Novels and Plays—Little Lord Fauntleroy and his Origin—Mr. Hall Caine—Preference for Books to Plays—John Oliver Hobbes—J. M. Barrie’s Diffidence—Anthony Hope—A London Bachelor—A Pretty Wedding—A Tidy Author—A First Night—Dramatic Critics—How Notices are Written—The Critics Criticised—Distribution of Paper—“Stalls Full”—Black Monday—Do Royalty pay for their Seats?—Wild Pursuit of the Owner of the Royal Box—The Queen at the Opera.
IT is a surprise to the public that so many novelists are becoming dramatists.
The reason is simple enough: it is the natural evolution of romance. In the good old days of three-volume novels, works of fiction brought considerable grist to the mill of both author and publisher; after all it only cost a fraction more to print and bind a three-volume work which sold at thirty-one shillings and sixpence than it does to-day to produce a book of almost as many words at six shillings.
Then again, half, even a quarter of, a century ago there were not anything like so many novelists, and those who wrote had naturally less competition; but all this is changed.
Novels pour forth on every side to-day, and money does not always pour in, in proportion. One of the first novelists to make a large sum by a play was Mrs. Hodgson Burnett. She wrote Little Lord Fauntleroy about 1885, it proved successful, and the book contained the element of an actable play. She dramatised the story, and she has probably made as many thousands of pounds by the play as hundreds by the book, in spite of its enormous circulation. I believe I am right in saying that Little Lord Fauntleroy has brought more money to its originator than any other combined novel and play, and the next most lucrative has probably been J. M. Barrie’s Little Minister.
Herein lies a moral lesson. Both are simple as books and plays, and both owe their success to that very simplicity and charm. They contain no problem, no sex question, nothing but a little story of human life and interest, and they have succeeded in English-speaking lands, and had almost a wider influence than the more elaborate physiological work and ideas of Ibsen, Maeterlinck, Sudermann, or Pinero.
For twenty years Little Lord Fauntleroy has stirred all hearts, both on the stage and off, in England and America, adored by children and loved by grown-ups.
Being anxious to know how the idea of the play came about, I wrote to Mrs. Burnett, and below is her reply in a most characteristically modest letter:
“New York,
“November 26th, 1902.
“Dear Mrs. Alec-Tweedie,
“I hope it is as agreeable as it sounds to be ’a-roaming in Spain.’ It gives one dreams of finding one’s lost castles there. Concerning the play of Fauntleroy; after the publication of the book it struck me one day that if a real child could be found who could play naturally and ingenuously the leading part, a very unique little drama might be made of the story. I have since found that almost any child can play Fauntleroy, the reason being, I suppose, that only child emotions are concerned in the representation of the character. At that time, however, I did not realise what small persons could do, and by way of proving to myself that it could—or could not—be done with sufficient simplicity and convincingness, I asked my own little boy to pretend for me that he was Fauntleroy making his speech of thanks to the tenants on his birthday. The little boy in question was the one whose ingenuous characteristics had suggested to me the writing of the story, so I thought if it could be done he could do it. He had, of course, not been allowed to suspect that he himself had any personal connection with the character of Cedric. He was greatly interested in saying the speech for me, and he did it with such delightful warm-hearted naturalness that he removed my doubts as to whether a child-actor could say the lines without any air of sophistication—which was of course the point.
Shortly afterwards we went to Italy, and in Florence I began the dramatisation. I had, I think, about completed the first act when I received news from England that a Mr. Seebohm had made a dramatisation and was producing it. I travelled to London at once and consulted my lawyer, Mr. Guadella, who began a suit for me. I felt very strongly on the subject, not only because I was unfairly treated, but because it had been the custom to treat all writers in like manner, and it seemed a good idea to endeavour to find a defence. I was frightened because I could not have afforded to lose and pay costs—but I felt rather fierce, and made up my mind to face the risk. Fortunately Mr. Guadella won the case for me. Mr. Seebohm’s version was withdrawn and mine produced with success both in England and America—and, in fact, in various other countries. I never know dates, but I think it was produced in London in ’88. It has been played ever since, and is played for short engagements on both sides of the Atlantic every year. I have not the least idea how many times it has been given. It is a queer little dear, that story—‘plays may come and books may go, but little Fauntleroy stays on for ever.’ I am glad I wrote it—I always loved it. I should have loved it if it had not brought me a penny. I am afraid I am not very satisfactory as a recorder of detail of a business nature. I never remember dates or figures. If we were talking together I should doubtless begin to recall incidents. It is the stimulating meanderings of conversation which stir the pools of memory.”
Mrs. Hodgson Burnett may indeed be proud of her success, although she writes of it in such a simple, unaffected manner. ’Twas well for her she faced the lawsuit, for ruin scowled on one side while fortune smiled on the other.
No novelist’s works have sold more freely than those of Hall Caine and Miss Marie Corelli. Both are highly dramatic in style, but Miss Corelli has not taken to play-writing, preferring the novel as a means of expression.
Hall Caine, on the other hand, has been tempted by the allurements of the stage. When I asked him why he took up literature as a profession, he replied:
“I write a novel because I love the motive, or the story, or the characters, or the scene, or all four, and I dramatise it because I like to see my subject on the stage. If more material considerations sometimes influence me, more spiritual ones are, I trust, not always absent. I don’t think the time occupied in writing a book or a play has ever entered into my calculations, nor do I quite know which gives me most trouble.”
Continuing the subject, I ventured to ask him whether he thought drama or fiction the higher art.
“I like both the narrative and the dramatic forms of art, but perhaps I think the art of fiction is a higher and better art than the art of a drama, inasmuch as it is more natural, more free, and more various, and yet capable of equal unity. On the other hand, I think the art of the drama is in some respects more difficult, because it is more artificial and more limited, and always hampered by material conditions which concern the stage, the scenery, the actors, and even the audience. I think,” he continued, “the novel and the drama have their separate joys for the novelist and dramatist, and also their separate pains and penalties.
“On the whole, I find it difficult to compare things so different, and all I can say for myself is that, notwithstanding my great love of the theatre, I find it so trying in various ways—owing, perhaps, to my limitations—that I do not grudge any one the success he achieves as a dramatist, and I deeply sympathise with the man who fails in that character.”
How true that is! By far the most lenient critics are the workers. It is the man who never wrote a book who criticises most severely, the man who never painted a picture who is the hardest to please.
Speaking about the dramatic element of the modern novel, Mr. Caine continued:
“But then the novel, since the days of Scott, has so encroached upon the domain of the drama, and become so dramatic in form that the author who has ‘the sense of the theatre’ may express himself fairly well without tempting his fate in that most fascinating but often most fatal little world.”
Such was Mr. Caine’s opinion on the novelist as dramatist.
Hall Caine’s personality is too well known to need describing; but his handwriting is a marvel. He gets more into a page than any one I know, unless it be Whistler, Sydney Lee, or Zangwill. Mr. Caine’s calligraphy at a little distance looks like Chinese, it is beautifully neat and tidy—but most difficult to read. Like Frankfort Moore, Richard Le Gallienne, and a host of others, he scribbles with a small pad in his hand, or on his knee. Some people prefer writing in queer positions, cramped for room—others, on the contrary, require huge tables and vast space.
“John Oliver Hobbes” is the uneuphonious pseudonym chosen by Pearl Teresa Craigie, another of our novel-dramatists. She has hardly been as successful with her plays as with her brilliant books, and therefore it seems unlikely that she will discard the latter for the former. The world has smiled on Mrs. Craigie, for she was born of rich parents. Although an American she lives in London (Lancaster Gate), and has a charming house in the Isle of Wight. She has only one son, so is more or less independent, can travel about and do as she likes, therefore her thoughtful work and industry are all the more praiseworthy. Ability will out.
Mrs. Craigie is an extremely good-looking woman. She is petite, with chestnut hair and eyes; is always dressed in the latest gowns from Paris; has a charming voice; is musical and devoted to chess.
J. M. Barrie, one of the most successful of our novel dramatists, is most reticent about his work. He is a shy, retiring little man with a big brain and a charitable heart; but he dislikes publicity in every form. He seems almost ashamed to own that he writes, and he cannot bear his plays to be discussed—so when he says, “Please excuse me. I have such a distaste for saying or writing anything about my books or plays for publication; if it were not so I should do as you suggest with pleasure,” one’s hand is tied, and Mr. Barrie’s valuable opinion on the novel and the drama is lost.
It was a difficult problem to decide. Naturally the public expect much mention of J. M. Barrie among the playwrights of the day, for had he not four pieces running at London theatres at the same moment? But to make mention means to offend Mr. Barrie and lose a friend.
This famous author creates and writes, but no one must write about him. Whether his simple childhood, passed in a quaint little Scotch village, is the source of this reticence, or whether it is caused by the oppression of the fortune he has accumulated by his plays, no one discourses upon Mr. Barrie except at the risk of earning his grave displeasure. He is probably the most fantastic writer of the day, and most of the accounts of him have been as fantastic as his work. Thus the curtain cannot be lifted, while he smokes and dreams delicately pitiless sentiment behind the scenes so far as this volume is concerned.
“Anthony Hope” is another dramatic novelist. He began his career as a barrister, tried for Parliamentary honours, and failed; took to writing novels and succeeded, and now seems likely to end his days in the forefront of British dramatists.
He was educated at Marlborough, became a scholar of Balliol College, Oxford, where he gained first-class Mods. and first-class Lit. Hum., so he has gone through the educational mill with distinction, and is now inclined to turn aside from novels of pure romance to more psychological studies. This is particularly noticeable in Quisanté and Tristram of Blent.
The author of The Prisoner of Zenda is one of the best-known men in London society. He loves our great city. Mr. Hope is most sociable by nature; not only does he dine out incessantly, but as a bachelor was one of those delightful men who took the trouble to entertain his lady friends. Charming little dinners and luncheons were given by this man of letters, and as he had chambers near one of our largest hotels, he generally took the guests over to his flat after the meal for coffee and cigars. Many can vouch what pleasant evenings those were; the geniality of the host, the frequent beauty of his guests, and the generally brilliant conversation made those bachelor entertainments things to be remembered. His charming sister-in-law often played the r?le of hostess for him; she is a Norwegian by birth, and an intimate friend of the Scandinavian writer Bj?rnstjerne-Bj?rnson, whose personality impressed me more than that of any other author I ever met.
The bachelor life has come to an end.
From a painting by Hugh de T. Glazebrook.
MR. ANTHONY HOPE.
Nearly twenty years ago Anthony Hope began to write novels with red-haired heroines—The Prisoner of Zenda is perhaps the best-known of the series. No one could doubt that he admired warm-coloured hair, for auburns and reds appeared in all his books. One fine day an auburn-haired goddess crossed his path. She was young and beautiful, and just the living girl he had described so often in fiction. Anthony Hope, the well-known bachelor of London, was conquered by the American maid. A very short engagement was followed by a beautiful wedding in the summer of 1903, at that quaint old city church, St. Bride’s, where his father has been Rector so long. It was a lovely hot day as we drove along the Embankment, through a labyrinth of printing offices and early newspaper carts, to the door of the church. All the bustle and heat of the city outside was forgotten in the cool shade of the handsome old building, decorated for the occasion with stately palms. Never was there a prettier wedding or a more lovely bride, and all the most beautiful women in London seemed to be present.
The bridegroom, who was wearing a red rosebud which blossomed somewhat alarmingly during the ceremony, looked very proud and happy as he led the realisation of twenty years’ romance down the aisle.
“Anthony Hope” is not his real name, and yet it is, which may appear paradoxical. He was born a Hawkins, being the second son of the Rev. E. C. Hawkins, and nephew of Mr. Justice Hawkins, now known as Baron Brampton. The child was christened Anthony Hope, and when he took to literature to fill in the gaps in his legal income, he apparently thought it better for the struggling barrister not to be identified with the budding journalist, and consequently dropped the latter part of his name. Thus it was he won his spurs as Anthony Hope, and many people know him by no other title, although he always signs himself Hawkins, and calls himself by that nomenclature in private life. Rather amusing incidents have been the result. People when first introduced seldom realise the connection, and discuss “Lady Ursula,” or other books, very frankly with their new acquaintance. Their consequent embarrassment or amusement may be better imagined than described! Aliases often lead to awkward moments.
Literary men are not, as a rule, famed for “speechifying,” but Mr. Hawkins is an exception. He went to America a few years ago an indifferent orator, and returned a good one. This was the result of a lecturing tour—one of those expeditions of many thousand miles of travel and daily discourse in different towns. Literary men are not generally more orderly at their writing-tables than they are good at delivering a speech, but here again Anthony Hope is an exception. His desk is so neat and precise it reminds one irresistibly of a punctilious old maid (I trust he will forgive the simile?), so methodical are his arrangements. He writes everything with his own hand, and replies to letters almost by return of post, although he is a busy man, for he not only writes for four or five hours a day, but attends endless charity meetings, and takes an energetic part among other things in the working of the Society of Authors, of which he is chairman. He does nothing by halves; everything he undertakes he is sure to see through, being most conscientious in all his work. In many ways Anthony Hope often reminds one of the late Sir Walter Besant, both alike ever ready to help a colleague in distress, ever willing to aid by council or advice those in need, and untiring so far as literary work for themselves, or helping others, is concerned.
Mr. Hawkins is generally calm and collected, but I remember an occasion when he was quite the reverse. It was the first performance of one of his plays, and he stood behind me in a box, well screened from public gaze by the curtain. First he rested on one foot, then on the other, always to the accompaniment of rattling coins. Oh, how he turned those pennies over and over in his pockets, until at last I entreated to be allowed to “hold the bank” until the fall of the curtain.
First nights affect playwrights differently, but although they generally disown it, they seem to suffer tortures, poor creatures.
For an important production there are as many as two or three thousand applications for seats on a “first night,” but to a great extent each theatre has its own audience. The critics are of course the most important element. As matters stand they know nothing of what they are going to see, they have not studied or even read the play beforehand, and yet are expected to sum up the whole drama and criticise the acting an hour or two later. The idea is preposterous. If serious dramas are to be considered seriously, time must be given for the purpose, and the premiers must begin a couple of hours earlier, or a dress rehearsal for the critics arranged the night before, just as a “press view” is organised at a picture gallery. As it is, all the critics go in the first night.
That is why the bulk of those in the stalls are men. Some take notes throughout the acts, others jot down pungent lines during the dialogue; but all are working at high pressure, and however clear the slate of their mind may be on entering the theatre, it is well covered with impressions when they leave. From that jumble of ideas they have to unravel the play, criticise the dramatist’s work, and make a study of the suitability of the actors to their parts. This unreflecting impression must be quickly put together, for a critic has no time for leisurely philosophic judgments.
The critics, or, rather, “the representatives of the papers,” are given their seats; but the rest of the house pays. Only people of eminence, or personal friends of the management, are permitted the honour of a seat. Their names are on the “first-night list,” and if they apply they receive, the outside public rarely getting a chance.
The entrance to a theatre on a first night is an interesting scene. Many of the best-known men and women of London are chatting to friends in the hall; but they never forget their manners, and are always in their places in good time. Between the acts those who are near the end of a row get up and move about; in any case the critics leave their seats, and many of them begin their “copy” during the entr’acte. Other men not professionally engaged wander round the boxes and talk to their friends, and a general air of happy expectation pervades the auditorium.
“Stuffed with obesity or an?mia,” exclaimed a well-known dramatist when describing the dramatic critics. However that may be the dramatic critic is an important person, and his post no sinecure. It is all very well when first night representations are given on Saturday, because then only the handful of Sunday paper writers have to scramble through their work—but when Wednesday or Thursday is chosen, as sometimes happens, dozens of poor unfortunate men and women have to work far into the night over their column—they have no time to consider the comedy or tragedy from any standpoint beyond the first impression. No doubt a play should make an impression at once, and that is why the drama cannot be criticised in the same way as books. The playwright must make an immediate effect, or he will not make one at all; while the poet or novelist can be contemplated with serenity and commented on at leisure.
There are so many problem plays nowadays, however, that it is often difficult for the critic to make his decision between the close of the theatre at midnight and his arrival at the nearest telegraph office (if he be on a provincial paper), or at the London newspaper office, a quarter of an hour later, when that impression has to be reduced to paper and ink. Only those who have written at this nervous pressure know its terrors. To have a “devil” (the printer’s boy) standing at one’s elbow waiting for “copy” is horrible—the ink is not dry on the paper as sheet after sheet goes off to the compositor waiting its arrival. By the time the writer reaches his last sentences the first pages are all in type waiting his corrections. At 2 a.m. the notice must be out of his hands for good or ill, because the final “make-up” of the paper necessitates his “copy” filling the exact space allotted to him by the editor, and two hours later that selfsame newspaper, printed and machined, is on its way to the provinces by the “newspaper trains,” and on sale in Liverpool, Birmingham, or Sheffield, a few hours only after the latest theatrical criticism has been added to its columns.
The stage is necessarily intimately connected with the press, and a free hand is imperative if the well-reasoned essay, and not merely a reporter’s account, is to be of value.
Wise critics refuse to know personally the objects of their criticism, and so avoid many troubles, for many actors are hyper-sensitive by nature. The press is naturally a great factor, but it cannot make or mar a play any more than it can make or mar a book; it can fan the flame, but it cannot make the blaze.
At the O.P. Club Alfred Robbins recently delivered an address on “Dramatic Critics: Are they any use?” He pertinently remarked:
“A play is like a cigar—if it is bad no amount of puffing will make it draw; but if good then every one wants a box.” He held that the great danger was that the critic should lack pluck to protest against a revolting play on a well-advertised stage, and follow the lead of the applause of programme-sellers in a fashionable house; while making up for it by hunting for faults with a microscope in the case of a young author or manager. The critic should tell not so much how the play affected him as how it affected the audience. Critics were always useful when they were interesting, but not when they tried to instruct.
E. F. Spence, as a critic himself, pointed out that some critics had no words that were not red and yellow, while others wrote entirely in grey. When one man said a play was “not half bad,” and another described it as an “unparalleled masterpiece,” they meant often the same thing. And the readers of each, accustomed to their tone and style, knew what to expect from their words.
Mrs. Kendal thought “criticism would be better after three weeks, when the actor had learnt to know his points.” All agreed that the critics of to-day are scrupulously conscientious.
G. Bernard Shaw wrote: “A dramatic criticism is a work of literary art, useful only to the people who enjoy reading dramatic criticisms, and generally more or less hurtful to everybody else concerned.”
Clement Shorter’s opinion was: “I do not in the least believe in the utility of dramatic critics. The whole sincerity of the game has been spoilt. The hand of the dramatic critic is stayed because the dramatist and the important actor have a wide influence with the proprietors of newspapers.”
An anonymous manager wrote: “The few independent critics are of great use, but the critic who turns his attention to play-writing should not be allowed to criticise, for he is never fair to any author’s work except his own. It has paid managers to accept plays from critics even if they don’t produce them.”
Apart from criticism the theatre is in daily touch with the papers, for one of the greatest expenses in connection with a theatre is the “Press Bill.” From four to six thousand pounds a year is paid regularly for newspaper advertising, just for those advertisements that appear “under the clock,” and in those columns announcing plays, players, and hours.
The distribution of “paper” is a curious custom, some managers prefer to fill their houses by such means, others disdain the practice, especially the Kendals, who are as adverse to “free passes” as they are to dress rehearsals, and who always insist on paying for their own tickets to see their friends act. An empty house is nevertheless dispiriting—dispiriting to the audience and dispiriting to the performers—so a little paper judiciously used may often bolster up a play in momentary danger of collapse.
“Stalls full.” “Dress Circle full.” “House full.” Such notices are often put outside the playhouse during a performance, and in London they generally mean what they say. In the provinces, however, a gentleman arrived at an hotel, and after dinner went off to the theatre as he had no club. He saw the placards, but boldly marched up to the box office in the hope that perchance he might obtain an odd seat somewhere.
“A stall, please.”
“Yes, sir, which row?” When he got inside he found the place half empty, in spite of the legend before the doors.
A well-known singer wired for a box in London one night—it being an understood thing that professional people may have seats free if they are not already sold. She prepaid the answer to the telegram as usual. It ran:
“So sorry, no boxes left to-night.”
The next day she met a friend at luncheon who had been to that particular theatre the night before. He remarked:
“It was a most depressing performance: the house was half empty, and the actors dull in consequence.”
Then the singer told her story, and both had a good laugh over the telegram.
There are certain bad weeks which appear with strict regularity in the theatrical world. Bank-holiday time means empty houses in the West End. Just before Easter or Christmas are always “off” nights. Royal mourning reduces the takings, and one night’s London fog half empties the house. Lent does not make anything like so great a difference as formerly; indeed, in some theatres its advent is hardly noticed at all. Saturday always yields the biggest house. Whether this is because Sunday being a day of rest people need not get up so early, or because Saturday is pay day, or because it is either a half or whole holiday, no one knows; but it always produces the largest takings of the week, just as Monday is invariably the fattest booking-day. This may possibly be due to Sunday callers discussing the best performances, and recommending their friends to go to this or that piece. The good booking of Monday is more often than not followed by a bad house on Monday night, which is the “off” day of the week. A play will run successfully for weeks, suddenly Black Monday arrives, and at once down, down, down goes the sale, until the play is taken off; no one can tell why it declines any more than they can predict the success or failure of a play until after its first two or three performances.
It seems to be generally imagined that Royalty do not pay for their seats; but this is a mistake. One fine day a message comes from one of the ticket agents to the theatres to say that the King and Queen, or Prince and Princess of Wales, will go to that theatre on a certain night. Generally a couple of days’ notice is given. Consternation often ensues, for it sometimes happens the Royal box has been sold. The purchaser has to be called upon to explain that by Royal command his box is required for the night in question, and will he graciously take it some other evening instead? or he is offered other seats. People are generally charming about the matter and ready to meet the manager at once—but sometimes there are difficulties. Wild pursuit of the owner of the box occasionally occurs; indeed, he sometimes has not been traceable at all, and has even arrived at the theatre, only to be told the situation.
The box is duly paid for by the library; Royalty never accept their seats, and are most punctilious about paying for them.
At the back of the Royal box there is generally a retiring-room, where the gentlemen smoke, and sometimes coffee is served. The King, who is so noted for his cordiality, usually sends for the leading actor and actress during an entr’acte, and chats with them for a few minutes in the ante-room; but the Queen rarely leaves her seat. After the death of Queen Victoria it was a long time, a year in fact, before the King went to the theatre at all. After that he visited most of the chief houses in quick succession, but he did not send for the players for at least six months, not, in fact, till the Royal mourning was at an end. His Majesty is probably the warmest and most frequent supporter of the drama in Britain, as the Queen is of the opera.
In olden days Royal visits were treated with much ceremony. Cyril Maude in his excellent book on the Haymarket Theatre tells how old Buckstone was a great favourite with Queen Victoria. The Royal entrance in those days was through the door of “Bucky’s” house which adjoined the back of the theatre in Suffolk Street. At the street door the manager waited whenever the Royal box had been commanded. In either hand he carried a massive silver candlestick, and, walking backwards, escorted the Royal party with monstrous pomp to their seats. As soon as he had shown them to their box, however, the amiable comedian had to hurry off to take his place upon the stage.
Nothing of that kind is done nowadays, although the manager generally goes to meet them; but if the manager be the chief actor too, he sends his stage manager just to see that everything is in order—Royal folk like to come and go as unostentatiously as possible.
Many theatres have a private door for Royalty to enter by. As a rule they are punctual, and if not the curtain gives them a few minutes’ grace before rising. If they are not in their seats within ten minutes, the play begins, and they just slip quietly into their places.
At the Opera on gala nights it is different—the play waits. When they enter, the band strikes up “God Save the King,” and every one stands up. It is a very interesting sight to see the huge mass of humanity at Covent Garden rise together, and see them all stand during the first verse in respect to Royalty. The Queen on ordinary occasions occupies the Royal box on the right facing the stage on the grand tier, and three back from the stage itself, so there are tiers of boxes above and one below; the Queen sits in the corner the farthest from the stage; the King often joins her during the performance, otherwise he sits in the omnibus box below with his men friends. So devoted is Her Majesty to music she sometimes spends three evenings a week at the Opera. She often has a book of the score before her, and follows the music with the greatest interest.
On ordinary operatic nights the Queen dresses very quietly; generally her bodice is cut square back and front with elbow-sleeves, and not off the shoulders as it is at Court. More often than not she wears black with a bunch of pink malmaisons—of course the usual heavy collar composed of many rows of pearls is worn, and generally some hanging chains of pearls. No tiara, but diamond wings or hair combs of that description. In fact, at the Opera our Queen is one of the least conspicuously dressed among the many duchesses and millionairesses who don tiaras and gorgeous gowns. No Opera-house in the world contains so many beautiful women and jewels as may nightly be seen in London.
In front is a number above each box, and at the back of the box is the duplicate number with the name of the person to whom it belongs. They are hired for a season, and cost seven and a half to eight guineas a night on the grand tier. These boxes hold four people, and are usually let for ten or twelve weeks: generally for two nights a weeks to each set of people. Thus the total cost of one of the best boxes for the season is, roughly speaking, from one hundred and fifty, to one hundred and eighty guineas for two nights a week.
At the theatre Queen Alexandra dresses even more simply than at the opera. In winter her gown is often filled in with lace to the neck. She is always a quiet, but a perfect dresser. Never in the fashion, yet always of the fashion, she avoids all exaggerations, moderates her skirts and her sleeves, and yet has just enough of the dernier cri about them to make them up to date. She probably never wore a big picture hat in her life, and prefers a small bonnet with strings, to a toque.
Royalty thoroughly enjoy themselves at the play. They laugh and chat between the acts, and no one applauds more enthusiastically than King Edward VII. and his beautiful Queen. They use their opera-glasses freely, nod to their friends, and thoroughly enter into the spirit of the evening’s entertainment.
Novelist—Dramatist—Scene-painter—An Amateur Scenic Artist—Weedon Grossmith to the Rescue—Mrs. Tree’s Children—Mr. Grossmith’s Start on the Stage—A Romantic Marriage—How a Scene is built up—English and American Theatres Compared—Choosing a Play—Theatrical Syndicate—Three Hundred and Fifteen Plays at the Haymarket.
A NOVELIST describes the surroundings of his story. He paints in words, houses, gardens, dresses, anything and everything to heighten the picture and show up his characters in a suitable frame.
The dramatist cannot do this verbally; but he does it in fact. He definitely decides the style of scene necessary for each act, and draws out elaborate plans to achieve that end. It is the author who interviews the scene-painter, talks matters over with the costume-artist, the dressmaker, and the upholsterer. It is the author who generally chooses the cretonnes and the wall-papers—that is to say, the more important authors invariably do. Mr. Pinero, Mr. W. S. Gilbert, and Captain Robert Marshall design their own scenes to the minutest detail, but then all three of them are capable artists and draughtsmen themselves.
Scene-painting seems easy until one knows something about its difficulties. To speak of a small personal experience—when we got up those theatricals in Harley Street, mentioned in a previous chapter, my father told me I must paint the scenery, to which I gaily agreed. Having an oil painting on exhibition at the Women Artists’, I felt I could paint scenery without any difficulty.
First of all I bought yards and yards of thick canvas, a sort of sacking. It refused to be joined together by machine, and broke endless needles when the seams were sewn by hand. It appeared to me at the time as if oakum-picking could not blister fingers more severely. After all my trouble, when finished and stretched along a wall in the store-room in the basement, with the sky part doubled over the ceiling (as the little room was not high enough to manage it otherwise), the surface was so rough that paint refused to lie upon it.
I had purchased endless packets of blue and chrome, vermilion and sienna, umber and sap-green; but somehow the result was awful, and the only promising thing was the design in black chalk made from a sketch taken on Hampstead Heath. Sticks of charcoal broke and refused to draw; but common black chalk at last succeeded. I struggled bravely, but the paint resolutely refused to adhere to the canvas, and stuck instead to every part of my person.
Photo by Hall, New York.
MR. WEEDON GROSSMITH.
At last some wiseacre suggested whitewashing the canvas, and, after sundry boilings of smelly size, the coachman and I made pails of whitewash and proceeded to get a groundwork. Alas! the brushes when full of the mixture proved too heavy for me to lift, and the unfortunate coachman had to do most of that monotonous field of white.
So far so good. Now came “the part,” as the gallant jehu was pleased to call it.
It took a long time to get into the way of painting it at all. The window had to be shut, the solitary gas-jet lighted, endless lamps unearthed to give more illumination while I struggled with smelling pots.
Oh, the mess! The floor was bespattered, and the paint being mixed with size, those spots remain as indelible as Rizzio’s blood at Holyrood. Then the paint-smeared sky—my sky—left marks on the ceiling—my father’s ceiling—and my own dress was spoilt. Then up rose Mother in indignation, and promptly produced an old white garment—which shall be nameless, although it was decorated with little frills—and this I donned as a sort of overall. With arms aching from heavy brushes, and feet tired from standing on a ladder, with a nose well daubed with yellow paint, on, on I worked.
In the midst of my labours “Mr. Grossmith” was suddenly announced, and there below me stood Weedon Grossmith convulsed with laughter. At that time he was an artist and had pictures “on the line” at the Royal Academy. His studio was a few doors from us in Harley Street.
“Don’t laugh, you horrid man,” I exclaimed; “just come and help.”
He took a little gentle persuading, but finally gave in, and being provided with another white garment he began to assist, and he and I finally finished that wondrous scene-painting together.
After a long vista of years Mrs. Beerbohm Tree—who, it will be remembered, also acted with us in Harley Street—and Weedon Grossmith—who helped me paint the scenery for our little performance—were playing the two leading parts together at Drury Lane in Cecil Raleigh’s Flood Tide.
The two little daughters of the Trees, aged six and eight respectively, were taken by their father one afternoon to see their mother play at the Lane. They sat with him in a box, and enjoyed the performance immensely.
“Well, do you like it better than Richard II.?” asked Tree.
There was a pause. Each small maiden looked at the other, ere replying:
“It isn’t quite the same, but we like it just as much.”
When they reached home they were asked by a friend which of the two plays they really liked best.
“Oh, mother’s,” for naturally the melodrama had appealed to their juvenile minds, “but we did not like to tell father so, because we thought it might hurt his feelings.”
The part that delighted them most at Drury Lane was the descent of the rain, that wonderful rain which had caused so much excitement, and which was composed of four tons of rice and spangles thrown from above, and verily gave the effect of a shower of water.
But to return to Weedon Grossmith. Whether he found art didn’t pay at the studio in Harley Street, or whether he was asked to paint more ugly old ladies than pretty young ones, I do not know; but he gave up the house, and went off to America for a trip. So he said at the time, but the trip meant that he had accepted an engagement on the stage. He made an instantaneous hit. When he returned to England, sure of his position, as he thought, he found instead that he had a very rough time of it, and it was not until he played with Sir Henry Irving in Robert Macaire that he made a London success. Later he “struck oil” in Arthur Law’s play, The New Boy under his own management.
Round the The New Boy circled a romance. Miss May Palfrey, who had been at school with me, was the daughter of an eminent physician who formerly lived in Brook Street. She had gone upon the stage after her father’s death, and was engaged to play the girl’s part. The “engagement” begun in the theatre ended, as in the case of Forbes Robertson, in matrimony, and the day after The New Boy went out, the new girl entered Weedon Grossmith’s home as his wife.
Success has followed success, and they now live in a delightful house in Bedford Square, surrounded by quaint old furniture, Adams’ mantelpieces, overmantels, and all the artistic things the actor appreciates. A dear little girl adds brightness to the home life of Mr. and Mrs. Weedon Grossmith.
Artist, author, actor, manager, are all terms that may be applied to Weedon Grossmith, but might not scene-painter be added after his invaluable aid in the Harley Street store-room with paints and size?
So much for the amateur side of the business: now for the real.
The first thing a scenic artist does is to make a complete sketch of a scene. This, when approved, he has “built up” as a little model, a miniature theatre, in fact, such as children love to play with. It is usually about three feet square, exactly like a box, and every part is designed to scale with a perfection of detail rarely observed outside an architect’s office.
One of the most historic painting-rooms was that of Sir Henry Irving at the Lyceum, for there some of the most elaborate stage settings ever produced were constructed, inspired by the able hand of Mr. Hawes Craven.
A scene-painter’s workshop is a large affair. It is very high, and below the floor is another chamber equally lofty, for the “flats,” or large canvases, have to be screwed up or down for the artist to be able to get at his work. They cannot be rolled wet, so the entire “flat” has to ascend or descend at will.
To make the matter clear, a scene on the stage, such as a house or a bridge, is known as a “carpenter’s scene.” The large canvases at the back are called “flats,” or “painters’ cloths.” “Wings” are unknown to most people, but really mean the side-pieces of the scene which protrude on the stage. The “borders” are the bits of sky or ceiling which hang suspended from above, and a “valarium” is a whole roof as used in classical productions.
A scene-painter’s palette is a strange affair; it is like a large wooden tray fixed to a table, and that table is on wheels; along one side of the tray are divisions like stalls in a stable, each division containing the different coloured paints, while in front is a flat piece on which the powders can be mixed. The thing that strikes one most is the amount of exercise the scenic artist takes. He is constantly stepping back to look at what he has done, for he copies on a large scale the minute sketch he has previously worked out in detail. Assistants generally begin the work and lay the paint on; but all the finishing touches are done by the master, who superintends the whole thing being properly worked out from his model.
The most elaborate scenery in the world is to be found in London, and Sir Henry Irving, as mentioned before, was the first to study detail and effect so closely. Even in America, where many things are so extravagant, the stage settings are quite poor compared with those of London.
Theatres in England and America differ in many ways. The only thing I found cheaper in the United States than at home was a theatre stall, which in New York cost eight shillings instead of ten and sixpence. They are also ahead of us inasmuch as they book their cheaper seats, which must be an enormous advantage to those unfortunate people who can always be seen—especially on first nights—wet or fine, hot or cold, standing in rows outside a London pit door.
There is no comparison between the gaiety of the scene of a London theatre and that of New York. Long may our present style last. In London every man wears evening dress in the boxes, stalls, and generally in the dress circle, and practically every woman is in evening costume, at all events without her hat. Those who do not care to dress, wisely go to the cheaper seats. This is not so across the Atlantic. It is quite the exception for the male sex to wear dress clothes; they even accompany ladies to the stalls in tweeds, probably the same tweeds they have worn all day at their office “down town,” and it is not the fashion for women to wear evening dress either. What we should call a garden-party gown is de rigueur, although a lace neck and sleeves are gradually creeping into fashion. Little toques are much worn, but if the hat be big, it is at once taken off and disposed of in the owner’s lap. Being an American she is accustomed to nursing her hat by the hour, and does not seem to mind the extra discomfort, in spite of fan, opera-glass, and other etceteras.
The result of all this is that the auditorium is in no way so smart as that of a London theatre. The origin of the simplicity of costume in the States of course lies in the fact that fewer people in proportion have private carriages, cabs are a prohibitive price, and every one travels in a five cents (2?d.) car. The car system is wonderful, if a little agitating at first to a stranger, as the numbers of the streets—for they rarely have names in New York—are not always so distinctly marked as they might be. It is far more comfortable, however, to get into one’s carriage, a hansom, or even a dear old ramshackle shilling “growler” at one’s own door, than to have to walk to the nearest car “stop” and find a succession of electric trams full when you arrive there, especially if the night happens to be wet. The journey is cheap enough when one does get inside, but payment of five cents does not necessarily ensure a seat, so the greater part of one’s life in New York is spent hanging on to the strap of a street car.
“Look lively,” shouts the conductor, almost before one has time to look at all, and either life has to be risked, or the traveller gets left behind altogether.
Not only travelling in cars, but many things in the States cost twopence halfpenny. It seems a sort of tariff, that five cents, or nickle, as it is called. One has to pay five cents for a morning or evening paper, five cents to get one’s boots blacked, and even in the hotels they only allow a darkie to perform that operation as a sort of favour.
It is a universal custom in the States to eat candies during a performance at the theatre, but when do Americans refrain from eating candies—one dare not say “chewing-gum,” for we are told that no self-respecting American ever chews gum nowadays!
The theatres I visited in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, New Orleans, and even in far-away San Antonio, Texas, were all comfortable, well warmed, well ventilated, and excellently managed, but the audience were certainly not so smart as our own, not even at the Opera House at New York, where the performers are the same as in London, and the whole thing excellently done, and where it is the fashion to wear evening dress in the boxes. Even there one misses the beauty of our aristocracy, and the glitter of their tiaras.
Choosing a play is no easy matter. Hundreds of things have to be considered. Will it please the public? Will it suit the company? If Miss So-and-So be on a yearly engagement and there is no part for her, can the theatre afford out of the weekly profits of the house to pay her a large salary merely as an understudy? What will the piece cost to mount? What will the dramatist expect to be paid? This latter amount varies as greatly as the royalties paid to authors on books.
As nearly every manager has a literary adviser behind his back, so almost every actor-manager has a syndicate in the background. Theatrical syndicates are strange institutions. They have only come into vogue since 1880, and are taken up by commercial gentlemen as a speculation. When gambling ceases to attract on the Stock Exchange, the theatre is an exciting outlet.
The actor-manager consequently is not the “sole lessee” in the sense of being the only responsible person. He generally has two or three backers, men possessed of large incomes who are glad to risk a few thousand pounds for the pleasure of a stall on a first night, or an occasional theatrical supper. Sometimes the syndicate does extremely well: at others ill; but that does not matter—the rich man has had his fun, the actor his work, the critic his sneer, and so the matter ends.
The actor-manager draws his salary like any other member of the company; but should the play prove a success his profits vary according to arrangement.
If, on the other hand, the venture turn out a failure, in the case of the few legitimate actor-managers—if one may use the term—he loses all the outgoing expenses. Few men can stand that. Ten thousand pounds have been lost through a bad first night, for although some condemned plays have worked their way to success, or, at least, paid their expenses, that is the exception and by no means the rule.
Many affirm there should be no actor-managers: the responsibility is too great; but then no man is sure of getting the part he likes unless he manages to secure it for himself.
Every well-known manager receives two or three hundred plays per annum. Cyril Maude told me that three hundred and fifteen dramas were left at the Haymarket Theatre in 1903, and that he and Frederick Harrison had actually read, or anyway looked through, every one of them. They enter each in a book, and put comments against them.
“The good writing is Harrison’s,” he remarked, “and the bad scribble mine”; but that was so like Mr. Maude’s modesty.
After that it can hardly be said there is any lack of ambition in England to write for the stage. The extraordinary thing is that only about three per cent. of these comedies, tragedies, burlesques, or farces are worth even a second thought. Many are written without the smallest conception of the requirements of the theatre, while some are indescribably bad, not worth the paper and ink wasted on their production.
It may readily be understood that every manager cannot himself read all the MSS. sent him for consideration, neither is the actor-manager able to see himself neatly fitted by the parts written “especially for him.” Under these circumstances it has become necessary of late years at some theatres to employ a literary adviser, as mentioned on the former page. All publishing-houses have their literary advisers, and woe betide the man who condemns a book which afterwards achieves a great success, or accepts one that proves a dismal failure! So likewise the play reader.
Baskets full of dramatic efforts are emptied by degrees, and the few promising productions they contain are duly handed over to the manager for his final opinion.
In spite of the enormous number of plays submitted yearly, every manager complains of the dearth of suitable ones.
A Star’s Dressing-room—Long Flights of Stairs—Miss Ward at the Haymarket—A Wimple—An Awkward Predicament—How an Actress Dresses—Herbert Waring—An Actress’s Dressing-table—A Girl’s Photographs of Herself—A Grease-paint Box—Eyelashes—White Hands—Mrs. Langtry’s Dressing-room—Clara Morris on Make-up—Mrs. Tree as Author—“Resting”—Mary Anderson on the Stage—An Author’s Opinion—Actors in Society.
AFTER ascending long flights of stone stairs, traversing dreary passages with whitewashed walls, and doors on either side marked one, two, or three, we tap for admission to a dressing-room.
Where is the fairy pathway? where the beauty?—ah! where? That long white corridor resembles some passage in a prison, and the little chambers leading off it are not very different in appearance from well-kept convict cells, yet this is the home of our actors or actresses for many hours each day.
In some country theatres the dressing-rooms are still disgraceful, and the sanitary arrangements worse.
Even in London it is only the “stars” who have an apartment to themselves. At such an excellently conducted theatre as the Haymarket, Miss Winifred Emery has to mount long flights between every act. Suppose she has to change her costume four times in the play, she must ascend those stone stairs five times in the course of each evening, or, in other words, walk up two hundred and fifty steps in addition to the fatigue of acting and the worry of quick changing, while on matinée days this exertion is doubled. She is a leading lady; she has a charming little room when she reaches it, and the excitement, the applause, and the pay of a striking part to cheer her—but think of the sufferers who have the stairs without the redeeming features. An actress once told me she walked, or ran, up eight hundred steps every night during her performance.
While speaking of dressing-rooms I recall a visit I paid to Miss Geneviève Ward at the Haymarket during the run of Caste (1902). It was a matinée, and, wanting to ask that delightful woman and great actress a question, I ventured to the stage door and sent up my card.
“Miss Ward is on the stage; but I will give it to her when she comes off in four minutes,” said the stage-door-keeper.
Accordingly I waited near his room.
The allotted time went by—it is known in a theatre exactly how long each scene will take—and at the expiration of the four minutes Miss Ward’s dresser came to bid me follow her up to the lady’s room. The dresser was a nice, complacent-looking woman, l’age ordinaire, as the French would say, arrayed in a black dress and big white apron.
Miss Ward had ascended before us, and was already seated on her little sofa.
“Delighted to see you, my dear,” she exclaimed. “I have three-quarters of an hour’s wait, so I hope you will stay to cheer me up.”
How lovely she looked. Her own white hair was covered by a still whiter front wig, while added colour had given youth to her face, and the darkened eyelids made those wondrous grey orbs of hers even more striking.
“Why, you look about thirty-five,” I exclaimed, “and a veritable grande dame!”
“It is all the wimple,” she said.
“And what may that be?”
“Why, this little velvet string arrangement from my bonnet, with the bow under my chin; when you get old, my dear, you must wear a wimple too; it holds back those double, treble, a nd quadruple chins that are so annoying, and restores youth—me voilà.”
Miss Ward was first initiated into the mysteries and joys of a wimple when about to play in Becket at the Lyceum.
While we chatted she took up her knitting—being as untiring in that line as Mrs. Kendal. Miss Ward was busy making bonnets for hospital children, and during all those long hours she waited in her dressing-room, this indefatigable woman knitted for the poor. After about half an hour her dresser returned and said:
“It is time for you to dress, madame.”
“Shall I leave?” I asked.
“Certainly not—there is plenty of room for us all;” and in a moment the knitting was put aside, and her elaborate blue silk garment taken off and hung on a peg between white sheets. Rapidly Miss Ward transformed herself into a sorrowing mother—a black skirt, a long black coat and bonnet were placed in readiness, when lo, the dresser, having turned everything over, exclaimed:
“I cannot see your black bodice.”
Miss Ward looked perturbed.
“I do believe I have left it at home—I went back in it last night, if you remember, because I was lazy; and forgot all about it. Never mind, no one will see the bodice is missing when I put on my cloak, if I fasten it tight up, and I must just melt inside its folds.”
But when the cloak was fastened there still appeared a decidedly décolleté neck. Time was pressing, the “call boy” might arrive at any moment. Miss Ward seized a black silk stocking, which she twirled round her neck, secured it with a jet brooch, powdered her face to make it look more doleful, and was ready in her garb of woe ere the boy knocked.
Then we went down together.
These theatrical dressers become wonderfully expert. I have seen an actress come off the stage after a big scene quite exhausted, and yet only have a few minutes before the next act. She stood in the middle of her dressing-room while we talked, and at once her attendant set to work. The great lady remained like a block. Quickly the dresser undid her neck-band, and unhooked the bodice after removing the lace, took away the folded waistband, slipped off the skirt, and in a twinkling the long ball dress was over the actress’s head and being fastened behind. Her arms were slipped into the low bodice, and while she arranged the jewels or her corsage the dresser was doing her up at the back. Down sat the actress in a chair placed for her, and while she rouged more strongly to suit the gaiety of the scene, the dresser was putting feathers and ornaments into her hair, pinning a couple of little curls to her wig to hang down her neck, and just as they both finished this rapid transformation the call boy rapped.
Off went my friend.
“I shall be back in seven minutes,” she exclaimed, “so do wait, as I have fourteen minutes’ pause then.”
The dresser caught up her train and her cloak, and followed the great lady to the wings, where I saw her arranging the actress’s dress before she went on, and waiting to slip on the cloak and gloves which she was supposed in the play to come off and fetch.
A good dresser is a treasure, and that is why most people prefer their own to those provided at the theatres.
Apropos of knowing exactly how long an actor is on the stage, I may mention that Herbert Waring once invited me to tea in his dressing-room.
“At what time?” I naturally asked.
“I’ll inquire from my dresser,” was his reply. “I really don’t know when I have my longest ‘wait.’”
Accordingly a telegram arrived next day, which said “tea 4.25,” so at 4.25 I presented myself at the stage door, where Mr. Waring’s man was waiting to receive me.
Others joined us. A tin tray was spread with a clean towel; as usual, the theatrical china did not match, and the spoons and the seats were insufficient, but the tea and cakes were delicious, and the rough-and-tumble means of serving them in a star’s dressing-room only in keeping with the usual arrangements of austere simplicity behind the scenes.
“What was the most amusing thing that ever happened to you on the stage?”
Mr. Waring looked perplexed.
“I haven’t the slightest idea. Nothing amusing ever happens; it is the same routine day, alas, after day, the same dressing, undressing, acting, finishing, going gleefully home, and returning next day to begin exactly the same thing over again. I must be a very dull dog, but I cannot ferret out anything ‘amusing’ from the back annals of a long theatrical career,” and up he jumped to slip on his powdered wig—which he had removed to cool his head—and away he ran to entertain his audience.
Mr. Waring’s amusing experiences, or lack of them, seem very usual in theatrical life. What a delightful man he is, and what a gentleman in all his dealings. He is always loved by the companies with whom he acts, and never makes a failure with his parts.
The most important thing in an actress’s dressing-room is her table—verily a curious sight. It is generally very large, more often than not it is composed of plain deal, daintily dressed up in muslin flouncings over pink or blue calico. There seems to be a particular fashion in this line, probably because the muslin frills can go to the wash—a necessary proviso for anything connected with the theatre. In the middle usually reposes a large looking-glass, and as one particular table is in my mind’s eye, I will describe it, as it is typical of many, and belonged to a beautiful comic-opera actress.
The looking-glass was ornamented with little muslin frills and tucks, tied with dainty satin bows, on to which were pinned a series of the actress’s own photographs. These cabinet portraits formed a perfect garniture, they represented the lady in every conceivable part she had ever played, and were tied together with tiny scarlet ribbons, the foot of one being fixed to the head of the next. The large mirror over the fireplace—for she was a star and had a fireplace—was similarly ornamented, so was the cheval glass, and above the chimneypiece was a complete screen composed of another set of her own photographs from another piece. These had to stand up, so the little red bows which fixed them went from side to side, by which means they stood along the board zig-zag fashion, like a miniature screen, without tumbling down. She was not in the least egotistical, it was simply the craze for photographs, which all theatrical folk seem to have, carried a little further than usual, and in her own dressing-room she essayed to have her own photographs galore. As she was very pretty and many of the costumes charming, she showed her good taste.
In front of the looking-glass was a large pincushion stuffed with a multiplication of pins of every shape and size, endless hat-pins, safety-pins, and little brooches, in fact, a supply sufficient to pin everything on to her person that exigency might require. There were large pots of powder, flat tablets of rouge, hares’ feet, for putting on the rouge, fine black pencils for darkening eyes, blue chalk pencils for lining the lids, wonderful cherry-red arrangements for painting Cupid’s lips, for even people with large mouths can by deft artistic treatment be made to appear to have small ones. There were bottles of white liquid for hands and neck, because it is more important, of course, to paint the hands than the face, otherwise they are apt to look appallingly red or dirty behind the footlights.
There were two barber’s blocks on which stood the wigs for the respective acts, since it is much quicker and less trouble to put on a wig than adjust one’s hair, and probably no one, except Mrs. Kendal, has ever gone through an entire theatrical career and only twice donned a wig.
Of course there were endless powders as well as perfumes of every sort and kind. There were hand-mirrors and three-fold mirrors, and electric light that could be moved about, for it is important to look well from all sides when trotting about the stage.
Theatrical dressing-rooms are so small that the dressing-table is their chief feature, and if there be room for a sofa or arm-chair, they are accounted luxurious.
All the costumes, as a rule, are hung against the wall, which is first covered with a calico sheet, then each dress is hung on its own peg, over which other calico sheets fall. This does not crush them, keeps all clean, and avoids creases; nevertheless, the most brilliant theatrical costumes look like a series of melancholy ghosts when not in use.
One of the actress’s most important possessions is the grease paint-box, which in tin, separated into compartments for paints, costs about ten and sixpence. Into these little compartments she puts vaseline, coco butter, Nuceline, and Massine for cleaning the skin. For the face has to be washed, so to speak, with grease, preparatory to being made up.
A fair woman first lays on a layer of grease paint of a cream ground. On to that she puts light carmine on her cheeks, and follows the lines of her own colour as much as she can. Some people have colour high up on the cheek-bones, others low down, and it is as well to follow this natural tint if possible.
She blue-pencils round her eyes to enhance their size, gets the blue well into the corners and down a little at the outside edges to enlarge those orbs. Then she powders her face all over to get rid of that look of grease which is so distressing, and soften down the general make-up, and then proceeds to darken her eyelashes and eyebrows.
One little actress told me she always wound a piece of cotton round a hairpin, on to which she put a blob of cosmetic, heated it in the gas or candle, and when it was melted, blinked her eyelashes up and down upon it so that they might take on the black without getting it in hard lumps, but as a level surface. She put a little red blob in the corner of her eyes to give brightness, and a red line in the nostrils to do away with the black cavern-like appearance caused by the strong lights of the stage.
“I never make up the lips full size,” she said, “or else they look enormous from the front. I put on very bright little ‘Cupid’s bow’ middles, which gives all the effect that is necessary. After I have powdered my face and practically finished it, I just dust on a little dry rouge with a hare’s foot to get the exact amount of colour I wish for each act. Grease paints are absolutely necessary to get the make-up to stay on one’s face, but they have to be well powdered down or they will wear greasy.”
“I always think the hands are so important,” I remarked.
“Oh yes,” she replied. “Of course, for common parts, such as servants, one leaves one’s hands to look red, for the footlights always make them look a dirty red, but for aristocratic ladies we have to whiten our hands, arms, and neck, and I make a mixture of my own of glycerine and chalk, because it is so much cheaper than buying it ready-made.
“Sometimes it takes me an hour to make up my face. You see, a large nose can be modified; and a small nose can be made bigger by rouging it up the sides and leaving a strong white line down the middle. It is wonderful how one can alter one’s face with paint, though I think it is better to make up too little than too much.”
Thus it will be seen an hour is quite a usual length of time for an actress to sit in front of her dressing-table preparatory to the performance.
Mrs. Langtry’s dressing-room at the Imperial Theatre may be mentioned. An enormous mirror is fastened against one wall, and round it, in the shape of a Norman arch, are three rows of electric lights giving different colour effects. The plain glass is to dress by in the ordinary way; pink tones give sunset and evening effect; while the third is a curious smoked arrangement to simulate moonlight or dawn. Dresses can be chosen and the face painted accordingly to suit the stage colouring of the scene. The lights turn on above, below, or at the sides, so the effect can be studied from every point of view.
While on the subject of making up, a piece of advice from the great actor Jefferson to the wonderful American actress, Clara Morris, is of interest:
“Be guided as far as possible by Nature. When you make up your face, you get powder on your eyelashes. Nature made them dark, so you are free to touch the lashes themselves with ink or pomade, but you should not paint a great band about your eye, with a long line added at the corner to rob it of expression. And now as to the beauty this lining is supposed to bring, some night when you have time I want you to try a little experiment. Make up your face carefully, darken your brows and the lashes of one eye; as to the other eye, you must load the lashes with black pomade, then draw a black line beneath the eye, and a broad line on its upper lid, and a final line out from the corner. The result will be an added lustre to the make-up eye and a seeming gain in brilliancy; but now, watching your reflection all the time, move slowly backwards from the glass, and an odd thing will happen; that made-up eye will gradually grow smaller and will gradually look like a black hole, absolutely without expression.”
Clara Morris followed Jefferson’s counsel and never blued or blacked her eyes again.
I once paid an interesting visit to a dressing-room: it came about in this wise.
In 1898 the jubilee of Queen’s College, in Harley Street, was celebrated. It was founded fifty years previously as the first college open to women. A booklet in commemoration of the event was got up, and many old girls were persuaded to relate their experiences. Among them were Miss Sophia Jex Blake, M.D., Miss Dorothea Beale (of Cheltenham), Miss Adeline Sargent, the novelist, Miss Louisa Twining, whose work on pauperism and workhouses is well known, Miss Mary Wardell, the founder of the Convalescent Home, etc. Mrs. Tree agreed to write an article on the stage as a profession for women. At the last moment, when all the other contributions had gone to press, hers was not amongst them. It was a matinée day, and as editor I went down to Her Majesty’s, and bearded the delinquent in her dressing-room. She was nearly ready for the performance, in the midst of her profession, so to speak; but realising the necessity of doing the work at once or not at all, she seized some half-sheets of paper, and between her appearances on the stage jotted down an excellent article. It was clever, to the point, and full of learning. It appeared a few days later, and some critic was unkind enough to say “her husband or some other man had written it for her.” I refute the charge; for I myself saw it hastily sketched in with a pencil at odd moments on odd scraps of paper.
Mrs. Tree is a woman who would have succeeded in many walks of life, for she is enthusiastic and thorough, a combination which triumphantly surmounts difficulties. She has a strong personality. In the old Queen’s College days she used to wear long ?sthetic gowns and hair cut short. Bunches of flowers generally adorned her waist, offerings from admiring young students, whom she guided through the intricacies of Latin or mathematics.
The Beerbohm Trees have a charming old-fashioned house at Chiswick, and three daughters of various and diverse ages, for the eldest is grown up while the youngest is quite small. Both parents are devoted to reading and fond of society, but their life is one long rush. Books from authors line their shelves, etchings and sketches from artists cover their walls; both have great taste with a keen appreciation of genius. Few people realise what an unusually clever couple the Beerbohm Trees are, or how versatile are their talents. They fly backwards and forwards to the theatre in motor-cars, and pretend they like it in spite of midnight wind and rain.
Theatrical work means too much work or none. It is a great strain to play eight times a week, to dress eight times at each performance, as in a Drury Lane drama, and to rehearse a new play or give a matinée performance as well, and yet this has to be done when the work is there, for what one refuses, dozens, aye dozens, are waiting eagerly to take. Far more actors and actresses are “resting” every evening than are employed in theatres, poor souls.
“Resting!” That word is a nightmare to men and women on the stage. It means dismissal, it means weary waiting—often actual want—yet it is called “resting.” It spells days of unrest—days of dreary anxiety and longing, days when the unfortunate actor is too proud to beg for work, too proud even to own temporary defeat—which nevertheless is there.
A long run of luck, the enjoyment of many months, perhaps years, when all looked bright and sunny, when money was plentiful and success seemed assured, suddenly stops. There is no suitable part available, new blood is wanted in the theatre, and the older hands must go. Then comes that cruelly enforced “rest,” and, alas! more often than not, nothing has been laid by for the rainy day, when ￡10 a week ceases even to reach 10s. Expenses cannot easily be curtailed. Home and family are there, the actor hopes every week for new work, he refuses to retrench, but lives on that miserable farce “keeping up appearances,” which, although sometimes good policy, frequently spells ruin in the end.
Photo by Bassano, 25, Old Bond Street, W.
MRS. BEERBOHM TREE.
Some of the best actors and actresses of the day are forced into this unfortunate position; indeed, they suffer more than the smaller fry—for each theatre requires only one or two stars in its firmament. Theatrical folk are sometimes inclined to be foolish and refuse to play a small part for small pay, because they think it beneath their dignity, so they prefer to starve on their mistaken grandeur, which is, alas! nothing more nor less than unhappy pride.
Clara Morris, one of America’s best-known actresses, shows the possible horrors, almost starvation, of an actress’s early years in her delightful volume, Life on the Stage.
She nearly died from want of food, and after years and years of work all over the States made her first appearance as “leading lady” at Daly’s Theatre in New York at a salary of thirty-five dollars a week, starting with only two dollars (eight shillings) in her pocket.
Her first triumph she discussed with her mother and her dog over a supper of bread and cheese. She had attained success—but even then it was months and months, almost years, before she earned enough money either to live in comfort or be warmly clothed.
The beautiful Mary Anderson, in her introduction to the volume, says:
“I trust this work will help to stem the tide of girls who so blindly rush into a profession of which they are ignorant, for which they are unfitted, and in which dangers unnumbered lurk on all sides. If with Clara Morris’s power and charm so much had to be suffered, what is—what must be—the lot of so many mediocrities who pass through the same fires to receive no reward in the end?”
Every one who knows the stage, knows what weary suffering is endured daily by would-be actors who are “resting”; and as they grow older that “resting” process comes more often, for, as one of the greatest dramatists of the day said to me lately:
“The stage is only for the young and beautiful, they can claim positions and salaries which experience and talent are unable to keep. By the time youth has thoroughly learnt its art it is no longer physically attractive, and is relegated to the shelf.”
“That seems very hard.”
“Ah, but it is true. At the best the theatrical is a poor profession, and ends soon. Believe me, it is only good for handsome young men and lovely girls. When the bloom of youth has gone, good acting does not command the salary given to beautiful inexperience.”
“How cruelly sad!”
“Perhaps—but truth is often sad. When a girl comes to me and says she has had an offer of marriage, but she doesn’t want to give up her Art, I reply:
“‘Marry the man before your Art gives you up.’”
This was severe, but I have often thought over the subject since, and seen how true were the words of that man “who knew.”
Half a century ago only a few favoured professionals were admitted into the sacred circle called Society, and then only on rare occasions, but all that is now changed: actors and actresses are the fashion, and may be found everywhere and anywhere. Their position is remarkable, and they appear to enjoy society as much as society enjoys them. They are fêted and feasted, the world worships at their feet. In London the position of an actor or actress of talent is a brilliant one socially.
A Voice Trial—How it is Done—Anxious Faces—Singing into Cimmerian Darkness—A Call to Rehearsal—The Ecstasy of an Engagement—Proof Copy; Private—Arrival of the Principals—Chorus on the Stage—Rehearsing Twelve Hours a Day for Nine Weeks without Pay.
“HOW does a man get on the stage?” is a question so continually asked that the mode of procedure, at any rate for comic opera, may prove of interest.
After application the would-be actor-singer, if lucky, receives a card, saying there will be a “voice trial” for some forthcoming musical comedy at the theatre on such a date at two o’clock. Managements that have a number of touring companies arrange voice trials regularly once a week, but others organise them only when necessary.
Let us take a case of Special Trial for some new production. There are usually so many persons anxious to procure employment, that three days are devoted to these trials from two till seven o’clock.
Upon receiving a card the would-be artist proceeds to his destination in a state of wild excitement and overpowering nervousness at a quarter to two, having in the greenness of inexperience arranged to meet a friend at three o’clock, expecting by then to be able to tell him he has been engaged.
On arriving at the corner of the street the youth is surprised to see a seething mass of struggling humanity striving to get near the stage door; something like a gallery entrance on a first night. At this spectacle his nervousness increases, for he has a vague fear that some of these voices and dramatic powers may be better than his own. During the wait outside, people recognise and hail friends whom they have played with in other companies on tour, or met on the concert platform, or perhaps known in a London theatre. Every one tries to look jaunty and gay, none would care to acknowledge the cruel anxiety they are enduring, or own how much depends on an engagement.
After half an hour, or probably an hour’s wait, the keen young man reaches the stage door, and finally gets into the passage. In his eagerness he fancies he sees space in that passage to slip past a number of people who are waiting round the door-keeper’s room, and congratulates himself on his smartness in circumventing them. Somehow he contrives to get through, and finally runs gaily down a flight of stairs, to find himself—not on the stage, as he had hoped, but underneath it. A piano and voice are heard overhead. Quickly retracing his steps he mounts higher and higher in his anxiety to be an early performer, tries passage after passage, to find nothing but dressing-rooms, until he arrives breathless at the top of the building opposite two large apartments relegated later to the chorus. Utterly bewildered by the intricacies of the theatre, and a sound of music which he cannot locate, the poor novice is almost in despair of reaching the stage at all. One more effort, and a man who looks like a carpenter remarks:
“These ’ere is the flies, sir: there’s the stage,” and he points down below over some strange scaffolding.
The singer looks. Lo, there are fifty or sixty people on the stage.
“And those people?”
“All trying for a job, sir; but, bless yer ’eart, not one in twenty will get anything.”
This sounds cheerless to the stage beginner, whose only recommendation is a good, well-trained voice.
With directions from the carpenter he wends his way down again, not with the same elastic step with which he bounded up the stairs. “Bless yer ’eart, not one in twenty will get anything” was not a pleasant piece of news.
Ah, here is a glass door, through which—oh joy! he sees the stage at last. He is about to enter gaily when he is stopped by a theatre official who demands his “form.”
“Form? What form? I have none.”
“Go back to the stage door, sign your name and address there, and fill in the printed form you will get there,” says this gentleman in stentorian tones that cause the poor youth to tremble while he inquires:
“Where is the stage door?”
“Up those stairs, first to the right, and second to the left.”
Back he goes, and after another wait, during which he notes many others filling in forms one by one and asking endless questions, he gets the book, signs his name, and receives a form in which he enters name, voice, previous experience, height, and age. There is also a column headed “Remarks,” which the would-be actor feels inclined to fill with superlative adjectives, but is informed that “the stage manager fills in this column himself.”
At last he is on the stage, and after all the ladies have sung and some of the men, his name is called and he steps breezily down to the footlights. Ere he reaches them, however, some one to his left says:
“Where is your music?” and some one else to his right:
“Where is your form?”
He hands the form to a person seated at a table, and turning round sees a very ancient upright piano, where he gives his music to the accompanist. Then comes a trying moment. The youth has specially chosen a song with a long introduction so as to allow time to compose himself. But that introduction is omitted, for the accompanist in a most inconsiderate manner starts two bars from the end of it and says:
“Now then, please, if you’re ready.”
The singer gets through half a verse, when he is suddenly stopped by:
“Sing a scale, please.”
He sings an octave, and is about to exhibit his beautiful tenor notes, when he is again interrupted by the question:
“How low can you go?”
He climbs down, and with some difficulty manages an A.
“Is that as deep as you can get?”
“Yes, but I’m a tenor. Shall I sing my high notes?”
A voice from the front calls out, “Your name.”
All this is abruptly disconcerting, and the lad peers into Cimmerian darkness. In the stalls he sees two ghost-like figures, as “in a glass dimly.” These are the manager and the composer of the new piece, while a few rows behind, two or three more spirits may be noted flitting restlessly about in the light thrown from the stage.
“Mr. A——” again says that voice from the front.
“Yes, sir.”
“Did you say you were a tenor?”
“Yes.”
“Ah, I’m afraid we’ve just chosen the last one wanted. We had a voice trial yesterday, you know.” And the tone sounded a dismissal.
“May I not sing the last verse of my song?” the young fellow almost gasps.
“If you like.” He does like, and the two figures in front lean over in conversation; but he thinks he detects a friendly nod.
“Have we your address?” asks one of them.
“Yes, sir, I left it at the stage door.”
“Thank you; we’ll communicate with you should we require your services.” The tenor is about to murmur his thanks, when another voice from the side of the stage calls, “Mr. Jones, please,” and he hurries off, hearing the same questions from the two attendant spirits, “Where is your form?” “Where is your music?” addressed to the new-comer.
Just as he reaches the door he hears Mr. Jones stopped after three bars with “Thank you, that will do. Mr. Smith, please.”
This is balm to his soul; after all, he was not hurried off so quickly, and he passes out into the light of day with the “Where is your form?” “Where is your music?” “Bless yer ’eart, not one in twenty will get anything,” still ringing in his ears. And so to tea with what appetite he may bring at a quarter to seven instead of three o’clock as arranged.
Ten weary days pass—he receives no letter, hears nothing. He has almost given up all hope of that small but certain income, when a type-written missive arrives:
“Kindly attend rehearsal at the —— Theatre on Tuesday next at twelve o’clock.”
The words swim before his eyes. Can it be true? Can he be among the successful ones after all? He is so excited he is scarcely able to eat or sleep, waiting for Tuesday to come. It does come at last, and he sets out for the theatre, thinking he will not betray further ignorance, and arrives fashionably late at a quarter to one. This time he sees no signs of life at the stage door.
“Of course, now that I belong to the theatre, I must go in through the front of the house, not at the side entrance,” he says to himself. Round, therefore, he goes to the front, where some one sitting in the box office asks:
“What can I do for you?”
“Nothing, thanks; I am going to rehearsal.”
“You’re late. The chorus have started nearly an hour.”
Good chance here to make an impression.
“Chorus? I’m a principal.” This is not quite true at the moment, but may be in a year or two.
“Principal? Then you’re too early, sir! Principals won’t be called for another three weeks.”
The tenor slinks out and goes round to the stage door again, where “You’re very late, sir,” is the door-keeper’s greeting. “I should advise you to hurry up, they started some time ago. You’ll find them up in the saloon. On to the stage, straight through to the front of the house, and up to the back of the circle.”
He goes down on the stage, where he finds the same old piano going, and some one sitting in the stalls, watching a girl in a blouse and flaming red petticoat, who is dancing, whilst three or four other girls in various coloured petticoats, none wearing skirts, are waiting their turn. In the distance he hears sounds of singing, which make the most unpleasant discord with the dance tune on the stage. The accompanist points to an iron door at the side, passing through which the youth finds himself outside another door leading to the stalls, and, guided by his ear, finally reaches the saloon. He enters unobserved to find it filled with some forty girls and men, standing or sitting about, and singing from printed copies of something. Sitting down he looks over his neighbour’s shoulder, and notices that each copy has printed on it “Proof copy. Private.” After half an hour the stage manager, who has been standing near the piano, says:
“Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, that will do: back in an hour, please. Is Mr. A—— here? And Mr. A—— replies “Yes,” and is told to wait, and asked why he did not answer to his name before.
“I was a little late, I fear.”
“Don’t be late again, or I shall have to fine you.”
Off he goes to luncheon, and returns with the rest, who after a further three hours’ work are dismissed for the day.
This goes on for six hours a day, during a fortnight, when the chorus is joined by eight more ladies and gentlemen styled “Small-part people,” who, however, consider themselves very great people all the same.
Next the young man is told that in two days every one must be able to sing without music, as rehearsals will commence on the stage. In due course comes the first rehearsal on the stage, and after a couple of days Position, Gestures, and Business are all taken up in turn.
The saloon is then used by the principals, who have now turned up, and in the intervals of rest the chorus can hear sounds of music floating toward them.
In another week the principals join the company on the stage, and are told their places, while all principals read from their parts at first, such being the etiquette even if they know their lines. Books are soon discarded, however, and rehearsals grow rapidly longer, while everything shows signs of active progress towards production. Scenery and properties begin to be on view, and every one is sent to be measured for costumes, wigs, and boots. Then comes the first orchestral rehearsal, and finally, a week before the production, night rehearsals start in addition to day, so that people positively live in the theatre from 11.30 in the morning till 11.30 at night or later. Apart from all the general rehearsals there are extra rehearsals before or after these, for the dances.
There are generally two or three semi-dress rehearsals, followed by the full-dress rehearsal on Friday afternoon at two o’clock, or sometimes seven in the evening, when all the reserved seats are filled with friends of the management or company, various professionals connected in any way with the stage, and a number of artists and journalists, making sketches for the papers. At the end of each act the curtain is rung up and flash-light photographs taken of the effective situation and the finale, and so at last the curtain rises on the first night. Nine weeks’ rehearsal were given for a comic opera lately, and no one was paid for his or her services during all that time. It only ran for six weeks, when the salaries ceased.
In comic opera there are such constant changes, of dialogue, songs, and alterations, that the company have a general rehearsal at least once a fortnight on the average, right through the run of a piece, and there is always an entire understudying company ready to go on at any moment.
Why Women go on the Stage—How to prevent it—Miss Florence St. John—Provincial Company—Theatrical Basket—A Fit-up Tour—A Theatre Tour—Répertoire Tour—Strange Landladies—Bills—The Longed-for Joint—Second-hand Clothes—Buying a Part—Why Men Deteriorate—Oceans of Tea—E. S. Willard—Why he Prefers America—A Hunt for Rooms—A Kindly Clergyman—A Drunken Landlady—How the Dog Saved an Awkward Predicament.
IT is continually being asked: Why do women crowd the stage?
The answer is a simple one—because men fail to provide for them. If every man, willing and able to maintain a wife, married, there would still be over a million women left. Many women besides these “superfluous” ones will never marry—many husbands will die, and leave their widows penniless, and therefore several millions of women in Great Britain must work to live. Their parents bring them into the world, but they do not always give them the means of livelihood.
Marriage with love is entering a heaven with one’s eyes shut, but marriage without love is entering hell with them open.
What then?
Women must work until men learn to protect and provide for, not only their wives, but their mothers, daughters, and sisters. All men should respect the woman toiler who prefers work to starvation, as all must deplore the necessity that forces her into such a position. Women of gentle blood are the greatest sufferers; brought up in luxury, they are often thrust on the world to starve through no fault of their own what ever. The middle-class father should also be obliged to make some provision by insurance for every baby girl, which will enable her to live, and give her at least the necessities of life, so that she may not be driven to sell herself to a husband, or die of starvation. The sons can work for themselves, and might have a less expensive up-bringing, so that the daughters may be provided for by insurance, if the tragedies of womanhood now enacted on every side are to cease.
It is no good for young men to shriek at the invasion of the labour market by women: the young men must deny themselves a little and provide for their women folk if it is to be otherwise. It is no good grinding down the wages of women workers, for that does harm to men and women alike, and only benefits the employer. Women must work as things are, and women do work in spite of physical drawbacks, in spite of political handicap, in spite—too often—of lack of sound education. The unfortunate part is that women work for less pay than men, under far harder conditions, and the very men who abuse them for competing on their own ground, are the men who do not raise a hand to make provision for their own women folk, or try in any way to help the present disastrous condition of affairs.
Men can stop this overcrowding of every profession by women if they really try, and until they do so they should cease to resent a state of affairs which they themselves have brought about.
Luckily there is hardly any trade or profession closed to women to-day. They cannot be soldiers, sailors, firemen, policemen, barristers, judges, or clergymen in England, but they can be nearly everything else. Even now, in these so-called enlightened days, men often leave what money they have to their sons and let chance look after their daughters. They leave their daughters four alternatives—to starve, to live on the bitter bread of charity, to marry, or to work. Independent means is a heritage that seldom falls to the lot of women. There are too many women on the stage as there are too many women everywhere else; but on the stage as in authorship, women are at least fairly treated as regards salary, and can earn, and do earn, just as much as men.
The provinces are the school of actors and actresses, so let us now turn to a provincial company, for after all the really hard work of theatrical life is most severely felt in the provinces. A pathetic little account of early struggles appeared lately from the pen of Miss Florence St. John. At fourteen years of age she sang with a Diorama along the South coast, and a few months after she married. Her parents were so angry they would have nothing more to do with her, and not long afterwards her husband’s health failed and he died. Sheer want pursued her during those years.
“My efforts to secure work seemed almost hopeless.”
That is the crux of so many theatrical lives. Those eight words so often appear—and yet there are sanguine people who imagine employment can always be obtained on the stage for the mere asking, which is not so; but let us now follow the fortunes of a lucky one.
After a play has been sufficiently coached in London, at the last rehearsal a “call” is put up on the board, which says:
“Train call. All artistes are to be at —— Station at —— o’clock on such and such a date. Train arrives at A—— at —— o’clock.”
When the actors reach the station they find compartments engaged for them, it being seldom necessary nowadays to charter a private train. Those compartments are labelled in large lettering with the name of the play for which they have been secured. The party travel third class, the manager as a rule reserving first-class compartments for himself and the stars. Generally the others go in twos and twos according to their rank in the theatre, that is to say, the first and second lady travel together, the third and fourth, and so on. Often the men play cards during the whole journey; generally the women knit, read, or enliven the hours of weary travel by making tea and talk!
At each of the stations where the train pauses people look into the carriages in a most unblushing manner, taking a good stare at the theatrical folk, as if they were wild beasts at the Zoo instead of human beings. Sometimes also they make personal and uncomplimentary remarks, such as:
“Well, she ain’t pretty a bit,” or, “My! don’t she look different hoff and hon!”
Each actress has two supplies of luggage, one of which, namely, a “theatrical basket,” contains her stage dresses, and the other the personal belongings which she will require at her lodgings. As a rule, ere leaving London she is given two sets of labels to place on her effects, so that the baggage-man may know where to take her trunks and save her all further trouble.
Naturally theatrical folk must travel on Sunday. On a “Fit-Up” tour, when they arrive at the station of the town in which they are to play, each woman collects her own private property, and those who can afford the expense drive off in a cab, while the others—by far the more numerous—deposit it in the “Left Luggage Office.” After securing a room, the tired traveller returns to the station and employs a porter to deliver her belongings.
Sometimes a girl experiences great difficulty in finding a suitable temporary abode, for, although in large towns a list of lodgings can be procured, in smaller places no such help is available, and she may have to trudge from street to street to obtain a decent room at a cheap rate. By the time what is wanted is found, she generally feels so weary she is only too thankful to share whatever the landlady may chance to have in the way of food, instead of going out and procuring the same for herself.
On a “Theatre Tour” the members of a company nearly always engage their rooms beforehand and order dinner in advance, because they can go to recognised theatrical lodgings, a list of which may be procured by applying to the Actors’ Association, an excellent institution which helps and protects theatrical folk in many ways. When rooms can be arranged beforehand, life becomes easier; but this is not always possible, and then poor wandering mummers meet with disagreeable experiences, such as finding themselves in undesirable lodgings, or at the tender mercy of a landlady who is too fond of intoxicants. A liberal use of insect powder is necessary in smaller towns.
A girl friend who decided to go on the stage has given me some valuable information gathered during six or seven years’ experience of provincial theatrical life. Hers are the experiences of the novice, and bear out Mrs. Kendal’s advice in an earlier chapter. She was not quite dependent on her profession, having small means, but for which she says she must have starved many a time during her noviciate.
“One comes across various types of landladies,” she explained, “but they are nearly always good-natured, otherwise they would never put up with the erratic hours for meals, and the late return of their lodgers. Some of them have been actresses themselves in the olden days, but, having married, they desire to ‘lead a respectable life,’ by which remark they wish one to understand that the would-be lodger is not considered ‘respectable’ so long as she remains in the theatrical profession.
“They are sometimes very amusing, at others the reminiscences of their own experiences prove a little trying; but after all, even such folk are better than the type of lodging-house-keeper who has come down in the world, and is always referring to her ‘better days.’ A great many of these people do not appear ever to have had better days. Now and then, however, one finds a genuine case and receives every possible attention, being made happy with flowers—a real luxury when on tour—nice table linen, fresh towels, all things done in a civilised manner, and oh dear! what a joy it is to come across such a home.”
“Are the rooms, then, generally very bare?” I asked.
“One never finds any luxuries. As a rule one has to be content with horsehair-covered chairs and sofas, woollen antimacassars, wax or bead flowers under glass cases, often with the addition of a stuffed parrot brought home by some favourite sailor son. But simplicity does not matter at all so long as the lodgings do not smell stuffy. The bedroom furniture generally consists of the barest necessaries, and if one’s couch have springs or a soft mattress it proves indeed a delightful surprise.
“There is a terrible type of landlady who rushes one for a large bill just at the last moment. As a rule the account should be brought up on Saturday night and settled, but this sort of woman generally manages to put off producing hers until the last moment on Sunday morning, when one’s luggage is probably on its way to the station. Then she brings forth a document which takes all the joy out of life, and sends the unhappy lodger off without a penny in her pocket. Arguing is not of the slightest use, and if one happens to be a woman, as in my case, she has to pay what is demanded rather than risk a scene.”
My friend’s experiences were so practical I asked her many questions, in reply to some of which she continued:
“I have always managed to share expenses with some one I knew, which arrangement, besides being less lonely, reduced the cost considerably; but even then there is a terrible sameness about one’s food. An egg for breakfast is very general, as some ‘ladies’ even object to cooking a rasher of bacon. Jam and other delicacies are beyond our means. Everlasting chop or steak with potatoes for dinner. One never sees a joint; it is not possible unless a slice can be begged from the landlady, in which case one often has to pay dearly for the luxury.
“We generally have supper after we return from the theatre, from which we often have to walk home a mile or more after changing. Many landladies refuse to cook anything hot at night, in which case tinned tongue or potted meat suffice; but a hot meal, though consisting only of a little piece of fish or poached eggs, is such a joy when one comes home tired and worn out, that it is worth a struggle to try to obtain.
“The least a bill ever comes to in a week is fifteen shillings, and that after studying economy in every way possible. Even though two of us lived together I never succeeded in reducing my share below that.”
“What is the usual day?”
“One has breakfast as a rule between ten and eleven—earlier, of course, if a rehearsal has been called for eleven, in which case ten minutes’ grace is given for the difference in local clocks; any one late after that time gets sharply reprimanded by the management. After rehearsal on tour a walk till two or three, a little shopping, dinner 4.30, a rest, a cup of tea at 6.30, after which meal one again proceeds to the theatre, home about 11.30, supper and bed. Week in, week out it is pretty much the same.
“For the first four years I only earned a guinea a week, and as it was necessary for me to find all my own costumes for the different parts in the companies in which I played, I had to visit second-hand shops and buy ladies’ cast-off ball dresses and things of that sort, although cheap materials and my sewing machine managed to supply me with day garments. It is extraordinary what wonderful effects one can get over the footlights with a dress which by daylight looks absolutely filthy and tawdry, provided it be well cut; that is why it is advisable to buy good second-hand clothes when possible.
“In my own theatre basket I have fourteen complete costumes, and with these I can go on any ordinary tour. I travelled for some time with a girl who, though well-born, had out of her miserable guinea a week to help members of her family at home. She was an excellent needlewoman, and used to send her sewing-machine with her basket to the theatre, where she sat nearly all day making clothes or cutting them out for other members of the company. By these means she earned a few extra shillings a week, which helped towards the expenses of her kinsfolk. She was a nice girl, but delicate, and I always felt she ought to have had all the fresh air possible instead of bending over a sewing-machine in a stuffy little dressing-room.
“Of course it is necessary for us to take great care of our private clothes, and in order to save them I generally keep an old skirt for trudging backwards and forwards through the dust and dirt, and for rehearsals, since at some of the ill-kept provincial theatres a good gown would be ruined in a few days; added to which, one often gets soaked on the way to and from the theatre, for we can rarely afford cabs, and even if we could, on a wet night the audience take all available vehicles, so that by the time the performers are ready to leave, not one is to be procured.”
Perhaps it may be well to say a little more concerning the theatre basket. It looks like a large washing basket, but being made of wicker-work is light. It is lined inside with mackintosh, and bears the name of the company to which it belongs on the outside. It is taken to the theatre on Sunday when the party arrives in the town, and as a rule each actress goes first thing on Monday morning for rehearsal and to unpack. The ordinary provincial company usually comprises about five men and five women, but in important dramas there are many more, and sometimes a dozen women and girls will have to dress in one room.
Of course the principal actresses select the best dressing-rooms, and each chooses according to her rank. Round the wall of the room a table is fastened, such a table as one might find in a dairy, under which the dress baskets stand. Those who can afford it, provide their own looking-glass and toilet-cover to put over their scrap of table, also sheets to cover the dirty walls, ere hanging up their skirts; but as every one cannot afford to pay for the washing of such luxuries, many have to dispense with them.
There is seldom a green-room in the provinces, so as a rule the actresses sit upon their own baskets during the waits; and as in many theatres there are no fireplaces in these little dressing-rooms, and not always artificial heat, there they remain huddled in shawls waiting their “call.”
“The most interesting form of company,” said my friend, “is the ‘Répertoire,’ for that will probably give three different pieces a week, which is much more lively than performing in the same play every night for months.
From a painting by Hugh de T. Glazebrook.
MRS. PATRICK CAMPBELL.
“If any one falls out of the cast through illness or any other reason, and a new man or woman join the company, a fortnight is required for rehearsals, and during that fortnight we unfortunate players have to give our gratuitous services every day for some hours.”
On asking her whether she thought it wise for a girl to choose the stage as a profession, she shook her head sadly.
“I do not think a woman should ever choose the stage as a profession if she have any person depending upon her, for it is practically impossible to live on one’s precarious earnings. It is only the lucky few who can ever hope to make a regular income, and certainly in the provinces very few of us do even that. Many managers like to engage husbands and wives for their company, as this means a joint salary and a saving in consequence. These married couples do not generally get on well, and certainly fail to impress one with the bliss of professional wedded life.”
“What are the chances of success?” I inquired.
“The chances of getting on at all on the stage are small in these days, when advancement means one must either have influence at headquarters, or be able to bring grist to the manager’s mill. It is heart-breaking for those who feel they could succeed if they were but given a chance, to see less talented but more influential sisters pushed into positions. One gradually loses all hope of true merit finding its own reward, while it is no uncommon thing for a girl to pay down ￡20 to be allowed to play a certain part. She may be utterly unfitted for the r?le, but ￡20 is not to be scoffed at, and she is therefore pitchforked into it to succeed or fail. In most cases she fails, and cannot get another engagement unless she produces a second ￡20.
“No, I do not consider the stage a good profession for a girl, simply because there is no authority over her, and few people take enough interest in the young creature to even warn her of the peril. In the theatrical profession, and especially on tour, the sexes meet on an equal footing. No chivalry need be expected, and is certainly rarely received, because when one is vouchsafed any little attention or politeness, such as one would naturally claim in society or take for granted in daily intercourse, it is merely because the man has some natural instinct which causes him to be polite in spite of adverse circumstances.
“The majority of men upon the stage to-day are so-called gentlemen, but there is something in the life which does not conduce to keep them up to the standard from which they start. They become careless in their manners, dress, and conversation, and keep their best side for the audience. As a rule they are kind-hearted and willing to help women, but men upon the stage get ‘petty.’ I do not know whether it is the effect of the paint, the powder, and the clothes, or the fact of their doing nothing all day, but they certainly deteriorate; one sees the decadence month by month. They begin by being keen on sport, for instance, but gradually they find even moving their bicycles about an expense and leave them behind. They have nowhere to go, are not even temporary members of clubs, so gradually get into the habit of staying in bed till twelve or even two o’clock for lack of something to interest them, and finish the rest of the day in a ‘gin crawl,’ which simply means sitting in public-houses drinking and smoking.
“Unfortunately this love of drink sometimes increases, and as alcohol can be readily procured by the dresser, men and women too, feeling exhausted, often take things which had better be avoided. You see their meals are not sufficiently substantial—how can they be on the salary paid? Girls live on small rations of bread, butter, and oceans of tea, and the men on endless sausage rolls and mugs of beer.”
This reminds me of a little chat I had with E. S. Willard. On the fiftieth night of that excellent play The Cardinal, by Louis N. Parker, at the St. James’s Theatre, a mutual friend came to ask me to pay a visit behind the stage to the great Mr. Willard.
We arrived in Mr. Alexander’s sitting-room described elsewhere, at the end of the third act, and a moment later the rustling silk of the Cardinal’s robe was heard in the passage.
“I’m afraid this is unkind of me,” I said: “after that great scene you deserve a ‘whisky and soda’ instead of a woman and talk.”
“Not at all,” said this splendid-looking ecclesiastic, seating himself gaily. “I never take anything of that sort till my work is done.”
“But you must be fearfully exhausted after such a big scene?”
“No. It is the eighth performance this week, and the second to-day; but I’m not really tired, and love my work, although I do enjoy my Sunday’s rest.”
Mr. Willard looks handsomer off the stage than on. His strong face seems to have a kindlier smile, his manner to be even more courtly, and I was particularly struck with the fact that he wore little or no make-up.
“You are an Englishman,” I said, “and yet you have deserted your native land for America?”
“Not so. I’m English, of course, though I love America,” was the reply. “Seven years ago I went across the Atlantic and was successful, then I had a terrible illness which lasted three years. When I was better I did not dare start afresh in England and risk failure, so I began again in the States, where I was sure of the dollars. They have been so kind to me over there that I do not now like to leave them. You see America is so enormous, the constant influx of emigrants so great, one can go on playing the same piece for years and years, as Jefferson is still doing in Rip van Winkle. Here new plays are constantly wanted, and even if an actor is an old favourite he cannot drag a poor play to success. Management in London has become a risky matter. Expenses are enormous, and a few failures mean ruin.”
Alas! at that moment the wretched little bell which heralds a new act rang forth, and I barely had time to reach the box before Mr. Willard was once more upon the stage, continuing his masterly performance. He is an actor of strong personality, and can ill be spared from England’s shores.
But to return to the provinces, and the experiences of the pretty little actress.
“The familiarity which necessarily exists between the sexes,” continued she, “both in acting together at night, and rehearsing together by day, is in itself a danger to some girls who are unfortunate enough to be thrown into close companionship with unprincipled men, and have not sufficient worldly wisdom or instinct to guard against their advances.
“The idea of the stage door being besieged by admirers is far from true in the provinces. With musical comedies of rather a low order there may be a certain amount of hanging about after the performance, but in the case of an ordinary company this rarely happens. The real danger in the provinces does not come from outside.
“Life on tour for a single man is anything but agreeable. He has no one to look after his clothes, for, needless to say, no landlady will do that, and therefore both his theatre outfit and his private garments are always getting torn and worn. As a rule, however, there are capable women in the company who are willing to sew on buttons, mend, or darn, and if it were not for their good nature, many men would find themselves in sorry plight.”
She was an intelligent, clever girl, and I asked her how she got on the stage.
“After having been trained under a well-known manager for six months and paying him thirty guineas for his services, I was offered an engagement in one of his companies then starting for a ‘Fit-Up’ tour through Scotland at a ￡1 week, payable in two instalments, namely, 10s. on Wednesday and 10s. on Saturday. Fortunately, being a costume play, dresses were provided, but I had to buy tights, grease-paint, sandals, and various ornaments, give two weeks’ rehearsals in London free, play for three nights and live for three days in Scotland before I received even the first ten shillings.
“Happily I was the proud possessor of small means, and shared my rooms and everything with a girl friend who had trained at the same time as myself, consequently we managed with great care to make both ends meet; but it was hard work for us even with my little extra money, and what girls do who have to live entirely on their pay, and put by something for the time when they are out of an engagement, a time which often comes, I do not pretend to know.
“A ‘Fit-Up’ tour is admittedly the most expensive kind of work for actors, because it means that three nights is the longest period one ever remains in any town, most of the time being booked for ‘one-night places’ only. On this particular tour of sixteen weeks there were no less than sixty ‘one-night places,’ and my total salary amounted to ￡16.
“It may sound ridiculous to travel with a dog, but mine proved of the greatest use to me on more than one occasion. Our first hunt was always for rooms; the term sounds grand, for the ‘rooms’ generally consisted of one chamber with a bed sunk into the wall, as they are to-day at a great public school like Harrow. To get to this abode we sometimes had to pass through the family apartments, a most embarrassing proceeding, as the members had generally retired to rest before our return from the theatre; but still, ‘beggars cannot be choosers,’ and in some ways we often felt ourselves in that position.
“Supposing we arrived at a one-night place, we would sally forth and buy
? lb. tea,
? lb. butter,
1 small loaf,
? lb. steak or chop for dinner,
2 eggs for breakfast.
“The landlady’s charge as a rule for two lodgers sharing expenses varied from 2s. 6d. to 3s. for a single night, or 5s. for three nights, so that the one-night business was terribly extravagant.
“Being our first tour we were greatly interested by the novelty of everything; it was this novelty and excitement which carried us through. We really needed to be sharp and quick, for in that particular play we had to change our apparel no less than six times. We were Roman ladies, slaves, and Christians intermittently during the evening, being among those massacred in the second act, and resuscitated to be eaten by lions at the end of the play; therefore, while the audience were moved to tears picturing us being devoured by roaring beasts, we were ourselves roaring in the wings in imitation of those bloodthirsty animals.
“A ‘Fit-Up’ carries all its own scenery, and nearly always goes to small towns which have no theatre, only a Town Hall or Corn Exchange, while the dressing-rooms, especially in the latter, are often extremely funny, being like little stalls in a stable, where we sometimes found corn on the floor, and could look over at each other like horses in their stalls.
“The ‘Fit-Up’ takes its own carpenter, who generally plays two or three parts during the evening. He has to make the stage fit the scenery or vice versa, and get everything into working order for the evening performance.
“On one occasion we arrived at a little town in Scotland and started off on our usual hunt for rooms. We were growing tired and depressed; time was creeping on, and if we did not obtain a meal and rooms soon, we knew we should have to go to the theatre hungry, and spend that night in the wings. Matters were really getting desperate when we met two other members of the company in similar plight. One of them was boldly courageous, however, and when we saw a clergyman coming towards us, suggested she should ask him if he knew of any likely place. She did so, and he very kindly told her to mention his name at an inn where he was sure they would, if possible, put her and her friend up, but he added, ‘There is only one room.’ This, of course, did not help my friend and myself, so after the two had started off we stood wondering what was to become of us.
“‘Can you not tell us of any other place?’ we asked. No, he could not, but at this moment a lady appeared on the scene who asked what we wanted. We explained the difficulty of our situation, and she pondered and thought, but intimated there was no lodging she could recommend, whereupon we proceeded disconsolately on our way, not in the least knowing what we were to do.
“A moment or two afterwards we heard some one running behind. It was the clergyman. Taking off his hat and almost breathless, he exclaimed, ‘My wife wishes to speak to you,’ and lo and behold that dear wife hurried after him to say she felt so sorry for the position in which we were placed that she would be very glad if my friend and I would give her the pleasure of our company and stay at her house for the night.
“We went. She sent from the vicarage to the station for our belongings, and we could not have been more kindly treated if we had been her dearest friends. She had a fire lighted in our bedroom, and there were lovely flowers on the table when we returned from the theatre. They took us for a charming expedition to some old ruins on the following morning, invited friends to meet us at luncheon, and although they did not go to the theatre themselves at night, they sat up for us and had a delightful little supper prepared against our return.
“I shall never forget the great kindness they showed us. I am sure there are very few people who would be tempted to proffer such courtesy and hospitality to two wandering actresses; and yet if they only knew how warmly their goodness was appreciated and how beneficent its influence proved, they would feel well repaid.
“In the afternoon when it was time to leave, rain was pouring down, but that fact did not deter the clergyman from accompanying us to the station, carrying an umbrella in one hand and a bag in the other, while his little son followed with a great bunch of flowers.
“As if to take us down after such luxurious quarters, we fell upon evil days at the very next town, where we were told it was difficult to get accommodation at all, and therefore made up our minds to take the first we met. It did not look inviting, but the woman said that by the time we had done our shopping she would have everything clean and straight. We bought our little necessaries, and as the door was opened by a small boy handed them in to him, saying we were going for a walk but would be back in less than an hour for tea. On our return we were admitted, but saw no signs of tea, so rang the bell. No one came. We waited ten minutes and rang again. A pause. Suddenly the door was burst open and in reeled the landlady, who banged down a jug of boiling water on the table and departed. We gazed at each other in utter consternation, feeling very much frightened, for we both realised she was drunk.
“We rang again after a time, but as no one attempted to answer our summons, and it being impossible to make a meal off hot water, I crept forth to reconnoitre. There was not a soul to be seen, not even the little boy, but I ventured into the kitchen to try if I could not find the bread, butter, and tea, so that we might prepare something to eat for ourselves. While so engaged a sonorous sound made me turn round, and there upon the floor with her head resting upon a chair in the corner of the room lay our landlady, dead drunk. It was an appalling sight. We gathered our things together as quickly as we could and determined to leave, put a shilling on the table to appease the good woman’s wrath when she awoke, and were glad to shake the dust of her home from our feet.
“Not far off was a Temperance Hotel, the sight of which after our recent experience we hailed with delight, and where we engaged a bedroom, to which we repaired, when our evening’s work was finished.
“My dog, who always lay at the foot of my bed, woke us in the middle of the night by his low growls. He seemed much perturbed, so we lay and listened. The cause of his anxiety soon became clear; some one was trying to turn the handle of the door, while the voices of two men could be heard distinctly, one of which said:
“‘Only two actresses, go on,’ and then the door handle turned again and his friend was pushed in. It was all dark, but at that moment my dog’s growls and barks became so furious and angry as he sprang from the bed that the man precipitately departed, and we were left in peace, although too nervous to sleep.
“Of course we complained next morning, but equally of course the landlady knew nothing about the matter. These were our best and worst experiences during my first tour.”
Easy to Make a Reputation—Difficult to Keep One—The Theatrical Agent—The Butler’s Letter—Mrs. Siddons’ Warning—Theatrical Aspirants—The Bogus Manager—The Actress of the Police Court—Ten Years of Success—Temptations—Late Hours—An Actress’s Advertisement—A Wicked Agreement—Rules Behind the Scenes—Edward Terry—Success a Bubble.
MANKIND curses bad luck, but seldom blesses good fate. It is comparatively easy to make a reputation once given a start by kindly fate; but extremely difficult to maintain one in any walk of life, and this applies particularly to the stage.
Happening to meet a very pretty girl who had made quite a hit in the provinces and was longing for a London engagement, I asked her what her experience of theatrical agents had been.
“Perfectly horrible,” she replied, “and heart-breaking into the bargain. For three whole months I have been daily to a certain office, and in all this weary time I have only had five interviews with the manager.”
“Is it so difficult to get work?”
“It is almost impossible. When I arrive, the little stuffy office is more or less crowded; there are women seeking engagements for the music halls, fat, common, vulgar women who laugh loud and make coarse jokes; there are sickly young men who want to play lovers’ parts on the legitimate stage, and who, according to the actors’ habit, never take their hats off. It is a strange fact that actors invariably rehearse in hats or caps, and sit in them on all occasions like Jews in synagogues.
“There are children who come alone and wait about daily for an engagement, children who have been employed in the pantomime, and whose parents are more or less dependent on their gains, and there is one girl, she is between thirteen and fourteen, whom I have met there every day for weeks and weeks. Seventy-four days after the pantomime closed she was still without work, and I watched that child get thinner and paler time by time as she told me with tears in her eyes she was the sole support of a sick mother.
“When I go there, the gentleman who has the office makes me shrivel up.
“‘Do you specialise?’ he asks, peeping over the edge of his gold-rimmed spectacles. He jots down my replies on a sheet of paper. ‘Character or juvenile parts?’ he inquires. ‘What salary? Whom have you played with?’ And having made these and other inquiries he looks through a series of books, turns over the pages, says, ‘I am sorry I have nothing for you to-day, you might look in again to-morrow.’ And this same farce or tragedy is repeated every time.”
“But is it worth while going?” I asked.
“Hardly; one wears out one’s shoe-leather and one’s temper; and yet after all the theatrical agent is practically my only chance of an engagement. This man is all right, he is not a bogus agent, but he simply has a hundred applicants for every single post he has to fill.”
She went back day after day, and week after week, and each time the same scene was enacted, but no engagement came of it. Finally, brought to the verge of starvation, she had to accept work again in the provinces, and so desert an invalid father. She happened to be a lady, but of course many applicants for histrionic fame ought to be kitchen-maids or laundry-maids: they have no qualifications whatever to any higher walk of life.
Below is an original letter showing the kind of person who wants to go on the stage. It was sent to one of our best-known actresses when she was starring with her own company.
“... Castle
“Oct 19th 1897
“Dear Madam
“i writ you this few lins to see if you would have a opening for me as i would be an Actor on the Stage for my hole thought and life is on the stage and when i have any time you will always feind me readin at some play i make a nice female as i have a very soft voice Dear Madam i hop you will not refuse me i have got no frends alive to keep me back and every one tells me that you would make the best teacher that i could get Dear lady i again ask you not to refuse me i will go on what ever termes you think best i have been up at the theatre 4 times seeing you i enclose my Card to let you see it plese to send it back again and i enclose 12 stamps to you to telegraf by return if you would like to see me or if you would like to come down to the Castle to see me No more at present
“but remans your
“Obedient servant
“Peter W——.”
This was a letter from a man with aspirations, and below is a letter from Mrs. Siddons. If this actress, whose position was probably the grandest and greatest of any woman on the stage, can express such sentiments, what must be the experiences of less successful players?
“Mrs. Siddons presents her compliments to Miss Goldsmith, & takes the liberty to inform her, that altho’ herself she has enjoyed all the advantages arising from holding the first situation in the drama, yet that those advantages have been so counterbalanced by anxiety & mortification, that she long ago resolved never to be accessory to bringing any one into so precarious & so arduous a profession.”
The deterrent words of Mrs. Siddons had little effect in her day, just as the deterrent words of those at the top of the profession have little effect now. Consequently, not only does the honest agent flourish, but the bogus agent and bogus manager grow rich on the credulity of young men and women.
Speaking of the bogus manager, Sir Henry Irving observed:
“The actor’s art is thought to be so easy—in fact, many people deny it is an art at all—and so many writers persistently assert no preparation is needed for a career upon the stage, that it is little wonder deluded people only find out too late that acting, as Voltaire said, is one of the most rare and difficult of arts. The allurements, too, held forth by unscrupulous persons, who draw money from foolish folk under the pretence of obtaining lucrative engagements for them, help to swell very greatly the list of unfortunate dupes. I hope that these matters may in time claim the attention of serious-minded persons, for the increasing number of theatrical applicants for charity, young persons, too, is little less than alarming.”
This remark of Sir Henry’s is hardly surprising when below is a specimen application received by the manager of a London suburban theatre from a female farm servant in Essex:
“Deer sur,—I works hon a farm but wants to turn actin. Would lik ingagement for the pantomin in hany ways which you think I be fit for. I sings in the church coir and plais the melodion. I wants to change my work for the stage, has am sik of farm wark, eas last tater liftin nigh finished me.”
Another was written in an almost illegible hand which ran:
“Honoured Sir,—i wants to go on the staige i am a servent and my marster sais i am a good smart made so i wod like to play act mades parts untill i can do laidies i doant mind wages for a bit as i like your acting i’d like to act in your theter so i am going to call soon.”
Truly the assurance of people is amazing; to imagine they can enter the theatrical profession without even common education is absurd. Only lately another stage-struck servant appeared in the courts. Although an honest girl, she was tempted to steal from her mistress to pay ￡3 7s. to an agent for a problematical theatrical engagement. She is only one of many.
One day a woman stood before a manager. She had been so persistent for days in her desire to see him, and appeared so remarkable, that the stage door-keeper at last inquired if he might admit her.
“Please, sir, I wants to be an actress,” she began, on entering the manager’s room.
“Do you? And what qualifications have you?”
“I’m a cook.”
“That, my good woman, will hardly help you on the stage.”
“And I’ve been to the the-a-ters with my young man—I’m keeping company with ’im ye know, and——”
“Well, well.”
“And ’e and I thinks you ain’t got the right tone of hactress for them parts. Now I’m a real cook I am, and I don’t wear them immoral ’igh ’eels, and tiny waists, I dresses respectable I do, and I’d just give the right style to the piece. My pal—she’s a parlourmaid she is—could do duchesses and them like—she’s the air she ’as—but I ain’t ambitious, I’d just like to be what I am, and show people ’ow a real cook should be played—Lor’ bless ye, sir, I don’t cook in diamond rings.”
That manager did not engage the lady; but he learnt a lesson in realism which resulted in Miss FitzClair being asked to dispense with her rings on the stage that night.
With a parting nod the “lady” said as she left the door:
“Your young man don’t make love proper neither, you should just see ’ow ’Arry makes love you should, he’d make you all sit up, I know, he does it that beautiful he do—your man’s a arf-’arted bloke ’e is, seems afraid of the gal, perhaps it’s ’er ’igh ’eels and diamonds ’e’s afraid of, eh?”
The lady took herself off.
These are only a few instances to show how all sorts and conditions of people are stage-struck. That delightful man Sir Walter Besant lay down an excellent rule for young authors, “Never pay to produce a book”—it spells ruin to the aspirant. The same may be said of the stage. Never part with money to get on the stage. It may be advisable to accept a little if one cannot get much; but never, never to pay for a footing. Services will be accepted while given free or paid for, and dispensed with when the time comes for payment to be received.
Among the many temptations of stage life is drink. The actor feels a little below par, he has a great scene before him, and while waiting in his dressing-room for the “call boy” he flies to a glass of whiskey or champagne. He gets through the trying ordeal, comes off the boards excited and streaming at every pore, flings himself into a chair, and during the time his dresser is dragging him out of his clothes, or rubbing him down, yields to the temptation of another glass. Many of our actors are most abstemious, though more than one prominent star has been known to mumble incoherently on the stage.
Matinée days are always a strain for every one in the theatre, and there are people foolish enough to think a little stimulant will enable them to get through, not knowing a continuance of forced strength spells damnation.
Yes. The stage is surrounded by temptations. Morally, extravagantly, and alcoholically the webs of excess are ready to engulf the unwary, and therefore, when people keep straight, run fair, and save their pennies, they are to be congratulated, and deserve the approbation of mankind. He who has never been tempted, is not a hero in comparison with the man who has turned aside from the enticing wiles of sin.
There is a certain class of woman who continually appears in the police courts, described as an “actress.” She is always “smartly dressed,” and is generally up before the magistrate or judge for being “drunk and disorderly”—suing her husband or some one else for maintenance—or claiming to have some grievance for a breach of promise or lost jewellery.
These “ladies” often describe themselves as actresses: and perhaps they sometimes are; but if so they are no honour to their profession. There is another stamp of woman who becomes an actress by persuading some weak man to run a theatre for her. Sympathy between men and women is often dangerous. She generally ends by ruining him, and he in running away from her. These bogus actresses, with their motor cars and diamonds, are more dangerous and certainly more attractive than the bogus manager. They are the vultures who suck young men’s blood. They are the flashy, showy women who attract silly servant-girls with the idea the stage spells wealth and success; but they are the scourge of the profession.
Good and charming women are to be found upon the stage. Virtue usually triumphs; they are happy in their home life, devoted to their children, sympathetic to their friends, and generous almost to a fault. The leading actresses are, generally speaking, not only the best exponents of their art, but the best women too. The flash and dash come to the police courts, and end their days in the workhouse.
The stage at best means very, very hard work, and theatrical success is only fleeting in most cases. It must be seized upon when caught and treated as a fickle jade, because money and popularity both take wings and fly away sooner than expected. In all professions men and women quickly reach their zenith, and if they are clever may hold that position for ten years. After that decline is inevitable and more rapid than the ascent has been.
If a reputation is to be made, it is generally achieved by either man or woman before the age of forty. By fifty the summit of fame is reached, and the downward grade begun. One can observe this again and again in every profession.
A great actor, doctor, lawyer, writer, or painter has ten years of success, and if he does not provide for his future during those ten years, ’tis sad for him. As the tide turns on the shore, so the tide turns on the careers of men and women alike.
Public life is not necessarily bad. In the first place, it is only the man with strong individuality who can ever attain publicity. He must be above the ordinary ruck and gamut, or he will never receive public recognition. If, therefore, he is stronger than his brother, he should be stronger also to resist temptation, to disdain self-love or vainglory. The moment his life becomes public he is under the microscope, and should remember his influence is great for good or ill. Popular praise is pleasant, but after all it means little; one’s own conscience is the thing, that alone tells whether we have given of our best or reached our ideal. The true artist is never satisfied, therefore the true artist never suffers from a swelled head; it is the minor fry who enjoy that ailment.
The temptations behind the footlights are enormous. It is useless denying the fact. One may love the stage, and count many actors and actresses among one’s friends; but one cannot help seeing that theatrical life is beset by dangers and pitfalls.
Young men and women alike are run after and fawned upon by foolish people of both sexes. Morally this is bad. Actors are flattered and worshipped as though they were little gods. This in itself tends to evoke egotism. The gorgeous apparel of the theatre makes men and women extravagant in their dress; the constant going backwards and forwards in all weathers inclines them to think they must save time or themselves by driving; the fear of catching cold makes them indulge in cabs and carriages they cannot afford, and extravagance becomes their besetting sin. Every one wants to look more prosperous than his neighbour, every recipient of forty shillings a week wishes the world to think his salary is forty pounds.
Apart from pay, the life is exacting. The leaders of the profession seldom sup out: they are tired after the evening’s work, and know that burning the candle at both ends means early extinction, but the Tottie Veres and Gladys Fitz-Glynes are always ready to be entertained.
The following advertisement appeared one day in a leading London paper:
“Stage.—I am nearly eighteen, tall, fair, good-looking, have a little money, and wish to adopt the stage as a profession. Engagement wanted.”
What was the result? Piles of letters, containing all sorts of offers to help Miss A—— to her doom. A certain gentleman wrote from a well-known fashionable club, the letter being marked Private, saying: “I should like if possible to assist you in your desire to go on the stage, but I am not professional myself in any way. This is purely a matter in which I might be happy to take an interest and assist, if you think proper to communicate with me by letter, stating exactly the circumstances, and when I can have an interview with you on the subject.” This letter might be capable of many interpretations. The gentleman might, of course, have been purely philanthropic in his motives; we will give him the benefit of the doubt.
Others were yet more strange and suggestive of peril for the girl of eighteen.
What might have been the end of all this? Supposing Miss A—— had granted an interview to No. 1. Supposing further he had advanced the money for the novice to buy an engagement, what might have proved her fate? She would have been in his clutches—young, inexperienced, powerless, in the hands of a man who, if really philanthropic, could easily have found persons needing interest and assistance among his own immediate surroundings, instead of going wide afield to dispense his charity and selecting for the purpose an unknown girl of eighteen who innocently stated she was good-looking.
Miss Geneviève Ward, a woman who has climbed to the top of her profession, allows me to tell the following little story about herself as a warning to others, for it was only her own genius—a very rare gift—which dragged her to the front.
here i am my dear old friend gee gee
By permission of W. Boughton & Sons, Photographers, Lowestoft.
MR. GEORGE GROSSMITH.
When she first came to England, with a name already well established in America, expecting an immediate engagement, she could not get work at all. She applied to the best-known theatrical agents in London. Day after day she went there, she a woman in her prime and at the top of her profession, and yet she was unable to obtain work.
“Tragedy is dead, Miss Ward,” exclaimed Mr. B——. “Young women with fine physical developments are what we want.”
It was not talent, not experience, that were required according to this well-known agent, but legs and arms—a poor standard, truly, for the drama of the country.
However, at last there came a day, after many weary months of waiting, when some one was wanted to play tragedy at Manchester. It was only a twelve weeks’ engagement, and the pay but ￡8 a week. It was a ridiculous sum for one in Miss Ward’s position to accept, but she was worn out with anxiety, and determined not to go back to America and own herself vanquished; therefore she accepted the offer, paid the agent heavily, and went to Manchester, where she played for twelve weeks as arranged. Before many nights had passed, however, she had signed a further engagement at double the pay. Her chance in England had come and she had won.
If such delay, such misery, such anxiety can befall those whose position is already established, and whose talents are known, what must await the novice?
“I suppose I have kept more girls off the stage than any living woman,” said Miss Ward. “Short, ugly, fat, common, hopeless girls come to me to ask my advice. There is not one in twenty who has the slightest chance, not the very slightest chance, of success. Servants come, dressmakers, wives of military men, daughters of bishops and titled folk. The mania seems to spread from high to low, and yet hardly one of them has a voice, figure, carriage, or anything suitable for the stage, even setting dramatic talent aside.”
“What do you say to them?”
“Tell them right out. I think it is kinder to them, and more generous to the drama. ‘Mind you,’ I say, ‘I am telling you this for your own good; if I consulted personal profit I should take you as a pupil and fill my pocket with your guineas; but you are hopeless, nothing could possibly make you succeed with such a temperament, or voice, or size, or whatever it may be, so you had better turn your attention at once to some other occupation.’”
I have known several cases in which Miss Ward has been most kind by helping real talent gratuitously; many of the women on the stage to-day owe their position to her timely aid.
“Warn girls,” she continued, “when asked for a bonus, never, NEVER to give one.”
It is no uncommon thing for a bogus agent to ask for a ￡10 bonus, and promise to secure an engagement at ￡1 a week. That engagement is never procured, or, if it be, lasts only during rehearsals—which are not paid for—or for a couple of weeks, after which the girl is told she does not suit the part, and dismissed. Thus the matter ends so far as a triumphal stage entry is concerned.
It may be well here to give an actual case of bonus as an example.
A wretched girl signed an agreement to the following effect. She was to pay ￡20 down to the agent as a fee, to provide her own dresses and travelling expenses, and to play the first four months without any salary at all. At the expiration of that time she was to receive 10s. a week for six months, with an increase of ￡1 a week for the following year.
On this munificent want of salary the girl was expected to pay rent, dress well for the stage, have good food so as to be able to fulfil her engagements properly, attend endless rehearsals, and withal consider herself fortunate in obtaining a hearing at all. She broke the engagement on excellent advice, and the agent wisely did not take action against her, as he at first threatened to do.
In the sixties Edward Terry essayed the stage. Seeing an advertisement, the future comedian offered his services at a salary of 15s. a week.
Above the door was announced in grand style:
“Madame Castaglione’s Dramatic Company, taking advantage of the closing of the Theatres Royal Covent Garden, Drury Lane, Lyceum, etc., will appear at Christchurch for six nights only.”
It was an extraordinary company, in which several parts were acted by one person during the same evening. There was only one play-book, from which every actor copied out his own part, no one was ever paid, and general chaos reigned. Edward Terry had fallen into the hands of one of the most notorious bogus managers of his time. His next engagement was more lucrative. He was always sure of playing eighteen parts a week, and sometimes received 20s. in return. Matters are better now; but strange stories of early struggle crop up occasionally, and the bogus manager-agent, in spite of the Actors’ Association and the Benevolent Fund, still exists.
Edward Terry had to fight hard in order to attain a position, and thoroughly deserves all the success that has fallen to his lot; but all stage aspirants are not Edward Terrys, and then their plight in the hands of the bogus agent is sad indeed, especially in the provinces where he flourishes.
Those who know the stage only from the front of the house little realise the strict regulations enforced behind the scenes in our first-class London theatres, the discipline of which is almost as severe as that of a Government office. Each theatre has its code of rules and regulations, which generally number about twenty, but are sometimes so lengthy they are embodied in a handbook. These rules and regulations have to be signed by every one, from principal to super, and run somewhat in this wise:
“The hair of the face must be shaven if required by the exigencies of the play represented.”
“All engagements to be regarded as exclusive, and no artiste shall appear at any other theatre or hall without the consent in writing of the manager or his representative.”
“All artistes engaged are to play any part or parts for which they may be cast, and to understudy if required.”
“In the event of the theatre being closed through riot, fire, public calamity, royal demise, epidemic, or illness of principal, no salary shall be claimed during such closing.”
A clause in a comic opera agreement ran:
“No salary will be payable for any nights or days on which the artiste may not perform, whether absenting himself by permission, or through illness, or any other unavoidable cause, and should the artiste be absent for more than twelve consecutive performances under any circumstances whatever, this engagement may be cancelled by the manager without any notice whatsoever.”
Thus it will be seen an engagement even when obtained hangs on a slender thread, and twelve days’ illness, although an understudy may step in to take the part, threatens dismissal for the unfortunate sufferer.
Of course culpable negligence of the rules may be punished by instant dismissal, but for ordinary offences fines are levied, in proportion to the salary of the offender. Sometimes a fine is sixpence, sometimes a guinea, but an ordinary one is half a crown “for talking behind the scenes during a performance.” Some people are always being fined.
In the case of legitimate drama the actor is not permitted to “build up” his part at his own sweet will; in comic opera, however, “gagging” and “business” have often gone far to make success.
The upholder of law and order behind the scenes is the stage manager. If power gives happiness he should be happy, but his position is such a delicate one, and tact so essential, that it is often difficult for him to be friendly with every one and yet a strict and impartial disciplinarian.
Life is a strange affair. We all try to be alike in our youth, and individual in our middle age. As we grow up we endeavour to shake ourselves out of that jelly-mould shape into which school education forces us, although we sometimes mistake eccentricity for individuality. Just as much real joy comes to the woman who has darned a stocking neatly or served a good dinner, as is vouchsafed by public praise; just as much pleasure is felt by the man who has helped a friend, or steered a successful bargain. In the well-doing is the satisfaction, not in indiscriminate and ofttimes over-eulogistic applause.
Stage aspirants soon learn those glorious press notices count for naught, and they cease to bring a flutter to the heart.
Success is but a bubble. It glistens and attracts the world as the soap globe glistens and attracts the child. It is something to strive for, something to catch, something to run after and grasp securely; yet, after all, what is it? It is but a shimmer—the bubble bursts in the child’s hand, the glistening particles are nothing, the ball once gained is gone. Is not success the same? We long for, we strive to attain our goal, and then find nothing but emptiness.
If we are not satisfied with ourselves, if we know our best work has not yet been attained, that we have not reached our own high standard, worldly success has merely pricked the bubble of ambition, that bubble we had thought meant so much and which really is so little. People are a queer riddle. One might liken them to flowers. There are the beautiful roses, the stately lilies, the prickly thorns and clinging creepers; there are the weeds and poisonous garbage. Society is the same. People represent flowers. Some live long and do evil, some live a short while and do good, sweetening all around them by the beauty of their minds. Our friends are like the blooms in a bouquet, our enemies like the weeds in our path.
What diversified people we like. This woman excites our admiration because she is beautiful, that one because she is clever, yon lady is sympathetic, and the trend of the mind of the fourth stimulates our own. They are absolutely dissimilar, that quartette, we like them all, and yet they have no points in common. It does us good to be with some people, they have an ennobling, refining, or softening effect upon us—it does us harm to be with others.
And so we are all many people in one. We adapt ourselves to our friends as we adapt our clothes to the weather. We expand in their sunshine and frizzle up in their sarcasm. We are all actors. All our life is merely human drama, and imperceptibly to ourselves we play many parts, and yet imagine during that long vista of years and circumstances we are always the same.
We act—you and I—but we act ourselves, and the professional player acts some one else; but that is the only difference, and it is less than most folk imagine.
Love of the stage is the fascination of the mysterious, which is the most insidious of all fascinations.
A Fantasy Founded on Fact
Plain but Fascinating—The Swell in the Stalls—Overtures—Persistence—Introduction at Last—Her Story—His Kindness—Happiness crept in—Love—An Ecstasy of Joy—His Story—A Rude Awakening—The Result of Deception—The Injustice of Silence—Back to Town—Illness—Sleep.
THE curtain had just risen; the orchestra was playing the music of the famous operetta Penso, when a man in the prime of life in a handsome fur coat entered the stalls. He was alone. Having paid for his programme and taken off his furs, he quietly sat down to survey the scene.
The chorus was upon the stage; sweeping his glasses from end to end of the line of girls upon the boards, his eyes suddenly lighted upon the second girl on the left. She was not beautiful. She had a pretty figure, and a most expressive face; but her features were irregular and her mouth was large. Far more lovely girls stood in that row, many taller, with finely chiselled features and elegant figures, but only that girl—Number II. on the Left—caught and riveted his attention. He looked and looked again. What charm did she possess, he wondered, which seemed to draw him towards her? She was singing, and making little curtsies like the others in time to the music: she was waving her arms with those automatic gesticulations the chorus learn; she was smiling, and yet behind it all he seemed to see an unutterable sadness in the depths of her dark grey eyes. The girl fascinated him; he listened not to the music of Penso, he hardly looked at any one else; so long as Number II. on the Left remained upon the stage his entire thoughts were with her. She enchained, she almost seemed to hypnotise him, and yet she seldom looked his way. During the entr’acte Allan Murray went outside to try and discover the name of Number II. on the Left. No one, however, was able to tell him, or if they were, they would not.
Disappointed he returned to his seat in time for the second act. She had changed her dress, and the new one was perhaps less becoming than the first.
“She is not pretty,” he kept repeating to himself, “but she is young. She is neither a great singer nor a dancer, but she is a gentlewoman.”
So great was the fascination she had exerted over the man of the world, that he returned the next night to a seat in the stalls, and as he gazed upon the operetta he felt more than ever convinced that there was some great tragedy lying hidden behind the smiling face of Number II. on the Left. He desired to unravel it.
A short time before Christmas, being absolutely determined to find out who she was, he succeeded in worming the information from some one behind the scenes. Her real name was Sarah Hopper—could anything be more hideous?—her professional one Alwyn FitzClare—could anything be more euphonious? He went off to his club after one of the performances was over, and wrote her a note. Days went by and he received no answer. Then he purchased some beautiful flowers and sent them to the stage door for Miss Alwyn FitzClare with his compliments. Still no answer; but in the meantime he had been back to the theatre, and had been even more struck than before with the appearance of the girl, and felt sorry for the look of distress he thought he saw lurking behind her smiles.
It was now two days before Christmas, and writing her a note begging her not to take it amiss from a stranger, who wished her a very pleasant Christmas, he enclosed two five-pound notes, hoping she would drink his health and remember she had given great pleasure to one of her audience.
Christmas morning brought him back the two notes with a formal stiff little letter, saying that Miss FitzClare begged to return her thanks and was quite unable to accept gifts from a stranger.
For weeks and weeks he occupied a stall at the theatre, whenever he had an off-night. He continued to write little notes to Miss Alwyn FitzClare, but never received any reply. However, at last he ventured to beg that she would grant him an interview. If she would only tell him where she came from, or give him an inkling of her position, he would find some means to obtain a formal introduction. She answered this letter not quite so stiffly as the former one containing the bank-notes, and stated that she came from Ipswich. Time passed; he succeeded in gaining an introduction, and sent it formally to Number II. on the Left. At the same time he invited her to lunch with him at a famous restaurant. She accepted; she came out of curiosity, she ultimately vowed, although in spite of the introduction, and in spite of the months of persuasion on his part, she felt doubtful as to the wisdom of doing so.
The girl who had looked plain but interesting upon the stage, appeared before him in a neat blue serge costume, well fitting and undecorated, and struck Mr. Murray as very much better looking, and smarter altogether in the capacity of a private person than she did in the chorus. “A gentlewoman” was writ big all over her. No one could look at her a second time and not feel that she was well born.
“Do you know,” she said, “I often have funny letters from people on the other side of the footlights; but yours is the only one I ever answered in my life. Tell me why you have been so persistent?”
“Because of the trouble in your face,” he answered.
“In mine? But I am always laughing on the stage—that is part of the duty of the chorus.”
“Yes,” he replied, “you laugh outwardly; but you cry inwardly. It was your sad expression which first attracted my attention.”
He was very sympathetic and very kind, and gradually she told him her story. Her father had been a solicitor of good birth. He had a large practice, but dying suddenly left a family of nine children, all under the age of twenty, practically unprovided for, for the small amount for which his life was insured soon dwindled away in meeting the funeral expenses and settling outstanding bills.
“I was not clever enough to become a governess,” she said, “I had not been educated for a secretary—in fact, I had no talent of any sort or kind except the ability to sing a little. Luck and hard work brought me the chance of being able to earn a guinea a week on the stage, out of which I manage to live and send home a shilling or so to help mother and the children.”
It was a tragic little story—one of many which a great metropolis can unfold, where men bring children into the world without giving a thought to their future, and leave them to be dragged up on the bitter bread of charity, or to work in that starvation-mill which so many well-born gentlewomen grind year after year.
The rich gentleman and Number II. on the Left became warm friends. Months went by and they often met. She lunched with him sometimes; they spent an occasional Sunday on the river, and she wrote to him, and he to her, on the days when they did not meet. She was very proud; she would accept none of his presents, she would not take money, and was always most circumspect in her behaviour. Gradually that sad look melted away from her eyes, and a certain beauty took its place. He was kind to her, and by degrees, little by little, the interest aroused by her mournful expression deepened—as it disappeared—into love. She, on her side, looked upon him as a true friend, practically the only disinterested friend she had in London; and so time wore on, bringing happiness to both: neither paused to think. Her life was a happy one. She grew not to mind her work at the theatre, or the sewing she did for the children at home, sitting hour by hour alone in her little attic lodging, looking forward to those pleasant Sunday trips which brought a new joy into her existence. His companionship and friendship were very precious to this lonely girl in London.
One glorious hot July Sunday which they spent near Marlow-on-Thames seemed to Sarah Hopper the happiest day of her life. She loved him, and she knew it. He loved her; and had often told her so; but more than that had never passed between them. It was nearly two years since they first met, during which time the only bright hours in the life of Number II. on the Left had been those spent in Allan Murray’s company. His kindness never changed. His consideration for her seemed to Alwyn delightful.
On that sunny afternoon they pulled up under the willows for tea, which she made from a little basket they always took with them. They were sitting chatting pleasantly, watching the water-flies buzzing on the stream, throwing an occasional bit of cake to a swan, and thoroughly enjoying that delightful sense of laziness which comes upon most of us at the close of a hot day, when seated beneath the shady trees that overhang the river.
He took her hand, and played with it absently for a while.
“Little girl,” he said at last, “this cannot go on. I love you, and you know it; you love me, and I know that too; but do you love me sufficiently to give yourself to me?”
“I don’t think I could love you any more,” she replied, “however hard I tried, for you have been my good angel for two happy years, you have been the one bright star of hope, the one pleasant thing in my life. I love you, I love you, I love you,” she murmured, as she leaned forward and laid her cheek upon his hand. He felt her warm breath thrill through him.
“I know it, dear,” he said, and a sad pained look crossed his face; “but what I want to know is, do you care for me sufficiently?”
“I hardly understand,” she answered, frightened she knew not why.
“Will you give me the right to keep you in luxury and protect you from harm?”
She looked up anxiously, there was something in his words and something in his tone she did not comprehend. His face was averted, but she saw how pale and haggard he looked.
“What do you mean?” she questioned, turning sick with an inexplicable dread.
“Could you give up the stage, the world for me? Instead of being your friend I would be your slave.”
She seemed to be in a dream; his words sounded strange, his halting speech, his ashen hue denoted evil.
“Tell me what you mean,” she cried.
“Dearest,” he murmured, and then words seemed to fail him.
“But?” and she looked him through and through, a terrible suspicion entering her soul, “but——”
“But,” he replied, turning away from her, “you can never be my wife.”
“Great God!” exclaimed the girl. “This from the one friend I thought I had on earth, from the one man I had learned to love and respect. Not your wife?” she repeated. “Am I losing my senses or are you?”
“You cannot be my wife,” he reiterated desperately.
“So you think 1 am not good enough?” she gasped almost hysterically. “It is true I am only Number II. on the Left, and yet I was born a lady. I am your equal in social standing, and no breath of scandal has ever soiled my name. You have made love to me for two years, you have vowed you love me, and now, when you know my whole heart is given to you, you turn round and coolly say, ‘You are not good enough to be my wife.’”
“My darling,” he said, taking her hand and squeezing her fingers until the blood seemed to stand still within them, “this is torture to me.”
“And what do you suppose it is to me?” she retorted. “It is not only torture but insult. You have brought me to this. I loved you so intensely and trusted you so implicitly, I never paused to think. I have lived like a blind fool in the present, happy when with you, dreaming of you when away, drifting on, on, in wild Elysium, hoping—yes, hoping, I suppose—that some day I might be your wife, or if not that, at any rate that I could still continue to respect myself and respect you. To think that you, you, whom I trusted so much, should insult me like this,” and she buried her face in her hands and sobbed.
“My darling, I cannot marry,” he replied. “It is not your position, it is not the stage, it is nothing to do with you that makes me say so. Had it been possible I should have asked you to be my wife a year ago or more, but, little girl, dearest love, how can I tell you?” and almost choking with emotion he added, “I am a married man.”
She left his side and staggered to the other end of the boat, where, throwing herself upon the cushions, she wept as if her heart would break.
“Have I deserved this,” she cried, “that you in smiling guise should come to me as an emblem of happiness? You have stolen my love from me, and oh, your poor, poor, wretched wife!”
She was a good, honest, womanly girl, and even in her own anguish of heart did not forget she was not the only sufferer from such treachery.
In a torrent of words he told her how he had married when a student at the ’Varsity—married beneath him—how his life had ever since been misery. How the pretty girl-bride had developed into a vulgar woman, how for years she and her still commoner family had dogged his footsteps, how he had paid and paid to be rid of her, how his whole existence had been ruined by the indiscretion of his youth, and the wiles of the designing landlady’s daughter, how he had never felt respect and love for woman until he had met her, Number II. on the Left.
It was a tragic moment in both their lives. He felt the awful sin he had committed in not telling her from the first that he could never marry. He felt the injustice of it all, the punishment for his own folly that had fallen upon him, and she, poor soul, not only realised the shock to her ideal, but the horrible barrier that had risen between them.
They travelled up to town together, both silent—each feeling that all the world was changed. They parted at Victoria—she would not let him see her home.
The idol of two years was rudely shattered, the happy dreams of life had suddenly turned to miserable reality.
He returned to his chambers, where he cursed himself, and cursed his luck, as he walked up and down his rooms all night, and realised the root of the misery lay in the deception he had practised. He, whose life had been ruined by the deception of a designing, low-class minx, had himself in his turn committed the selfsame sin of misrepresentation. The thought was maddening; his remorse intense. But alack! the past cannot be recalled, and the curse that had followed him for many years he had, alas! cast over a sinless girl.
Sarah Hopper returned to her cheap little lodging at Islington, for after two years’ hard work her salary was still only 30s. a week, and throwing herself into an arm-chair, she sat and thought. Her head throbbed as if it would burst, her eyes seemed on fire as she reviewed the whole story from every possible side. She had been a blind fool; she had trusted in a man she believed a good man, the web of fate had entangled her, and this—this was the end. She could never see him again.
By morning she was in a high state of fever, and when the landlady came to her later in the day she was so alarmed at her appearance she sent at once for the doctor. The doctor came.
“Mental shock,” he said.
Days went by and in wild delirium the little chorus girl lay upon her bed in the lodging, till one night when the landlady had fallen asleep the broken-hearted girl managed to scramble up, and getting a piece of paper and an envelope wrote:
“You have killed me, but for the sake of the honest love of those two years, I forgive you all.”
She addressed it in a firm hand to Alan Murray, and crawling back into bed fell asleep.
A few hours later the landlady awoke; all was silent in the room—so silent, in fact, that she began to wonder. The wild raving had ceased, the restless head was no longer tossing about on the pillow. Drawing back the muslin curtains to let the light of early morning—that soft gentle light of a summer’s day—pour into the room, she went across to the bed.
The kindly old woman bent over the broken-hearted girl to find her sleeping peacefully—the sleep of death.
Printed and bound by Hazell, Watson & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury.
The End