“With an auspicious and a dropping eye,” as Shakespeare says, I returned
in due course to the Parent Office of the Apollo. I was glad to go back
to Mr. Blades and Travers and other friends; but I was exceedingly sorry
to leave Mr. Walter and Mr. Bright. In fact, I missed them a great deal,
and wrote to them once or twice; and they answered without hesitation,
and hoped to see me again at some future time.
And now I was faced with my first great critical task for Mr. Bulger,
and secretly I viewed it with great nervousness, though openly to
Brightwin I approached the test in a jaunty spirit. Needless to say I
had taken preliminary steps, and the greatest of these was to hire a
dress suit. At this stage in my career, unfortunately, to buy a dress
suit presented insuperable difficulties; but I found from fellow-pupils
at the Dramatic School that one might hire for a merely nominal sum. So
I hired, and had a dress rehearsal of the part I was to play at Clapham
Assembly Room, in which my Aunt Augusta and her servant, Jane,
constituted the audience.
Then came the important night. I returned home direct from the office,
partook of a slight repast, and reached the Clapham Assembly Room
three-quarters of an hour before the doors opened. This was rather
feeble in a way, and not worthy of Mr. Bulger, or _Thespis_, because we
all know that professional critics dash up at the last moment in their
private broughams and sink into a sumptuous stall just as the curtain
rises on new productions. But I had come, as a matter of fact, in a tram
and was far too early. A sense of propriety, however, told me that I
ought not to be there—skulking about at least an hour before I need be;
and so, with a fair amount of presence of mind, I started off to take a
look at Clapham, which was a district quite unknown to me. I decided
with myself that nothing would make me return to the Assembly Room until
ten minutes before the curtain actually rose. I should then lounge in,
present my ticket, and appear with a bored and weary air among my
fellow-critics.
But as all roads were said by the ancients to lead to Rome, so all roads
at Clapham appear to lead to the Assembly Room. I walked away again and
again and kept going in directions that seemed to point exactly opposite
from the Assembly Room, yet, sooner or later, I invariably found myself
back in the same old spot. The exterior of this edifice was of an
unattractive architecture, and not until two minutes before the doors
opened did people begin to collect in front of it. After being, as it
were, the hero of a hundred first nights in London, this audience at
Clapham appeared piffling; but as the performance was for a charitable
institution, many came actuated by philanthropic emotions and, of
course, in a perfectly uncritical spirit. I, however, being there in the
course of business, felt that I must not let any considerations of the
charitable institution come between me and my duty.
The moment arrived, and I entered and presented my ticket with an air of
patient and long-suffering indifference.
“Press!” said the man in the ticket-office, and marked a number on my
ticket and handed it to another man. It was distinctly a moment to
remember, and I forgot my hired clothes and everything, but just felt
that I stood there as a representative of that glorious institution—the
London Press!
My seat was in the second row and comfortable enough, without being
sumptuous. I had a good view of the stage and I leisurely divested
myself of my overcoat, saw that my dress shirt and tie were all right,
pulled down my cuffs, and cast my eyes round the house. An amateur band,
consisting chiefly of ladies, was playing, and a certain amount of verve
and vivacity, though not much, filled the auditorium. Clapham had by no
means turned out in its thousands; in fact, it was quite easy to count
the house, and I should be exaggerating if I suggested that there were
more than two hundred and fifty persons in it. Subtract fifty for biased
friends of the performers and take off another fifty for pure
philanthropists, and that left not more than a hundred and fifty at the
outside who could be supposed to have come in a critical or artistic
spirit.
The critics did not reveal their personality or sun themselves in the
front of the stalls, as I had seen them do in proper theatres on a first
night. They may have been there by stealth and in disguise; but more
likely they had sent substitutes.
An official in evening dress came to speak to me presently. He evidently
knew that I wielded my pen for _Thespis_, and I could see that knowledge
inspired his friendship. He hoped I was comfortable, and said that,
after the second act, there would be whisky and soda and sandwiches
going in the gentlemen’s cloak-room. He added that they had all been in
fear that the leading lady would lose her mother and be unable to act.
But by good chance her mother was spared and she was going to play.
“Of course we had an understudy,” explained the official, who proved to
be the assistant acting manager; “but no doubt you know, better than I
do, what a bore it is for everybody concerned to have to fall back upon
the understudies.”
“For everybody but the understudies,” I answered in a knowing sort of
way, and the assistant acting manager said it was deuced good, and left
me.
Of course the whisky and soda and sandwiches were a bribe, and I decided
not to touch them, because you couldn’t be unprejudiced about people who
thrust whisky and soda upon you; besides, I didn’t drink whisky. Every
critic worthy of the name snatches a glass of champagne between the acts
of a new play, and then comes back to his seat licking the ends of his
mustache; but the management doesn’t pay for the sparkling beverage—far
from it: the critic pays himself and so preserves his right of judgment
untarnished.
As a matter of fact, after the second act I did stroll round to see the
other critics and hear if others agreed with my views of the
performance. There were four obvious critics in the cloak-room, all
eating and drinking with complete abandon and not saying a word about
the play; and there were several other people of both sexes also eating
and drinking, who might, or might not, have been critics.
Somehow I found a plate of sardine sandwiches under my hand, so just ate
perhaps six or eight, without, however, surrendering my right of
judgment. There was no sparkling wine going, but siphons of soda-water
and two bottles of whisky. I drank about a pennyworth of pure
soda-water, smoked half a cigarette, and then returned to the
auditorium. No official spoke a word to me during this interlude. They
may have felt it was better taste not to.
The play which was submitted to my attention was not in any literary
sense a novelty, though there were several new readings in it, of which
the least said the soonest mended, in my opinion. The drama in question
was adapted from the French of that famous dramatist, M. Victorien
Sardou, and it had taken two Englishmen to do it, both called Rowe,
namely, Mr. Saville Rowe and Mr. Bolton Rowe. _Diplomacy_ was the
English name of the famous play, and there were seven men in it and five
women. I knew the play, having seen it performed to perfection by Mr.
and Mrs. Bancroft and their company; and the come-down from them to the
Clapham Macreadies was, of course, tragically abrupt. But, as a critic,
I naturally made allowance for the gulf that was fixed between
professional and amateur acting, combined with the differences between
an Assembly Room and a proper theatre.
There was much to praise; and no doubt if you are beginning to be an
actor yourself and just finding out the fearful difficulties of the
stage, it makes you more merciful than if you are a critic who has never
himself tried it, or knows in the least what it feels like. After the
third act, the assistant acting manager came to me again, on his way to
others, and said in a hopeful voice:
“Going strong—eh?”
“D’you mean me, or the play?” I asked, not in the least intending a
joke; but he took it for such and evinced considerable amusement.
“You’ll be the death of me,” he said. “You’re a born humourist. I expect
I should be surprised if I knew your name.”
“Very likely you would,” I replied guardedly. But of course I kept
hidden under the critical veil and preferred to remain anonymous;
because, to have told him that my name was merely Corkey, and that I was
a clerk in a fire insurance office, would have made him under-value my
criticism; whereas, in reality, some of the greatest critics of the
drama the world has ever known, such as Charles Lamb, have pursued the
avocation of clerk with great lustre and great honour to themselves and
their employers.
The assistant acting manager asked me to come behind after it was over
and be introduced to some of the actors and actresses. He evidently
observed that I was still in my first youth and might be dazzled; but
though I should very much have liked to fall in with this suggestion, I
felt that my critical faculty might be nipped in the bud, so to speak,
if I approached the amateur histrion in the flesh on terms of equality.
Therefore I declined, and he hoped I would “let them all down gently,”
to use his own expression, and I saw no more of him.
At the end of the play there was much applause and cheering, and the
ladies received bouquets of choice flowers handed up by frenzied
admirers; but all this was, of course, nothing to me. I left the
Assembly Room and passed out among the audience, like one of themselves.
Then I walked all the way home, in order that I might collect my
thoughts and reach a judicial and impartial frame of mind. Of course one
must sometimes be cruel to be kind, and so on; but I felt in this case
that it was possible, allowing for the low artistic plane on which
amateurs are accustomed to move, to say some friendly and encouraging
thing, accompanied, of course, by the practical advice for which these
Clapham Macreadies would naturally look in the pages of _Thespis_ when
next they purchased it.
My review occupied an entire Sunday in writing, and I don’t think I
overlooked anything or anybody. I began by touching lightly on the
veteran French dramatist who was responsible for the play; I then
alluded to the translation, and the Bancrofts, and their reading of the
parts, and so on. Then, slowly but surely, I came to the Macreadies and
their production.
I began with some hearty praise of the general performance and the
courageous spirit that had inspired the company to attempt so ambitious
an achievement. I censured some of the scenery, but indicated how it
might have been made better with a little more forethought. The music
between the acts I examined very thoroughly and considered it not well
chosen.
I may quote a passage or two, in order to show the general nature of the
critique:—
“To Mr. Frank Tottenham fell the part of Count Orloff, and we may say at
once that his rendition left little to be desired. His conception was
subtle and vigorous; he managed his limbs with a sound knowledge of
stage deportment, and though his elocution was faulty, his voice
appeared well in keeping with the character. His make-up, however, left
much to be desired. There was a lack of permanence about it, and it
changed perceptibly during the course of the play.”