take a steamship and see the first performances of two plays
which he controlled, "Dr. Quick's Patient" and "The Alabaster
Staircase." The latter was written by Captain Marshall of England who
wrote "The Second in Command." John Hare was to enact the leading rôle.
It looked good to me and I jumped across. My trip saved me two more
failures as each of this pair of plays lasted just one week. Instead
of either of them I brought back a manuscript of a comedy called "What
Would a Gentleman Do?"--which proved as big a failure as any I ever
had! Next I produced "The Master Hand" by a Mr. Fleming--whew! what a
flivver! (The play, of course!)
But before I increase this list further let me hark back to matters
more personal if no less gloomy!
_Chapter LVIII_
AT JACKWOOD
During the early days at Jackwood when I was busily engaged in
hiring guests to come and partake of my board and rooms (I mean the
professional diners out) I found great difficulty in securing patrons.
I had plenty at my command so far as professional friends and visiting
Americans were concerned, but the fair Maxine had the English bee in
her American bonnet and insisted that we try to get together some of
the impecunious nobility and army men as guests.
I knew of no one who represented those particular branches and had no
desire to know any, but being under her hypnotic influence I sought a
woman, the wife of a friend of mine, an American mining man, who knew
all the swagger members of "the Guards." Through her influence one of
these sapheads was persuaded to visit our humble home from Saturday to
Monday. He came, accompanied by one of the present Dukes of England
(whose father, by the way, died owing me a paltry two thousand dollars,
borrowed on the race course at Deauville, France). They came down with
Mme. Melba and Haddon Chambers.
We had a lovely time (that is, I presume they had). Max insisted on
my entertaining the guests between courses with my supposedly funny
stories. Generally after the telling of each one, which occupied some
little time, my portion of the feast was either cold or confiscated by
the butler. Very little attention was paid to me anyway except when I
was telling anecdotes (and on the first of every month when the bills
became due!).
On this particular Sunday evening the guests sauntered into the drawing
room expecting to hear Melba sing. She didn't even talk!
Then the party, in couples, sauntered through the house and inspected
the grounds.
Being on particularly good terms with the butler I selected him for
my companion and we quietly strolled through the upper rose terrace
discussing a _menu_ that might appeal to the next influx of England's
dilettantes. By this time all my American friends were barred. Max
considered them "extremely common" by now.
The butler and I were figuring out the expenses of the previous month
as the pale moon cast its rays over my book of memoranda. Inadvertently
we stopped before an open window of the drawing room. As we stood there
I chanced to overhear this remark:
"How could you possibly have married such a vulgar little person?"
Being terribly self conscious at all times I said to my butler, "Luic,
I am the v. l. p. to whom that chocolate soldier is referring. Listen,
and we'll have a Warrior's opinion of a Thespian!"
Then ensued the following dialogue:--
SHE: Do you think him vulgar?
HE: Not necessarily vulgar, but an awful accent!
SHE: Well, no one ever accused him of an American accent. He
was educated in Boston. Don't you think him rather amusing?
HE: In what way?
SHE: By way of anecdotes and funny stories?
HE: Were those stories he told at dinner supposed to be funny?
SHE: Of course; didn't you hear the guests laugh?
HE: Yes; so did I, but simply in a spirit of compliment. Is
he supposed to be a comic man in your country?
SHE: Extremely so.
HE: Really?
SHE: And he talks remarkably well.
HE: Did he talk remarkably well to-night?
SHE: I thought so.
HE: Well, maybe, but I was deafened by your beauty. I saw
nothing but those beauteous eyes of yours, my dear Mrs. Goodwin and
everything else was a blank. Really, I--
SHE: Now don't pay me silly compliments, Lord Algy; it isn't
nice.
HE: I beg your pardon; but please tell me how did you happen
to marry that funny little man.
SHE: Now don't ask impertinent questions; one has to get
married and, really, when he talks he says something.
HE: Does he--really?
The butler and I resumed our stroll.
Some time after I met this Grenadier, talked--and said something! (My
editor refuses even to edit it.)
Jackwood proved a lovely summer abode for me. It cost me fifty thousand
dollars to get it and fifteen thousand a "year" to keep it up (we were
there about ten weeks every season). It cost me twenty-five thousand
dollars to lose it!
During our lives at Jackwood incident followed incident, each of which
convinced me the autumn leaves were falling that would soon bury me.
I discovered the fair Maxine was being bored save when the house was
filled with English guests. Americans bored her even more than I did!
My repertoire palled and the anecdotes she screamed at when we first
were wed met with but little response and that only when the dinner
table was filled with English guests who found it quite as difficult to
fathom my wit as Maxine.
Life at Jackwood was beginning to pall on me. Many Sundays found me a
lonely host. Max was constantly accepting invitations to meet people at
country houses, spending the usual Saturday to Monday outing away from
her own fireside.
These Saturday to Monday gatherings as a rule were the rendezvous for
unblushing husbands and wives whose mates were enjoying the hospitality
of opposite houses of intrigue. Generally no husband is ever invited
to these meetings accompanied by his own wife, the husband always
accepting invitations to the house party of his friend's wife--and thus
the silly and unwholesome game goes on.
In nine weeks my wife made nine trips of from two to six days' duration
each. These outings included a visit to one of England's ex-Prime
Minister's country house, a Member of Parliament's yacht and a society
lady's home at Doncaster.
Being very respectable at the time, I was never invited to any of these
functions.
During my entire occupancy of Jackwood I accepted just one such
invitation. And then I was bored stiff. Of all the asinine, vacant,
vapid lot of people I ever saw commend me to the polyglot mob one meets
at the average Saturday to Monday gathering. Even the few actors and
actresses who were present seemed to absorb the atmosphere and became
deadly dull.
You must understand the guests are invited from some ulterior
motive--women to meet men for every kind of purpose, men to mingle
with men for financial reasons, from a tip on the race course to the
promotion of a South African mining scheme, women to meet women to plot
and intrigue and make trouble for either of the sexes. It is a sort of
clearing-house for the sale of souls and the ruin of women's morals.
At these gatherings more plots are schemed, more sins consummated,
more crimes committed than at Whitechapel during a busy Sunday! When
one stops to consider what can be accomplished by a bunch of these
parasites in forty-eight hours it is appalling. I leave it to your
imagination--what can be consummated in a week at these places--where
statesmen and financiers lend themselves to such intrigues--on yachts,
in closed stone castles and concealed hunting lodges!
At first I mildly protested against my wife's accepting these
invitations and was always met with mild acquiescence and a desire to
do what I demanded. If it were distasteful to me she would not accept
and, like a dutiful wife, remain at home with me from Saturday to
Monday. For two Sundays we sat in the drawing room with each other
twirling our thumbs! It was a day of eloquent silence--each of those
Sundays! At first I tried to think up stories to amuse her but she
would look up from her book with those dreamy, cruel eyes, listen for a
moment and in sweet dulcet tones remark:--
"Very clever, my dear, and most amusing, but you told me that some time
ago at Seattle!" Then she would resume the reading of her engagement
book for the following week.
I soon grew tired of our Saturday-to-Monday _tête-à-têtes_ and let her
go on her own as they say in England. We gave a few parties, but as I
found it difficult to separate my friends from their wives I gave it
up--and usually spent my forty-eight hours going to Paris to see a play
or to Ostend to indulge in it.
[Illustration: IN NATHAN HALE
_"They hang Nat in the last act"_]
It took me but a short time to become disgusted with our mode of living
and alarmed at the expense involved. My clever wife adroitly managed to
avoid all expense (although we had agreed to share it equally). Once
in a while she would accidentally leave her check book where I could
see it and the stubs convinced me she was not paying any of the
household bills. Large sums were artfully arranged in a cipher which a
Philadelphia lawyer or a writing expert could not fathom.
"Cigarette case for A" might mean Arthur or Alice; "Luncheon to N"
might be Nellie or Ned; "Sundries for M" might mean Mike or Mabel--and
there you are. Wherever her money went she was contributing nothing to
the maintenance of the home (which included the services of sixteen
servants)!
I made up my mind to bring things to an issue--to use a slang
expression, to vamp. Ugly rumors were rife concerning the attentions
of the ex-Prime Minister, the Member of Parliament, two American
millionaires, an English Lord and the leading man of Maxine's company.
I put Jackwood on the books of a real estate firm and placed my
furniture in a storehouse together with the contents of my wine cellar
(only to see them again, alas, adorning the home of my wife on Duke
Street, London, a residence purchased during our marriage, to which I
was never invited!).
After I had tried so hard to entertain her at Jackwood I think her
conduct most discourteous.
Our life was very tranquil at Jackwood so far as we were personally
concerned. Things went along pretty smoothly until we made a trip to
Trouville for a holiday. I was privileged to enjoy myself alone most
of the time as the fair Maxine would leave me early in the morning
returning in time for dinner after a day's outing on the golf links
accompanied by some English admirer. I spent most of my time gambling
at the Casino, where I managed to lose thirty thousand dollars! And
some ass has written:--
"Unlucky in love, lucky at cards!"
Up to this time I considered my wife thoughtless and fond of admiration
as all women are--but not worse than that. The only time she failed
to exercise her diplomacy and splendid tact was during our sojourn
at this French watering place. Perhaps my constant presence irritated
her. There is nothing that so gets on one's nerves as the presence of
someone who is a bore. I don't blame any woman for wanting to jump
the traces under these conditions. The only thing I hold against her
is that she never told me. It would have been very easy and I would
willingly have released her from her misery, but to inform people by
inference--to make a boob of me--was unkind, unjust and cruel.
It never occurred to me that I was boring her until I came across a
letter which fell into my hands quite by accident. My servant mistook
it for a note addressed to me and placed it with several others he had
previously opened for my perusal. It furnished one of my reasons for
divorcing the most beautiful woman in the world. Here it is:--
_Wednesday_
DEAR LORD ----
You see I don't quite dare say "----" yet but you wait till we
take our next walk together and I shall practice it every minute.
You nice thing! I am delighted with the photograph--it stands
before me as I write giving the modest room an air of fashion and
I shall always keep it among my treasures.
Aren't you lucky to be at ---- with that blessed ---- and as
many attractive people; this place would bore you to death I
think--the gaiety seems such hollow, tinsel-ly sort; if it were
not for golf I should find it intolerable. Unless one is filled
with sporting blood and goes in for gambling at the races, one
has a pretty dull time but then, England is the only place for
_me_ and my dolly is always stuffed with sawdust when I am away
from it. Perhaps I shall have the good luck to see you in London.
I get back Sept. 1st but only as a bird of passage; probably we
can't stay there even one night for I must go at once to the
country to see my sister and stay with Lady ---- from Sat. to
Monday and sail the 7th which means Tuesday would be our only day
in town I suppose. Alas! My love to you and don't forget me. I am
filled with the most affectionate thoughts of you all at ----
MAXINE
Any man who could live with a woman who wrote such a letter does not
deserve the name of man. I made up my mind to quit then and there and
told her so. I gave her my reason, kept the letter and took the train
for London and the boat for America--thirty thousand loser!
Gee! but I had a bully summer!
Maxine Elliott is a variously gifted woman. With the ambition of a
Cleopatra she used me as a ladder to reach her goal and found her
crowning glory in the blinding glare of a myriad incandescent lights
which spell her name over the portals of a New York theatre. She is one
of the cleverest women I ever met. Her dignity is that of a Joan of
Arc, her demeanor Nero-like in its assertive quality and yet she has
channels of emotion that manifest womanhood in the truest sense of the
word.
_Chapter LIX_
"WHY DO BEAUTIFUL WOMEN MARRY NAT GOODWIN"?
"Why, oh why, do beautiful women marry Nat Goodwin?"
I shall endeavor to answer that query so frequently put to me by the
newspapers, not from any sense of obligation but simply in the spirit
of anecdote.
Time and again impertinent printed remarks have been made about my
plunging into matrimony and there have appeared flaming headlines such
as, "Bluebeard Goodwin Anticipates a Marriage" (or divorce!), "Red
Headed Nat Contemplates Matrimony!" etc.
These polite and complimentary references in the yellow journals
appear as a rule annually. Generally they occupy half a page and are
illustrated with pictures of the poor misguided creatures who had the
misfortune to bear my name with my photograph stuck up in one corner
(with a countenance suggesting more the physiognomy of a Bill Sykes
than a Romeo!). Then some extremely clever reviewer of prize fights
comes forth with this headline:--
"Why do Beautiful Women Shake Nat Goodwin?"
The scoffers, the envious, who know nothing about me except the fact
that I have furnished paragraphers much material anent my "matrimonial
forays," are inclined to credit my succession of beautiful wives for
any success that I have attained. Matrimony may and often does breed
notoriety and an actor's record may excite comment upon its endurance,
but neither personal antics nor long service ever won a man genuine
fame.
Is it a crime to be respectable? Is it a crime to have an honest
fireside?
I never stole any of my wives, neither were they ever forced into
matrimony--with me.
My friends who have been privileged to visit any home of mine will tell
you that it was the abode of a lady and gentleman!
This will jar my vilifiers. I have no right to be respectable and have
a home. I am a brawler and a reveler, a drunkard and a gambler. Maybe.
Yet with all these alleged vagaries I fail to remember any time when
I dined a mistress at the same table with my wife and children--an
incident in the career of a most conspicuous member of our profession
who has the reputation of being possessed of supreme chastity. He
prefers marshmallows to champagne--stick licorice to Havana cigars. He
married at the beginning of his career and is quite content to stand
pat--with his head in the sand.
I have often wondered if these self-elected critics of my actions would
have refused any of the women whom I have had the privilege of marrying!
Does it ever occur to them that a woman must first be interested in
a man (in some little degree!) before allowing him the privilege of
taking her hand in marriage? If she has a brain she understands his
motives and even if moved by other reasons than that of affection it is
still she who decides to meet the issue.
The women who married me had the reputation of being possessed of brain
as well as beauty and all of them had tasted the sweets of matrimony
before I came along. I wonder what these ebony-tipped-fingered
gentlemen who have marvelled at my success in the matrimonial field
would say if they were privileged to glance at my visitors' book in
use at Jackwood or in my West End Avenue home in New York! It would
convince them that they never could have passed the butler!
It has never been chronicled that the heads of the theatrical
profession were my constant visitors. Statesmen, diplomats, lawyers,
conspicuous public men from abroad, multi-millionaires (not forgetting
one President) and some of the nobility have graced my board. This may
have been the reason why one of the beautiful women married me!
Fancy any of my critics writing that Lord ---- had visited me, Senator
---- dined with me, Marchioness ---- accompanied me on a hunting trip!
That would not be news--it's too clean! But they do cable to the
remotest corner of the globe my presence at a prize fight. That is
interesting matter--and news! How considerate of the feelings of one's
aged parents who are forced to bear the brunt of their unwholesome
lies! How I loathe these mephitic hounds who burglarize men's
firesides, the pestilential pirates of women's homes who invade the
sanctity of loving hearts, who write with pens steeped in venom!
[Illustration: WM. H. THOMPSON
_An artist to his finger tips_]
_Chapter LX_
BILLY THOMPSON
What a splendid player is William H. Thompson--Bill as he is known to
his friends!
I have known him for over thirty years and have admired him in many
rôles. An artist to his finger tips, he is obliged by existing
conditions to fritter away his time in vaudeville instead of heading
his own company or occupying a theatre as the bright particular star.