A turning point in my career. I accept an offer to go to America and
travel with John H. Murray’s Railroad Circus. The discomforts of
crossing the Atlantic. The adventures of a jar of whisky. Our opening
show at Harlum a success. Blowing up “Hell Gate.” New York scared. Odd
experiences down south. An indignant darkie thirsts for my blood. The
clown not understood in America. A Yankee who didn’t like my “general
appearance.” A Pittsburg “burglar.” I return to England.
While at Sheffield there came a turning point to my career. I was still
with Adams’ Circus (perhaps I might mention that some little time
before this I had got married) which had its “pitch” in Station Road,
and a manager who happened to see me clowning came up to me after the
performance and startled me by asking without any preface:
“How would you like to go to America?”
The question rather took my breath away and I stared blankly at him for
a few moments. However, I had presence of mind enough to say:
“All right, if you make it worth my while. But you’ll have to let me
finish my engagement here.”
He agreed to this, so I went that night to his hotel and we fixed the
thing up, I signing a contract to travel with John H. Murray’s Railroad
Circus for 27 weeks in America.
A little later I was at Liverpool after a grand send-off at Sheffield.
Adams’ Company all wished me good luck, and I departed in the best of
spirits. Having my wife with me and a little baby about two months old,
we had a few preparations to make, but at last all was ready, and we
settled down on board the steamship _Italy_.
We had a comfortable state room given us. My wife’s berth was at the
bottom and mine at the top. On the opposite side was a settee. I was
specially privileged, being the only one allowed to burn a little light
through the night--because of the baby.
At that time there were no gigantic racing Cunard and White Star
liners, and our vessel, though of good size, gave us more than we liked
of the notorious Atlantic “roll.” On the third night out at sea a storm
came on; we were not allowed to go on deck, and our imprisonment ended
in our being battened down.
I was a fair sailor but my wife wasn’t, and as for the baby it did not
seem to care much which it was. A tremendous wave hit the ship and she
staggered under it. The passengers in the saloon were seized with a
panic and started singing psalms, which somehow didn’t add much to our
confidence. My wife made sure we were all going down, and in the middle
of the hubbub the baby took a header out of the bunk and rolled under
the settee, where it fixed itself until the ship gave a lurch in the
opposite direction, and back came baby a bit scared but not much hurt.
Of course, the Providence which is said to have a special care for
babies and drunken men was at hand somewhere.
What with my wife crying and what with the psalm singers and the baby
yelling its loudest, my customary self-possession nearly deserted me,
but in that unpleasant moment my “whimsicality” came to my rescue as it
has often done when I’ve been in a tight corner.
I had a happy thought and I’ll tell you what it was.
It so happened that on my coming on board some friend--I forget the
name of the good Samaritan--presented me with a gallon of Scotch whisky
of the right sort. Why not sample it in the hour of distress? was my
question, which I at once answered in the affirmative by opening the
wooden box which held the jar and extracting the bung, refreshed myself
with a good “go.” Much comforted, I climbed into my bunk and dropped
off to sleep. Towards morning I awoke and was conscious of an awful
smell of whisky. At first I thought it was a dream, but this idea soon
vanished. The whisky aroma was too real. The very atmosphere seemed
saturated with it. I looked over the side of my bunk and saw that the
jar had rolled out of the box and had smashed itself against an iron
trough which ran under the settee, and so round the steamer by the
bulwarks.
I jumped out of my bunk and in my half-sleepy condition seeing the
trough full of liquid I imagined the latter was simply whisky and
water, and that all I had to do was to bale it out to prevent the
passengers in the next state room being annoyed by the smell. I seized
a big head sponge and the jug of my wash basin and began sopping up
the contents of the trough. I don’t know how many times I filled and
emptied the jug and still the trough was as full of whisky and water
(as I thought) as ever. Then it dawned upon me that I was, like Mrs.
Partington, trying to mop up the Atlantic! For the trough running as
it did round the ship and at the stern allowing the steering chains
to pass through, was always full of water. It was a sad business
losing every drop of the precious whisky, but in these days of “Dora”
and “Pussyfoot” it would have been a dire disaster. I daresay this
reads like a trivial incident, but somehow trivialities have a way of
sticking in the memory.
Apart from the whisky catastrophe, the voyage was a terrible one--it
lasted 17 days--and when the ship arrived at New York she was minus two
boats and the deck smoking saloon. However, the warmth of our reception
made us forget all our troubles.
We drove direct to a boarding house, No. 75, Third Avenue, corner
of Fourteenth Street, kept by Mrs. Scholes, and I made ready for my
opening matinee at Harlum, New York.
I was at once at home with my audience, and it is no exaggeration to
say that I was a tremendous success and so also was my wife, who was a
member of the company and a fine rider and tight rope dancer. I have
never been able to define precisely what amuses an audience. I believe
it is a question of inspiration and maybe some sympathetic feeling
which brings the performer and his public together, goodness knows why
or wherefore. Anyhow, all I can say of my first experiment with a New
York audience was that it really consisted of putting in h’s where they
ought not to be, and the cockneyism went down immensely.
Fate ordained that in this, my first visit to New York, the great
business of blowing up Hell Gate, a huge rock in the middle of the
river, should take place. We were living at Houston Street at the time,
not far from the scene of action, and everybody was in a state of the
utmost alarm. The air was full of rumours, the least of which was that
half New York would be destroyed by the concussion. Not a few of the
residents in Houston Street removed their furniture and took refuge in
Hoboken. All the people in the house where I was were prepared for the
roof to fall in, and the floors to close telescope fashion. The time
for the explosion arrived. The little daughter of the chief of the
police touched a little electric button--the rock flew into fragments
and--that was all. Nothing else happened, not even a pane of glass was
broken. But we all felt very much better.
I have fears that my recollections of my first American tour are rather
mixed. We went to so many places. Everything was so new and fresh,
so different from what we had been accustomed to in old England.
There were no gaping rustics; no sleepy picturesque villages. No old
churches. No inviting quaint hostelries. No rippling streams and
moss-grown bridges.
When we went down south, for instance, we found audiences divided. The
whites would not sit with the blacks. But of the two I preferred the
blacks. My word, they _could_ laugh! One couldn’t help being funny when
one saw their black eyes rolling till you saw almost nothing but the
whites, and their gleaming teeth stretching nearly from ear to ear!
But it was as well to be on your guard. Once I had to sing a song with
the words like these:
There was an old woman who had three sons,
Benjamin, James, and John,
One got lost, one got hung
The other was lost and never was found,
That was an end of the three sons.
I thought it would be a good joke to sit down by the side of a fat old
negress whom I had spotted in the audience and say to the Ringmaster,
“Here’s a discovery.”
“Where?”
“Why, here.”
“What do you mean?”
“Why, here’s the old lady who had three sons, Benjamin, James and John.”
At this point I left the old lady, rushed into the arena, and whilst
the audience were laughing, a man next to this old woman, also a
nigger, stuck his hand behind his back.
“Look out,” suddenly whispered Mr. Murray, the proprietor, to me, “he’s
going to pop you off.”
That meant to shoot me.
I said, “Is he?”
Well, you know there is a pole that keeps the circus tent up in the
centre, so I made myself as thin as possible against this pole, and
directly the horse came round covering me from the nigger, I ran out
of the ring into my dressing room and disguised myself.
After the performance was over this outraged black gentleman wanted to
find the clown who had insulted his mother. Said he, sticking out his
chest with pride, “She never had any sons but me.”
I never tried that wheeze any more and I was glad to get out of the
town, for I was told that had this good son, who was so ready to defend
the honour of his mother, had an opportunity, he would most certainly
have put a bullet into me.
Perhaps a greater contrast between England and America could hardly
be found than in their respective ideas about pantomime. Pantomime
is (perhaps I ought to say _was_, for I’m afraid the juveniles of
to-day have very little opportunity of seeing the real old-fashioned
harlequinade) one of the cherished traditions of the English boy. Fifty
years ago grown-ups had not come to look upon the pantomime as silly
and vulgar. To children the clown with his mixed notions of _meum_ and
_tuum_ was an old friend; the pantaloon, his companion and scapegoat in
crime, hardly less so. If the child’s notions as to the precise object
of the mysterious flittings on and off the stage of the harlequin and
columbine were a little hazy it did not much matter; they completed the
picture. But in America--well, a disagreeable experience of mine showed
what was thought of the clown on the other side of the Atlantic.
On one occasion I was standing at the back of the curtain waiting for
the signal to enter the arena, when a formidable looking gentleman
who had somehow found his way in behind the circus, came up to me and
stared me in the face. I could see he wasn’t quite sober, but this
didn’t make him any the less dangerous. I was in my clown’s dress and
painted up; and looking at me with every sign of disapprobation he
coolly pulled out a revolver.
“Say, damn you,” he drawled, “I’m going to pop you off.”
I knew the fellow meant shooting, but I showed no signs of alarm and
remarked quietly,
“Why should you? I’ve never done you any harm. You don’t even know me.
I only arrived in this town with the circus this morning.”
“No, you’ve done me no harm, but I don’t like your general appearance.”
And without a doubt he would have expressed his dislike in a more
decided fashion, but at that moment one of the circus employees came
along, hit him on the back of his neck with the palm of his hand,
wrested the revolver from him and threw him down. My rescuer was only
just in time, for the fellow meant mischief. It turned out that he was
very drunk and on the verge of D.T. But would an Englishman in the same
condition have a horror of the harmless clown? I fancy not.
In those days the revolver in America was far too handy to please
me. When we were in Pittsburg murderous outrages were of constant
occurrence, and one night my wife and I had quite a scare at the
hotel where we were staying. She had gone to her room as usual and I
remained downstairs playing billiards. After a couple of games I went
up to the bedroom, opened the door, and there saw my wife sitting up in
bed trembling with fright.
She dared not speak, but calling pantomime business to her aid,
she easily made me understand that a burglar was under the bed!
I pantomimed back that I would go out of the room and fetch my
six-shooter. I did so, made some kind of noise, opened the door and
stalked in, calling out in a rough voice:
“Come from under that bed or I’ll fire.”
He crawled out--not a burglar, but a poor little collie dog wagging
his tail in the most friendly manner. The collie belonged to the hotel
proprietor, of whom I bought him for a 10-cent cigar. In my customary
fashion with all the animals I ever had, I soon taught him no end of
tricks, and he travelled with me during the rest of my tour in America.
He was the best of pals and always looked after me in the most amusing
fashion at the various restaurants where I dined and supped. I was very
sad when the poor animal I had come to love so much was run over by a
tramcar in Omaha and killed.