Leaves in the Wind

by A. G. Gardiner

ON TAKING THE CALL

Jane came home from the theatre last night overflowing with an indignation that even the beauty of a ride on the top of a bus in the air of these divine summer nights had not cooled. It was not dissatisfaction with the play or the performance that made her boil with volcanic wrath. It was the vanity of the insufferable actor-manager, who would insist on "taking the call" all the time and every time. There were some quite nice people in the play, it seemed, but the more the audience called for them the more the preposterous "old-clo'" man of the stage came smirking before the curtain, rubbing his fat hands and creasing his fat cheeks. "It was disgusting," said Jane. "The creature had been gibbering in the lime-light all night, and the audience were trying to level things up a bit by giving the interesting people a show, and this greedy cormorant snatched every crumb for himself. I hate him. He is a Hun."

The outburst reminded me of a story I once heard about another actor-manager. At the end of the play he went on the stage and found his company bending down in a circle and gazing intently at something on the floor. "What are you looking at?" he asked. "Oh," they chanted in chorus, "we're looking at a spot we've never seen before. It's the centre of the stage."

There are, of course, people who carry the centre of the stage with them. It does not matter where they go or what they play: they dominate the scene. "Where O'Flaherty sits is the head of the table," and where Coquelin stood was the centre of the stage. He needed no placard to remind you that he was someone in particular. You would no more have thought of turning the limelight on to him than you would have thought of turning it on to the moon at midnight or the sun at midday. He just appeared and everyone else became accessory to that commanding presence: he spoke and all other voices seemed like the chirping of sparrows.

And so in other spheres. Take the case of Mr. Asquith, for example, in relation to the House of Commons. It does not matter where he sits. He may go to the darkest corner under the gallery, but the centre of the stage will go with him. When he had sat down after delivering his first speech in opposition, one of the ablest observers in Parliament turned to me and said: "The Prime Minister has crossed the floor of the House." And that exactly expressed the feeling created by that authoritative manner, that masculine voice, that air of high detachment from the mere squalor and tricks of the Parliamentary game. He never seemed greater to the House than in the moment when he had fallen—never more its intellectual master, its most authentic voice, its wisest and most disinterested counsellor.

It is not these men, the Coquelins and the Asquiths, who come sprinting before the curtain after drenching themselves in the limelight on the stage. They hate the limelight and they are indifferent to the applause. The gentry who cultivate the art of "taking the call" are quite another breed. You know the type, both on the stage and off. Take that eminent actor, Bluffington Phelps. He shambles about the stage, his words gurgle in his throat, his eyes roll like a bull's under torture; if he is not throwing agonised glances at the man with the limelight he is straining to catch the voice of the prompter at the flies. But when it comes to "taking the call" there is not his superior on the stage. He monopolises the applause as he monopolises the limelight; and by these artifices he has persuaded the public that he is an actor. It is a glorious joke—

Hood an ass in reverend purple,
So that you hide his too ambitious ears,
And he shall pass for a cathedral doctor.

It is true, as Lincoln said, that you can fool some of the people all the time. Mr. Bluffington Phelps knows that it is true. He knows that there is a large part of the public, possibly the majority of the public, which is born to be fooled, which will believe anything because it hasn't the faculty of judging anything but the size of the crowd and which will always follow the ass with the longest ears and the loudest bray.

It is the same off the stage. The art of politics is the art of "taking the call." Harley knew the trick perfectly. Where anything was to be got, it was said of him, he always knew how to wriggle himself in; when any misfortune threatened he knew how to wriggle himself out. He took the cheers and passed the kicks on to his colleagues. His chivalrous spirit is not dead. It is familiar in every country, but most of all in democratic countries. We all know the type of politician who has the true genius for the limelight. If the newspapers forget him for five minutes he is miserable. "What has happened to the publicity department? Has the fellow in charge of the limelight gone to sleep? Wake him up. Don't let the public forget me. If there's nothing else to tell 'em, tell 'em that my hat is two sizes larger than it was a year ago. Tell 'em about my famous smile. Tell 'em about my dear old grandmother to whom I owe my inimitable piety. Tell 'em I'm at my desk at seven o'clock every morning and never leave it until half-past seven the next morning. Tell 'em anything you like—only tell 'em."

If things go right, and there is applause in the house, he skips in front of the curtain to take the call. "Thank you, gentlemen—and ladies. Thank you. Yes, alone I did it. Nobody else in the company had a hand in it—nor a finger. No, not a finger." If anything goes wrong and the audience hiss, does he shirk the ordeal? Not at all. He comes before the curtain with indignant sorrow. "Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I agree with you. Most scandalous failure. It was all Jones's doing, and Smith's, and Robinson's. I went down on my bended knees to them, but they wouldn't listen to me—wouldn't listen. And now you see what's happened. Hear the anguish in my voice. Look at the tears in my broken-hearted eyes. Oh, the pity of it, ladies and gentlemen—the pity of it. And I tried so hard—I really did. But they wouldn't listen—they wouldn't l-l-listen." (Breaks down in sobs.)

I recall a legend that seems apposite. A certain politician of antiquity—let us all call him Eurysthenes—hit on a happy idea for making himself famous. He bought a lot of parrots and taught them to shriek "Great is Eurysthenes!" Then he turned them all out into the woods, and there they sat and squawked "Great is Eurysthenes!" And the Athenians, astonished at such unanimity, took up the refrain and cried, "Great is Eurysthenes." And Eurysthenes, who was waiting in the flies, so to speak, took the call and was famous ever after.