Just previous to my coming East I met, for the first time, Mr. John E.
Owens. He was considered a wealthy man, and was at the height of his
popularity as a comedian. He was odd, even his marriage seemed an
expression of eccentricity, and one felt as if one had received a dash of
cold water in the face when the hot-tempered, peppery, and decidedly
worldly Mr. Owens presented the little orthodox Quakeress, with a
countenance of gentle severity, as his wife.
She wore the costume of her people, too, and watched him above her
knitting-needles with folded lips and condemning eye as he strutted and
fumed and convulsed his audience. She was said to be a most tender and
gentle nurse and, indeed, a devoted wife, but she certainly seemed to
look down upon theatrical life and people.
Mr. Owens was telling me she was a clever business woman, with a quick
eye for a good investment, when I jestingly answered: "That seems to be a
peculiarity of the sect--thee will recall the fact that William Penn
showed that same quality of eye in his beautiful and touching relations
with the shrewd and knowing Indians," and in the middle of his laugh, his
mouth shut suddenly, his eyes rolled: "Oh, Lord!" he said, "you've done
for yourself--she heard you, your fate's fixed!"
"But," I exclaimed, "I was just joking."
"No go!" he answered, mournfully, "the eye that can see the main chance
so clearly is blind to a joke. She has you down now on her list of the
ungodly. No use trying to explain--I gave that up years ago. Fact of the
matter is, when that Quakeress-wife of mine puts her foot down--I--well,
I take mine up, but hers stays right there."
Mr. Owens was of medium height and very brisk in all his movements,
walking with a short and quick little step. He had a wide mouth, good
teeth, and a funny pair of eyes. The eyeballs were very large and round,
and he showed an astonishing amount of their whites, which were of an
unusual brilliancy and lustre; this, added to his power of rolling them
wildly about in their sockets, made them very funny; indeed, they
reminded many people of a pair of large peeled onions.
I think his most marked peculiarity was his almost frantic desire to
provoke laughter in the actors about him. He would willingly throw away
an entire scene--that is, destroy the illusion of the audience--in order
to secure a hearty laugh from some actor or actress whom he knew not to
be easily moved to laughter; and what was more astonishing still, if an
actress in playing a scene with him fell from tittering into helpless
laughter and failed to speak her lines, he made no angry protest, but
regarded the situation with dancing eyes and delighted smiles, seeming to
accept the breakdown as proof positive that he was irresistible as a
fun-maker.
For some reason I never could laugh at "Solon Shingle." Mr. Owens had
opened in that part, and as I stood in the entrance watching the
performance, my face was as grave as that of the proverbial judge. He
noticed it at once, and paused a moment to stare at me. Next morning,
just as he entered and crossed to the prompt-table at rehearsal, I, in
listening to a funny story, broke out in my biggest laugh. Open flew the
star's eyes, up slid his eyebrows.
"Ha! ha!" said he, "ha! ha! there's a laugh for you--by Jove, that's a
laugh as is a laugh!"
I turned about and faced him. He recognized me instantly. "Well, blast my
cats!" he exclaimed, "say, you young hyena, you're the girl that wouldn't
laugh at me last night. I thought you couldn't, and just listen to your
roars now over some tomfoolery. What was the matter with me, if you
please, mum?"
I stood in helpless, awkward embarrassment, then, drawing in his lip and
bulging out his eyes until they threatened to leap from their places, he
advanced upon me, exclaiming: "Spare me these protestations and
explanations, I beg!" then tapped me on the chest with his forefinger
and, added, in a different tone: "My young friend, I'll make you laugh or
I'll cut my throat!" next turned on his heel, and called: "Everybody
ready for the first act? Come on, come on, let's get at it!"
Rehearsal began and Mr. Owens did not have to cut his throat.
Funny in many things, it was the old farce of "Forty Winks" that utterly
undid me, and not only sat me violently and flatly down upon the entrance
floor, but set me shrieking with such misguided force that next day all
the muscles across and near my diaphragm were too lame and sore for me to
catch a breath in comfort. Perhaps that's not the right word, and I may
not be locating the lamed muscles properly, but if you will go to see
some comedian who will make you laugh until you cry, and cry until you
scream, and laugh and cry and scream until you only breathe in gasps and
sobs, you will next morning know exactly which muscles I have been
referring to--even if you haven't got a diaphragm about you.
But really the mad absurdities Mr. Owens indulged in that night might
have made the very Sphinx smile stonily. As a miserly old man, eating his
bread-and-cheese supper in his cheap little bedroom, and retiring for the
night only to be aroused by officers who are in pursuit of a flying man,
and think they have now found him. Not much to go upon, that, but, oh, if
you could have seen his ravening hunger; have seen his dog-like snaps at
falling crumbs; his slanting of the plate against the light to see if any
streak of butter was being left; his scooping up of bread-crumbs from
his red-handkerchief lap, and eager licking up of the same; have seen him
sorting out his money and laying aside the thin, worn pennies to give the
waiter; breaking off the hardened grease that in melting had run down the
candle's side, putting it away in his valise, "to grease his boots next
winter" (a line he introduced for my especial benefit).
Having gone up-stage and taken off his shoes, he suddenly bethought him
that there might be a few crumbs on the floor, and taking his candle,
down he came to look, and turning his back to the audience, they screamed
with sudden laughter, for two shining bare heels were plainly showing
through his ragged black woollen socks. He paid no heed, but sought
diligently, and when he found a crumb he put his finger to his lip to
moisten it, and pouncing upon the particle, conveyed it to his mouth, and
mumbled so luxuriously one almost envied him. Then, remarking that it was
too cold to undress, he undressed, and as his coat came off he started
toward a chair, saying, querulously: "He couldn't abide a man that wasn't
neat and careful about his clothes," and down he pitched the coat in a
heap upon the floor in front of the chair. His vest he dumped beside
another seat, as he dolorously declared: "He had neat habits ever since
his mother had taught him to put his clothes carefully on the chair at
night."
And so he went up and down and about, until that stage was one litter of
old clothes. Blowing out his candle he got into bed, and, shivering with
cold, tried frantically to pull the clothes over his poor shoulders--but
all in vain. At last a tremendous jerk brought the quilt and sheet about
his shoulders, only to leave his ancient black feet facing the audience,
all uncovered. And so went on the struggle between feet and shoulders
until, worn out, the old man finally "spooned" himself with knees in
chest, and so was covered and fell asleep, only to be aroused by
officers, and turned into driveling idiocy by a demand "for the girl."
It was at the point when, sitting up in bed, trying, with agonizing
modesty, to keep covered up, his eyes whitely and widely rolling, he
pleadingly asked: "N-n-now I, leave it to you--do I look like a seducer?"
that my knees abandoned me to my fate, and sat me down with a vicious
thud that nearly shook the life out of me. And John Owens sat in bed and
saw my fall and rejoiced with a great joy, and said: "Blast my cats--look
at the girl! there, now, that's something like laughing. I'd take off my
hair and run around bald-headed for her!"
I was called upon to play blind _Bertha_ to Mr. Owens's _Caleb Plummer_
in the "Cricket on the Hearth," and I was in a great state of mind, as I
had only seen one or two blind persons, and had never seen a blind part
acted. I was driven at last by anxiety to ask Mr. Owens if he could make
any suggestions as to business, or as to the walk or manner of the blind
girl. But he was no E. L. Davenport, he had no desire to teach others to
act, and he snappishly answered: "No--no! I can't suggest anything for
you to do--but I can suggest something for you not to do! For God's sake
don't go about playing the piano all evening--that's what the rest of 'em
do!"
"The piano?" I repeated, stupidly.
"Yes," he said, "the piano! D----d if they don't make me sick! Here they
go--all the '_Berthas_'!"
He closed his eyes, screwed up his face dismally, and advancing, his
hands before him, began moving them from left to right and back, as
though they were on a keyboard. It was very ridiculous.
"And that's what they call blindness--playing the piano and tramping
about as securely as anybody!"
Ah, ah! Mr. Owens, you did make a suggestion after all, though you did
not mean to do it, but I found one all the same in that last contemptuous
sentence, "_tramping about as securely as anybody_." It quickened my
memory--I recalled the piteous uncertainty of movement in the blind; the
dread hesitancy of the advancing foot, unless the afflicted one was on
very familiar ground. I tried walking in the dark, tried walking with
closed eyes. It was surprising how quickly my fears gathered about my
feet. Instinctively I put out one hand now and then, but the fear of
bumping into something was as nothing to the fear of stepping off or
down, or falling through the darkness--oh!
Then I resolved to play _Bertha_ with open eyes. It was much the more
difficult way, but I was well used to taking infinite pains over small
matters, and believing that the open, unseeing eye was far more pathetic
than the closed eye, I proceeded to work out my idea of how to produce
the unseeing look. By careful experiment I found that if the eyes were
very calm in expression, very slow in movement, and at all times were
raised slightly above the proper point of vision, the effect was really
that of blindness.
It was unspeakably fatiguing to keep looking just above people's heads,
instead of into their faces, as was my habit, but where is the true actor
or actress who stops to count the cost in pain or in inconvenience when
striving to build up a character that the public may recognize? Says the
ancient cook-book: "First catch your hare, and then--"; so with the
actor, first catch your idea, your desired effect, and _then_ reproduce
it (if you can). But in the case of blind _Bertha_ I must have reproduced
with some success the effect I had been studying, for an old newspaper
clipping beside me says that: "The doubting, hesitating advance of her
foot, the timid uncertainty of her occasional investigating hand spelled
blindness as clearly as did her patient unseeing eyes," and for my reward
that wretched man amused himself by pulling faces at me and trying to
break me down in my singing of "Auld Robin Grey," until I was obliged to
sing with my eyes tight shut to save myself from laughter; and when the
curtain had fallen he said to me: "I'll settle your hash for you some
night, young woman, you see if I don't--you just wait now!" And the next
season, in Cincinnati, in very truth, he did "settle my hash" for me, to
his great delight and my vexation.
He was so very, very funny as _Major Wellington de Boots_ in "Everybody's
Friend"; his immense self-satisfaction, his stiff little strut, his
martial ardor, his wild-eyed cowardice were trying enough, but when he
deliberately acted _at_ you--oh, dear! He would look me straight in the
eye and make faces at me, until I sobbed at every breath. Then he had a
wretched little trick of rising slowly on his toes and sinking back to
his heels again, while he cocked his head to one side so like a knowing
old dicky-bird that he simply convulsed me with laughter.
I was his _Mrs. Swansdown_, and I had kept steady and never lost a line,
until we came to the scene where, as my landlord and would-be husband, he
brought some samples of wall-paper for me to choose from. Where, in
heaven's name, he ever found those rolls of paper I can't imagine. They
were not merely hideous but grotesque as well, and were received with
shouts of laughter by the house.
With true shopman's touch, he would send each piece unrolling toward the
footlights, while holding up its breadth of ugliness for _Mrs.
Swansdown's_ inspection and approval, and every piece that he thus
displayed he greeted at first sight with words of hearty admiration for
its beauty and perfect suitability, until, catching disapproval on the
widow's face, he in the same breath, with lightning swift hypocrisy,
turned his sentence into contemptuous disparagement, and fairly shook his
audience with laughter at the quickness of his change of opinion.
At last he unfurled a piece of paper whose barbarity of design and
criminality of color I remember yet. The dead-white ground was widely and
alternately striped with a dark Dutch blue and a dingy chocolate brown,
and about the blue stripes there twined a large pumpkin-colored
morning-glory, while from end to end the brown stripes were solemnly
pecked at by small magenta birds. The thing was as ludicrous as it was
ugly--an Indian clay-idol might have cracked into smiles of derision over
its artistic qualities.
Then Mr. Owens, bursting into encomiums over its desirability as a
hanging for the drawing-room walls of a modest little retreat, caught my
frown, and continued: "Er--er, or perhaps you'd prefer it as trousering?"
then, delightedly: "Yes--yes, you're quite right, it _is_ a neat
thing--cut full at the knee, eh? Close at the foot, yes, yes, I see,
regular peg-tops--great idea! I'll send you a pair at once. Oh, good
Lord! what have I done! I--I--mean, I'll have a pair myself, _Mrs.
Swansdown_, cut from this very piece of your sweet selection!"
Ah, well! that ended the scene so far as my help went. The shrieking
audience drowned my noise for a time, but, alas, _it_ recovered directly,
having no hysterics to battle with, while I buried my head deep in the
sofa-pillows and rolled and screamed and wept and bit my lips, clinched
my hands, and vainly fought for my self-control; while all the time I saw
a pair of trousers cut from that awful wall-paper, and Mr. Owens just
bulged his white shiny eyes at me and pranced about and rejoiced at my
downfall, while the audience, seeing what the trouble was, laughed all
over again, and--and--well, "my hash" was very thoroughly "settled," even
to the entire satisfaction of Mr. Owens's self.