He had a coarse confident face, a red nose, a Cockney accent and a
raucous voice. He was dressed as a sluttish woman.
Directly I saw him I was conscious of a feeling of repulsion, which I
fear my expression must have indicated, for he looked surprised.
"Why aren't you laughing?" he asked.
"Why should I laugh?" I asked in return.
"Because you are looking at me," he said. "I am accustomed to laughter
the instant I appear."
"Why?"
"Because I am a funny man," he said.
"How?"
"I look funny," he said; "I say funny things; I draw a good salary for
it. If I wasn't funny I shouldn't draw a good salary, should I?"
"You do draw it," I said guardedly. "Be funny now."
"'Wait till I catch you bending,'" he said with a violent grimace.
"'What ho! 'Ave a drop of gin, ole dear?'"
"Be funny now," I repeated.
He looked bewildered. "I _was_ being funny," he said. "I bring the
house down with that, as a rule."
"Where?"
"In panto," he said.
"Oh!" I replied. "So you're the funny man of a pantomime, are you?"
"Yes," he said.
"Which one?"
"All of them," he said.
"Good," I replied. "I have long wanted a talk with you. There are
things I want to ask you. Why, for instance, do you always pretend to
be a grimy slum woman?"
"It seems to be expected," he said.
"Who expects it? The children?"
"What children?"
"The children who go to pantomimes," I said.
"Oh, those! Well, they laugh," he replied evasively.
"They like to see you quarrelling with your husband and getting
drunk?"
"They laugh," he said.
"They like to hear you, as an Ugly Sister in _Cinderella_, singing
'Father's on the booze again; mother's off her chump'?"
"They laugh," he said.
"They like to see you as the wife of Ali Baba, finding pawntickets
in your husband's pockets and charging him with spending his money on
flappers?"
"They laugh," he said.
"They like to see you, as The Widow Twankay, visit a race meeting and
get welshed and have your clothes torn off?"
"They laugh," he said.
"They like to see you, as Dick Whittington's mother, telling the cat
that, if he must eat onions, at any rate he can refrain from kissing
her?"
"They laugh," he said.
"They like to see you, as the dame in _Goody Two Shoes_, open a night
club on the strict understanding that it is only for clergymen's
daughters in need of recreation?"
"They laugh," he said again.
"But they don't know what you mean?"
"No. But I'm funny. That's what you don't seem to understand. I'm so
funny that everything I say and do makes them laugh. It doesn't, in
fact, matter _what_ I say."
"Ah!" I replied, "I have you there! In that case why don't you say a
few simpler and sweeter things?"
He seemed perplexed.
"Things," I explained, "that don't want quite so much knowledge of the
seamy side of life?"
"Go on!" he said derisively. "I haven't got time to mug _that_ up.
I've got my living to get. You don't suppose I invent my jokes, do
you? I collect them. I'm on the Halls the rest of the year, and I hear
them there. There hasn't been a new joke in a pantomime these twenty
years. But what you don't seem to get into your head, mister, is the
fact that I make them laugh. Laugh. I'm a scream, I tell you."
"And laughter is all you want?" I asked.
"I must either make people laugh or get 'the bird.'"
"But hasn't it ever occurred to you," I said, "that children in a
theatre at Christmas time are entitled to have a little fun that
is not wholly connected with sordid domestic affairs and pothouse
commonness?"
"Never," he said, and I believed him.
"Haven't you children of your own?"
"Several."
"And is that how you amuse them at home?"
"Of course not. They're too young."
"How old are they?"
"From six to thirteen."
"But that's the age of the children who go to pantomimes," I
suggested.
"Well, it's different in your own home," he said. "Besides," he added,
"it isn't children I aim at in my jokes. There's other things for
them: the fairy ballets, the comic dog."
"And what is the audience you aim at?" I asked. "I suppose there is
one definite figure you have in your mind's eye?"
"Yes," he said, "there is one. The person in the audience that I
always aim at is the silly servant-girl in the front row of the
gallery. That's why I so often say 'girls' before I make a joke.
You've heard me, haven't you?"
"Haven't I?" I groaned.
* * * * *