It is amongst the prerogatives of an author to inform his reader of many
things which go on “behind the scenes” of life. Let me, therefore, ask
your company, for a brief space, in a small and not ill-furnished
chamber, which, deep in the recesses of back scenes, dressing-rooms,
scaffolding, and machinery, is significantly entitled, by a painted
inscription, “Manager's Room.” Though the theatre is a London one, the
house is small. It is one of those West-End speculations which are
occasionally graced by a company of French comedians, a monologist, or a
conjurer. There is all the usual splendor before the curtain, and all
the customary squalor behind. At the present moment--for it is growing
duskish of a November day, and rehearsal is just over--the general
aspect of the place is dreary enough. The box fronts and the lustre are
cased in brown holland, and, though the curtain is up, the stage
presents nothing but a chaotic mass of disjointed scenery and
properties. Tables, chairs, musical instruments, the half of a boat, a
throne, and a guillotine lie littered about, amidst which a ragged
supernumerary wanders, broom in hand, but apparently hopeless of where
or how to begin to reduce the confusion to order.
The manager's room is somewhat more habitable, for there is a good
carpet, warm curtains, and an excellent fire, at which two gentlemen are
seated, whose jocund tones and pleasant faces are certainly, so far as
outward signs go, fair guarantees that the world is not dealing very
hardly with them, nor they themselves much disgusted with the same
world. One of these--the elder, a middle-aged man somewhat inclined to
corpulency, with a florid cheek, and clear, dark eye--is the celebrated
Mr. Hyman Stocmar; celebrated, I say, for who can take up the morning
papers without reading his name and knowing his whereabouts; as thus:
“We are happy to be able to inform our readers that Mr. Stocmar is
perfectly satisfied with his after season at the 'Regent's.' Whatever
other managers may say, Mr. Stocmar can make no complaint of courtly
indifference. Her Majesty has four times within the last month graced
his theatre with her presence. Mr. Stocmar is at Madrid, at Vienna, at
Naples. Mr. Stocmar is in treaty with Signor Urlaccio of Turin, or
Mademoiselle Voltarina of Venice. He has engaged the Lapland voyagers,
sledge-dogs and all, the Choctaw chiefs, or the Californian lecturer,
Boreham, for the coming winter. Let none complain of London in November
so long as Mr. Hyman Stocmar caters for the public taste;” and so on. To
look at Stocmar's bright complexion, his ruddy glow, his well-filled
waistcoat, and his glossy ringlets,--for, though verging on forty, he
has them still “curly,”--you'd scarcely imagine it possible that his
life was passed amongst more toil, confusion, difficulty, and
distraction than would suffice to kill five out of any twenty, and
render the other fifteen deranged. I do not mean alone the worries
inseparable from a theatrical direction,--the fights, the squabbles, the
insufferable pretensions he must bear, the rivalries he must reconcile,
the hates he must conciliate; the terrible existence of coax and bully,
bully and coax, fawn, flatter, trample on, and outrage, which goes on
night and day behind the curtain,--but that his whole life in the world
is exactly a mild counterpart of the same terrible performance; the
great people, his patrons, being fifty times more difficult to deal with
than the whole corps itself,--the dictating dowagers and exacting lords,
the great man who insists upon Mademoiselle So-and-so being engaged, the
great lady who will have no other box than that occupied by the Russian
embassy, the friends of this tenor and the partisans of that, the
classic admirers of grand music, and that larger section who will have
nothing but comic opera, not to mention the very extreme parties who
only care for the ballet, and those who vote the “Traviata” an unclean
thing. What are a lover's perjuries to the lies such a man tells all day
long?--lies only to be reckoned by that machine that records the
revolutions of a screw in a steamer. His whole existence is passed in
promises, excuses, evasions, and explanations; always paying a small
dividend to truth, he barely escapes utter bankruptcy, and by a
plausibility most difficult to distrust, he obtains a kind of half-
credit,--that of one who would keep his word if he could.
By some strange law of compensation, this man, who sees a very dark side
of human nature,--sees it in its low intrigues, unworthy pursuits,
falsehoods, and depravities,--who sees even the “great” in their moods
of meanness,--this man, I say, has the very keenest relish for life, and
especially the life of London. He knows every capital of Europe: Paris,
from the Chaussée d'Antin to the Boulevard Mont-Parnasse; Vienna, from
the Hof to the Volksgarten; Rome, from the Piazza di Spagna to the
Ghetto; and yet he would tell you they are nothing, all of them, to that
area between Pall Mall and the upper gate of Hyde Park. He loves his
clubs, his dinners, his junketings to Richmond or Greenwich, his short
Sunday excursions to the country, generally to some great artiste's
villa near Fulham or Chiswick, and declares to you that it is England
alone offers all these in perfection. Is it any explanation, does it
give any clew to this gentleman's nature, if I say that a certain
aquiline character in his nose, and a peculiar dull lustre in the eye,
recall that race who, with all the odds of a great majority against
them, enjoy a marvellous share of this world's prosperity? Opposite to
him sits one not unworthy--even from externals--of his companionship. He
is a very good-looking fellow, with light brown hair, his beard and
moustaches being matchless in tint and arrangement: he has got large,
full blue eyes, a wide capacious forehead, and that style of head, both
in shape and the way in which it is set on, which indicate a frank,
open, and courageous nature. Were it not for a little over-attention to
dress, there is no “snobbery” about him; but there is a little too much
velvet on his paletot, and his watch trinkets are somewhat in excess,
not to say that the gold head of his cane is ostentatiously large and
striking. This is Captain Ludlow Paten, a man about town, known to and
by everybody, very much asked about in men's circles, but never by any
accident met in ladies' society. By very young men he is eagerly sought
after. It is one of the best things coming of age has in its gift is to
know Paten and be able to ask him to dine. Older ones relish him full as
much; but his great popularity is with a generation beyond that again:
the mediaevals, who walk massively and ride not at all; the florid,
full-cheeked, slightly bald generation, who grace club windows of a
morning and the coulisses at night. These are his “set,” _par
excellence_, and he knows them thoroughly. As for himself or his family,
no one knows, nor, indeed, wants to know anything. The men he associates
with chiefly in life are all “cognate numbers,” and these are the very
people who never trouble their heads about a chance intruder amongst
them; and although some rumor ran that his father was a porter at the
Home Office, or a tailor at Blackwall, none care a jot on the matter:
they want him; and he could n't be a whit more useful if his veins ran
with all the blood of all the Howards.
There is a story of him, however, which, though I reveal to you, is not
generally known. He was once tried for a murder. It was a case of
poisoning in Jersey, where the victim was a well-known man of the Turf,
and who was murdered by the party he had invited to spend a Christmas
with him. Paten was one of the company, and included in the accusation.
Two were banged; Paten and another, named Collier, acquitted. Paten's
name was Hunt, but he changed it at once, and, going abroad, entered the
Austrian service, where, in eight years, he became a lieutenant. This
was enough for probation and rank, and so he returned to England as
Captain Ludlow Paten. Stocmar, of course, knew the story: there were
half a dozen more, also, who did, but they each and all knew that poor
Paul was innocent; that there was n't a fragment of evidence against
him; that he lost--actually lost--by Hawke's death; that he was carried
tipsy to bed that night two hours before the murder; that he was so
overcome the next morning by his debauch that he was with difficulty
awakened; that the coroner thought him a downright fool, he was so
stunned by the event; in a word, though he changed his name to Paten,
and now wore a tremendous beard, and affected a slightly foreign accent,
these were disguises offered up to the mean prejudices of the world
rather than precautions of common safety and security.
Though thus Paten's friends had passed this bill of indemnity in his
favor, the affair of Jersey was never alluded to, by even his most
intimate amongst them. It was a page of history to be carefully wafered
up till that reckoning when all volumes are ransacked, and no blottings
nor erasures avail! As for himself, who, to look at him, with his bright
countenance, to hear the jocund ring of his merry laugh--who could ever
imagine such a figure in a terrible scene of tragedy? What could such a
man have to do with any of the dark machinations of crime, the death-
struggle, the sack, the silent party that stole across the grass at
midnight, and the fish-pond? Oh, no! rather picture him as one who,
meeting such details in his daily paper, would hastily turn the sheet to
seek for pleasanter matter; and so it was he eschewed these themes in
conversation, and even when some celebrated trial would for the moment
absorb all interest, giving but one topic in almost every circle, Paten
would drop such commonplaces on the subject as showed he cared little or
nothing for the event.
Let us now hear what these two men are talking about, as they sat thus
confidentially over the fire. Stocmar is the chief speaker. He does not
smoke of a morning, because many of his grand acquaintances are averse
to tobacco; as for Paten, the cigar never leaves his lips.
“Well, now for his story!” cried Paten. “I 'm anxious to hear about
him.”
“I 'm sorry I can't gratify the curiosity. All I can tell you is where I
found him. It was in Dublin. They had a sort of humble Cremorne there,--
a place little resorted to by the better classes; indeed, rarely visited
save by young subs from the garrison, milliners, and such other lost
sheep; not very wonderful, after all, seeing that the rain usually
contrived to extinguish the fireworks. Having a spare evening on my
hands, I went there, and, to my astonishment, witnessed some of the most
extraordinary displays in fireworks I had ever seen. Whether for beauty
of design, color, and precision, I might declare them unequalled. 'Who's
your pyrotechnist?' said I to Barry, the proprietor.
“'I can't spare him, Mr. Stocmar,' said he, 'so I entreat you don't
carry him off from me.'
“'Oh!' cried I, 'it was mere curiosity prompted the question. The man is
well enough here, but he would n't do for us. We have got Giomelli, and
Clari--'
“'Not fit to light a squib for him,' said he, warming up in his
enthusiasm for his man. 'I tell you, sir, that fellow would teach
Giomelli, and every Italian of them all. He's a great man, sir,--a
genius. He was, once on a time, the great Professor of a University; one
of the very first scientific men of the kingdom, and if it was n't for
'--here he made a sign of drinking--'he 'd perhaps be this day sought by
the best in the land.'
“Though interested by all this, I only gave a sort of incredulous laugh
in return, when he went on:--
“'If I was quite sure you 'd not take him away--if you 'd give me your
word of honor for it--I'd just show him to you, and you 'd see--even
tipsy as he's sure to be--if I'm exaggerating.'
“'What is he worth to you, Barry?' said I.
“'He 's worth--not to reckon private engagements for fireworks in
gentlemen's grounds, and the like,--he 's worth from seven to eight
pounds a week.'
“'And you give him--'
“'Well, I don't give him much. It would n't do to give him much; he has
no self-control,--no restraint He'd kill himself,--actually kill
himself.'
“'So that you only give him--'
“'Fourteen shillings a week. Not but that I am making a little fund for
him, and occasionally remitted his wife--he had a wife--a pound or so,
without his knowledge.'
“'Well, he's not too dear at that,' said I. 'Now let me see and speak
with him, Barry, and if I like him, you shall have a fifty-pound note
for him. You know well enough that I needn't pay a sixpence. I have
fellows in my employment would track him out if you were to hide him in
one of his rocket-canisters; so just be reasonable, and take a good
offer.'
“He was not very willing at first, but he yielded after a while, and so
I became the owner of the Professor, for such they called him.”
“Had he no other name?”
“Yes; an old parrot, that he had as a pet, called him Tom, and so we
accepted that name; and as Tom, or Professor Tom, he is now known
amongst us.”
“Did you find, after all, that you made a good bargain?”
“I never concluded a better, though it has its difficulties; for, as the
Professor is almost an idiot when perfectly sober, and totally
insensible when downright drunk, there is just a short twilight interval
between the two, when his faculties are in good order.”
“What can he do at this favorable juncture?”
“What can he not? is the question. Why, it was he arranged all the
scores for the orchestra after the fire, when we had not a scrap left of
the music of the 'Maid of Cashmere.' It was he invented that sunrise, in
the last scene of all, with the clouds rolling down the mountains, and
all the rivulets glittering as the first rays touch them. It was he
wrote the third act of Linton's new comedy; the catastrophe and all were
his. It was he dashed off that splendid critique on Ristori, that set
the town in a blaze; and then he went home and wrote the parody on
'Myrra' for the Strand, all the same night, for I had watered the
brandy, and kept him in the second stage of delirium till morning.”
“What a chance! By Jove! Stocmar, you are the only fellow ever picks up
a gem of this water!”
“It's not every man can tell the stone that will pay for the cutting,
Paten, remember that. I 've had to buy this experience of mine dearly
enough.”
“Are you not afraid that the others will hear of him, and seduce him by
some tempting offer?”
“I have, in a measure, provided against that contingency. He lives here,
in a small crib, where we once kept a brown bear; and he never ventures
abroad, so that the chances are he will not be discovered.”
“How I should like to have a look at him!”
“Nothing easier. Let us see, what o'clock is it? Near five. Well, this
is not an unfavorable moment; he has just finished his dinner, and not
yet begun the evening.” Ringing the bell, as he spoke, he gave orders to
a supernumerary to send the Professor to him.
While they waited for his coming, Stocmar continued to give some further
account of his life and habits, the total estrangement from all
companionship in which he lived, his dislike to be addressed, and the
seeming misanthropy that animated him. At last the manager, getting
impatient, rang once more, to ask if he were about to appear.
“Well, sir,” said the man, with a sort of unwillingness in his manner,
“he said as much as that he was n't coming; that he had just dined, and
meant to enjoy himself without business for a while.”
“Go back and tell him that Mr. Stocmar has something very important to
tell him; that five minutes will be enough.--You see the stuff he's made
of?” said the manager, as the man left the room.
Another, and nearly as long a delay ensued, and at last the dragging
sound of heavy slipshod feet was heard approaching; the door was rudely
opened, and a tall old man, of haggard appearance and in the meanest
rags, entered, and, drawing himself proudly up, stared steadfastly at
Stocmar, without even for an instant noticing the presence of the other.
“I wanted a word,--just one word with you, Professor,” began the
manager, in an easy, familiar tone.
“Men do not whistle even for a dog, when he 's at his meals,” said the
old man, insolently. “They told you I was at my dinner, did n't they?”
“Sorry to disturb you, Tom; but as two minutes would suffice for all I
had to say--”
“Reason the more to keep it for another occasion,” was the stubborn
reply.
“We are too late this time,” whispered Stocmar across towards Paten;
“the fellow has been at the whiskey-bottle already.”
With that marvellous acuteness of hearing that a brain in its initial
state of excitement is occasionally gifted with, the old man caught the
words, and, as suddenly rendered aware of the presence of a third party,
turned his eyes on Paten. At first the look was a mere stare, but
gradually the expression grew more fixed, and the bleared eyes dilated,
while his whole features became intensely eager. With a shuffling but
hurried step he then moved across the floor, and, coming close up to
where Paten stood, he laid his hands upon his shoulders, and wheeled him
rudely round, till the light of the window fell full upon him.
“Well, old gent,” said Paten, laughing, “if we are not old friends, you
treat me very much as though we were.”
A strange convulsion, half smile, half grin, passed over the old man's
face, but he never uttered a word, but stood gazing steadily on the
other.
“You are forgetting yourself, Tom,” said Stocmar, angrily. “That
gentleman is not an acquaintance of yours.”
“And who told _you_ that?” said the old man, insolently. “Ask himself if
we are not.”
“I'm afraid I must give it against you, old boy,” said Paten, good-
humoredly. “This is the first time I have had the honor to meet you.”
“It is not!” said the old man, with a solemn and even haughty emphasis.
“I could scarcely have forgotten a man of such impressive manners,” said
Paten. “Will you kindly remind me of the where and how you imagine us to
have met?”
“I will,” said the other, sternly. “You shall hear the where and the
how. The where was in the High Court, at Jersey, on the 18th of January,
in the year 18--; the how, was my being called on to prove the death, by
corrosive sublimate, of Godfrey Hawke. Now, sir, what say you to my
memory,--is it accurate, or not?”
Had not Paten caught hold of a heavy chair, he would have fallen; even
as it was, he swayed forward and backward like a drunken man.
“And you--you were a doctor in those days, it seems,” said he, with an
affected laugh, that made his ghastly features appear almost horrible.
“Yes; they accused _me_ of curing folk, just as they charged _you_ with
killing them. Calumnious world that it is,--lets no man escape!”
“After all, my worthy friend,” said Paten, as he drew himself haughtily
up, and assumed, though by a great effort, his wonted ease of manner,
“you are deceived by some chance resemblance, for I know nothing about
Jersey, and just as little of that interesting little incident you have
alluded to.”
“This is even more than you attempted on the trial. You never dreamed of
so bold a stroke as that, there. No, no, Paul Hunt, I know you well:
that's a gift of mine,--drunk or sober, it has stuck to me through
life,--I never forget a face,--never!”
“Come, come, old Tom,” said Stocmar, as he drew forth a sherry decanter
and a large glass from a small recess in the wall, “this is not the
kindliest way to welcome an old friend or make a new one. Taste this
sherry, and take the bottle back with you, if you like the flavor.”
Stocmar's keen glance met Paten's eyes, and as quickly the other
understood his tactique.
“Good wine, rare wine, if it was n't so cold on the stomach,” said the
old man, as he tossed off the second goblet. Already his eyes grew wild
and bloodshot, and his watery lip trembled. “To your good health,
gentlemen both,” said he, as he finished the decanter. “I'm proud you
liked that last scene. It will be finer before I 've done with it; for I
intend to make the lava course down the mountain, and be seen fitfully
as the red glow of the eruption lights up the picture.”
“With the bay and the fleet all seen in the distance, Tom,” broke in
Stocmar.
“Just so, sir; the lurid glare--as the newspaper fellows will call it--
over all. Nothing like Bengal-lights and Roman-candles; they are the
poetry of the modern drama. Ah! sir, no sentiment without nitrate of
potash; no poetry if you have n't phosphorus.” And with a drunken laugh,
and a leer of utter vacancy, the old man reeled from the room and sought
his den again.
“Good Heavens, Stocmar! what a misfortune!” cried Paten, as, sick with
terror, he dropped down into a chair.
“Never fret about it, Paul. That fellow will know nothing of what has
passed when he wakes to-morrow. His next drunken bout--and I 'll take
care it shall be a deep one--will let such a flood of Lethe over his
brain that not one single recollection will survive the deluge. You saw
why I produced the decanter?”
“Yes; it was cleverly done, and it worked like magic. But only think,
Stocmar, if any one had chanced to be here--it was pure chance that
there was not--and then--”
“Egad! it might have been as you say,” said Stocmar; “there would have
been no stopping the old fellow; and had he but got the very slightest
encouragement, he had been off at score.”