On The Stage-And Off

CHAPTER VII. Dressing

WE had no dress rehearsal. In the whole course of my professional life, I remember but one dress rehearsal. That was for a pantomime in the provinces. Only half the costumes arrived in time for it. I myself appeared in a steel breast-plate and helmet, and a pair of check trousers; and I have a recollection of seeing somebody else – the King of the Cannibal Islands, I think – going about in spangled tights and a frock coat. There was a want of finish, as one might say, about the affair.

Old stagers, of course, can manage all right without them, but the novice finds it a little awkward to jump from plain dress rehearsals to the performance itself. He has been making love to a pale-faced, middle-aged lady, dressed in black grenadine and a sealskin jacket, and he is quite lost when smiled upon by a high-complexioned, girlish young thing, in blue stockings and short skirts. He finds defying stout, good-tempered Mr. Jones a very different thing to bullying a beetle-browed savage, of appearance something between Bill Sykes and a Roman gladiator, and whose acquaintance he then makes for the first time. Besides, he is not at all sure that he has got hold of the right man.

I, in my innocence, so fully expected at least one dress rehearsal, that, when time went on, and there were no signs of any such thing, I mooted the question myself, so that there should be no chance of its being accidentally overlooked. The mere idea, however, was scouted. It was looked upon as the dream of a romantic visionary.

“Don’t talk about dress rehearsals, my boy,” was the reply; “think yourself lucky if you get your dress all right by the night.”

The “my boy,” I may remark, by no means implied that the speaker thought me at all youthful. Indeed, seeing that I was eighteen at the time, he hardly could, you know. Every actor is “my boy,” just, as before mentioned, every actress is “my dear.” At first I was rather offended; but when I heard gray-headed stars, and respectable married heads, addressed in the same familiar and unceremonious manner, my dignity recovered itself. It is well our dignity is not as brittle as Humpty Dumpty. How very undignified we should all become, before we had been long in this world.

As a matter of fact, nobody – at all events, none of the men, with the exception of Chequers – seemed to care in the slightest about what they should wear. “Chequers” was the name we had given to our walking gentleman, as a delicate allusion to the pattern of his overcoat. I think I have already described the leading features in this young man’s private-life apparel. He went in a good deal for dress, and always came out strong. His present ambition was to wear his new ulster in the piece, and this he did, though, seeing that the action of the play was supposed to take place a century ago, it was hardly consistent with historical accuracy. But then historical accuracy was not a strong point with our company, who went more on the principle of what you happened to have by you. At the better class of London theater, everything is now provided by the management, and the actor has only to put on what is given him. But with the theaters and companies into which I went, things were very different; costumes being generally left to each person’s individual discretion. For ordinary modern dress parts, we had to use our own things entirely, and in all cases we were expected to find ourselves in hosiery and boot leather, by which I mean such things as tights and stockings, and the boots and shoes of every period and people; the rest of the costume was provided for us – at all events in London.

In the provinces, where every article necessary for either a classical tragedy or a pantomime has often to be found by the actor himself, I have seen some very remarkable wardrobe effects. A costume play, under these circumstances, rivaled a fancy dress ball in variety. It was considered nothing out of the way for a father, belonging to the time of George III, to have a son who, evidently from his dress, flourished in the reign of Charles II. As for the supers, when there were any, they were attired in the first thing that came to hand, and always wore their own boots.

Picturesqueness was the great thing. Even now, and at some of the big London houses, this often does duty for congruity and common sense. The tendency to regard all female foreigners as Italian peasant girls, and to suppose that all agricultural laborers wear red waistcoats embroidered with yellow, still lingers on the stage.

Even where costumes were provided, the leading actors, and those who had well-stocked wardrobes of their own, generally preferred to dress the part themselves, and there was nobody who did not supplement the costumier’s ideas to some greater or less extent.

I am speaking only of the men. Actresses nearly always find their own dresses. There is no need of a very varied wardrobe in their case, for in spite of all the talk about female fashions, a woman’s dress is much the same now as in the time of the Mrs. Noahs – at least, so it seems to me, judging from my own ark. The dress that Miss Eastlake wore in the Silver King would, I am sure, do all right for Ophelia; and what difference is there between Queen Elizabeth and Mrs. Bouncer? None whatever, except about the collar and the sleeves; and anybody can alter a pair of sleeves and make a ruff. Why do actresses have so many dresses? As far as mere shape is concerned, one would do for everything, with a few slight alterations. You just tack on a tuck or a furbelow, or take in a flounce, and there you are.

Maybe I’m wrong, though.

We were told to look in at the costumier’s some time during the week, for him to take our measurement, and those of us who were inexperienced in theatrical costumiers did so, and came away with a hopeful idea that we were going to be sent clothes that would nearly fit us. The majority, however, did not go through this farce, but quietly took what they found in their dressing-rooms on the opening night, and squeezed themselves into, or padded themselves out to it, as the necessity happened to be.

The dressing-rooms (two rows of wooden sheds, divided by a narrow passage) were situated over the property-room, and were reached by means of a flight of steps, which everybody ascended and descended very gingerly indeed, feeling sure each time that the whole concern would come down before they got to the other end. These apartments had been carefully prepared for our reception. The extra big holes in the partitions had been bunged up with brown paper, and the whitewash had been laid on everywhere with a lavishness that betokened utter disregard of the expense; though as, before a week was over, nearly the whole of it had been transferred to our clothes, this was rather a waste, so far as the management was concerned. It was even reported that one of the rooms had been swept out, but I never saw any signs of such a thing having been done myself either then or at any other time, and am inclined to look upon the statement merely in the light of a feeler, thrown out for the purpose of getting at the views of the charwoman. If so, however, it was a failure. She said nothing on hearing it, but looked offended, and evidently considered it a subject that should not have been mentioned to a lady.

One or two of the doors still hung upon their hinges, and could, with a little maneuvering, be opened or shut; but in most cases they had been wrenched off, and stood propped up against their own posts, like drunken revelers taken home by the cabmen. The only means therefore of getting in or out of the rooms was by lifting them bodily away. It was a pretty sight to watch some stout, short-winded actor, staggering about the place with one of these great doors in his arms, trying to make it stand up. After a series of fearful efforts, he would get it wedged firmly across the passage, and, at that exact moment, some one would be sure to come rushing upstairs in a desperate hurry to get to his room. He could not, of course, pass while the wretched door was in that position, so, with a view of expediting matters, he would lay hold of the other side of it, and begin tugging. The first man, not being able to see what was going on, and thinking larks were being played with him, would plunge about more wildly than ever, and jam the door down on the other fellow’s toes. Then they would both grapple madly with it, one on each side, bump each other’s head with it, crush each other with it against the sides of the passage, and end by all three going down in a heap together, the door uppermost.

The furniture provided, simple though it was, had evidently been selected with a thoughtful desire that everything should be in keeping: it consisted of a few broken chairs. The supply of toilet requisites in hand, too, seemed to be rather limited, but great care and ingenuity had been displayed in their distribution. There not being enough basins and jugs to go all around, these had been divided. Some rooms had a jug but no basin, while others had a basin but no jug, either circumstance being a capital excuse for leaving them without any water. Where there was neither basin nor jug, you could safely reckon on a soap-dish. We were supplied with towels, the allowance being one a fortnight – a small thin one with a big hole in the middle – among six, but we brought our own soap: at least some of us did, and the others, without a moment’s hesitation, appropriated it. One of the rooms was better appointed than the others, being able to boast a washstand, made out of an old cane chair that had lost its back and one of its legs. This article of luxury was the cause of a good deal of bitterness at first among the occupants of the less-favored apartments, but its tendency toward sudden and unexpected collapse soon lessened this feeling of envy. Even its owners ceased to take any pride in it after a while, and it was eventually kicked to pieces in a fit of frenzy by Juveniles; it having been the cause, as far as we could gather from his disjointed blasphemy, of his being compelled to play all the rest of that evening in sopping wet tights.

A blear-eyed individual used to hang about these rooms of a night. He called himself a dresser, though, for all the dressing he ever did, he might just as well have been a kitchen one. He got a dressing himself once for upsetting a pot of paint over Jim’s supper; but that was the only one he ever, to my knowledge, assisted at. However, he came in handy to go out for sheep’s head and porter.

But although the dressing-rooms surprised me somewhat, they did not disappoint me. I had built no expectations upon them. I had conjured up no airy visions concerning them. Mine eyes had not hungered to gaze upon their imagined glories. No, the dressing-rooms I bore up under; it was the green room that crushed me. It was about the green room that my brightest hopes had been centered. It was there that I was to flirt with Beauty, and converse with Intellect. I had pictured a brilliantly lighted and spacious apartment with a polished oak floor, strewn with costly rugs; gilded walls, hung with choicest gems of art; and a lofty, painted ceiling. There would be luxurious easy-chairs and couches, upon which to rest ourselves between our artistic labors; a piano, from which fairy fingers would draw forth rapturous strains, while I turned over the music; and carved cabinets, filled with old china, and other rare and precious knickknacks. Heavy curtains, over the door, would deaden the outside din to a droning murmur, which would mingle pleasantly with the low hum of cheerful conversation within; whilst the flickering firelight, flashing upon the Spanish mahogany furniture, and glittering reflected in the many mirrors round the room, would throw a touch of homeliness over what might otherwise have been the almost too dazzling splendor of the place.

There was no green room. There never had been a green room, I never saw a green room, except in a play, though I was always on the lookout for it. I met an old actor once who had actually been in one, and I used to get him to come and tell me all about it. But even his recollections were tinged with a certain vagueness. He was not quite sure whether it had been at Liverpool or at Newcastle that he had come across it, and at other times he thought it must have been at Exeter. But wherever it was, the theater had been burnt down a good many years ago – about that he was positive.

On one occasion, I went specially to a big London theater where, I was assured, there really was one, and it cost me four-and-sevenpence in drinks. I found the green room all right, but they said I had better not go in, because it was chock full of properties, and I might break something in the dark.

The truth is that where a green room was originally provided, it has been taken by the star or the manager, as his or her private room, and the rest of the company, are left to spend their off time either in their own dressing-rooms, where they are always in each other’s way, or at the wings, where they catch cold, and are hustled by the scene-shifters.

CHAPTER VIII. My “First Deboo”

ON Saturday came the opening night, and with it my first appearance before the British public – my “first deboo” as our perruquier called it. In thinking about it beforehand, I had been very much afraid lest I should be nervous; but strange to say, I never experienced stage-fright at any time. I say strange, because, at that period of my life at all events, I was – as true greatness generally is – of a modest and retiring disposition. In my very early youth, I believe, I was not so. I am told that in my frock and pinafore days, I used to stand upon the table, and recite poetry, to the intense gratification of my elderly relatives (ah, the old folks knew how to enjoy themselves, when I was a boy!); and an old nurse of mine always insisted that on one occasion I collected half a crown in an omnibus by my spirited rendering of “Baa, baa, black sheep.” I have no recollection of this performance myself though, and, if it really did take place, where’s the money? This part of the question has never, to my mind, been satisfactorily cleared up.

But however self-possessed I may have been at eight, I was anything but so at eighteen. Even now, I would not act to a drawing-room full of people for a thousand pounds – supposing the company considered the effort worth that sum. But before a public audience, I was all right, and entirely free from that shyness about which, in private life, my lady friends so bitterly complain. I could not see the people for one thing – at all events, not those beyond the third row of stalls. The blaze of light surrounding one on the stage, and the dimness of the rest of the house, give the audience a shadowy and ghost-like appearance, and make it impossible to see more than a general mass of white faces. As I never noticed the “hundreds upon hundreds of glaring eyes,” they did not trouble me, and I let ‘em glare. The most withering glance in the world won’t crush a blind man.

If I had been nervous on the first night, I think I should have had a good excuse for it, knowing, as I did, that a select party of my most particular friends, including a few medical students and clergymen’s sons, were somewhere in the theater; having come down, in a body with the intention of giving me a fair start, as they said. They had insisted on coming. I had begged them not to trouble themselves on my account, but they wouldn’t hear of it. They said it would be such a comfort to me to know that they were there. That was their thoughtful kindness. It touched me.

I said: “Look here, you know, if you fellows are going to play the fool, I’ll chuck the whole blessed thing up.”

They said they were not going to play the fool they were coming to see me. I raised no further objections.

But I checkmated them. I lied to those confiding young men with such an air of simple truthfulness, that they believed me, though they had known me for years. Even now, after all this time, I feel a glow of pride when I think how consummately I deceived them. They knew nothing of the theaters or actors over the water so I just gave them the name of our first old man, and told them that that was the name I had taken. I exaggerated the effect of making-up, and impressed upon them the idea that I should be so changed that they would never believe it was I; and I requested them especially to note my assumed voice. I did not say what character I was going to play, but I let slip a word now and then implying that my mind was running on gray hairs and long-lost children, and I bought a stick exactly similar to the one the poor old gentleman was going to use in the part, and let it lie about.

So far as I was concerned, the plan was a glorious success, but the effect upon the old man was remarkable. He was too deaf to hear exactly what was going on, but he gathered enough to be aware that he was the object of a certain amount of attention, and that he was evidently giving great satisfaction to a portion of the audience; which latter circumstance apparently surprised him. The dear fellows gave him a splendid reception when he first appeared. They applauded everything he said or did throughout the play, and called for him after every act. They encored his defiance of the villain, and, when he came on without his hat in a snow scene, they all pulled out their pocket handkerchiefs and sobbed aloud. At the end they sent a message round to tell him to hurry up, as they were waiting for him at the stage door, an announcement that had the effect of sending him out by the front way in wonderfully quick time.

On the whole, that first night passed off pretty well. First nights are trying times at all theaters. The state of excitement behind the scenes is at fever heat, and the stage manager and the head carpenter become positively dangerous. In sensation pieces, where the author plays second fiddle to the scene-shifter, this, of course, is especially the case.

Now – as all modern playgoers know – there are never any hitches or delays on first nights. At all events, not at any of the West-end houses, where everything is always a “triumph of stage management!” But in my time, hitches on first nights were the rule rather than the exception, and when a scene was got through without any special mishap, we felt we were entitled to shake hands with one another. I remember one first night at a London theater where the sensation was to be the fall of a house, crushing the villain (literally) at the end of the fourth act. Great expectations were entertained about this “effect.” It was confidently calculated that the collapse of this building would bring down the house, and so no doubt it would have done, if, owing to a mistake in the cues, the curtain had not come down first. The house fell beautifully, the dummy villain was killed on the spot, and the heroine saved in the nick of time by the hero (who, in these plays, is always just round the corner), but the audience only wondered what all the noise was about, and why no one had struck an attitude at the end of the act.

But however flat things fell in front, the sensation behind was undoubted. When the excitement had partially subsided, there was an energetic inquiry for the man who had let down the curtain, but it appeared that he had left without stopping even to put on his hat. This did not transpire at the time, however, and, for half an hour afterward, the manager was observed to be wandering about with a crowbar, apparently looking for some one.

The premature rise of curtains is attended with still more ludicrous results. On one occasion, I call to mind, the “rag” went up unexpectedly, and discovered the following scene:

The king of the country, sitting by the side of his dying son. He is drinking beer out of a bottle. His wig and beard lie beside him on the floor. – The dying son, touching herself up by the aid of a powder-puff and a hand-glass. – The chief priest of the country (myself) eating a Bath bun, while a friendly super buttons him up the back.

Another time I recollect was at a very small provincial theater. There was only one dressing-room in the whole place, and that the ladies had of course. We men had to dress on the stage itself. You can imagine the rest – the yell, the confusion; the wild stampede; the stage looking like the south bank of the Serpentine after 8 P. M.; the rapid descent of the curtain; the enthusiastic delight of the audience. It was the greatest success we had during our stay.

I have a strong opinion, however, that this latter catastrophe was not due so much to accident as to a certain mean villain among the company, whose name, in consideration of his family, I refrain from mentioning.

CHAPTER IX. Birds of Prey

I REMAINED in London with my first manager during the whole summer season, which lasted about nine months, and I think that, altogether, it was the happiest period of my stage career. The company was a thoroughly agreeable one. It was a genial, jovial company – a “Here you are, my boy; just in time for a pull” sort of company – a “Hail fellow well met” with everybody else sort of company. Among players, there are none of those caste distinctions such as put an insurmountable barrier between the man who sells coal by the ton and the man who sells it by the hundredweight. “The Profession” is a Republic. Lead and Utility walk about arm-in-arm, and the Star and the Singing Chambermaid drink out of the same pewter. We were all as friendly and sociable together as brothers and sisters – perhaps even more so – and the evening spent in those bare dressing-rooms was the pleasantest part of the day. There was never a dull moment, but always plenty of bustle and fun, plenty of anecdotes, plenty of good stories – ah, they could tell ‘em! – plenty of flirting, and talking, and joking, and laughing.

What jolly little suppers they were, too, brought in smoking hot from the cook-shop over the way, and in the middle of which we had to be constantly rushing off with our mouths full to rescue some unfortunate female who was always getting into trouble, or to murder an uncle; and how wide we had to open our lips, when eating, lest we should rub the carmine off! How delicious a quart of six ale was after a row with the police, or a struggle with the man who had carried off the girl! How enjoyable a smoke when you had to hide your pipe in your boot each time you heard a footstep, because smoking was strictly prohibited!

I was not so contented at first as I might have been. I expected about three pounds a week salary after giving my one month gratis, and I did not get it. My agreement, it may be remembered, stipulated that I should receive a “salary according to ability” at the end of that time, but the manager said he did not think there would ever be enough money in the house to pay me at that scale, and suggested nine shillings a week instead, generously giving me the option of either taking it or leaving it. I took it.

I took it because I saw plainly enough that if I didn’t I should get nothing, that he could find twenty other young fellows as good as I to come without any salary at all, and that the agreement was not worth the paper it was written on. I was wroth at the time, but, seeing that the nine shillings was soon raised to twelve, and afterward to fifteen and eighteen, I had really, taking things as they were, nothing to grumble at; and, when I came to know a little more about, professional salaries, and learnt what even the old hands were glad to get, I was very well satisfied.

The company was engaged at summer prices, which are a good deal less than winter ones, and these latter average something less than the wages of an industrious sweep. The public, who read of this actor receiving a hundred and twenty pounds a night, of that actress making eight hundred pounds a week, of a low comedian’s yearly income being somewhere about six thousand pounds, and of a London manager who has actually paid his rates and taxes (so he says), can scarcely have any idea of what existence at the bottom of the stage ladder is like. It is a long ladder, and there are very few who possess a personal experience of both ends. Those who do, however, must appreciate the contrast. Mr. Henry Irving, speaking somewhere of his early days, mentions his weekly salary, I think, as having been twenty-five shillings; and no doubt, at the time, he thought that very good, and can most likely remember when he got less. In the provinces, thirty shillings is a high figure for a good all-round “responsibles,” and for that amount he is expected to be equal to Othello or Sir Peter Teazle at a moment’s notice, and to find his own dress. A “lead” may get three pounds in the winter, and a young “utility” thinks himself very well off indeed on a guinea. Now and again, the latter will get twenty-two or three shillings, but this only leads him into habits of extravagance, and he suffers for it afterward. At the minor London theaters, there being no expenses connected with traveling, etc., the salaries are even less, and from eighteen shillings to two pounds are about the sums promised.

I do not believe I should ever have got even the salary I did, if it had not been for the extraordinary circumstance of a really successful season, so successful, indeed, that the fact could not be disguised, and, for the last three or four months – excess of good fortune having evidently turned the manager’s head – salaries were paid regularly and in full! This is not romancing, it is plain, sober truth. Such a thing may surprise my readers, especially those who know much about the stage, but it cannot surprise them one fiftieth part so much as it surprised us. It completely bewildered the majority of the company. To have anything more than five shillings paid to them at one time seemed to confuse them, and, on treasury days, they went away from the theater with a puzzled air of affluence and responsibility.

They had not been accustomed to receiving salaries in that way. What they had been used to was, say, two-and-sixpence one day, sixpence at the beginning of the next night, another twopence after the first act, and eightpence as they were going away.

“That makes one-and-four you’ve had to-night, and two-and-sixpence last night makes three-and-ten, mind.”

“Yes, but, hang it all, you know, there was four shillings owing from last week, and five-and-sixpence from the week before, that I’ve never had yet.”

“My dear boy, for Heaven’s sake don’t talk about last week and the week before. Do let’s keep to one week at a time. We can’t go back to the Flood.”

They had been accustomed to haggle and fight for every penny they got; to dodge and trick and bully for their money in a way that a sixty-percent. money-lender would rather lose principal and interest than resort to; to entreat and clamor for it like Italian beggar children; to hang about after the acting manager like hungry dogs after a cat’s-meat man; to come down to the theater early in the morning and wait all day for him; to watch outside his room by the hour together, so as to rush in the moment the door was opened, and stick there till he threw them, a shilling; to lie in wait at dark corners and spring out upon him as he passed; to run after him upstairs and downstairs; to sneak after him into public-house bars; or to drive him into a corner and threaten to punch his head unless he gave them another sixpence – this last expedient, of course, being possible only when the actor was big and the acting manager little. Fortunately acting managers mostly were little, otherwise the profession would have died of starvation.

If, as sometimes happened, they left the acting manager alone, and went for the lessee himself, the latter would always refer them to the former, assuming for himself a magnificent indifference about such trivial things as money matters; and he would even play out the farce to the length of sending for the acting manager, and begging that gentleman, as a personal favor to himself, to let Mr. So-and-So be paid without further delay, which the acting manager would gravely promise should be done.

If it had not filled one with shame for one’s profession, it would have been amusing to listen to some of the comedies nightly played behind the scenes.