He is very old, and very long, and very thin. He has white hair. He
dresses in the costume of the last generation but seven. He has bushy
eyebrows and is clean shaven. His chin itches considerably, so that he
has to be always scratching it. His favorite remark is "Ah!"
In real life we have heard of young solicitors, of foppish solicitors,
of short solicitors; but on the stage they are always very thin and very
old. The youngest stage solicitor we ever remember to have seen looked
about sixty--the oldest about a hundred and forty-five.
By the bye, it is never very safe to judge people's ages on the stage by
their personal appearance. We have known old ladies who looked seventy,
if they were a day, turn out to be the mothers of boys of fourteen,
while the middle-aged husband of the young wife generally gives one the
idea of ninety.
Again, what appears at first sight to be a comfortable-looking and
eminently respectable elderly lady is often discovered to be, in
reality, a giddy, girlish, and inexperienced young thing, the pride of
the village or the darling of the regiment.
So, too, an exceptionally stout and short-winded old gentleman, who
looks as if he had been living too well and taking too little exercise
for the last forty-five years, is not the heavy father, as you might
imagine if you judged from mere external evidence, but a wild, reckless
boy.
You would not think so to look at him, but his only faults are that he
is so young and light-headed. There is good in him, however, and he will
no doubt be steady enough when he grows up. All the young men of the
neighborhood worship him and the girls love him.
"Here he comes," they say; "dear, dear old Jack--Jack, the darling
boy--the headstrong youth--Jack, the leader of our juvenile
sports--Jack, whose childish innocence wins all hearts. Three cheers for
dancing, bright-eyed Jack!"
On the other hand, ladies with the complexion of eighteen are, you learn
as the story progresses, quite elderly women, the mothers of middle-aged
heroes.
The experienced observer of stage-land never jumps to conclusions from
what he sees. He waits till he is told things.
The stage lawyer never has any office of his own. He transacts all his
business at his clients' houses. He will travel hundreds of miles to
tell them the most trivial piece of legal information.
It never occurs to him how much simpler it would be to write a letter.
The item for "traveling expenses" in his bill of costs must be something
enormous.
There are two moments in the course of his client's career that the
stage lawyer particularly enjoys. The first is when the client comes
unexpectedly into a fortune; the second when he unexpectedly loses it.
In the former case, upon learning the good news the stage lawyer at once
leaves his business and hurries off to the other end of the kingdom
to bear the glad tidings. He arrives at the humble domicile of the
beneficiary in question, sends up his card, and is ushered into the
front parlor. He enters mysteriously and sits left--client sits right.
An ordinary, common lawyer would come to the point at once, state the
matter in a plain, business-like way, and trust that he might have the
pleasure of representing, etc., etc.; but such simple methods are not
those of the stage lawyer. He looks at the client and says:
"You had a father."
The client starts. How on earth did this calm, thin, keen-eyed old man
in black know that he had a father? He shuffles and stammers, but the
quiet, impenetrable lawyer fixes his cold, glassy eye on him, and he is
helpless. Subterfuge, he feels, is useless, and amazed, bewildered
at the knowledge of his most private affairs possessed by his strange
visitant, he admits the fact: he had a father.
The lawyer smiles with a quiet smile of triumph and scratches his chin.
"You had a mother, too, if I am informed correctly," he continues.
It is idle attempting to escape this man's supernatural acuteness, and
the client owns up to having had a mother also.
From this the lawyer goes on to communicate to the client, as a great
secret, the whole of his (the client's) history from his cradle upward,
and also the history of his nearer relatives, and in less than half an
hour from the old man's entrance, or say forty minutes at the outside,
the client almost knows what the business is about.
On the other occasion, when the client has lost his fortune, the
stage lawyer is even still happier. He comes down himself to tell the
misfortune (he would not miss the job for worlds), and he takes care to
choose the most unpropitious moment possible for breaking the news. On
the eldest daughter's birthday, when there is a big party on, is his
favorite time. He comes in about midnight and tells them just as they
are going down to supper.
He has no idea of business hours, has the stage lawyer--to make the
thing as unpleasant as possible seems to be his only anxiety.
If he cannot work it for a birthday, then he waits till there's a
wedding on, and gets up early in the morning on purpose to run down and
spoil the show. To enter among a crowd of happy, joyous fellow-creatures
and leave them utterly crushed and miserable is the stage lawyer's
hobby.
The stage lawyer is a very talkative gentleman. He regards the telling
of his client's most private affairs to every stranger that he meets
as part of his professional duties. A good gossip with a few chance
acquaintances about the family secrets of his employers is food and
drink for the stage lawyer.
They all go about telling their own and their friends' secrets to
perfect strangers on the stage. Whenever two people have five minutes to
spare on the stage they tell each other the story of their lives. "Sit
down and I will tell you the story of my life" is the stage equivalent
for the "Come and have a drink" of the outside world.
The good stage lawyer has generally nursed the heroine on his knee when
a baby (when she was a baby, we mean)--when she was only so high. It
seems to have been a part of his professional duties. The good stage
lawyer also kisses all the pretty girls in the play and is expected
to chuck the housemaid under the chin. It is good to be a good stage
lawyer.
The good stage lawyer also wipes away a tear when sad things happen; and
he turns away to do this and blows his nose, and says he thinks he has
a fly in his eye. This touching trait in his character is always held in
great esteem by the audience and is much applauded.
The good stage lawyer is never by any chance a married man. (Few good
men are, so we gather from our married lady friends.) He loved in early
life the heroine's mother. That "sainted woman" (tear and nose business)
died and is now among the angels--the gentleman who did marry her, by
the bye, is not quite so sure about this latter point, but the lawyer is
fixed on the idea.
In stage literature of a frivolous nature the lawyer is a very different
individual. In comedy he is young, he possesses chambers, and he is
married (there is no doubt about this latter fact); and his wife and his
mother-in-law spend most of the day in his office and make the dull old
place quite lively for him.
He only has one client. She is a nice lady and affable, but her
antecedents are doubtful, and she seems to be no better than she ought
to be--possibly worse. But anyhow she is the sole business that the poor
fellow has--is, in fact, his only source of income, and might, one would
think, under such circumstances be accorded a welcome by his family. But
his wife and his mother-in-law, on the contrary, take a violent dislike
to her, and the lawyer has to put her in the coal-scuttle or lock her
up in the safe whenever he hears either of these female relatives of his
coming up the stairs.
We should not care to be the client of a farcical comedy stage lawyer.
Legal transactions are trying to the nerves under the most favorable
circumstances; conducted by a farcical stage lawyer, the business would
be too exciting for us.