IV

When I heard that there was a cricket club in connection with the Apollo

Fire Office I was glad, and still more so when I found that the team

played other Fire Offices; for the Apollo is by no means the only one in

London, though easily the best. Of course I never thought that in an

office full of grown men I should be able to play in matches; but Dicky

Travers explained to me that I might hope, if I was any good, as only a

comparatively small number of the clerks actually played, though a large

number patronised the games with their presence and came to the Annual

Dinner at the far-famed Holborn Restaurant. This restaurant, I may say,

is almost a palace in itself, and the walls are decorated with sumptuous

marbles and works of foreign art. The waiters are also foreign. There

are fountains and a band to play while you eat; and it shows how

accustomed the London mind can get to almost anything in the way of

luxury, for I have seen people eating through brilliant masterpieces of

music and not in the least put off their food by them, though every

instrument in the band was playing simultaneously. But, of course, there

were no bands or fountains where I went for my Bath bun and glass of

milk. As a matter of fact, this was rather a light meal for me, but I

hoped to get accustomed to it. Anyway the result, when dinner-time came

at the flat of my Aunt Augusta, was remarkably good, and I used to eat

in a way that filled her with fear. And, after eating, I felt that I

simply must have exercise of some sort, and I used to go out in the dark

to the Regent’s Park and run for miles at my best pace. It worried

policemen when I flew past them, because it is very unusual to race

about after dark in London if you are honest, and policemen are,

unfortunately, a suspicious race and, owing to their work, get into the

way of thinking that anything out of the common may be a clew. Once

having flown past a policeman and run without stopping to a certain

lamp-post, I went back to the man and explained to him that I had to sit

on an office stool most of the day, and that at night, after dinner, I

felt a frightful need for active exercise, and so took it in this way. I

thought he would rather applaud the idea, but he said it was a fool’s

game and might lead to trouble if I persisted in it. He advised me to

join an athletic club and a gymnasium, and I told him that the advice

was good and thanked him. As a matter of fact, I was able to tell the

policeman also that a great friend of mine had put me up for the London

Athletic Club, and that I hoped soon to hear that I had been elected as

a member. I mentioned Dicky Travers and thought the policeman would be a

good deal surprised that I actually knew this famous man. However, the

surprise was mine, because the policeman had never heard of him. But

sport was a sealed book to him, as the saying is.

I only remember one other thing about those runs. I used to put on very

little clothes, of course, but even so, naturally worked myself up into

a terrific perspiration, which was what I meant to do, it being a most

healthful thing for people who have to sit still all day. But my aunt

was quite alarmed when I returned to have a bath and a rub down; and

then it came out that she had never seen anybody in a real perspiration

before! I roared with laughter and explained, and she said that she

thought people only had perspirations when they were ill. She had never

been in one in her whole life apparently. She was a very nice and kind

woman, but I puzzled her fearfully, because she had never known many

boys of my age, and though she smoked cigarettes herself, she thought

they were bad for me and begged me to be very temperate in the use of

them. To be temperate in everything was a mania with her. I must have

upset her flat a lot one way and another; but she was very patient and

wouldn’t hear of my going into lodgings alone.

“You are much too young,” she said. “You must look upon me as your

mother till you are eighteen, at any rate.”

Then it was—after I had been in the City of London six weeks—that I met

with my first great misfortune, though it began as a most hopeful and

promising affair.

I had heard, of course, from Dicky Travers and Mr. Blades and others,

that there were plenty of shady characters in London, and that their

shadiness took all sorts of forms; but this did not bother me much,

because a clerk such as I was would not, I thought, provoke a shady

character, owing to my youth. But a good many of these shady characters

mark down young men as their regular and lawful prey, like the tiger

marks down the bison in the jungle. And a great feature of the cunning

of these people is that they get themselves up in a way to hide their

real natures—in fact, such is their ingenuity, that they pretend to go

to the other extreme, and appear before their victims dressed just the

very opposite of what one would expect in a shady character. They are,

in fact, full of deceit.

One day I had eaten my bun and drunk my glass of milk in about a second

and a half, and was looking at books in a very interesting bookseller’s

window that spread out into the street near that historic building known

as the Mansion House, where the Lord Mayor lives. I had found a sixpenny

book about Mr. Henry Irving’s art and was just going to purchase it,

bringing from my pocket a five-pound note to do so, when an old man of a

religious and gentlemanly appearance spoke to me.

But first, to calm the natural excitement of the reader at hearing me

mention a five-pound note, I ought to explain that that morning was

pay-day at the office—the first in which I had actively participated.

The five-pound note was the first that I had ever earned, and it gave me

a great deal of satisfaction to feel it in my pocket. This was natural.

“Good literature here, sir,” said the stranger. “I hope you love books?”

“Yes, I do,” I answered, concealing my five pounds instantly.

“I write books,” he told me. “I dare say my name is familiar enough to

you, if you are a reader of poetry.”

I looked at him and saw that he had a long grey beard and red rims to

his eyes. His clothes were black and had seen better days. He wore

rather a low waistcoat which was touched here and there with grease; but

his shirt was fairly white, and through his beard I saw a black tie

under his chin. He was tall, and carried an umbrella and a black and

rather tattered bag of leather. I seemed to feel that his black bag was

heavy with great poetry. It was a solemn moment for me.

“I’m afraid I’m not much of a hand at poetry, sir,” I said. “At school

one had a lot to learn, and now I’m rather off it—excepting

Shakespeare.”

“You City men don’t know what you are missing,” he answered. “I have

just come from Paternoster Row, where I have been arranging with a great

publisher—one of the greatest, in fact—for my next volume of poems.

Strangely enough, I saw you handle a book of mine on this bookstall only

a few moments ago, and I felt drawn to you.”

“Then you are Mr. Martin Tupper!” I exclaimed, “for I picked up a book

of his just now—though only to see what was under it, I am afraid.”

He felt disappointed at this, but admitted that I was right in my

suspicion.

“I am Tupper,” he confessed; “and though perhaps nobody in the world has

more unknown friends, yet I allow myself no intimates. It is owing to my

terribly sensitive genius. I read men like books. That is why I am

talking to you at this moment. My knowledge of human nature is such that

I can see at a glance—I can almost feel—whether a fellow-creature is

predisposed towards me or not.”

“It is a great honour to speak to you, Mr. Martin Tupper,” I answered.

“But I’m afraid a man like me—just a clerk in a noisy and booming hive

of industry—wouldn’t be any good to you as a friend. I don’t know much

about anything—in fact, I am nobody, really; though I hope some day to

be somebody.”

“I felt sure of that,” he answered. “Your reply pleases me very much,

young man, because it indicates that you are modest but also plucky. You

recognise that you have as yet done nothing, but your heart is high and

you look forward to a time when you will do everything. Had you read my

_Proverbial Philosophy_, you would have discovered that—however, you

must read it—to please me. You must let me send you a copy from the

author.”

I was, of course, greatly surprised at such unexpected kindness, but

there was more to come.

“When I find a young and promising man studying the books upon this

stall between the hours of one and two o’clock,” said Mr. Tupper, “my

custom is to ask him to join me at a modest meal—luncheon, in fact. Now

do not say that you have lunched, or you will greatly disappoint me.”

Of course I had lunched, and yet, in a manner of speaking, I hadn’t—not

as a man of world-wide fame would understand the word. To tell the

truth, I had felt from the first that it was rather sad in a way—having

to subsist on a Bath bun and a glass of milk for so many hours; and I

knew that I never should get to feel it was a complete meal. So when

this good and celebrated man offered me a luncheon, I felt, if not

perfectly true, yet it was true enough and not really dishonest to say

that I had not lunched. So I said it, and he was evidently very glad.

“We will go to the ‘Cat on Hot Bricks,’” he told me. “It is an

eating-house of no pretension, but I prefer the greatest simplicity in

all my ways, including my food and drink. At the big restaurants I

should be recognised, which is a source of annoyance to me; but I am

unknown at the ‘Cat on Hot Bricks,’ and I often take my steak or chop

and a pint of light ale there, with other celebrities, and study life.

Ah! the study of life, my young friend, is the prince of pursuits! The

name that I have made is based entirely upon that study. Long practice

has enabled me to see in a moment the constituents of every character

and know at a glance with whom I have to deal.”

I told him my name, and he said that he had had the pleasure to meet

some of the elder members of my family in the far past. I ventured to

tell him about Aunt Augusta and her paintings, and he said that they

were well known to him and that he possessed a good example of her

genius. He even promised to call upon her when next in that part of

London. He was immensely interested in my work and asked me many

questions concerning fire insurance. And then I told him that I hoped in

course of time to be an actor, and he said that, next to the poet, the

actor was often the greatest influence for good. He himself had written

a play, but he shrank from submitting it to a theatrical manager for

production. It was a highly poetical play and made of the purest poetry,

and so delicate that he feared that actors and actresses, unless they

were the most famous in London, might go and rub the bloom off it and

spoil it.

He let me choose what I liked for luncheon, and I chose steak-and-kidney

pie and ginger beer. He then told me that the steak-and-kidney pie was

all right, but that the only profits made at the “Cat on Hot Bricks”

arose from the liquid refreshment, and that it would not be kind or

considerate to drink so cheap a drink as ginger beer. So he ordered two

bottles of proper beer, and then he told me about the place and its

ways.

“The Bishop of London often comes here—just for quiet,” he said. “Of

course I know him, and we have a chat sometimes, about religion and

poetry and so on. And the Dean of St. Paul’s will drop in now and then.

He has a weakness for ‘lark pudding’—a very famous dish here. They have

it on Wednesdays only. Now tell me about your theatrical ambitions, for

I may be able to help you in that matter.”

I told him all about my hopes, and he said that one of his few personal

friends was Mr. Wilson Barrett, of the Princess’s Theatre in Oxford

Street.

“That great genius, Mr. Booth, from America, has been acting Shakespeare

there lately,” I said.

“He has,” answered Mr. Tupper; “his ‘Lear’ is stupendous. I know him

well, for he often recites my poems at benefit matinees. But Wilson” (in

this amazingly familiar way he referred to the great Mr. Wilson Barrett)

“is always on the lookout for promising young fellows to join his

company, and walk on with the crowds, and so learn the rudiments of

stage education and become familiar with the boards. He is anxious to

get a superior set of young fellows on to the stage, and he often comes

to me, because he knows that in the circles wherein I move the young men

are intellectual and have high opinions about the honour of the actor’s

calling.”

“It would be a glorious beginning for a young man,” I said, “but, of

course, such good things are not for me.”

Mr. Tupper appeared to be buried in his own thoughts for a time. When he

spoke again, he had changed the subject.

“Will you have another plate of steak-and-kidney pie?” he asked, and I

consented with many thanks.

Then he returned to the great subject of the stage.

“Only yesterday,” he said, “I was spending half an hour in dear old

Wilson’s private room at the Princess’s Theatre. He likes me to drop in

between the acts. He is a man who would always rather listen than talk;

and, if he has to talk, he chooses any subject rather than himself and

his histrionic powers. All the greatest actors are the same. They are

almost morbid about mentioning their personal talents, or the parts they

have played. But the subjects that always interest Wilson are the

younger men and the future of the drama. ‘Martin,’ he said to me, ‘I

would throw up the lead in my own theatre to-night, if I could by so

doing reveal a new and great genius to the world! I would gladly play

subordinate parts, if I could find a young man to play my parts better

than I do myself.’ I tell you this, Mr. Corkey, to show you that one

supreme artist, at least, is always on the lookout for talent, always

ready to stretch a helping hand to the tyro.”

“Perhaps some day,” I said, “years hence, of course, when I have learned

elocution and stage deportment and got the general hang of the thing,

you would be so very generous and kind as to give me a letter of

introduction to Mr. Barrett?”

Mr. Tupper filled my glass with more beer and sank his voice to a

confidential whisper.

“I couldn’t ‘give’ you an introduction, Mr. Corkey, because Wilson

himself would not allow that. I am, of course, enormously rich, but it

is always understood between me and the great tragedian that I get some

little honorarium for these introductions. Personally, I do not want any

such thing; but he feels that a nominal sum of three to five guineas

ought to pass before young fellows are lifted to the immense privilege

of his personal acquaintance, and enabled actually to tread the boards

with him in some of his most impassioned creations. The money I give to

the Home for Decayed Gentlewomen at Newington Butts—in which I am deeply

interested. Thus, you see, these introductions to Mr. Wilson Barrett

serve two great ends: they advance the cause of the Decayed

Gentlewomen—the number of whom would much distress you to learn—and they

enable the aspirant to theatrical honours to begin his career under the

most promising circumstances that it is possible to conceive.”

“But I ought to go through the mill, like Mr. Barrett himself and Mr.

Henry Irving and all famous actors have done,” I said; and Mr. Tupper

agreed with me.

“Have no fear for that,” he answered. “Wilson will see to that. He is

more than strict and, while allowing reasonable freedom for the

expansion of individual genius, will take very good care you have severe

training and plenty of hard work. But the point is that you must go

through his mill and not another’s. It is no good going to Wilson after

some lesser man has taught you to speak and walk and act. You would only

have to unlearn these things. If you want to flourish in his school of

tragedy, which is, of course, the most famous in England at the moment,

you must go to him, as it were, empty—a blank sheet—a virgin page

whereon he can impress his great principles. Will you have apple tart,

plum tart, or tapioca pudding and Surrey cream?”

I took apple tart, but Mr. Tupper said that sweet dishes were fatal to

the working of his mind in poetical invention, so he had celery and

cheese.

“I see Wilson to-night,” he resumed. “To be quite frank, I have to tell

him about a lad who is very anxious to join him, and wishes to give me

fifty pounds for the introduction; but such is my strange gift of

intuition in these cases, that I would far rather introduce you to the

theatre than the youth in question. You are clearly in earnest and I

doubt if he is. You have a theatrical personality and he has not. Your

voice is well suited for the higher drama; his is a cockney voice and

will always place him at a disadvantage save in comedy. Had it been in

your power to go before Wilson this week, I should have substituted your

name for the other. I wish cordially there were no sordid question of

money. I would even advance you five guineas myself. But you are as

delicate-minded as I am. You would not like me to do that.”