_"I never cared for the singer's fame,
But, oh, for the singer's heart
Once more--
The bleeding, passionate heart!"--"B. V."_
These are a few films from the human biograph of Harry Barnes, old
actor. You know, when you are old, you accept life with more or less of
a sigh of quiet acquiescence, and by your cozy fire you sit and nod to
an inner voice, a gentle old voice which over and over whispers and
murmurs--"Once upon a time, once upon a time." And possibly Barnes would
have nodded, too, but he lacked the cozy fire. Life has its dramatic
unities, it would seem, and if one thing or another is awry we are apt
not to perform as the book says we should. No cozy fire, says the Great
Stage Manager; no nodding acquiescence, replies the Mummer in the Play.
Barnes listened, it is true, over and over to the voice which murmured
"Once upon a time," but he sat not by a comfortable open grate, amid
grandchildren. Instead, he lurked in East Fourteenth Street amid
decaying agents' offices, hunting a chance to do a bad monologue in a
worse vaudeville show. He had outlasted his time; he could not get work.
He lived on those two heartless things, Hope and Memory. And for all I
know he is living on them yet.
Now, you will not in your careless youth or your sceptical maturity find
beauty in this story, you will not "get under the skin" of it, as the
saying is, unless you have stopped sometime in your busy going, to
consider, aside and with understanding, the pathos of the old actor. It
is a curiously poignant human thing, written about by a few, suffered by
many, and ignored by the loud, inordinate world.
The old actor out of employment! A target for jokes, a piece of
battered, ancient "property" cluttering up a new and very busy stage.
You smile at his curious figure, unconscious of the broken misery that
aches beneath, where life has died and living goes paradoxically on;
and only sometimes late at night do you get a part of that hidden ache
when you hear old legs drag weary feet up the boarding-house stairs,
past your door and on up into the skylight room on the roof,
despondently to bed; and you know that the old man has had another
unsuccessful day among the agents and the managers. You can sometimes
interpret the querulous little laugh over the thin oatmeal at breakfast,
sometimes you can guess the water in the rapidly winking eyes; but of
course you do not proclaim your deductions. Civilization is a process of
making less noise about things.
This is a segment of the life-film of Harry Barnes, old actor, as he
traveled the stones of Fourteenth Street. Not the Rialto, where fat men
adorned with fat diamonds smoke fat cigars in order to narcotize fat
consciences; but Fourteenth Street, grimy with old, sparsely-tenanted
buildings, where theatrical offices three flights up bargain for the
driblets of trade among the low music-halls and the cheapest vaudeville
houses, where niggardly, gray-haired agents have for two generations sat
among their dusty contracts and their rusty pens, haggling over
bread-and-water salaries with the jetsam of a too-volatile profession.
Harry was old and dropsical with drink, a sad hero for a careless story.
The only ideal he had ever had, besides one, was to arrive at the fine
fame of printer's ink: headlines, bill-boards, critical notices,
reproductions of his photograph. But this was long ago. He had longed to
be chronicled in his time, preëminent and large; this he had desired
with that hungry passion for display which only an actor can feel. But
this, remember, was once upon a time. His other ideal--no need to
mention it amid Momus and his mimes!--was to sway people with laughter
and tears, to burn them with romance, to chasten them with tragedy, to
carry them with him in his frenzy, to play upon them with his art.
Art! Do you care for a grotesque, serious evening in its humblest
presence? Have you time to listen, over beer glass and cigarette, to a
broken-down old actor out of a job?
[Illustration: HARRY BARNES, OLD ACTOR]
Barnes was incongruously named when he was given the name of Harry. It
is a flippant name. It calls up merriness, youth, bravado, color, song.
Barnes was forty-nine, streaked with grey, heart-sick, pallid,
shuffling, timorous, sorry, and forlorn. Three decades of grease paint
had made his skin flabby; and three decades of what the grease paint
stood for had done likewise by his soul. It was thus that he drifted
from doorway to doorway in Fourteenth Street, down by the Elevated,
where dry little agents told him in dry little voices that there was
nothing for him from day to day. It was thus that he dragged his feet up
the boarding-house stairs to his skylight room, night after night,
carrying the two heartless fardels, Hope and Memory.
It was approaching a certain holiday, a holiday which came on Sunday.
"Harry," said old Tony Sanderson, after he had finished informing the
actor that there was no news for him, "why don't you do a little
press-agent work for yourself? Get your name in the paper. That might
help you get something to do."
The other listened despondently.
"Now here's a chance," went on the agent, in a confidential tone. "No
money in it, of course, but, as I said, there's a chance to get into
print. Some sort of a newsboys' benefit bunch is going to get together
Sunday night and give a little entertainment fer the kids up in Beals'
gymnasium on the Bowery. They're callin' for volunteers among the
actors. You take your monologue stunt down there and get onto the
program. The newspapers always plays up this newsboy dope strong and
you'll get a good mention sure. Clip the notices and _then_ you've got
somethin' to flash. See?"
Barnes stood uneasily by the desk. "I--I don't know, Tony," he answered.
"To tell yuh the truth, I'd be a little bit scared to try it. Yuh see,
I--well, if you wasn't an old friend of mine, I couldn't say it--but,
confidentially, Tony, I--I've kind o' lost my grip. I'm a--a back
number, Tony. I'm afraid o' them kids; they're too wise. My old act
wouldn't go." He waited, awkwardly; then, as if he hoped he were wrong,
he asked: "Would it?"
Sanderson snapped his grim eyes. "What're yuh tryin' to put it on fer,
at all, then--if yuh think it won't take with a gang of kids at a free
doin's?" Then his tone softened. "Look here, Harry. It'll only be ten or
twenty minutes. Go ahead. You'll get through all right. You ain't as
much of a dead one as you think you are."
Barnes straightened up. It was all right for him to make a slight
confession, but Sanderson had wounded his professional vanity. "A dead
one!" he exclaimed. "Certainly not. Harry Barnes a dead one! After a
thirty years' career in the companies of the best----"
The agent shoved a card in his hand and cut him off short. "Go around
there and tell 'em to put you down for a monologue." And Harry went,
with dignity and misgivings.
His misgivings were all the more increased when he saw the list of
promised performers: La Belle Marie, the famous little toe dancer in her
attractive transformations; the Brothers Zincatello, Risley experts at
the Hippodrome; Julian Jokes, "in his inimitable Hebrew monologue"; the
Seven Sebastians, the world's most marvelous Herculean acrobatic
performers; Mlle. Joujou, the popular singing comedienne, Prima Donna
and Star, direct from her unusual and most distinguished triumph at the
Palace Theater, London; and a dozen more of the younger and more popular
people of the stage, all adorned, with adjectives and hyperbole. Down at
the bottom of the list with a trembling pencil he wrote: "Harry Barnes,
Singing and Talking." Then he shook hands with the secretary of the
organization and walked back to his boarding-house in a mild fever of
excitement.
In his room he went eagerly about his work. He rehearsed again and again
his meager little bag of tricks, his funny Irishman, his Chinaman--no,
the Chinaman came first, because he used the queue afterward to wrap
around his chin and simulate Irish "galloways"--his Dutch comedian
monologue about married life, his old-time songs and dances. He
furbished up some old "patter" and injected new anecdotes. And this he
kept up morning and evening until the notable Sunday came.
[Illustration: "HE GRINNED AND WINKED AND FRISKED AND CAPERED"]
He was so nervous, this old actor of a thousand parts, that he could eat
no supper that night. He almost trotted to the gymnasium in his
excitement, and, though his pockets bulged with grease paint, mustaches,
wigs, and other paraphernalia, he forgot almost half of his material. At
the door he had to push his way through a wriggling, impish mass of
small boys who blocked the steps and the sidewalk. Inside the hall,
young faces packed the place to the window-sills. To the old man the
newsboys seemed as so many antagonistic bits of the younger generation,
the generation which evidently would have none of him, which relegated
him carelessly to the warehouse for old scenery and old settings.
He stood in dismay behind an extemporized "wing" and peered out at the
restless little bodies. He fancied already that he could see grins on
their sophisticated faces, ridicule in their eyes; he remembered once
hearing a gallery god shout "Twenty-three!" in the middle of an actor's
monologue, and what had then seemed humorous precocity now seemed hard,
bitter cruelty. He fumbled at his make-up in his pockets, shuffled
uneasily, and waited.
It was almost time to begin. Where were the other actors who had
promised to come? The boys out front were whistling, kicking their feet
upon the floor, clapping their hands, and shouting to one another. A
distracted official raced here and there among other officials, asking
some sort of exasperated question. Barnes could not hear what it was;
but telepathically he felt that there was a hitch in the program.
At last, after waiting a quarter of an hour, the manager stepped forward
and said:
"Boys, we had arranged a fine program for you to-night----"
"Good fer you!" yelled a voice.
The speaker held up his hand. "But it seems that actors are better
_promisers_ than they are _actors_." He smiled at his own joke, but the
audience gave one long "Aw-w-w!"
"However," he continued, "we are all here now and we intend to do the
best we can. If we make up our mind to, we can have a bully good time
just the same. We have with us at least one kind gentleman who
appreciates what a celebration like this means to the boys." ... Barnes
heard and saw things as if through a fog. The arms of the speaker were
gyrating and a voice shouted in the ear of the old actor: "What's your
name?"
"Harry Barnes," he said, moistening his lips. Nobody had shown up except
him, he kept thinking over and over to himself: nobody except him. He
had the thankless job of "opening the show."
"... Harry Barnes," echoed the speaker at the end of some sort of
practical talk concerning the newsboys' organization and its management.
"Mister Harry Barnes"--he squinted at the program--"in singing and
talking."
He turned and smiled at the old man, and to Barnes the smile seemed
diabolical. Somebody clapped him on the back. There was a hurricane of
whistles and shouts, and before he knew it he was in the middle of the
rostrum.
Mechanically he had made his old comic entrance, tripping his right toe
over his left heel, and turning to shake his fist at an imaginary enemy.
The boys, determined to be pleased, giggled appreciatively.
"How--how are you, boys?" Barnes asked, seriously.
The audience snickered with delight. He was such a funny-looking old
man!
"I hope you'll like my work," he went on, desperately, "or else we might
as well go home. I guess I'm the whole show, for a little while, at
least, as the feller said when he fell out o' the balloon." The house
roared with approval.
"Go wan, Barnesy," shouted a young pair of lungs in the front row.
He straightened up, turned his back for a moment, stuck a queer set of
mustaches on his upper lip, faced the crowd again, and began: "I was
walkin' down the street the other day when my friend J. Pierpoint Morgan
stepped up to me an' says, 'Barney, my boy'"....
The show had begun. Harry Barnes, singing and talking, had opened his
carefully rehearsed bag of tricks.
There is some peculiar psychology about humor. If people make up their
minds that they are going to laugh and that a performance is bound to be
funny, nothing on earth can keep them from enjoying themselves. The most
serious remark will be greeted with howls of approval; the most ancient
joke takes on a novel and present sprightliness. In the slang of the
stage, Barnes' line of patter took.
Four hundred boys simpered, smirked, grinned, giggled, tittered,
chuckled, and guffawed. A wine of merriment flushed the crowd and
mounted to the old mummer's brain and heart. He skipped and danced and
sang; he went through all the drollery and tomfoolery, all the old comic
business he could recall.
The children nudged each other, dug their fists into each other, and
cheered: "Oh, you Barnesy!" "Kill it, Kid!" "Whatcha know about dat!"
"Sand it down, Barnesy!" The old-timer was doing the famous lock-step
jig he had done with Pat Rooney in "Patrice" fifteen or twenty years
before. It was so old that it was new. Encore followed encore. The
perspiration cascaded through his pores; he grinned and winked and
frisked and capered. They would not let him stop. At the end of
twenty-five minutes he bowed himself off the stage, and still they
called him back. When he gave them, for the "call," the Little Johnny
Dugan pantomime from "The Rainmakers," the East Side children, born
since the day of such things, were suffocated with delight.
What did Dugan do to him?
--They say he was untrue to him.
Did Dugan owe him money?
--No; he stole McCarthy's wife!
Who? Little Johnny Dugan?
sang Barnes with a quizzical flirt of his head; and lungs that were wont
to fill the city streets with news could not even gasp for laughter.
The secretary of the organization followed with a speech about future
entertainments; another official read a letter from a prominent
financier promising the boys a swimming-pool and a half dozen summer
excursions.
"Somebody bang de box!" suggested a voice, after a pause.
Nobody could--except Barnes; and he volunteered. The whole affair was
now like one big family circle, each one secure in the amity of the
other, and when the old man sat down at the cracked piano, he sang as if
he were singing to himself, easily and without restraint. A quiet held
the house, and even the children were touched; for Harry Barnes was
quavering through the simple lines of "Should Auld Acquaintance Be
Forgot." After that he gave them the Lullaby Song from "Erminie," and
somehow it did not at all appear incongruous that a careworn mimic of
fifty should be singing to careworn workingmen of ten, down on the
Bowery, in a gymnasium, a verse about pretty little eyelids and sleeping
darlings. The world, fortunately, is not always with us; and the song
ended in a silent applause.
For two hours the entertainment went on, speeches and official plans
interspersed with the antics of Barnes.
[Illustration: "'OH, YOU DIVVIL, YOU! YOU OLD, BLATHERSKITING DIVVIL'"]
Was there anything he could not do? He mimicked birds and animals; he
imitated a wheezy phonograph playing "When We Were a Couple of Kids"; he
recited "The Raven" and "Paul Revere's Ride"; he gave a cutting from
Dickens and one from Sheridan Knowles; he showed how Joe Jefferson
played Rip Van Winkle, how Sol Smith Russell did "A Poor Relation."
And all through his soul and body, as he watched his haphazard audience
follow him in his moods and changes, ran the quiet magic of Art
Satisfied. It is a noble braggart madness, this glorification of a cheap
art by an old actor.
"Barnes, my boy," he said to himself, with a glow of rapid blood, "you
have not lost them yet! See them laugh with you! Feel them cry! What
does it matter if you eat watery oatmeal and live in a skylight room;
are you not an artist, a resonant instrument of poetry and music and
mirth, a true actor of the best parts? You are; and these are matters of
the undying soul. A boarding-house is a vulgar, temporal thing. You were
right to come here to-night, and do this thing without pay, for Art's
sake. You uphold the honor of a calling which is founded upon Art. And,
oh, most of all, you have not lost your power, you have not outlived
your time! Sanderson intimated that you were a dead one--very well,
to-morrow you shall triumphantly cut the acquaintance of Sanderson! To
have lived until this evening before the youth of this land; to have
caught the right intonation, the proper gesture; to have swept through
the hearts of your hearers like a vibration of music--this is to have
transcended, this is to have justified yourself! And justified yourself
to whom? To Sanderson? To the world? No! You have justified Harry Barnes
to Harry Barnes! You carry this human throng over the footlights and
into your soul with a Chinaman's queue and a putty nose. Your Art is
still that fine, secure Art which you have carried in your memory as you
traversed dingy stairways on Fourteenth Street. Barnes, you live, you
act, you accomplish! Bravo!"
He shook hands abstractedly all around when the affair came to a close.
He remembered bundling his make-up and trinkets into a piece of
newspaper and tucking it under his arm. A pleased face presented itself
at one time before his eyes and a voice said, confidentially, "Mr.
Barnes, I congratulate you; and the dramatic critic of the _Star_ was
here to-night."
He found himself at last out in the cool darkness of the street, and he
had to stop a moment to think which way his boarding-house lay. Then he
walked home, to save carfare. All the way up the silent streets his
brain sang with triumph. His blood jumped in gladness; he could hardly
keep from running. He declaimed aloud bits of Shakespeare, tag ends of
poems; he snapped his fingers and flung out his arms in sheer excess of
enthusiasm. He smiled, threw back his head, even made faces at the
passersby. He boomed into a solo from an opera, and kicked his foot at a
cigar stub on the sidewalk. And had anybody wished to observe when he
reached his house, the spectacle would have presented itself of a
caricature, funny-paper barn-stormer tramping merrily up the rattling
stairs and humming, "The flowers that bloom in the spring, tra-la, have
nothing to do with the case."
All the next day he did not leave his room, save at meal times; for he
wished to be alone and hug his exultation. To the four flat walls he
repeated snatches of the things he had done the night before; up and
down the rag carpet he smirked and grimaced and laughed and jigged. He
sang the songs that had "taken" so well. He went through certain
gestures and then deliberately exaggerated them, in a high good-humor.
He was as young again as on the day when he had signed his first
contract. He puffed out his chest, looked at himself in the glass with
mock seriousness, and then, when the pent-up good feeling burst out in
his merry eye, he winked it gleefully and said: "Oh, you divvil, you!
You old blatherskiting divvil!"
At half-past four he went down to the corner and bought a copy of the
_Star_, the late edition which had the dramatic news in it.
There it was! He felt like jumping up in the air and whooping the length
of the street. On the editorial page it was. His name was in the
headlines! Beneath, in the article itself, almost every other word
seemed to be Barnes. It praised him here, it admired him there, it
thanked him, it congratulated him, it asserted that he had saved the
night for four hundred newsboys. He was so anxious to read it through
and to read it fast that he skipped from paragraph to paragraph. There
was over a column of it! He hurried back up to the room; and then
regretted that he had not stopped to buy more copies of the paper. He
locked the door and spread the paper out on the little center-table. His
heart and breath almost stopped as he read the good words slowly
through. When he had finished, he threw the paper aside and bounded into
the middle of the room.
"Press agent, hey?" he laughed. "Press agent! I guess yes! A small
matter of a column and a quarter; that's all. _Only_ a column and a
quarter about Harry Barnes! Wonder what Sanderson will think about that?
Wonder if he won't get me something to do? Oh, no; I guess not. A column
and a quarter!"
He sat down again and smoothed out the paper before him. This time he
began noticing little niceties of the critic's phrasing ...
"entertaining, not to say pathetic rendition," etc., etc.... "_Not_ to
say?" Funny; look at it a moment, and it seems to mean it wasn't
pathetic. But here it said: "Infectious and heart-tickling old-time
Irish humor" ... "excellent characterization of Uriah Heep" ... and so
on.
[Illustration: "HE SAT STARING INTO THE BLANKNESS OF THE LITTLE ROOM"]
After a few minutes he ceased reading and sat, picking at the edge of
the paper, staring into the blankness of the little room. He stayed thus
immovable for a long, long time, and then slowly the tears slipped
across his cheeks, down on the forgotten "notice," his throat ached with
a tender sobbing, and he bowed his head into the newspaper.
He was thinking of the children; he had made them laugh and cry. And
this was the thrill, once more, of the singer's heart.
[Illustration: THE REPUDIATION OF JOHNSON'S POLICY