this great actor, George Weir, died, F. R. Benson began his speech.
His manner commanded the cessation of applause, and he raised one
hand, and held it high, and said:
“This year, one amongst us has answered the summons of the call-boy
of the stars.”
* * * * *
But to return to my small business. On the Sunday we travelled to
Worcester, and I spent the rest of the day in a desperate struggle
with Nym and “the humour of bread and cheese,” and “that’s the humour
of it,” in endeavouring to get into my memory phrases which are not
merely old but old-fashioned, for Nym, like Touchstone, discourses
for the most part Elizabethan catchwords which, three hundred years
before, were “certain of a laugh,” which the process of time and
fashion has made meaningless, and phrases such as these are very
difficult to learn.
But I learned them somehow or other on the Sunday, and the next
morning came to the one and only rehearsal. It was not on the stage,
more important things were happening there, but in the travellers’
samples room of one of the Worcester inns. Of course there was no
scenery, no costumes, no “props” of any kind. A few chairs indicated
the set, quite sufficiently, I may say to a man of experience, but
dubiously enough to a man of next to no experience. Thus, when
it came to my last exit, the Assistant Stage-Manager gave his
instructions somewhat as follows:
“After you have said the last words to Page, turn round and go up
the flight of steps L.C., here, between these chairs. When you have
got to the top, turn again and say to Page, over his shoulder: ‘My
name is Nym, and Falstaff loves your wife.’ Then exit Left along the
terrace.”
Simplicity itself, to an actor, but somewhat horrifying to a
beginner. And then two or three of the principals were not
there--they were rehearsing other scenes, very likely, on the stage,
and the Prompter’s: “Mr. Rodney will come on on that cue from the
right upper entrance, where that table is, and you go up to him and
meet him Centre and say so and so, and then he speaks the line so and
so and you cross to the Right”--with much more to the same effect.
And my breath was queer and catchy, even though it was only the
rehearsal, and I wondered what my voice and I would be like at night!
Well, I was paralysed with stage-fright. But I got through, somehow;
and I hope the Old Woman of the Company, Miss Denvil, as admirable an
actress as George Weir was an actor, meant what she said after I had
made my Exit Left along the terrace. She smacked me heartily on the
back, and said:
“There! I always say the nervous ones are the best!”
So the tour went on, and in the course of it I received an odd bit
of promotion. I descended from the flower-pot stand in the Trial
Scene of the “Merchant” and became the Clerk of the Court. I think
he speaks one line and reads a letter, and that is all. It is hardly
to be called a part; if the man who had to do it failed at the last
moment the Business Manager or, more likely, his assistant, would be
summoned and robed in the black habit and the square cap. He would be
told the line and given the letter, and that would be all right. It
was so small a thing that the man who “played” it was supposed not to
care to do so under his own name, so I was either not in the bill at
all or else I appeared as “Mr. Walter Plinge,” the Mrs. Harris of the
Benson Company, who often came in useful on occasions like this, or
when there was a case of “doubling.” There was such a person, but I
believe he kept a tavern frequented by the Company.
And so I was the Clerk of the Court, and solemnly proceeded to
consider within myself what a Compleat Clerk of the Court should
be like. I determined, firstly, that the boy at the back of the
gallery should hear what I said; but this is a general rule--and by
no means the least important--which applies to all acting. My second
resolution was that a really convincing Clerk would not take the
faintest interest in the very emotional procedure which seems to have
characterised the strict court of Venice. He would listen to all
the pleadings and all the agonies with a stolid countenance. When
the Doge spoke of “brassy bosoms” and “hearts of flint” and “gentle
answer, Jew” and so forth, the Clerk would become stonier and stonier
in his indifference, possibly reflecting inwardly that he had always
thought that the appointment was a purely political one, and that now
he was sure of it. “Ad captandum arguments,” “Old Bailey rhetoric,”
“Buzfuz on the Bench,” “Trying to throw dust in the eyes of the Jew,”
such phrases, translated, of course, into choice Venetian dialect,
might be supposed to flit through the purely legal and formalistic
mind of the Clerk. As for the young advocate, whose credentials the
Clerk had been obliged to proclaim, well, frankly, the Clerk could
not understand how the Doge, politician as he was, could permit such
unprofessional rubbish as the “Quality of mercy” speech to be uttered
in court at all. “Mountain pines,” “wag their high tops,” “twice
blest,” “crowned monarch better than his throne”: really, really!
What was the Bar coming to? The Clerk’s face and attitude have become
perfectly stony in their supreme indifference; he might be a thousand
miles away.
But! What is that? The Bond bad in law? The plaintiff debarred from
recovering, and not only that, but, _ipso facto_, liable to criminal
proceedings of a highly penal character? Now, indeed, the Clerk of
the Court is interested. Not that he cares twopence for Antonio or
for Shylock either; but there does seem distinctly to be a flaw.
The young Advocate must have a technical mind, that greatest of all
blessings. The Clerk pricks up his ears, as if he were a terrier
advised of the presence of a rat; he is intensely awake; he consults
his authorities on the table before him; he is really inclined to
think that a highly important point is at issue; he believes that the
question, or something very much like it, was raised in the Dogeship
of Bragadin, _c._ 1150. At length the Clerk of the Court is all alive.
I thought of all that, and I tried to render it as best I could.
And I only mention this trivial nonsense because, to the best of my
belief, it is the only instance in which I have found that doing my
best and sparing no pains brought me the faintest sort of reward.
As a rule, in my experience, the mere fact of taking pains has been
rewarded with the malignity of scoundrels and the insults of fools.
But in this extraordinary and, as I must say, miraculous affair it
was otherwise. The tour of the Benson Company drew to its close. It
was now hot summer and we were playing a _matinée_, I think on the
Whitsuntide Bank Holiday, in some theatre on the south side of the
river; some theatre which in all probability is now devoted to “the
pictures.” It was glorious weather, there were few people in the
house, and as one of the ladies of the company observed cheerfully in
the wings, “People who come to see Shakespeare on an afternoon like
this ought to have their noses rubbed in it.” Ah, the good, gross
gaiety: how few people have as this lady had, and has, the true art
of it! Her remark did me a lot of good that languid, heated afternoon
in the half-empty theatre; and I believe that the Clerk of the
Court--we were playing the “Merchant”--was a shade wearier than usual
in his utter boredom and contempt of the whole proceedings: till his
moment came.
And a few days later Henry Ainley was saying to me in our
dressing-room: “I am engaged by Alexander to play Paolo next year.
And, do you know, Alexander said to me: ‘You’ve got a remarkably good
actor in your Company; and I couldn’t even find his name in the cast.
He was playing the Clerk of the Court that afternoon: he was very
good indeed.’”
The great George Alexander to speak thus of the little beginner
in his little shadow of a part! Well, I suppose all such taps
are vanities; but there was a very happy man that night in the
dressing-room, and he plied the spirit-gum and fixed on his beard for
the part of the Major-Domo in the “Shrew”--two lines--with trembling,
unsteady, rapturous fingers.
A few weeks later I was engaged to play a small part in “Paolo and
Francesca,” but that was for the early spring of 1902, and I had to
fill in. So I joined a pastoral or open-air company (almost all of
whom were Bensonians), and played with them for three weeks. Then I
met a friend in the Strand and said “I want a shop,” and found myself
rehearsing next day the part of a comic Irish servant in a sketch
called “The Just Punishment”--an entirely preposterous playlet. We
did a fortnight of it--two houses a night--at the Hoxton Varieties
and another East-End hall, the name of which I have forgotten. At
the Varieties I dressed with a very pleasant black man; the rats ran
about the dressing-rooms and passages like kittens. And the audience!
There was no question of their being all right till you began to
bore them. You made your entrance as the curtain went up, and found
the whole house in an uproar. Most of it was lighthearted hilarity,
some of it was argument, and they argue very forcibly in Hoxton,
occasionally with broken bottles. The actor’s business was to drown
them, and get them to listen, and amuse them--if he could--and very
capital training it was. But the sketch was not booked on--and no
wonder--so I went to Mr. Denton’s in Maiden Lane. He sent me to Mr.
Charles Terry, who was taking out a melodrama called “The Silent
Vengeance,” written by Mr. Harry Grattan round the personality of
Mr. Silward, that wonderful animal impersonator. From first to
last I played three parts in “The Silent Vengeance”--a solicitor,
a doctor and a barber--and it only ran six weeks. But for the last
week of the run I had been rehearsing the part of an old actor in
the farcical comedy of “The Varsity Belle.” Then at the end of a
fortnight, for one reason or another, I had to change this rôle for
that of a University Don; and there were over two hundred cues in
the first act, and I had only a week for study! The manager was an
entirely honest but boorish fellow, and I gave him my notice; “bunged
in my notice” would be more idiomatic. The day I left “The Varsity
Belle” company I got an engagement from an old Bensonian friend to
play for a fortnight or so in Old Comedy down in the western country,
and a delightful engagement it turned out. We all knew each other,
or very soon got to know each other, and we drank beer and played
skittles in tumbledown alleys behind old inns, and brewed bowls of
punch, and in spite of these wild practices acted, I think, decently.
Poor Ernest Cosham was the Comedian and Mr. Leon Quartermaine played
the juvenile leads; and I hope he has not forgotten a famous game of
Blind Hookey in a little inn at Westbury-on-Avon, the only card game
that I ever enjoyed. And the morning after our last performance I
went up from Andover to town and listened to Stephen Phillips reading
his play, “Paolo and Francesca,” to the assembled company. I had been
a year on the stage, and I think I had had as varied an experience as
falls to the lot of most beginners.
* * * * *
And here there is a great gap. There were other adventures on the
stage; but enough, I think, has been said of these things. I have
just told of that happy moment of June, 1901, when Henry Ainley
repeated to me George Alexander’s kindly praise of my acting. And,
indeed, that was bliss, but I believe that I received the promise
of a happiness that should be deeper and more lasting one morning
towards the end of August, 1921. For that morning brought a letter
ending my career as a journalist.
* * * * *
Poor George Sampson got into grievous trouble over his innocent
speculations as to so innocent a thing as an underpetticoat. I
propose, therefore to say nothing about the craft of journalism,
which I followed for many years.
Save only this: _Eduxit me de lacu miseriæ, et de luto fæcis. Et
statuit super petram pedes meos: et direxit gressus meos._
THE END
Printed in Great Britain at
_The Mayflower Press, Plymouth_. William Brendon & Son, Ltd.
Transcriber’s Note:
Words may have multiple spelling variations or inconsistent
hyphenation in the text. These have been left unchanged unless
indicated below. Jargon, dialect, obsolete and alternative spellings
were left unchanged. Three misspelled words were corrected.
Words and phrases in italics are surrounded by underscores, _like
this_. Unprinted or partially printed letters and punctuation,
were corrected.