THESPIS SENDS ME TWO REPRESENTATIVES ON THE SAME DAY AND MONOPOLISES
OUR ATTENTION
I was sitting in my room at half-past ten wondering whether I should
go to the Oval or to Lord's when a brisk rap sounded at the door, it
was flung open, and in burst a dazzling, rustling creature.
"Oh, I beg your pardon!" she said. "I have come to the wrong room.
I thought this was Miss Lestrange's room."
I saw who it was in a flash--it was Azure Verity. I told her that
Miss Lestrange dwelt in some remote region of this wonderful
expanding house to which I had never penetrated, and that if she
would wait a moment I would ring for Mrs. Duckie.
"Mrs. who?" she asked, with an air of such perfect ingenuousness that
I was caught at once.
"Duckie," I said, and then she laughed, and I no doubt blushed.
"Not really?" she inquired, laughing again.
"It is absurd, isn't it?" I said.
It his long been my theory that some of the best friendships are
based upon a good initial _faux pas_ or ridiculous misunderstanding.
The freemasonry of laughter gets to work at once and does in an
instant what it otherwise might take days or weeks to achieve.
"May I tell you," I asked, "who you are, and then we can introduce
each other?"
"Certainly," she said.
"You are Miss Azure Verity, now acting with unparalleled success at
the Princess's Theatre in Mr. Operin's new play, and you have come to
see your dresser, who calls herself Miss Lestrange but is really Miss
Duckie."
"Wonderful!" she cried. "You are a Zanzig. But," she added, "so am
I. You know there are always two of them. Let me now do my turn."
I had long since decided that I would not ring the bell before it was
really necessary.
"You are the gentleman," she said, "from abroad who has the beautiful
niece, and reads old books all night, and talks to mother in the
mornings about what London used to be like thirty years ago--the
gentleman who promises to go to the theatre to see Miss Verity but
never gets nearer than a music hall. Am I right, sir?" she
concluded, with an adorably mischievous smile.
"Quite right," I said. "We are very extraordinary people, it is
clear, and we ought to succeed as duettists."
"Yes," she said, "Falconer and Verity--thought-readers and
clairvoyants. That sounds all right."
"Verity is indeed an inspiration," I added. "It would make the
fortune of a palmist."
"Oh," she said, "don't make any jokes about my name. I am so tired
of them. Punch did it again only last week. Please ring for
Mrs.--Mrs.--Duckie," she added, "but before I go I want you to
promise me something. Promise me that if I send you a box you will
not only come to the theatre but bring your niece too. Will you
promise?"
I promised, and Mrs. Duckie appearing, the apparition disappeared.
Be-trice's illness brought me a second meeting with her illustrious
brother Alf Pinto. He looked in to see if she was well enough to be
driven to Epping, and by his mother's wish came into my room.
I told him that I had heard him at the Frivoli, and he seemed to be
as gratified as any other kind of artist would be. "But I've got a
better song than any of those," he assured me, and forthwith sang it.
I suppose that to be as assured as that is half-way towards the
conquest of the world; but for my part I could as easily undress in a
crowded drawing-room as sing an unaccompanied song. He fixed me with
his bold, roguish eye throughout three long coarse verses and three
inane choruses. And without any shame, too; but indeed how could he
have shame, for there was none over: I had it all. I had no notion
where to look until he had done.
"That's a clinker, isn't it?" he said, and his words once more
convinced me how needlessly we can suffer for others, for they proved
him utterly oblivious to any confusion or want of appreciation on my
part.
I temporised. "With proper costume and a full band it ought to go
very well," I said; and I suppose it would, for the thing was as ugly
and tawdry as the people want. Another exposure of marriage. The
awakening after the raptures of courtship to the disenchantment of
wedded life: the horror of crying twins and a bad-tempered wife and
all the rest of it. The cruelty, the hateful ugliness, of this
tireless delight in the ruin of the happiest of all human hopes!
"Why," I said, "do you always sing this kind of thing? Why is there
no song about a happy marriage with some love and trust in it?"
"Where's the joke?" he asked.
"But surely," I said, "it could be made humorous or amusing enough.
Surely there are families that have cheerfulness and gaiety as well
as quarrels and poverty and drink. Look at your own father and
mother."
"Not worth singing about," he said. "No fun in it."
I suppose this is so. People go to the music halls to laugh at, not
smile with. They want a target, and apparently they are so
constituted that they never relate the experiences in the songs to
their own lives. The shilling at the pay-box absolves them from
thought, releases them from fact; they, are in fairyland for the
evening--or what stands for fairyland to them. Otherwise how could
any member of the audience face marriage or paternity at all?
The odd thing is that, taking music-hall laughter as the test, the
logical outcome is that if in England marriage were either abolished
or became uniformly successful, and if we returned to a state of
nature and called a spade a spade, there would be no humour left.
Jokes came in with wives and clothes.
"Well," I said, "I'm sorry if cheerfulness is so impracticable. It
would be new, at any rate, and novelty is said to be a great thing."
"Not in songs," replied Alf. "They don't want anything new in songs
except the tune. They've all got to be about the same things for
ever and ever."
But for all his ready-made cynicism and London brass, young Duckie is
a decent fellow who seems to have character enough to be able to
withstand the allurements of the bar. It is an odd way of making a
living, but he works at it honestly and hard.
He receives sometimes, he tells me, as many as a dozen songs a day,
none of them any good at all. "Do you mean all of them worse than
the one you have just sung?" I said, rather unkindly.
But he saw no sting. "Yes," he said simply. "It is not so easy as
it looks," he went on, "to sing even a good song; and to make a bad
song, and they're mostly bad, go, wants hours of practice not only
alone but with the band. The difficult thing to get is movement all
the time." (He meant what a more accomplished artist would call the
rhythm.) "It's not only that you've got to have a voice, but you've
got to drive every word home too, and also keep it going."
This, I gather, is where the value of being unashamed comes in. The
music-hall singer must be ashamed of nothing.
Our evening at the Frivoli to hear Alf had been, I suppose, a
success, for we were all in good enough spirits; but with exceptions
so rare and far between as to constitute oases which only made the
desert the more arid, the performance was dull and stupid. But we
had one half-hour of the real thing, when a little Scotchman swung on
to the stage and sang three Scotch songs, with every line and every
syllable telling. Curious songs, too, to come from that dour
northern country, songs with an almost Oriental warmth in them and an
infectious and irresistible glee. I sounded Alf about this little
rival. He had no jealousy; he recognised supremacy and honoured it.
"Oh yes," he said, "Lauder--he's a genius. He can do what he likes.
There's no need for him to sing the old stuff. But he's almost the
only one. All the rest of us have got to give it to them. But," he
added, "why do you bother about it, Mr. Falconer? Music-hall songs
aren't written for you. Music-hall songs are written for the gallery
and the pit, every one of them, and always will be."
"Well," I said, "that may be so, but I am interested none the less in
improving them."
"Better leave it alone," he answered. "They're as good songs as the
people deserve."
And perhaps he is right; but one's fingers get in the way of itching
to alter so many things.
None the less I think that the music halls have improved since my
young days. There are grimy-minded men still, but the _double
entendre_ is rarer than it was, and a measure of drollery has become
important. Merely to roar out ugliness is not as sufficient as it
used to be. The acrobatics, juggling, conjuring, and other
exhibitions of skill are infinitely superior: so much so, indeed,
that to see certain human gifts in perfection a visit to the music
hall has become a necessity; while that curious modern extension of
the illustrated newspaper--the cinematoscope--has also a real
interest of its own, and takes the place of rubbish very
satisfactorily.
Until this spring I had not been in an English music hall since
January 1875. We made a final round of them just before I sailed for
the Argentine. Thirty-three years ago! There were not so many then,
nor were those that we had under such intensely business-like
control. The singer when he had finished in those days would take
his glass in the hall: no tearing off in a motor car to perform again
elsewhere. It was now and then even possible to get an encore; there
is no such thing to-day. Everything is now cut and dried, and each
performer contrives to do as little as possible, and is supported by
his Union in that praiseworthy ideal.
Alf was interested in hearing of the old easier system. "I'd often
like to give encores," he said, "but there's no chance. It would
throw out the whole time-table. But it's a loss the singer can feel
quite as much as the audience--only they don't know it." I liked him
for saying that.
My last music hall was, I remember, on a Monday night,--I sailed on
the Wednesday and spent the Tuesday night at home,--and it was a very
special occasion--the benefit of Sam Adams, the manager of the Royal,
in Holborn. I have since been in the Royal as it is to-day--it is
called the Holborn Empire--and how changed! Two performances
nightly, and not a single thing the same except its site. Sam had a
red, impetuous face and curly hair, and a shirt front that, one felt,
would cover the Oval.
I asked Alf Pinto about him, and found that his name was not even
known; but Trist tells me he is dead, and his own hall--the
Trocadero, or Troc, as it was called by the bloods--has disappeared
too, and is now a restaurant. Poor Sam! It is odd what flashes of
insight one has. I remember thinking that night, in the midst of his
triumph and all the jolly good-fellowship that sweltered round him,
that he did not look as if marked out for happiness or longevity.
I cannot remember much of the evening, but George Leybourne was there
with two or three slap-up songs, and Lieutenant Cole the
ventriloquist, and Sam Redfern, a burnt-cork cynic, and Henri Clark,
a comic singer, and an extraordinary couple named Ryley and Marie
Barnum, who called themselves (to the total exclusion of George Fox)
"the Original Quakers," the adjective made necessary, I imagine, by
too successful imitation of their discreet yet mischievous caperings.
Trist tells me that of these entertainers Leybourne is dead (to think
that death should come also to Champagne Charley!), Henri Clark owns
a music-hall in the Edgware Road, and Sam Redfern was recently in the
bankruptcy court through inability to make a chicken farm pay. Well,
well!
But if I can see no more of the performances of these variety stars,
there are two or three actors still performing whom I saw that month
during my farewell round of gaiety. Lionel Brough, who was then with
Willie Edouin and Lydia Thompson in _Blue Beard_ at the Globe, is
still playing, and Wyndham, who was in _Brighton_ at the Royal Court,
is active almost as ever; but James Thorne, whom I laughed at in _Our
Boys_ at the Vaudeville, Irving who was in _Hamlet_ at the Lyceum,
Buckstone and Sothern in _Our American Cousin_ at the
Haymarket--where are they?
We went to the Princess's--to the Royal Box, if you please--to see
Miss Verity: Naomi and I, Lionel, and Dollie Heathcote with the very
latest shirt and a dress suit watch no thicker than half a crown.
Serious plays are as a rule not much in either Dollie's or Lionel's
way: and Operin is now always serious, with his conscientious
transcript of types from what is called real life (as if there were
two kinds of life), who talk pedantic grammar and covet their
neighbours' wives. Some day perhaps a playwright will arise
observant enough to find other domestic difficulties as full of
dramatic possibilities as this dreary formula of the _tertium quid_;
but at present we are as much under its sway as the French nation are
under that of their single joke. There are a thousand problems of
daily life within the experience of every one that have as much drama
in them as is needed. One would think that all England had nothing
to do but break the seventh commandment; whereas those of us who do
so are in a minute minority, and are not the especially interesting
persons. Is there no material for drama in the lives of husbands who
do not tire of their wives and wives who do not tire of their
husbands--the most enviable people of all, when all is said?
Both Dollie and Lionel, as I say, would rather have been at a musical
comedy, but they had a very real desire to meet the famous Azure, and
the evening promised an opportunity. Naomi was very happy to be at
the play and to wear a new dress, neither event being too common with
her; and as for me, I did not much mind, for once, although had I
been alone I should probably have faltered at the theatre portico. I
have too many points in common with Wang Hiu-Chih, one of the
illustrious persons in my Chinese book, and the occupier of a high
place on the roll of honour of the diffident. "On one occasion," it
is recorded, "he went in the snow to visit a friend, named Tai
Ta-k'uei; but on reaching the door he turned round and went home
again. Being asked the explanation of this behaviour, he replied, 'I
started full of spirits; when they were exhausted, I came back.'" So
is it very often with me; I start out full of spirits, and when they
are exhausted I come back. Probably there are no persons in London
at this moment who in the past few months have seen so many first
acts, and first acts only, as I have. It needs a very engaging
dramatist or very acceptable performers to make me forget the
allurements of the word Exit.
But on the present occasion I was on duty and in perfect order. At
the end of the second act a servant came summoning us to Miss
Verity's dressing-room. Naomi would not go, try as I would to make
her, but Dollie and Lionel hurried off with no attempts to conceal
their pleasure. In a very few moments, however, they were back
again, and Miss Verity with them--a rustle of femininity at high
pressure. "If you don't come to see me, I must come to see you," she
said very winningly to Naomi; and she sat down at the back of the
box, well out of view, and talked away gaily and extremely well. Why
she so wanted to make an impression on this quiet girl I did not
understand; but I will venture the opinion that she had never worked
harder to ingratiate herself with a man.
The _entr'acte_ was not long, but long enough for her to wring from
Naomi her consent to come to tea.
"You are very rude," she said to me as a parting shot. "You have
never said how you like me in the play."
How I wish I was a better liar; or, in other words, less of an
intellectual snob. I did not like her in the play, and I did not
like the play. The simple natural thing under such conditions was to
say, "You are absolutely delightful," but having a paltry vanity as
to preserving pure one's twopenny-halfpenny critical sense, I said
nothing, and instead was just awkward and offensive.
"Never mind, Mr. Falconer," said Azure, who divines swiftly, "don't
say anything. Keep that conscience intact whatever happens."
And so saying she was gone, with Lionel and Dollie in attendance.
Such is the vitality of her personality that it seemed for the moment
as if she had taken all the air with her and we languished in a
vacuum. But only for a moment or so.
"She is very attractive," said Naomi, with a little sigh. "It must
be nice to have such power and be so popular."
I took her hand and stroked it.
Dollie and Lionel here came back, crushed their hats against their
bosoms, and sat dawn.
"She's a ripper," said Lionel. "She's coming to see me play against
Somerset to-morrow."
"Jolly awkward if you make a blob," said Dollie. "I've got her
autograph."
"Where? I should like to see it," said Naomi.
"Here," he said, "on my shirt front. That means fifteen and six, for
of course I shan't wear the shirt again. I shall have it framed.
Isn't it jolly handwriting?"