Short on Words.
"You can imagine the nature of my rôles," said Mr. Royle, in relating to me this portion of his career, "by the following incident: At the end of the season it was decided to bring out a souvenir of the engagement, with signatures by all the people in the company. Each signature was to be accompanied by a line from his or her part. When it came my turn to write, my part was so short that all I had to say in the piece went down as my contribution, in the shape of—
"'Oh, Cæsar! No, by no means!'"
And here began the apparent strokes of ill luck which in the end have proved blessings in disguise. The first one was the failure of Mrs. Potter to come to this country for a tour on one occasion when Royle had been engaged in her support. He did not know that he was free until September, when it was too late to seek other positions.
Thrown out of a job, he turned his attention to playwriting, having at one time thought seriously of taking up literature as a profession. He wrote "Friends," and brought it out in New York the next summer, with a capital furnished by a Western uncle.
The play made a hit after a rather slow start, and he played it on the road for some seasons, following it with another, "Captain Impudence," and later by a farce, "My Wife's Husbands." The latter made a decided hit, but Mr. Royle was unable to obtain road bookings for it owing to a glut of attractions kept out of New York by the unfinished condition of two theaters which should have been ready for them. Shows booked for them, with companies all engaged, had to be placed somewhere pending the completion of the Lyceum and the Hudson, so that the dates were all filled by the time it was known that "My Wife's Husbands" had caught on. In this crisis, Nat Goodwin, who had just come a cropper with a new offering of his own, rose up and bought the rights to the play, but failed to make good in the part himself and shelved it after two weeks' trial.
Meanwhile, one night when he couldn't sleep, Royle got to thinking about the Indians he used to see when a boy at the Indian reservation not far from Salt Lake. And then there formed in his mind the germ idea of "The Squaw Man"—the Englishman tied to the Indian wife when the way was clear for him otherwise to go back home.
The next morning he told his wife—Selena Fetter—of the scheme, adding that he thought of making a play out of it.
"Oh, don't," she begged him. "Can't you think of something pleasanter? You know 'Friends' gained all its success out of the comedy there was in it."
So he did nothing in the matter then, but later, when he was asked to write a skit for the Lambs' Gambol, he used this idea for a short piece, which went so well that it was used afterward at the annual public gambol, where it repeated its hit.
Royle was now in vaudeville, having cut down "Captain Impudence" to the required time limits. He decided to follow this with "The Squaw Man," and here is where once more his good luck in the guise of bad stepped upon the scene.