II

During its run we had a strange opportunity of experiencing the extraordinary way in which a play fluctuates with the public pulse. From the first night it was a great success, and the booking became so great that we were obliged to enlarge the time for the advance purchase of seats. Our usual time was four weeks, and as a working rule it was found well to keep to this. Where booking is not under great pressure, too long a time means extra particularity in choice of seats, and a de facto curtailment of receipts. For Ravenswood we had to advance, first one week and then a second; so that about the end of the first month we were booking six weeks ahead. I may say that we were booked that long, for as each day’s advance sheet was opened it became quickly filled. The agents, too, were hard at work and we were not able to allot to any of them the full number of seats for which they asked. I have a special reason for mentioning this, as will appear. Now at the Lyceum from the time of my taking charge of the business we did not ever “pencil” to agents—that is, we did not let them have seats after the customary fashion “on sale or return.” We had, be sure, good reason for this. Whatever seats they had they took at their own risk by week or month, in a sort of running agreement terminable at fixed notice. When we arrived at the fiftieth performance the play was going as strong as ever, the receipts being on or about two thousand pounds per week. Towards the end of the year, theatre receipts generally began to drop a little; Christmas is coming, and many things occupy family attention; the autumn visitors have all departed; and the fogs of November are bad for business. We did not, therefore, give it a second thought that the door receipts got a little less, for all the bookable seats were already secure. On Thursday, November 20, I had an experience which set me thinking. During that day I had visits from three of the theatre agents having businesses in the West End and the City. They came separately and with an unwonted secrecy. Each wished to see me alone, and being secured from interruption, stated the reason. Each had the same request and spoke in almost identical terms, so that the conversation of one will illustrate all. The first one asked me:

“Will you tell me frankly—if you don’t mind—are you really doing good business with Ravenswood?”

“Certainly,” I answered. “All we can do. Why you know that we can only let you have for six weeks ahead a part of the seats you have asked for. After some odd nervousness he said again:

“I suppose I may take it that that applies to every one you deal with? I know I can trust you, for you always treat me frankly; and this is a matter I am exceedingly anxious about.” For answer I rang the bell for the commissionaire in waiting on the office and sent him round to the box-office to bring me the booking sheets for six weeks ahead. These I duly placed before the agent—Librarian they called them in those days, as they were the survivors of the old lending libraries who used to secure theatre tickets for their customers.

“See for yourself!” I said; and he turned over the sheets, every seat on which was marked as sold.

“It is very extraordinary!” he said after a pause. By this time my own curiosity was piqued and I asked him to tell me what it all meant.

“It means this,” he said. “Things can’t go on at this rate. We have not sold a single ticket this week for any theatre in London!”

I opened a drawer and took out what we called the “Ushers’ Returns” for each night that week. We used to have, as means of checking the receipts of the house in addition to the tickets, a set of returns made by the ushers. Each usher had a sectional chart of the seats under his charge, and he had to show which was occupied during the evening, and which, if any, were unoccupied. I had not gone over these as all the seats having been sold it did not much matter to us whether they were occupied or not. To my surprise I found that on each night, growing as the week went on, were quite a number of seats unoccupied. On reference to the full plan I found that most of these were seats sold to the libraries, but that a good proportion of them had been booked at our own office. Neither of us could account for such a thing in any way. When the next, and then the third agent came there was a strong sense over me that something was happening in the great world. As a rule when there is pressure in a theatre the seats belonging to agents remaining unsold can always be disposed of in the theatre box office.

That night Irving had a little supper party of intimate friends in the Beefsteak Room; amongst them one man, Major Ricarde-Seaver, well skilled in the world of haute finance. In the course of conversation I asked him:

“What is up? There is something going to happen! What is it?” He asked me why I thought so, and I told him.

“That is certainly strange!” was his comment. “Then you don’t know?”

“Know what?” I asked. “What is going to happen?” His answer came after a pause.

“You will know soon. Possibly to-morrow; certainly the next day!” The mystery was thickening. Again I asked:

“What is it?” The answer came with a shock:

“Baring’s! They’ve gone under!”

Now any one of a speculative tendency in London, or out of it, could have that day made a fortune by selling “bears”—and there is no lack of sportsmen willing to make money on a “sure thing.” And yet for three days at least there must have been in business circles some uneasiness of so pronounced a character that it for the time obliterated social life with many people. Had they knowledge where the public pulse lay, and how to time its beats, they might have plucked fortune from disaster.

In the Lyceum we became wide awake to the situation. In a time of panic and disaster there is no need for mimetic tragedy; the real thing crowds it out. The very next day we arranged to change the bill on the earliest day possible. As we were booked for six weeks we arranged to change the tragic Ravenswood for Much Ado About Nothing—the brightest and cheeriest comedy in our répertoire—on Monday, January 3.

This we did with excellent result. From the day of the failure of Baring’s the receipts began to dwindle. The nightly return dropped from three hundred pounds odd to two hundred pounds odd, and finally to one hundred pounds odd. With the change to Comedy they jumped up again at once to the tune of an extra hundred pounds a performance.

Except for some performances in the provinces in the autumn that was the last of Ravenswood. There was never a chance for its revival, though from that we might have expected much; it was burned in the fire at our storage in 1898—of which more anon.