On The Stage-And Off

CHAPTER XI. First Provincial Experiences

ITHOUGHT I was safe for the summer with this company, and congratulated myself upon having found such good quarters. The glorious uncertainty of the boards, however, almost rivals that of the turf. From one reason and another, we broke up without ever going on tour, so that, two months after leaving London, I found myself back there again on my way to the opposite side of the kingdom to join another company.

But, short as was my first country engagement, it gave me a pretty good insight into what provincial work was like. The following is from one of my letters, written after about a fortnight’s experience of this work, which did not begin until the pantomime was withdrawn:

“The panto, is over. I wasn’t by any means fond of it, but I’m sorry for one thing. While it was running, you see, there was no study or rehearsal, and we had the whole day free, and could – and did – enjoy ourselves. But no skating parties now! no long walks! no drives! no getting through a novel in one day! We play at least two fresh pieces every night and sometimes three. Most of them here already know their parts as well as they know their alphabet, but everything is new to me, and it is an awful grind. I can never tell until one night what I’m going to play the next. The cast is stuck up by the stage door every evening, and then, unless you happen to have the book yourself, you must borrow the stage manager’s copy, and write out your part. If somebody else wants it, too, and is before you, you don’t get hold of it till the next morning perhaps, and that gives you about eight hours in which to work up a part of say six or seven lengths (a ‘length’ is forty-two lines).

“Sometimes there’s a row over the cast. Second Low Comedy isn’t going to play old men. That’s not his line; he was not engaged to play old men. He’ll see everybody somethinged first. – First Old Man wants to know what they mean by expecting him to play Second Old Man’s part. He has never been so insulted in his life. He has played with Kean and Macready and Phelps and Matthews, and they would none of them have dreamt of asking him to do such a thing. – Juvenile Lead has seen some rum things, but he is blowed if ever he saw the light comedy part given to the Walking Gentleman before. Anyhow he shall decline to play the part given him, it’s mere utility. – Walking Gent, says, well it really isn’t his fault; he doesn’t care one way or the other. He was cast for the part, and took it. – Juvenile Lead knows it isn’t his fault – doesn’t blame him at all – it’s the stage manager he blames. Juvenile Lead’s opinion is that the stage manager is a fool. Everybody agrees with him here; it is our rallying point.

“The general result, when this sort of thing occurs, is that the part in dispute, no matter what it is, gets pitched on to me as ‘Responsibles.’ There’s a little too much responsibility about my line. I like the way they put it, too, when they want me to take a particularly heavy part. They call it ‘giving me an opportunity!’ If they mean an opportunity to stop up all night, I agree with them. That is the only opportunity I see about it. Do they suppose you are going to come out with an original and scholarly conception of the character, when you see the part for the first time the night before you play it? Why, you haven’t time to think of the meaning of the words you repeat. But even if you had the chance of studying a character, it would be no use. They won’t let you carry out your own ideas. There seems to be a regular set of rules for each part, and you are bound to follow them. Originality is at a discount in the provinces.

“I have lived to see our stage manager snubbed – sat upon – crushed. He has been carrying on down here, and swelling around to that extent you’d have thought him a station-master at the very least. Now he’s like a bladder with the air let out. His wife’s come.

“The company is really getting quite famili-fied. There are three married couples in it now. Our Low Comedian’s wife is the Singing Chambermaid – an awfully pretty little woman (why have ugly men always got pretty wives?). I played her lover the other night, and we had to kiss two or three times. I rather liked it, especially as she doesn’t make-up much. It isn’t at all pleasant getting a mouthful of powder or carmine.

“I gained my first ‘call’ on Saturday, before a very full house. Of course I was highly delighted, but I felt terribly nervous about stepping across when the curtain was pulled back. I kept thinking, ‘Suppose it’s a mistake, and they don’t want me.’ They applauded, though, the moment I appeared, and then I was all right. It was for a low comedy part – Jacques in The Honeymoon. I always do better in low comedy than in anything else, and everybody tells me I ought to stick to it. But that is just what I don’t want to do. It is high tragedy that I want to shine in. I don’t like low comedy at all. I would rather make the people cry than laugh.

“There is one little difficulty that I have to contend with at present in playing comedy, and that is a tendency to laugh myself when I hear the house laughing. I suppose I shall get over this in time, but now, if I succeed in being at all comical, it tickles me as much as it does the audience, and, although I could keep grave enough if they didn’t laugh, the moment they start I want to join in. But it is not only at my own doings that I am inclined to laugh. Anything funny on the stage amuses me, and being mixed up in it makes no difference. I played Frank to our Low Comedian’s Major de Boots the other night. He was in extra good form and very droll, and I could hardly go on with my part for laughing at him. Of course, when a piece is played often, one soon ceases to be amused; but here, where each production enjoys a run of one consecutive night only, the joke does not pall.

“There is a man in the town who has been to the theater regularly every night since we opened. The pantomime ran a month, and he came all through that. I know I was sick enough of the thing before it was over, but what I should have been sitting it out from beginning to end every evening, I do not like to think. Most of our patrons, though, are pretty regular customers. The theater-going population of the town is small but determined. Well, you see, ours is the only amusement going. There was a fat woman came last week, but she did not stay long. The people here are all so fat themselves they thought nothing of her.”

CHAPTER XII. “Mad Mat” Takes Advantage of an Opportunity

IHAD a day in London before starting off on my next venture, and so looked in at my old theater. I knew none of the company, but the workmen and supers were mostly the same that I had left there. Dear old Jim was in his usual state and greeted me with a pleasant:

“Hulloa! you seem jolly fond of the place, you do. What the deuce brings here?”

I explained that it was a hankering to see him once again.

“Mad Mat” was there, too. The pantomime was still running, and Mat played a demon with a pasteboard head. He was suffering great injustice nightly, so it appeared from what he told me. He was recalled regularly at the end of the scene in which he and his brother demons were knocked about by the low comedian, but the management would not allow him to go on again and bow.

“They are jealous,” whispered Mat to me, as we strolled into The Rodney (it would be unprofessional for an actor to meet a human creature whose swallowing organization was intact, and not propose a drink) – “jealous, that’s what it is. I’m getting too popular, and they think I shall cut them out.”

The poor fellow was madder than ever, and I was just thinking so at the very moment that he turned to me and said:

“Do you think I’m mad? candidly now.”

It’s a little awkward when a maniac asks you point-blank if you think he’s mad. Before I could collect myself sufficiently to reply, he continued:

“People often say I’m mad —I’ve heard them. Even if I am, it isn’t the thing to throw in a gentleman’s teeth, but I’m not – I’m not. You don’t think I am, do you?”

I was that “took aback,” as Mrs. Brown would put it, that, if I had not had the presence of mind to gulp down a good mouthful of whisky and water, I don’t know what I should have done. I then managed to get out something about “a few slight eccentricities, perhaps, but – ”

“That’s it,” he cried excitedly, “‘eccentricities ‘ – and they call that being mad. But they won’t call me mad long – wait till I’ve made my name. They won’t call me mad then. Mad! It’s they’re the fools, to think a man’s mad when he isn’t. Ha, ha, my boy, I’ll surprise ‘em one day. I’ll show the fools – the dolts – the idiots, who’s been mad. ‘Great genius is to madness close allied.’ Who said that, eh? He was a genius, and they called him mad, perhaps. They’re fools – all fools, I tell you. They can’t tell the difference between madness and genius, but I’ll show them some day – some day.”

Fortunately there was nobody else in the bar where we were, or his ravings would have attracted an unpleasant amount of attention. He wanted to give me a taste of his quality then and there in his favorite rôle of Romeo, and I only kept him quiet by promising to call that night and hear him rehearse the part.

When we were ready to go out, I put my hand in my pocket to pay, but, to my horror, Mat was before me, and laid down the money on the counter. Nor would any argument induce him to take it up again. He was hurt at the suggestion even, and reminded me that I had stood treat on the last occasion – about three months ago. It was impossible to force the money on him. He was as proud on his six shillings a week as Croesus on sixty thousand a year, and I was compelled to let him have his way. So he paid the eightpence, and then we parted on the understanding that I was to see him later on at his “lodgings.” – “They are not what I could wish,” he explained, “but you will, I am sure, overlook a few bachelor inconveniences. The place suits me well enough – for the present.”

Hearing a lunatic go through Romeo is not the pleasantest way of passing the night, but I should not have had pluck enough to disappoint the poor fellow, even if I had not promised, and, accordingly, after having spent the evening enjoying the unusual luxury of sitting quiet, and seeing, other people excite themselves for my amusement, I made my way to the address Mat had given me.

The house was in a narrow court at the back of the New Cut. The front door stood wide open, though it was twelve o’clock, and a bitterly cold night. A child lay huddled up on the doorstep, and a woman was sleeping in the passage. I stumbled over the woman, groping my way along in the dark. She seemed used to being trodden upon though, for she only looked up unconcernedly, and went to sleep again at once. Mat had told me his place was at the very top, so I went on until there were no more stairs, and then I looked round me. Seeing a light coming from one of the rooms, I peered in through the halfopen door, and saw a fantastic object, decked in gaudy colors and with long, flowing hair, sitting on the edge of a broken-down bedstead. I didn’t know what to make of it at first, but it soon occurred to me that it must be Mat, fully made-up as Romeo, and I went in.

I thought, when I had seen him a few hours before, that he looked queer – even for him – but now, his haggard face daubed with paint, and his great eyes staring out of it more wildly than ever, he positively frightened me. He held out his hand, which was thin and white, but remained seated.

“Excuse my rising,” he said slowly, in a weak voice, “I feel so strange. I don’t think I can go through the part to-night. So sorry to have brought you here for nothing, but you must come and see me some other time.”

I got him to lie down on the bed just as he was, and covered him with the old rags that were on it. He lay still for a few minutes, then he looked up and said:

“I won’t forget you, L – , when I’m well off. You’ve been friendly to me when I was poor: I shan’t forget it, my boy. My opportunity will soon come now – very soon, and then – ”

He didn’t finish the sentence, but began to murmur bits of the part to himself, and in a little while he dropped asleep. I stole softly out, and went in search of a doctor. I got hold of one at last, and returned with him to Mat’s attic. He was still asleep, and after arranging matters as well as I could with the doctor, I left, for I had to-be on my way early in the morning.

I never expected to see Mat again, and I never did. People who have lived for any length of time on six shillings a week don’t take long to die when they set about it, and two days after I had seen him, Mad Mat’s opportunity came, and he took it.

CHAPTER XIII. Lodgings and Landladies

IHEY charged me extra for the basket on the Great Eastern Line, and I have hated that company ever since. Of course it was over weight, but actors are good customers to the railways, and a little excess luggage is not, as a rule, too closely inquired into. The myrmidons at Bishopsgate, however, were inexorable. It was in vain I tried to persuade them that the thing was “as light as a feather.” They insisted on sticking it up edgeways on a shaky iron plate, and wobbling something up and down a bar; afterward giving me an absurd bit of paper with “4s. 4d.” on it, which, I explained, I didn’t want, but which they charged me for just as though I had specially ordered it.

My destination was a small market-town in the eastern counties, where I arrived about mid-day. It was the most dead and alive place I have ever been to. All eastern county towns are more or less dead and alive – particularly the former – but this one was dreariness personified. Not a soul was to be seen outside the station. In the yard stood a solitary cab to which was attached a limp horse that, with head hanging down and knees bent out, looked the picture of resigned misery; but the driver had disappeared – washed away by the rain, perhaps, which was pouring steadily down. I left my belongings in the cloak room, and walked straight to the theater. I passed two or three green posters on my way, headed:

“Theater Royal,” and setting forth that “ – , the World-Renowned Tragedian from Drury Lane,” would give his magnificent impersonations of Richard III. and The Idiot Witness that night, and begging the inhabitants, for their own sakes, to “come early.” I found the whole company assembled on the stage, and looking as dismal as the town itself. They all had colds in the head, including the manager, “the World-Renowned Tragedian from Drury Lane,” who had the face-ache into the bargain.

After a rough and ready rehearsal of the tragedy, melodrama, and burlesque to be played that evening (I had had all my parts sent me by post before joining), I started off by myself to look for lodgings, as I had come to the conclusion that my own society would, on the whole, be less depressing than that of any gentleman in the company.

Lodging hunting is by no means the most pleasant business connected with touring. It always means an hour or two’s wandering up and down back streets, squinting up at windows, knocking at doors, and waiting about on doorsteps. You are under the impression, all the while that the entire street is watching you, and that it has put you down as either a begging letter impostor, or else as the water-rate man, and despises you accordingly. You never find the place that suits you until you have been everywhere else. If you could only begin at the end and work backwards, the search would be over at once. But, somehow or other, you can never manage to do this, and you have always to go through the same routine. First of all, there are the places that ask about twice as much as you are prepared to give, and at which you promise to call again when you have seen your friend. Then there are the places that are just taken, or just going to be taken, or just not to be taken. There are the places where you can have half a bed with another gentleman, the other gentleman generally being the billiard-marker at the hotel opposite, or some journeyman photographer. There are the people who won’t take you because you are not a married couple, and the people who won’t take you because you are a play-actor, and the people who want you to be out all day, and the people who want you to be in by ten. Added to these, there is the slatternly woman, who comes to the door, followed by a mob of dirty children, that cling to her skirts and regard you with silent horror, evidently thinking that the “big ugly man,” so often threatened, has really come this time. Or the fool of a husband, who scratches his head and says you had better call again, when his “missus” is in. Or, most aggravating of all, the woman who stands on the step, after you have gone, and watches you down the street, so that you don’t like to knock anywhere else.

All this I was prepared for when I started, but no such ordeal was in store for me. The difficulty of selecting lodgings was got rid of altogether in the present case by there simply being no lodgings of any kind to be let. It had evidently never occurred to the inhabitants of this delightful spot that any human being could possibly desire to lodge there, and I don’t wonder at it. There were a couple of inns in the High Street, but country actors cannot afford inns, however moderate, and of “Furnished Apartments” or “Bed Rooms for Single Gentlemen” there were none. I explored every street in the town without coming across a single bill, and then, as a last resource, I went into a baker’s shop to inquire. I don’t know why bakers should be better acquainted than any other tradesmen with the private affairs of their neighbors, but that they are has always been my impression, or, at least, had been up till then, when it received a rude blow. I asked two bakers, and both of them shook their heads, and knew of no one who let lodgings. I was in despair, and the High Street, when I glanced up and saw a very pleasant face smiling at me from the door of a milliner’s shop. Somehow, the sight of it inspired me with hope. I smiled back, and —

“Could the owner of the pleasant face recommend me to any lodgings?”

The owner of the pleasant face looked surprised. “Was Monsieur going to stop in the town?” On Monsieur explaining that he was an actor, Madame was delighted, and smiled more pleasantly than ever. “Madame did so love the theater. Had not been to one for, Oh! so long time; not since she did leave Regent Street – the Regent Street that was in our London. Did Monsieur know London? Had been to heaps and heaps of theaters then. And at Paris! Ah! Paris! Ah, the theaters at Paris! Ah! But there was nothing to go to here. It was so quiet, so stupid, this town. We English, we did seem so dull. Monsieur, son mari, he did not mind it. He had been born here. He did love the sleepiness – the what we did call the monotony. But Madame, she did love the gayety. This place was, oh, so sad.”

Here Madame clasped her hands – pretty little hands they were, too – and looked so piteous, that Monsieur felt, strongly inclined to take her in his arms and comfort her. He, however, on second thoughts, restrained his generous impulse.

Madame then stated her intention to go to the theater that very evening, and requested to know what was to be played.

On Monsieur informing her that “ – , the World-Renowned Tragedian from Drury Lane, would give his magnificent impersonations of Richard III. and The Idiot Witness,” she seemed greatly impressed, and hoped it was a comedy. Madame loved comedies. “To laugh at all the fun – to be made merry – that was so good.” Monsieur thought that Madame would have plenty to laugh at in the magnificent impersonations of Richard III. and The Idiot Witness, even if she found the burlesque a little heavy, but he didn’t say so.

Then Madame remembered Monsieur was looking for lodgings. Madame put the tip of her forefinger in her mouth, puckered her brows, and looked serious. “Yes, there was Miss Kemp, she had sometimes taken a lodger. But Miss Kemp was so strict, so particular. She did want every one to be so good. Was Monsieur good?” This with a doubting smile.

Monsieur hazarded the opinion that having gazed into Madame’s eyes for five minutes was enough to make a saint of any man. Monsieur’s opinion was laughed at, but, nevertheless notwithstanding, Miss Kemp’s address was given him, and thither he repaired, armed with the recommendation of his charming little French friend.

Miss Kemp was an old maid, and lived by herself in a small three-cornered house that stood in a grass-grown courtyard behind the church. She was a prim old lady, with quick eyes and a sharp chin. She looked me up and down with two jerks of her head, and then supposed that I had come to the town to work.

“No,” I replied, “I had come to play. I was an actor.”

“Oh,” said Miss Kemp. Then added severely, “You’re married.”