PLAYING IN HUNLAND
Vienna and the Viennese--Churls by nature and instinct--How I
made “There’s a Girl in Havana” go down there--Chorus men and
waiters--Some innocent tricks of the music-hall trade--In
Berlin--Death of my giant--Official boorishness--German
sharp practice--I engage a Hun giant--Uncomfortable railway
travelling--At Buda-Pesth--More sharp practice--I throw up my
engagement and return to England in disgust--Litigation and worry
--My case is taken up by the Variety Artistes’ Federation--A new
“Battle of Prague”--Which I lose--A story of a “misspelled”
railway station--Back in Old England--A day’s rabbit shooting
--The two “Arthur Carltons.”
Later, during my professional wanderings through Europe, I could
not but contrast the treatment I received in France and Italy with
that meted out to me in Germany and Austria. Our allies, the French
and Italians, are gentlemen by instinct; kindly, considerate, and
courteous. The Germans I found exactly the reverse, and the Austrians
are not much better. Nor are either of them above snatching a mean
business advantage from an artiste if they get half a chance to do so.
As an example of their churlishness--I shall come to their sharp
practice later--I cannot do better than cite a little incident that
occurred in Vienna just before the war. I had been given a two months’
engagement at the Apollo Theatre there, and sharing the top of the bill
with me was Miss Ethel Levey (now Mrs. Graham-White).
She had never performed there before, and was a trifle nervous. Hers
was the turn before mine. She sang her first song, and came off. There
was practically dead silence throughout the theatre; she hardly got a
single “hand.”
Naturally she was very much upset, but by dint of coaxing her I managed
to persuade her to go on and sing her second song--“There’s a girl in
Havana.” She sang this first in English, and then in her pretty broken
German, which she had specially coached up for the occasion.
Miss Levey is, I need not say, an artiste to her finger-tips, and her
singing and acting on this occasion were absolutely faultless. Yet the
churlish Viennese would have none of it. There was no applause, or
at all events so little as made no odds, and the general tone of the
audience was, if not exactly hostile, at least not favourable.
Just try and imagine a London audience at, say, the Empire or the
Alhambra, behaving in this fashion to a continental lady artiste of
standing and repute on her first appearance! It made me mad. And I made
up my mind then and there that they had just got to hear Miss Levey,
and not only hear her, but applaud her into the bargain.
To this end I suggested to Mr. Ben Tieber, the manager of the hall,
that he should have a sheet put up at the back of the stage with the
words of the chorus on it in English and German. This he promised
should be done. He also fell in with my suggestion to have the waiters
(for on the Continent it is customary for people to dine in the hall)
taught the tune and words, and to engage half-a-dozen chorus men, and
put them in different parts of the building.
The result was that the next night the song went exceedingly well, and
within a week the lilting melody had taken Vienna by storm, and was
being sung and whistled in every café, on the streets, in the parks,
everywhere in fact. All the same, I can never forgive the churlish
Viennese for their first reception of the lady who popularised it there.
My own experience of German manners and customs was a far more serious
matter for me. It took place some three years before the war, and
when, therefore, our relations with Germany were supposed to be of
the best. I had been booked to appear, with my company, at the Winter
Gardens, Berlin. In my show was a dwarf, and also a giant. The latter,
an American named Bobby Dunlop, was a veritable mountain of flesh,
the fattest man in the world. He weighed over forty stone, and as he
could not pass his immense bulk through the door of an ordinary railway
carriage, he had to be accommodated in the luggage van.
Also he had to be taken from the station to the music-hall on a
lorry, drawn by two huge dray-horses, a source of wonderment to the
Berlin people, and likewise an excellent advertisement for my show.
I remember, too, by the way, that once, when we were performing in
London, I had him driven in a similar lorry down the Strand to a
tailor’s shop there, where they were advertising for sale thirty
shilling suits. Bobby marched in and ordered one.
Speaking of giants, one of mine (not Bobby) was an exceptionally bad
sailor, and on one occasion, during the crossing of the Bay of Biscay
on the voyage out to the Cape, his sufferings from sea-sickness were
atrocious.
[Illustration: CARLTON MESMERIZING BOBBY DUNLOP]
Aroused by his groans and gurgles one stormy night, I went to his cabin
which was next to mine.
“Can’t you keep anything on your stomach?” I said sympathetically.
“Only my hands,” moaned the poor giant.
Poor Bobby was a jolly fellow--for a giant. Giants are usually more or
less irritable and lachrymose. At all events this is my experience of
them, and I have had several in my employ in my time. But Bobby was
just the reverse of this, always singing and laughing. At least, he was
before he came to Berlin. Then a cloud seemed to come over him. His
cheerfulness departed. He got homesick. Kept on saying that he didn’t
like the country, and that he wanted to get back to America.
Consequently I was not greatly surprised when, a few days after we
opened in Berlin, my little dwarf came to me pulling a very long face,
and said: “Mr. Carlton, Bobby’s gone.”
I was playing billiards at the time, and intent on my game; so beyond
remarking that it was a good job too, I took little notice. I knew,
anyhow, that he could not get far without a passport, and that a man of
his dimensions could be easily traced, and brought back again.
“But, Mr. Carlton,” persisted the little chap, “I mean Bobby’s dead.”
“What!” I ejaculated; and dropping my cue, I ran off to his lodgings.
It was only too true. The big man was no more. He was, I was informed,
sitting on the side of his bed singing “Love me and the world is mine,”
when he suddenly gave a gasp and expired.
Knowing something from hearsay of the methods of German officialdom I
expected trouble. Nor was I disappointed.
For four days I was kept running about from police station to police
station, and from one official bureau to another. I answered about a
million questions and filled up reams of official forms and papers.
The police took possession of all the dead man’s effects, and but for
the intervention of the American Embassy I should have been unable to
recover a number of my “props” which he had in his room.
On the afternoon of the day he died they sent and took the body from
his lodgings to the public mortuary. It was about the biggest job of
the kind, I suppose, that they had ever undertaken. So heavy was he
that he broke the police stretcher, and about a dozen of them had to
carry the poor fellow bodily to the mortuary by grabbing hold of him
here, there, and everywhere, the best way they could. At his funeral,
too, about twelve men had to carry the specially made coffin in relays
by means of hooks attached to the bottom. It was rather a gruesome
“dead march.”
Towards evening of the day he died, tired out and dispirited, I sought
the manager of the Winter Gardens, and told him of my loss. I expected
sympathy, but I most certainly got none.
“Your giant has dropped down dead, has he?” remarked the manager. “That
is a pity, because he is the best part of the show. You will of course
now take very much less money to stop on? Is it not so?”
“Not much, I won’t!” I retorted hotly; for as a matter of fact the
giant had very little to do with my show, which is essentially a
one-man turn. He used to walk on at the end of my performance, in order
to seat himself on a chair, which broke down under his weight. He then
had to pretend to get angry and obstreperous, when the dwarf would
march in and persuade him to go quietly after everyone else--including
the stage hands--had failed. This always caused a lot of laughter,
and constituted a good curtain, but that was about all. It had really
nothing to do with my conjuring performance proper.
As a matter of fact, when I went on that night my show went just as
well as it had done before, nor was there any falling-off afterwards.
Nevertheless, at the end of my month’s engagement they stopped half my
salary.
This was a serious matter for me, because I was due to appear on the
Monday following at the Orpheum Fovarosi Theatre, Buda-Pesth, and what
with the expenses connected with my giant’s funeral plus a run of ill
luck at cards and racing, I didn’t have enough money left to pay the
railway fares for myself, my company, and my wife and eldest daughter,
who were accompanying me. Nor was there any time to get money from my
bankers in England. The only thing I could manage, and that with a lot
of difficulty, was to borrow just enough, at an exorbitant rate of
interest, to pay the second-class fares, leaving us not even sufficient
over with which to buy food on our long journey. I should add that I
had engaged another giant in Berlin, but he insisted at the last moment
on being paid £10 in advance before he would come to Buda-Pesth, and
this put the finishing touch on my impecuniosity. My only consolation
lay in the fact that the narrow wooden seats of the second-class car
incommoded him far more than they did us people of normal size.
However, I did well at Buda-Pesth, and from there I went on to Prague,
where I opened on a Sunday. I gave my first performance in the
afternoon, everything went with a bang and a flourish from start to
finish, and I came off feeling very pleased with myself. A few minutes
afterwards a messenger came up to me as I was standing in the wings,
and said that the manager wanted to see me in his private office.
Naturally I thought that he wanted to congratulate me. Nothing of
the sort. When I arrived there I found all the directors sitting in
solemn conclave round a big table, and before I could utter a word a
choleric-looking individual, whom I took to be the chairman, burst
forth as follows: “Mr. Carlton, your show is rotten. In fact it is not
at all the show we bargained for. Where is your other giant?”
“He’s dead,” I explained. “He died in Berlin, as you very well know,
for full accounts of the affair have been published in the papers. But
the giant I have now is an even greater draw here than was the original
one, for he speaks German, and can therefore make himself easily
understood by your audiences, which the other, being an American, could
not do.”
There was a lot more talk, the upshot of the business being that they
wanted to insist on my accepting half the salary I had contracted for.
I, however, was in no mood to repeat my Berlin experiences, nor did I
intend to. I pointed out to them that my contract said nothing about
giants, or, for the matter of that, about dwarfs either. These adjuncts
to my show were introduced by myself for my own purposes, and I had a
perfect right to dispense with them altogether, if I saw fit to do so.
[Illustration: BOBBY DUNLOP, CARLTON’S AMERICAN “FAT MAN,” WHO DROPPED
DEAD IN BERLIN]
I therefore declined to go on again unless they paid me my money as
agreed, and as they refused to do this I packed up my traps, and
returned to London. On my arrival I reported the matter to the
Variety Artistes’ Federation. This is, in effect, our trade union, and
amongst other benefits we derive, in return for our subscriptions, is
that of free legal advice.
Well, the V.A.F. decided to fight the Prague case through the
International Artistes’ Lodge, an association which before the war used
to protect and look after the interests of our artistes in Germany
and Austria, we, in our turn, doing the same by theirs over here. The
legal battle was waged long and fiercely in the Austrian courts, but
after nine months of litigation their judges decided against us, the
result being that I was done out of the sum that I ought by right to
have received for my Prague engagement, and the V.A.F. was called upon
to pay several hundred pounds in costs. Following these experiences I
decided to accept no more engagements in Germany or Austria, nor have I.
I should have mentioned that when I first went to Vienna my wife did
not accompany me, but followed me later on; she wiring me the date
and hour of her arrival, and asking me to be sure and meet her at the
station, which of course I did. Much to my dismay and perplexity,
however, when the train drew up at the platform she was nowhere to be
seen.
I looked everywhere for her, in the refreshment buffet, in the ladies’
waiting-rooms, etc., thinking she might have slipped past me in the
crowd. But all in vain. At length, and at the very last moment, it
occurred to me to search the train itself; and there sure enough I
found her, contentedly playing with our eldest child, then quite a baby.
“Why on earth didn’t you get out?” I asked, somewhat angrily I am
afraid, as I hustled the pair of them on to the platform just as the
train was starting.
“But this isn’t Vienna,” replied my wife, with a pretty air of
perplexity. “It’s Wien. Look, there’s the name on that big board over
there.”
Then I understood. The Austrians spell the name of their capital city
that way, i.e. Wien, and not as we spell it--Vienna. The mistake was
therefore a quite excusable one on the part of an English girl who had
never set foot in Austria before. Nevertheless it was lucky for both of
us that I happened to enter her compartment just when I did, for the
train she was travelling by was the Trans-Continental Express, and the
next stop after quitting Vienna was some three hundred miles down the
line towards Constantinople.
By the way, I cannot recommend Vienna as a place of residence for
married men who habitually stay out late at night, and who are not over
wishful to let their better halves know what hour they return home.
And for this reason. A householder in Vienna, or even the occupier
of a suite of rooms, or a flat, who is out after eleven o’clock at
night, has to put two coins, value about twopence of our money, in a
sort of automatic penny-in-the-slot contrivance which is affixed to
all the doors in order to obtain admission to his own domicile. And,
furthermore, the beastly little tell-tale machine actually registers
the time of your arrival.
Soon after my return to England, while I was playing at a certain
northern town, I was invited by the Chief Constable to go for a day’s
rabbit shooting on a big estate some few miles out.
There were about a dozen guns altogether. We motored to the place, and
before starting the Chief Constable addressed us somewhat as follows:
“Now, gentlemen, mind this is a rabbit shoot. No pheasants are to be
killed under any pretence whatever. Remember, all of you! it’s the
close season and it’s a very great privilege we have been accorded, and
it must not be abused.”
Of course we all promised to remember, and the shoot commenced. I was
given a place on the extreme outside of the covert, where I was hidden
from the remainder of the party by the thick undergrowth.
Presently I found myself within a few yards of the Chief Constable. I
could see him quite plainly, but he could not see me.
There were lots of pheasants about, and soon I saw the Chief peer
cautiously round to see if anybody was looking; then he let drive at a
fine cock bird, which he picked up and put in the inside pocket of his
shooting jacket.
A little later I also yielded to temptation, and bagged a bird for
myself. But before I could pick it up, the Chief Constable burst
through the undergrowth in a furious rage, and started to tell me off.
A lot of the others, attracted by the noise, gathered round, everybody
looking daggers at me.
I felt, I must confess, pretty small, though not nearly so small as I
should have felt if I had not known what I did.
Finally the Chief Constable, after one violent explosive volley of
objurgation, in the course of which he bade me clear off and never let
him see my face again, paused for lack of breath.
Then it was my turn. In his heat and excitement his jacket had become
slightly disarranged, and I saw, greatly to my delight, two ends of
tail feathers peeping out.
Edging closer to him by degrees, and muttering apologies all the while,
I suddenly put out my hand, and with an, “Excuse me, sir, but what are
these?” I whipped out the dead pheasant.
Never in my life did I see a man more completely taken aback. His face
changed from red to white from white to red again. He stamped up and
down. Then he essayed to say something, but a roar of laughter drowned
his voice.
Finally, putting the best face he could upon it, he picked up both
birds, and cried: “Put ’em in the car, and for God’s sake don’t tell
anybody anything about it.”
There is in England a theatre proprietor, the owner of several houses,
with the same name as myself--Arthur Carlton. One of his theatres is at
Worcester, where also his headquarters are.
This doubling of names has been the cause of some confusion. For
instance, once while I was at the Palace Theatre, London, I received
through the post a cheque--“Pay Arthur Carlton, Esq., £250.” It really
ought to have been delivered to him, and after a lapse of three days I
received a letter from him beginning “Dear Namesake,” inquiring about
it. Needless to say I sent it on to him by return of post.
At this time, and for some time afterwards, I had never met him; but
one year, when I was playing in pantomime at Newcastle, he wrote to
me saying he would like to make my acquaintance, and if I had a week
vacant at the close of the pantomime season, would I come down to
Worcester and do a turn at his theatre there?
As it happened I did have a week vacant, and I was naturally quite
agreeable. Now it is the custom among artistes on the last night of a
pantomime engagement to have a bit of a “flare-up,” and we did so on
this occasion, the champagne circulating freely.
We kept it up late, or rather, to be strictly accurate, early, so
that I had to hurry straight from the theatre to catch my train for
Worcester, which left at the unearthly hour of two-thirty on Sunday
morning.
On the Monday I met my namesake for the first time, and the first
words he greeted me with were, “Here’s a pretty go,” at the same time
pointing to a stack of letters about a foot high on the table of his
private room at the theatre, all addressed to “Arthur Carlton, Esq.”
I had arranged, of course, to have my correspondence forwarded to
the theatre in the usual way, never giving a moment’s thought to the
confusion that would arise. Now we neither of us knew which letters
were mine and which were his.
“Well,” I said at last, “I’ve no business that I am ashamed of. You’re
quite at liberty to open my letters.”
“All right!” he answered, and started on the topmost one of the pile.
He opened it, glanced at it, then threw it over to me.
“That’s yours!” he said.
Something in his manner made me feel uneasy. I grabbed the letter, read
the first few lines; then my face fell.
“Dear Mr. Carlton,” it ran. “Aren’t you ashamed of yourself, running
away without paying your bill? And me a poor lone widow, with three
little children to support, etc., etc.”
The letter was from my late landlady. In my excitement and hurry I had
quitted Newcastle without settling up with her for my week’s board and
lodging, the affair having, I need hardly explain, entirely slipped my
memory.
I don’t think I ever felt so small in my life. But of course I very
quickly explained to my namesake how the mistake had happened, and a
cheque to my landlady sufficed to appease that (justly) irate dame.
All the same, I reflected, it was a scurvy trick for Fate to play me.
Shortly after this I was at the Alhambra, Brighton, now a picture
palace. Sam Mayo, the “immobile comedian,” was also there, and it
happened to be the first anniversary of his wedding; so he invited me,
and three or four other “pros,” to a house he was staying at on the
front, with a view to celebrating the occasion. Amongst the company
was Malcolm Scott, the well-known female impersonator, and brother of
Admiral Sir Percy Scott.
There was champagne galore, and we were all very merry, when at about
2 a.m. I suggested, apparently on the spur of the moment, that we
should all go for a bathe in the sea to sober us up. The suggestion was
received with acclamation by all present, barring Malcolm; the fact
being that it was a put-up job between the rest of us to play a trick
on him, though of this he had no suspicion.
The weather was bitterly cold, it being mid-winter; nevertheless, we
all proceeded to the sea-front, including Malcolm, who naturally did
not care to be the only one to hang back. Then we started to undress,
but as none of us had the slightest intention of going into the water,
we naturally didn’t hurry over the operation. I especially, although I
removed my coat, and made great play with my boots, the laces of which
refused to come untied. I saw to that.
As a result Malcolm was the first and only one to make the plunge.
Immediately, I gathered up his clothes, and ran back into the house
with them; while Ernest Lepard, the manager of the Alhambra, who was
of the party, went and fetched a policeman whom he knew, and got him to
pretend to arrest Malcolm on a charge of infringing the local by-laws
by bathing nude on the front.
By this time our victim had come out of the water, and was standing
shivering and blue with the cold on the promenade. Likewise, despite
the unearthly hour, quite a small crowd had gathered, attracted by the
unusual spectacle.
I, for one, beginning to think that the joke had gone far enough,
fetched his clothes and asked him to dress himself. Not so, however,
Malcolm. Addressing the policeman, he said: “All right, constable, do
your duty. You’ve arrested me like this. Now take me to the station
like this.”
His insistence naturally put the policeman in a bit of a quandary;
and, probably fearing trouble with his superiors, and noting out of
the corner of his eye the gathering crowd, he quietly slipped away.
Whereupon, to our consternation, Malcolm announced his intention of
staying where he was until another policeman came along.
Eventually we had to carry him forcibly back into the house, where he
promptly collapsed. He came round after we had poured about half a
bottle of neat whisky down his throat, and piled a dozen blankets on
top of him before a roaring fire; but I have come to the conclusion
since that it was rather a silly joke to play. It might easily have
caused the death of our victim.
It was about this time that I started to work an illusion of my own
which I called “The Mysterious Cross.” It created a big sensation all
over the country, topping the bills wherever it was shown; but as I
am no believer in the saying about good wine needing no bush, I used
a device of my own to further advertise it at all the towns where I
showed it. Of which more anon!
The trick consisted in having a wooden cross, to which my sister Olive,
who has a very beautiful figure, was bound securely. Only one long rope
was used, this being fastened round her waist and neck, and finished
off at the wrists, which were extended to the ends of the arms of the
cross, the two ends of the rope being then held by two members of the
audience.
While the rope was thus being held, she used to vanish from under a
curtain that had meanwhile been drawn round her, and my assistant was
found, on the curtain being withdrawn, to have taken her place. The
whole thing was practically instantaneous, and the illusion has, I
may say, baffled some of the biggest experts in the world. I used no
mirrors, wires, trick scenery, or trap-doors, one or some or all of
which in conjunction form the basis of most illusions of the kind, and
the secret has never been found out by anybody to this day.
Now as to the advertising stunt I mentioned! I used to pay a man to
rise from his seat amongst the audience on my opening night, and call
out to me that he knew quite well how it was done--that I used a
trap-door in the stage. Of course I would pretend to be very surprised
and indignant, and protest that it was not so. But the man would insist
that he was right, and challenge me to prove the contrary by doing the
trick openly, without the aid of the enveloping curtain, so that the
audience could judge between us.
“No,” I would say, “I cannot do that, for this trick is my livelihood,
and if I let the people see how it is done, it will be no attraction
for the rest of the week and I can never come back here again with
it.” Then I would go on to say that if the interrupter could come
behind the scenes after the show, I would show him privately how it was
done.
But, no! The man would insist that what he wanted was a public
exposition. He knew there was a concealed trap-door. I had as good as
called him a liar. And so on.
By this time the place would be in an uproar. Some few of the audience,
possibly, siding with the interrupter, but the bulk of them, almost
invariably, being on my side. Then if the manager was a sport, I would
have him come on the stage from the wings, by prior arrangement between
us, and pretend to whisper a few words in my ear.
Whereupon, on his retirement, I would advance to the footlights and,
with a sob in my throat, hold forth somewhat as follows: “Ladies and
gentlemen, if I expose this trick now, on my opening night, nobody will
come here during the week, and business will be ruined. As I have been
publicly challenged, however, I as publicly promise that on Friday
night I will perform the trick openly without drawing the curtain, so
that everybody will be able to see with their own eyes how it is done,
and that I do not use a trap-door on the stage.”
The next day, and all through the week, the town would be placarded
all over with bills (previously printed) headed “Sensational Challenge
to Carlton,” and giving particulars of the forthcoming exposure of the
“Mysterious Cross” illusion. The result was that Friday, usually the
slackest night of the week, saw the theatre packed to suffocation at
both houses.
I kept my word, too, and performed the trick openly without the
curtain. But so quick were our movements, the whole thing only lasting
about two seconds, that even then the audience were quite unable to
detect how it was done. They could, however, see that there was no trap
door.
So good was this trick, and so great an interest did it arouse, that
I used almost invariably to get a return date. On my second visit,
however, I could not of course work the same advertising stunt, so I
evolved another one, as follows:
I used to announce from the stage that I would give £5 for the best
letter written by any member of the audience, after seeing the trick,
explaining how it was done. These letters, when received, I used to
read out from the stage at subsequent performances, thereby stimulating
the public’s curiosity and interest. Some of the explanations were very
ingenious, but none of the writers ever came anywhere near to guessing
the secret of the trick. If no real letters were forthcoming that were
sufficiently amusing I used to compose fake ones myself.
However, so as not to leave behind me the impression that I was trying
to shirk my obligations to the public, I always used to arrange with
somebody to appear on the stage as the winner, and claim and receive
the £5. Afterwards my manager would wait for him in the wings and get
back £4 of the money, leaving the recipient £1 as the reward of his
trouble.
But, alas! one day my man was called away to the telephone at the
critical moment, and forgot all about the business of retrieving my
fiver. He did his best to find the recipient, hunting high and low, but
it was not until late on the following day that he was discovered in a
local “pub,” surrounded and being complimented by his pals, whom he
had been treating--with my money--in the most lordly way conceivable.
All he had left of the £5 was a few--a very few--shillings.
I may add that it is difficult for me to explain in print, unless with
the aid of elaborate diagrams, precisely how this trick is worked.