CHAPTER XVI. Views on Acting
QUOTE from two more letters, and then I have done with this stock company. The first was written just after our star had set—or rather gone to the next town—the second about a fortnight later:
“... ——— ———- left on Saturday. We had crowded houses all the time he was with us, and I’m not surprised. It must have been a treat to these benighted provincials to see real acting. No wonder country people don’t care much for theaters, seeing the wretched horse-play presented to them under the name of acting. It does exasperate me to hear people talking all that thundering nonsense about the provinces being such a splendid school for young actors. Why, a couple of months of it is enough to kill any idea of acting a man may have started with. Even if you had time to think of anything but how to gabble through your lines, it would be of no use. You would never be allowed to carry out any ideas of your own. If you attempted to think, you would be requested to look out for, another shop at once. The slightest naturalness or originality would be put down to ignorance. You must walk through each part by the beaten track of rule and tradition—and such rule and tradition! The rule of Richardson’s Show, the tradition of some ranting inn-yard hack. To reach the standard of dramatic art in the provinces, you have to climb down, not up. Comedy consists in having a red nose, and tumbling about the stage; being pathetic makes you hoarse for an hour after; and as for tragedy! no one dare attempt that who hasn’t the lungs of a politician.
“But ———— changed all that for us. He infused a new spirit into everybody, and, when he, was on the stage, the others acted better than I should ever have thought they could have done. It is the first time I have played with any one who can properly be called an actor, and it was quite a new sensation. I could myself tell that I was acting very differently to the way in which I usually act. I seemed to catch his energy and earnestness; the scene grew almost real, and I began to feel my part. And that is the most any one can do on the stage. As to ‘being the character you are representing,’ that is absurd. I can hardly believe in any sane person seriously putting forward such a suggestion. It is too ridiculous to argue against. Picture to yourself a whole company forgetting they were merely acting, and all fancying themselves the people they were impersonating. Words and business would of course be out of the question. They would all say and do just what came natural to them, and just when it came natural; so that sometimes everybody would be talking at once, and at other times there would be nobody doing anything. Such enthusiasm as theirs would never bow to the pitiful requirements of stage illusion. They would walk over the footlights on to the heads of the orchestra, and they would lean up against the mountains in the background. It would be a grand performance, but it wouldn’t last long. The police would have to be called in before the first act was over. If they were not, the Leading Man would slaughter half the other members of the company; the Juvenile Lead would run off with the Walking Lady and the property jewels; and the First Old Man would die of a broken heart. What the manager would do on the second night I don’t know. If he opened at all, I suppose he would go in front and explain matters by saying:
“‘Ladies and Gentlemen,—I must apologize for the incompleteness with which the play will be presented to you this evening. The truth is, the performance last night was so realistic all round, that there is only the Low Comedy and a General Utility left. But we’ve a good many corpses about the theater, and with these, and the assistance of the two gentlemen mentioned, we will do what we can.’
“Even when studying in one’s own room, one cannot for a moment lose sight of one’s identity. A great actor, creating a character, doesn’t forget he’s himself, and think he’s somebody else. It’s only lunatics who have those fancies. But he is a man of such vast sympathy that he can understand and enter into all human thoughts and feelings; and, having pictured to himself the character of the man he wishes to represent, he can follow the workings of that supposed man’s mind under all possible circumstances.
“But even this sympathy must be left outside the theater doors. Once inside, the mind must be kept clear of all distracting thought. What is gone through on the stage is merely an exact repetition of what is conceived in the study, and a cool head and a good memory are the only reliable servants when once the curtain is up. Of course a man should feel what he is acting. Feeling is the breath of acting. It is to the actor what Aphrodite’s gift was to Pygmalion—it gives life to his statue. But this feeling is as much a matter of memory as the rest. The actual stage is too artificial for emotion to come to one naturally while there. Each passion is assumed and dropped by force of will, together with the words and action which accompany it.
“...I made a sensation here last Tuesday. I was playing the very part in which our Walking Gentleman met with his accident, and he was playing the villain, who tries to stab me while I am asleep. (The Heavy Man has left. He went soon after he had done the mischief.) Well, everything had gone very smoothly so far, and I was lying there on the couch at the back of the darkened stage, and he was leaning over me with the knife in his hand. I was quite still, waiting for my cue to awake, and wondering if I could manage to start up quickly, when I raised my eyes and caught sight of R——‘s face. I may have done him an injustice. His expression may have been mere acting. The whole idea was, perhaps, due to nothing but my own imagination. I have thought this since. At the time it flashed across me: ‘He means to revenge himself on me for having taken his place. He is going to disfigure me just as he was disfigured.’ In an instant I sprung up and wrested the knife from his hand.
“We stood there looking at one another, and neither of us moved or spoke; he, livid underneath his color, and trembling from head to foot. How long we kept in that position I do not know, for the thud of the curtain upon the stage was the first thing that recalled me to myself. Up to when I had snatched the knife from him, all had been in exact accordance with the book. After that, I should have held him down by the throat, and made a speech of about eight lines. I think our impromptu tableau was more effective.
“There was immense applause, and everybody congratulated me on my success. ‘I suppose you know you cut out the end,’ said the manager; ‘but never mind that. I daresay you were a little nervous, and you acted splendidly, my boy.’”
“I didn’t say it wasn’t acting, and neither did R————....”
I left here to join a small touring company as Juvenile Lead. I looked upon the offer as a grand opportunity at the time, and following Horace’s * advice, grasped it by the forelock. I therefore, one Sunday morning packed my basket, went round the town and shook hands with everybody—not without a pang of regret, for there are few human beings we can be with for any length of time and not be sorry to say good-by to—and then, as the bright summer’s sun was setting and the church bells beginning to peal, I steamed away, or rather the engine did, and the city and its people faded out of my sight and out of my life.
* Not quite sure whose advice this is. Have put it down to Horace to avoid contradiction.
Sunday is the great traveling day for actors. It loses them no time. A company can finish at one town on the Saturday night, and wake up on Monday morning in the next, ready to get everything ship-shape for the evening. Or an actor can leave one show and join another at the other end of the kingdom without missing a single performance. I have known a man play in Cornwall on the Saturday, and at Inverness on the following Monday. But convenient though it is in this respect, in every other, Sunday traveling is most unpleasant, and, for their gratification, I can assure strict Sabbatarians that it brings with it its own punishment.
Especially to a man with a conscience—an article which, in those early days, I was unfortunate enough to possess. A conscience is a disagreeable sort of thing to have with one at any time. It has a nasty disposition—a cantankerous, fault-finding, interfering disposition. There is nothing sociable about it. It seems to take a pleasure in making itself objectionable, and in rendering its owner as uncomfortable as possible. During these Sunday journeys, it used to vex me by every means in its power. If any mild old gentleman, sitting opposite me in the carriage, raised his eyes and looked at me, I immediately fancied he was silently reproaching me, and I felt ashamed and miserable. It never occurred to me at the time that he was every bit as bad as I was, and that I had as much right to be shocked at him as he to be horrified at me. Then I used to ask myself what my poor aunt would say if she could see me. Not that it was of the slightest consequence what the old lady would have said, but the question was just one of those petty annoyances in which a mean-spirited conscience delights. I was firmly convinced that everybody was pointing the finger of scorn at me. I don’t know which particular finger is the finger of scorn: whichever it is, that, I felt, was the one that was pointed at me. At every station, my exasperating inward monitor would whisper to me: “But for such abandoned wretches as you, all those porters and guards would be sleeping peacefully in the village church.” When the whistle sounded, my tormentor would add; “But for you and other such despicable scoundrels, that grimy, toil-stained engine-driver would be dressed in his best clothes, lounging up against a post at his own street corner.” Such thoughts maddened me.
My fellow-passengers generally let on that they were going to see sick relatives, and I would have done the same if it hadn’t been for that awful basket of mine. But the inventive faculty of a newspaper reporter couldn’t have explained away a basket the size of an average chest of drawers. I might have said that it contained a few delicacies for the invalid, but nobody would have believed me, and there would have been a good lie wasted.
But it is not only to people with consciences that Sunday traveling presents vexations. Even you, my dear reader, would find it unpleasant. There is a subdued going-to-a-funeral air about the whole proceeding, which makes you melancholy in spite of yourself. You miss the usual bustling attributes of railway traveling. No crowded platforms! no piles of luggage! no newspaper boys! The refreshment rooms don’t seem the same places at all, and the damsels there are haughtier then ever. When you arrive at your destination, you seem to have come to a city of the dead. You pass through deserted streets to your hotel. Nobody is about. You go into the coffee-room and sit down there by yourself. After a while the boots looks in. You yearn toward him as toward a fellow-creature. You would fall upon his neck, and tell him all your troubles. You try to engage him in conversation, so as to detain him in the room, for you dread to be left alone again. But he doesn’t enter into your feelings: he answers all questions by monosyllables, and gets away as quickly as possible. You go out for a walk. The streets are dark and silent, and you come back more miserable than you started. You order supper, but have no appetite, and cannot eat it when it comes. You retire to your room early, but cannot go to sleep. You lie there and wonder what the bill will come to, and, while thinking of this, you are softly borne away into the land of dreams, and fancy that the proprietor has asked you for a hundred and eighty-seven pounds nine and fourpence ha’penny, and that you have killed him on the spot, and left the house in your nightshirt without paying.
HE show which I now graced with my presence was a “fit-up.” I didn’t know this beforehand, or I should never have engaged myself. A “fit-up” is only one grade higher than a booth, which latter branch of the profession, by the way, I have always regretted never having explored. I missed the most picturesque and romantic portion of the theatrical world by not penetrating into that time-forsaken corner. Booth life is a Bohemia within a Bohemia. So far as social and artistic position is concerned, it is at the bottom of the dramatic ladder; but for interest and adventure, it stands at the very top.
However, I never did join a booth, so there is an end of the matter. The nearest I approached to anything of the kind was this fit-up, and that I didn’t like at all. We kept to the very small towns, where there was no theater, and fitted up an apology for a stage in any hall or room we could hire for the purpose. The town-hall was what we generally tried for, but we were not too particular; any large room did, and we would even put up with a conveniently situated barn. We carried our own props, scenery, and proscenium, and trusted for the wood work to some local carpenter. A row of candles did duty for footlights, and a piano, hired in the town, represented the orchestra. We couldn’t get a piano on one occasion, so the proprietor of the hall lent us his harmonium.
I will not linger over my experience with this company; they were not pleasant ones. Short extracts from two letters, one written just after joining, and the other sent off just before I left, will be sufficient:
“Dear Jim: I find I’ve dropped the substance and grasped the shadow (I pride myself not so much on the originality of this remark as on its applicability). I shall leave as soon as possible, and try my luck in London. My ambition to play Juvenile Lead vanished the moment I saw the Leading Lady, who is, as usual, the manager’s wife. She is a fat greasy old woman. She has dirty hands and finger nails, and perspires freely during the course of the performance. She is about three times my size, and if the audiences to which we play have the slightest sense of humor—which, from what I have seen of them, I think extremely doubtful—our love-making must be a rare treat to them. How a London first-night gallery would enjoy it! I’m afraid, though, it’s only wasted down here. My arm, when I try to clasp her waist, reaches to about the middle of her back; and, when we embrace, the house can’t see me at all. I have to carry her half-way across the stage in one part! By Jove! I’m glad we don’t play that piece often.
“She says I shall never make a good ‘lover’ unless I throw more ardor (‘harder,’ she calls it) into my acting....”
“... Shall be with you on Monday next. Can’t stand this any longer. It’s ruining me. Seven-and-six was all I could get last week, and eleven shillings the week before. We are not doing bad business by any means. Indeed, we have very good houses. The old man has got the knack of making out good gag bills, and that pulls ‘em in for the two or three nights we stay at each place. You know what I mean by a ‘gag’ bill: ‘The Ruined Mill by Dead Man’s Pool. Grace Mervin thinks to meet a friend, but finds a foe. Harry Baddun recalls old days.
“Why do you not love me?”
“Because you are a bad man.”
“Then die!” The struggle on the brink!! “Help!!” “There is none to help you here.”
“You lie, Harry Baddun; I am here.” A hand from the grave!! Harry Baddun meets his doom!!!
“That’s what I mean by a gag bill.
“Whatever money is made, however, he takes care to keep for himself. He can always put up at the best hotel in the place, while we have to pawn our things to pay for the meanest of lodgings.
“It isn’t only actors who get robbed by these managers: authors also suffer pretty considerably. We have two copyright pieces in our list, both of which draw very well, but not a penny is paid for performing them. To avoid any chance of unpleasantness, the titles of the pieces and the names of the chief characters are altered. So that even if the author or his friends (supposing it possible for any author to have any friends) were on the lookout, they would never know anything about it. And, if they did, it would be of no use. It would be throwing good money after bad to attempt to enforce payment from the men who do this sort of thing,—and I hear that it is done all over the provinces,—they have no money and none can be got out of them. Your penniless man can comfortably defy half the laws in the statute book.
“What a nuisance firearms are on the stage! I thought I was blinded the other night, and my eyes are painful even now. The fellow should have fired up in the air. It is the only safe rule on a small stage, though it does look highly ridiculous to see a man drop down dead because another man fires a pistol at the moon. But there is always some mishap with them. They either don’t go off at all, or else they go off in the wrong place, and, when they do go off, there is generally an accident. They can never be depended upon. You rush on to the stage, present a pistol at somebody’s head, and say, ‘Die!’ but the pistol only goes click, and the man doesn’t know whether to die or not. He waits while you have another try at him, and the thing clicks again; and then you find out that the property man hasn’t put a cap on it, and you turn round to get one. But the other man, thinking it is all over, makes up his mind to die at once from nothing else but fright, and, when you come back to kill him for the last time, you find he’s already dead.
“We have recourse to some rum makeshifts here, to eke out our wardrobes. My old frock coat, with a little cloth cape which one of the girls has cutout for me pinned on underneath the collar, and with a bit of lace round the cuffs, does for the gallant of half the old comedies; and, when I pin the front corners back and cover them with red calico, I’m a French soldier. A pair of white thingumies does admirably for buckskin riding breeches, and for the part of a Spanish conspirator, I generally borrow my landlady’s tablecloth....”
It was about the end of October when I found myself once more in London. The first thing I then did was to go to my old shop on the Surrey-side. Another company and another manager were there, but the latter knew me, and, as I owned a dress suit, engaged me at a salary of twelve shillings weekly to play the part of a swell. When I had been there just one week, he closed. Whether it was paying me that twelve shillings that broke him, I cannot say; but on Monday morning some men came and cut the gas off, and then he said he shouldn’t go on any longer, and that we must all do the best we could for ourselves.
I, with two or three others, thereupon started off for a theater at the East End, which was about to be opened for a limited number of nights by some great world-renowned actor. This was about the fortieth world-renowned party. I had heard of for the first time within the last twelvemonth. My education in the matter of world-renowned people had evidently been shamefully neglected.
The theater was cunningly contrived, so that one had to pass through the bar of the adjoining public-house—to the landlord of which it belonged—to get to the stage. Our little party was saved from temptation, however, for I don’t think we could have mustered a shilling among the lot of us that morning. I was getting most seriously hard up at this time. The few pounds I had had left, after purchasing my wardrobe and paying my railway fares, etc., had now dwindled down to shillings, and, unless things mended, I felt I should have to throw up the sponge and retire from the stage. I was determined not to do this though, till the very last, for I dreaded the chorus of “I told you so’s,” and “I knew very well how ‘twould be’s,” and such like well-known and exasperating crows of triumph, with which, in these cases, our delighted friends glorify themselves and crush us.
The East End theater proved a stop-gap for a while. I was fortunate enough to be one of those engaged out of the crowd of eager and anxious applicants, among whom I met a couple from the fit-up company I had lately left, they having come to the same conclusion as myself, viz., that it was impossible to live well and “dress respectably on and off the stage” upon an average salary of ten shillings weekly. The engagement was only for a fortnight, and there is only one incident connected with it that I particularly remember. That was my being “guyed” on one occasion. We were playing a melodrama, the scene of which was laid in some outlandish place or other, and the stage manager insisted on my wearing a most outrageous costume. I knew it would be laughed at, especially in that neighborhood, and my expectations were more than fulfilled. I hadn’t been on the stage five seconds before I heard a voice from the gallery hoarsely inquire: “What is it, Bill?” And then another voice added: “Tell us what it is, and you shall have it.”
A good deal of laughter followed these speeches. I got hot all over, and felt exceedingly uncomfortable and nervous. It was as much as I could do to recollect my part, and it was with a great effort that I began my first line. No sooner had I opened my mouth, however, than somebody in the pit exclaimed, in tones of the utmost surprise, “Blowed if it ain’t alive!”
After that, the remarks on my personal appearance fell thick and fast: “Look well in a shop window, that bloke!” “Nice suit to take your gal out on a Sunday in!”
“This style, thirty shillings,” etc.; while one good-natured man sought to put me at my ease by roaring out in a stentorian voice, “Never you mind, old man; you go on. They’re jealous ‘cos you’ve got nice clothes on.” How I managed to get through the part I don’t know. I became more nervous and awkward every minute, and, of course, the more I bungled, the more the house jeered. I gained a good deal of sympathy behind, for most of them had had similar experiences of their own; but I was most intensely miserable all that evening, and, for the next night or two, quite dreaded to face the audience. Making game of any one is a very amusing occupation, but the “game” doesn’t see the fun till a long while afterward. I can’t bear to hear any of the performers chaffed when I’m at a theater. Actors are necessarily a sensitive class of people, and I don’t think those who make fun of them, when any little thing goes wrong, have any idea of the pain they are inflicting. It is quite right, and quite necessary sometimes, that disapprobation should be expressed, and that unmistakably, but it should be for the purpose of correcting real faults. “Guying” is, as a rule, indulged in only by the silliest portion of the audience, and for no other object but to display their own vulgar wit.
After my fortnight at the East End, I went as one of the chorus in a new opera-bouffe to be brought out at a West End theater. We rehearsed for three weeks, the piece ran for one, and then I again took a provincial engagement, which, as it was now close upon Christmas, was easy enough to obtain.
My stay in London had not been very profitable to me, but it had given my friends a treat, as they had been able to come and see me act again. At least, I suppose it was a treat to them, though they did not say so. My friends are always most careful never to overdo the thing in the matter of praise. I cannot accuse them of sycophancy. They scorn to say pleasant things that they don’t mean. They prefer saying unpleasant things that they do mean. There’s no humbug about them; they never hesitate to tell me just exactly what they think of me. This is good of them. I respect them for saying what they think; but if they would think a little differently, I should respect them still more. I wonder if everybody’s friends are as conscientious? I’ve heard of people having “admiring friends,” and “flattering friends,” and “over-indulgent friends,” but I’ve never had any of that sort myself. I’ve often thought I should rather like to, though, and if any gentleman has more friends of that kind than he wants, and would care to have a few of the opposite stamp, I am quite ready to swop with him. I can warrant mine never to admire or flatter under any circumstances whatsoever; neither will he find them over-indulgent. To a man who really wishes to be told of his faults, they would be invaluable; on this point they are candor itself. A conceited man would also derive much benefit from their society. I have myself.
