IX

I have told how I went out as 'special correspondent' to an American

paper in the Russo-Turkish war. From the hour at which we said good-bye

to each other on the platform of Charing Cross railway station, some

seventeen years ago, until now, I have never seen the military gentleman

from Chicago at whose instance I went out to watch the events of the

Russo-Turkish war. When I got home again, a month after the fall of

Plevna, I made inquiries about him, and learned that he had exceeded his

instructions, and that if he had followed the directions laid upon him

by his proprietors he himself would have gone out to the seat of war.

What object he proposed to himself in shirking that duty, and in sending

out a man whose salary he could not pay, I never definitely learned.

For quite a considerable time I used to call day by day at the Ottoman

Bank to ask if remittances had arrived, and so long as my funds lasted

I used to bombard that recalcitrant Yankee colonel with telegrams

insisting on the fulfilment of his contract. He took no notice of my

messages, and in a very little while things began to look desperate. It

was a great thing to be on the spot, however, and after some three weeks

of fruitless anger and bitter anxiety I found casual work to do under

a gentleman who had constituted himself the agent of an old-fashioned

London weekly. I wrote an article for this journal, entitled 'In a State

of Siege,' got money down for it, and lived carefully on it for some

ten days. At the end of that time, I was strolling rather disconsolately

round the Concordia Gardens at night-time, when I came upon a group of

men with whom I had a nodding acquaintance. They were seated round

a little table, drinking vishnap and lemonade, and chattering gaily

amongst themselves. One of them called me to join the party, and

another, whom I knew to be acting as agent for the _Scotsman_, was

reading a newspaper. We talked indifferently for a while; and the

reader, laying down his journal on the table, set his hand upon it

with a solid emphasis and said, 'If I could find the man who wrote that

article, I should ask him to go to the front at once.'

I glanced at the open sheet, and, lo! the article was mine. I said so,

and in ten minutes I had made a bargain. I was to go up country at the

earliest possible moment; and received instructions as to how to proceed

in application for the necessary _teskerai_, a form of passport or

safeguard without which no stranger was allowed to enter the interior.

The search after that abominable _testerai_ delayed me for many days,

and I danced attendance on Said Pasha (English Said as he was called)

until I was weary and heartsick.

At last I determined to go without the passport, and did so; but the

delay I experienced brought me into contact with as queer a body of

adventurers as I ever encountered in my life. At the head of these

gentlemen was a Mr. Montague Edie, or Edie Montague (for he wrote the

name both ways)--a young fellow of apparently four or five and twenty,

who gave himself out, I think, as a lieutenant in the English navy, and

who professed to have authority from the Turkish Government to sail a

war-ship under letters of marque and to harry Russian commerce in the

Black Sea.

Constantinople at this time was full of hare-brained adventurers,

and Mr. Montague Edie was not long in gathering about him a band of

officers. The business of the expedition was supposed to be a profound

secret; but it was talked about with a childish _naïveté_ in all manner

of public places. The chieftain laid in uniforms of his own designing,

and strolled about the Grande Rue de Péra, gaudy in a Turkish military

fez, white ducks and gloves, and a blue coat beplastered with gold lace.

One or two of his lieutenants followed his example; and the unfortunate

tailor who had provided these sartorial splendours held the Hôtel

Misserie and the Hôtel Byzance in siege for days in the vain hope of

extracting payment for his labours.

A droller set for the management of a ship of war was never seen

anywhere. The second lieutenant, I remember, was fresh from St. John's

College, Oxford. He had left his native shores for the first time on

this journey, and his whole experience of the sea had been acquired

in the passage of the Channel and the voyage from Marseilles to

Constantinople. Poor Schipka Campbell put him under examination one

evening at a _brasserie_ in the Grande Rue, and elicited the fact that

he supposed port and starboard to mean the same thing, and larboard

to be the antithesis of the two. I forget the first lieutenant; but a

subordinate officer was a fat City clerk who had been a volunteer in

some London corps, and who on the strength of his military experiences

had come out with intent to seek a commission in the Polish Legion.

The peculiarity of that contingent was that, so far as I know, not

a solitary Pole ever attempted to join its ranks. The City clerk

was seduced from his original purpose by die splendour of Mr.

Edie's uniform. He was himself rigged out at the expense of the same

unfortunate tailor who had supplied his fellow-officers; but he only

wore the uniform once, having been caught and mercilessly chaffed by a

contingent of British officers who were waiting for the formation of the

Turkish gendarmerie under Colonel Valentine Baker. Associated with this

crowd of silly and inexperienced boys was an old grey-bearded American

doctor, who believed in the whole cock-and-bull story as if it had

been gospel, and had undertaken to act as surgeon aboard that visionary

craft. He was a delightful old fellow, and, for all his simplicity,

had a vein of humour in him. Odd as it may sound, he was a man of some

distinction, and had served with conspicuous honour in the Civil War, He

had money of his own, and Heaven only knows how many generous things he

did amongst the crowd of stranded foreigners at that time in the city.

'I don't lay out to know much,' he said to me one day; 'but I have made

one discovery. Civilisation and the paper collar air ttwrterminous.

Turkey is a civilised country. I bought half a gross of paper collars at

the Bon Marché this morning. So long as I can purchase a paper collar I

know I am in a civilised country, and when I cayn't, I ain't.'

I met the doctor a day or two after the publication of this memorable

discovery, He was talking with one of the officers of the expedition,

and suddenly he threw the walking-stick he carried high into the air.

'That lets me out!' he said, in a very loud and decided tone; and,

quitting his companion, he beckoned to me to follow him. The old

gentleman's face and gesture were so urgent that I joined him at once.

He told his story in a vernacular racier than I dare to copy; but it

came to this. The Government had got wind of the precious scheme (to

which it had, of course, never given a moment's sanction), and had come

down with an intimation that the originator of it and his subordinates

would do well immediately to leave the country.

The chieftain was not thus easily to be balked, however. He called a

council of war, and proposed to his astonished satellites that they

should steal a gun-boat and turn pirates against the Russians on their

own account. This delectable scheme was instantly rejected by the

gentlemen to whom it was submitted, and it was the news of it which

let the doctor out. He took steamer that afternoon for Syra, and I

have never since heard of him. The officers of the letter of marque

surrendered their uniforms to the tailor whom they had blessed with

their patronage, and the chieftain went for a day or two to the lock-up

at the British Consulate.

Sir John Fawcett--Mr. Fawcett he was in those days--chose rather

to laugh at the whole business than to treat it seriously, and the

adventurous young gentleman was released on a promise to leave the

country. I myself was offered a post of honour in this remarkable

contingent. The secret at which all Constantinople had been laughing for

a week was confided to me in whispers at the Concert Flamm. I think--but

at this distance of time I am not quite sure--that the post offered to

me was that of Captain of Marines. I don't mind confessing, in justice

to my own unwisdom at that time of day, that if there had been a boat

and a marine I might have thought twice before refusing the offer. As it

was, of course it was simply a matter for laughter.

I hardly like to leave Constantinople without a memory of the Polish

Legion. I took a journey by the Shooting Star Railway with a chance

companion, to see him sworn in and receive his commission as an officer

of that regiment The place of assignation was a loft over an untenanted

stable, for the time being the head-quarters of the corps. I never heard

of their having any others; and I remember with unusual distinctness an

interview one of the officers had with Said Pasha, who told him, with a

perfect absence of reserve, that the Legion 'would be sent to the front

and would be dissipated.' As a matter of fact, it never got really into

form. I believe that there was never at any moment a solitary private

in its ranks. So long as it lasted it consisted entirely of officers of

various grades. Many of these, seeing how hopeless the whole enterprise

had grown to be, abandoned it openly; others quietly slipped away

without warning; and a good many willingly allowed themselves to be

drafted into other regiments, where some of them did good service.

The English journalists in Turkey were divided by faction. We were

mainly Philo-Turkish or Philo-Russian, according to the political

colours of the journals we represented; and I know now very well that

I was, for my own part, so impressed by the Bulgarian atrocities scare

that I hardly knew how to look for mercy or right feeling in a Turk.

The plain truth was very hard to get at, but now, through the far

perspective of the years that lie between, it is easier to see with a

judicial eye. If there is to be found anywhere in the world a gentler,

a more hospitable, a more sober, a more chaste, truthful, and loyal

creature than the citizen Turk, I confess that I should like to meet

him. If there is anywhere to be found a man more devoted to duty,

braver, simpler, gentler than the common soldier of the Turkish army, I

would walk a long way to find him.

While the war went on, half of the men who sent the news of it out to

the civilised world found the Turk _anathema maranatha_, and the other

half were persuaded that the Bulgarian was a beast altogether despicable

and cowardly. Since the Bulgarians have had a chance to govern

themselves they have amply disproved that unfavourable theory, and 'the

unspeakable Turk,' of whom we heard so much in those days, was in the

main as good a sort of fellow as might be found in Europe.

The atrocities which shocked the world were, without exception, the work

of the auxiliaries--the Tchircasse, the Bashi-Bazouk, the Zeibeck, the

Smyrniote and Tripolite. I claim to know something of the doings of

these gentry, for Mr. Francis Francis (then representing the _Times_)

and myself were for six weeks the only Englishmen in what was known

as the 'Roumelian atrocity district.' Day after day we lived among the

Christian dead, night after night we saw the incendiary fires. From the

heights of the lower Balkans--as at Sopot--we could see the horizon red.

The deserted villages stank with the unburied bodies of men and animals.

About them in the night-time hordes of vagabond dogs howled lugubriously

in the dark.

It was wonderful and terrible to see how the old savage Eastern spirit

could revive itself in these modern days--'Kill, slay! leave not one

stone standing upon another.' In Kalofer, where there had been a busy

and thriving population a fortnight before our arrival, there was not a

creature left, and scarcely a wall on the summit of which one might

not have laid one's hand. The town still sent up a melancholy smoke to

heaven as we entered it late in the evening, and the last torch of war

shone from a thatched roof at the uttermost limit of the place against

the lowering darkness of the sky. The arabajee who drove the lumbering

little vehicle in which our few belongings were stored fell upon his

knees in the middle of the stony desert street, and delivered to mean

impassioned address of which I could not make out one syllable. My

dragoman translated for my benefit 'Man with the two sweet eyes,' said

the kneeling orator, in possible tribute to my spectacles, 'why did

we enter upon this disastrous journey? Allah has forgotten us. Let us

return.' We were in two minds about it already, for the place was weird

to look at and the air was a slow poison; but the horses were tired, and

we ourselves had had almost enough of the day s march.

Suddenly I sighted a domestic rooster, walking with a certain air of

pensive reflection down the street. I rested my revolver on my left

arm, took careful aim and fired. The bird towered madly, executed a wild

waltz, and went round the corner. The noise of the shot disturbed some

members of his harem, and a hen fluttered into the branches of a tree

close by. Francis potted her, and she fell at our feet. Here, at least,

was supper; but at the first corner we turned, in search of a place in

which to camp for the night, we found the rest of the feathered brood

feeding on the carcase of a pig which literally heaved in waves of

vermin life. We were very hungry; but there was a good two to one chance

that our bird had enjoyed that uninviting diet, and we threw her over

the nearest wall into the cinders of a smoking cottage.

We were resigned to remain supperless, when, with a prodigious clatter

on the stony street, and a wild calling of voices, came down three

Turkish Cossacks, detached, to call us back, from a party of regular

troops which we had passed that morning. The news they brought was, that

the country was alive with every species of unconscionable blackguard

known to the time and region; and at their urgent advice we mounted

our tired beasts once more, and rode until a journey of some half-dozen

miles brought us to the camp. There we fed royally, and slept in safety.

X

There is a theory to the effect that every man or woman in the world

could write at least one readable and instructive novel out of his or

her own actual experience. There is a very apparent disposition to put

this idea to the test of practice, though, happily, not more than half

the world's population has been so far animated by it. An equally sage

idea is that anybody, and everybody, can take a part upon the stage.

To write a novel or to turn actor--to astonish the world with a new

Waverley, Esmond, or Copperfield, or to dazzle the mimic scene with a

novel Hamlet, Falstaff, Richelieu, or Othello--would seem the simplest

thing in the world to the apprehension of a good many excellent people.

Charles Dickens observed a great many years ago that to 'come out' in

a great part is one of the easiest things in the world; while to avoid

going in again is one of the most difficult. In my time I have both come

out and gone in again; and though I am not disposed to tax my modesty

for defences, or to offer prophecies for the future, it is not

improbable that I may repeat the experience in its completeness. I

suppose that the pursuit of the successful actor is the most fascinating

in the world. Here and there one learns that it has been distasteful in

an individual instance; but these cases are only the exceptions which

prove themselves and nothing else.

A great many people have been good enough to tell the story of my first

appearance on the stage; and they have told it in ways so diverse, and

yet so circumstantially, that I have been sometimes tempted to doubt

the genuineness of my own recollections. Here, however, for what it is

worth, is my belief about the matter.

I was in New Zealand some three years ago, when a travelling manager

whom I ran across in the course of my wanderings asked me if I happened

to have such a thing as a new and original drama about me. I confessed

that I had a scheme for a drama in my mind (the manager confessed

himself to be singularly anxious to produce it), and I undertook to

finish it and to see it through rehearsal. It will be observed that none

of the usual difficulties which lie in the way of the ordinary pretender

to dramatic fame obstructed my progress. There was no question of

suitability--no thought of excellence or the reverse. The travelling

manager had anything to gain and nothing to lose by the production of a

piece from my hand. It meant no more than the trouble of rehearsing; and

if the thing failed, it failed and there an end; and if it succeeded,

the manager stipulated for half profits wherever the piece might be

produced. He has not, so far, retired from business. In the innocence

of my heart I promised that the piece should be ready for rehearsal in

three weeks' time, and I set to work with the greatest vigour, burying

myself for the first week at Gisborne, a weird and lonely seaside town

where there has as yet been no whisper of a railway, and where

the steamers which ply along the coast may or may not call for the

traveller, according to the weather.

If I may say so of myself without immodesty, I am a rapid and assured

workman.

All my best work has been done at a tremendous pace. I turned out

'Joseph's Coat' in thirty-six sittings, a chapter at a sitting. 'Val

Strange,' a work of equal length or nearly, was written in as many

consecutive days. 'Aunt Rachel,' the one work of mine which may outlive

me by a score of years, was written at such a pace that a copying

clerk would have some ado to transcribe it in the time. Its three last

chapters were written between sunset and sunrise in the midst of as

tragic interruptions as ever befell the writing of comedy anywhere.

With this lifelong habit of swift workmanship upon me, I thought that

all I needed was to see my theme before me, and to go at it with my

whole heart as I would have done at a new novel. In writing a novel you

want a live place and live people; and these being provided, your book

is as good as finished when you are half-way through with it. But I

shall never forget in what a quagmire I landed myself when I began to

write 'Chums' upon this principle. I have always, since I can remember,

been a student of the acted drama. I acted for some years as dramatic

critic in the provinces and in London. I knew as much about the

exigencies of stage construction as the average man, and found that

that meant a little less than nothing. The very method of work looked

curiously bare and bald. My study for years has been to me a theatre in

which I have acted many scores of different parts, often enough before

a mirror to assure myself of nature. Yet I no sooner began to write

consciously for the stage than this useful faculty abandoned me

entirely. I no longer saw my living people; but in their stead the

members of the travelling company obtruded themselves upon me.

My leading lady was before me in the place of Lucy Draycott. She was and

is a most excellent and charming actress; but she was only playing at

being Lucy Draycott, and she stood in between me and my own conception

in a way which filled me with a cold embarrassment. Then, again, Square

Jack Furlong, a rustic rascal, who, as I boldly hoped, was to make quite

a new type of stage villain, was to be impersonated by a heavy man of

quite the conventional sort--a man who (small blame to him) would have

no idea of the accent my scoundrel was to speak in (a vital point to me)

and not a conception of the inner workings of his mind. In this way

all the real people who supposed they were to interpret my shadows into

flesh and blood converted my flesh and blood into shadow. Understand

that I am not apologizing for a bad play or a failure. It was not

counted either one or the other, though I must do something different

to touch the mark I am in quest of. I am only trying to show in what

fashion I was embarrassed by new conditions. My travelling manager

nearly broke his heart because I would not at first consent to allow my

villain to shoot little Harold, and at last in desperation I took his

advice and killed an idyll with a single grain of melodrama.

The piece was somehow written in the time prescribed, and was produced

'under the direct supervision of the author,' by which fact it gained

perhaps as much as might have been expected. It was produced at

Auckland, and achieved a success which it was not destined to repeat in

its fulness. It was admirably, and in one respect originally, staged.

The second act was laid in the New Zealand bush: and since at Auckland

folks know what a New Zealand bush-scene is like, it was needful to be

a little truer to nature than we found it easily possible to be when the

play was produced for a single experimental night at the Globe, or when

it ran its twelvemonth course in the English and Scotch provinces later

on.

Sir George Grey was interested in the production; and in Auckland Sir

George Grey does pretty much as he likes, as he has a right to do when

one remembers what the city, and indeed the whole colony, owes to his

patriotism, his statesmanship, and his personal generosity. Without his

aid the stage-manager's proposal could not possibly have been carried

out; but, armed with his authority, I presented myself to the curator of

the park, and from him obtained leafage enough to dress the whole scene

without the help of the scene-painter's art. We had a backcloth, to

be sure, and an artificial waterfall (which flooded the cellars,

by-the-by), but for everything else we were indebted to Sir George

Grey and pure nature. The live bush, the wounds of the woodman's axe

concealed by heaps of vari-coloured mosses, bloomed and rustled under

the limelight as I suppose it never bloomed and rustled elsewhere in the

history of the theatre, and the stage was ankle-deep in withered leaves;

the scent of the forest actually getting beyond the footlights for once

in a way.

I have never in my life seen any theatrical spectacle one-half as

lovely; and this one scene had a great deal to do with the success of

the piece. It was frantically applauded, and the scene-painter walked

in front and bowed as if he had been responsible for its beauties. I

overheard from a sun-tanned gentleman in the dress circle near whom

I sat one useful trifle in the way of criticism. When Mr. Stuart

Willoughby entered with his swag on his shoulder my neighbour whispered

to _his_ neighbour that _that_ fellow had never learned to hump

his bluey in Otago. 'I'll bet my head,' he added, 'that chap's

an Australian.' And so he was. The future Stuart Willoughbys were

instructed in this particular, and the most critical New Zealander could

have found no fault with the style in which Mr. David James, junior,

carried his belongings in the Otago bushland of the Globe Theatre,

London.

'Chums' hit the New Zealand fancy, and the little play was kindly

received in many places. I had begun to write another drama of a much

more serious sort, and was working pretty busily as well at a revised

edition of my first effort, when a serious accident befell us. My

manager and I were travelling together to Dunedin (for we had formed a

definite scheme of partnership, and had arranged to spend a year or two

in the preparation of a _repertoire_ of pieces which might be fit to

face the lights of London by the time we got there), when a telegram

found us at a railway station _en route_. It told us that an important

member of the company had seceded. I know now the story of his

secession; but I have some slight acquaintance with the law of libel,

and the history is of no particular interest to anybody.

We were announced to open in Dunedin in 'Jim the Penman,' and our

missing man was to have played the part of Baron Hardfeldt The town was

billed, seats were booked; there was no going back from the engagement

without disaster. Then I had a goodly number of friends in Dunedin who

were coming to see my own play, and there was a financial loss to be

encountered into the bargain. Personally I experienced a keen sense of

disappointment; but the manager was in despair. There was no filling

the place of the recalcitrant for love or money--there was very little

capital behind the concern; and, in short, it looked as if we had found

a finish for our enterprise. Then it was that I bethought me, 'Why the

dickens shouldn't I play Baron Hardfeldt?'

I communicated my idea to my companion, who grasped at it as a drowning

man grips a straw. We consulted together. We found it possible to begin

to study at midnight, and we arranged for a rehearsal on the morrow. I

had seen the piece once, and recalled its general tenor, and began to

construct a Hardfeldt. One of my dearest friends is a Zliricher, and I

felt certain of his accent. That was a point gained, for the rascally

Baron might as well have come from Zurich as from anywhere else in the

world. I recalled, with no twinge of inward apology, every tone of my

old friend's voice, every trick of facial expression, and every little

touch of Swiss gesture which helps his breezy and warm-hearted talk. I

determined to dower Sir Charles Young's admirable scoundrel with all my

dear old J---- G----'s tricks and manners; and I was the less

remorseful in copying his cheerful and childlike _bonhomie_ because our

recalcitrant had been in the habit of giving the Baron away at his very

entrance, and had stamped him from the first as a ruffian of the deepest

dye, whereas I was disposed to think that a really successful adventurer

would be likely to have an honest and engaging manner.

At midnight I began to study; and at three o'clock in the morning I went

away to bed, carrying with me the words and business of the part and a

pretty bad headache. We rehearsed at eleven; and I was 'letter-perfect,'

as actors say, and was always to be found on the very nail of the stage

on which I was wanted. I have always boasted a verbal memory like a

steel rat-trap. It never lets anything go upon which it once seizes.

So far excellent. 'But Linden saw another sight' at night-time. I knew

platform fright as well as anybody. I have thrice been physically sick

before addressing a strange audience, though I have been hardened by

nearly a quarter of a century of practice. John Bright once said in

my hearing that he never arose to speak in public without a feeling of

insecurity at the knees and 'the sense of a scientific vacuum behind

the waistcoat.' But this first appearance on the boards took me beyond

anything I had hitherto experienced. I recalled the phrase about

the 'scientific vacuum' which had fallen from the lips of England's

greatest orator, and tried to console myself with the hope that I might

not play so very vilely in spite of the fact that I had forgotten every

line and word. I was bathed in a coward sweat whilst I stood near the

central doors of the stage-chamber into which I was shortly to walk

like a sheep to the slaughter. The cue came, and I entered mechanically

crushing an opera-hat against my shirt-front. I know that if the

audience could have seen the face below the grease-paint and the powder,

they would have seen something very like the face of a corpse.

Luckily I am very short-sighted, and the space beyond the yellow glare

of the footlights was no more than a black and empty gulf to me. The

Penman, my miserable sin-steeped confederate, took me by the hand and

introduced me cordially to Mrs. Ralston. Until he had ceased to speak I

had no remotest idea of what I had to say; but the words came somehow,

and I half fancied that my old friend J---- G---- had spoken them.

There was a scattered round of applause at the end of the simple words I

had to speak; for some of my friends in front had recognised me, as they

might easily do, since I wore my own hair and beard. I did not think of

this, but wondered dimly that I should have begun to make an impression

so very early in the evening. I could see my breath rising like steam

against the darkness of the auditorium, for it was cold weather and

there was a touch of frost thus early even in the theatre. I sat and

talked in dumb-show with Lady Duns-combe, was fittingly snubbed by Lord

Dre-lincourt, and at length found myself alone with my confederate. The

scene before me I knew to be one of the strongest of its class in the

whole range of modern drama. I knew, impotent as I was, that I _could_

play it--I could feel the sense of power tingling through my own

impuissance. But the first essential was to know the words, and never

a word knew I. Luckily Jim the Penman was an old stager, had played the

part some two or three hundred times, and so knew most of the Baron's

lines.

Whilst we were having our dumb talk with Percival I had told him that

my head was as empty as a blown egg-shell, and had fairly frightened him

into taking care of me. He gave me my first words in a guarded whisper

at the close of every speech of his own, and shepherded me with

the utmost care through the whole scene. I shall never forget the

well-meaning feeble villain, stricken down by remorse and impending

terror, and the dominative Baron bullying him the while, with words

supplied piecemeal by the sufferer.

'And vot haf you to do vith shame?' inquired the Baron, and there stuck.

'Wife you cherish,' whispered the denounced one; and, thus primed, the

inexorable Baron resumed, and, having reached 'Wife you cherish,' stuck

again. 'Children you adore,' whispered Jim the Penman, gazing upward at

his tyrant with filmy eyes of suffering.

'And the children you adore,' echoed the Baron in a tone which spoke his

unrelenting nature. At last came one intolerable, awful moment, when the

hopeless Jim could prompt no longer. The prompter was at his post, but

took no earthly notice of the scene. He had witnessed the rehearsal and

was taking things easily. There was nothing else for it. I walked across

to him and asked him for the line, received it, and spoke it with

a biting scorn which nipped my confederate to the quick. I was

congratulated on that unwilling walk across the stage afterwards by an

old hand who was present at this first appearance of mine. He told me

that the pause, the walk, the turn, and the indignant scorn with which

the words were spoken had impressed him greatly, and had assured him

that I was a born actor. But by that time I had found the courage of

desperation, and all my fears had melted into thin air. The words of the

subsequent acts came readily, and before the last curtain fell I was as

much at home as I had ever found myself on the lecture platform.