WELFORD MIXED WRITS.
If the English Actor Had Been Less
Careless as a Law Clerk, He Would
Not Have Been "Mr. Hopkinson."
When the year 1906 began, American playgoers had never heard of an actor by the name of Dallas Welford. Before Easter all New York was applauding his work as the unconscionable little bounder in the title rôle of R.C. Carton's English farce, "Mr. Hopkinson."
In order to obtain for The Scrap Book some facts, at first hand, concerning his early life, I interviewed him in his dressing-room one afternoon after a matinée. And dressing, with him, is a very simple process, as he uses no make-up at all, and consequently does not have to give his face a bath of cold cream after the play in order to take the grease-paint off.
In fact, so simple are his preparations for the street that he once went out to dinner with a friend forgetting to remove the tiny false mustache which is all the concession to the mummer's mask he makes in fitting himself to the character of the Cockney tradesman who has come into money.
"How did I start?" he said, in answer to my query. "Well, you see, in one sense I did not need an introduction to the stage, or what you call 'pull,' because my mother was an actress, and as a kid I went on in the inevitable way as the Duke of York in 'Richard III,' besides being the perennial Little Willie in 'East Lynne.'
"I remember, too, that I was the child in your 'Danites' when it was done over on our side. But my mother did not want me to stick to the boards. She thought I wasn't adapted to make a success of it, and when I had had my bit of schooling she put me in a solicitor's office, or 'lawyer's,' as you call 'em over here.
"Well"—and he laughed at the recollection called up—"I lasted there just a week. You see, when I was sent out with writs to deliver, I used to serve the originals and keep the copies. You can believe there was some lively goings-on in that office when the boss found this out.
"He didn't enter any objections at all to my taking up a stage career—oh, no, not in the least! But my mother did, so I just went out and hunted up a job—any old thing, as a starter, so long as I once got my foot inside the stage door again.
"Where I landed finally was in a melodrama of 'The Glazier's Bride' type. I believe I was a luggage carrier, or some such modest adjunct to the proceedings. You see, it's easier to get your start in melodrama, because there are more people in a play like that, and there are sure to be parts for 'freshies' such as I was then. In comedy, the line I wanted, the least you can be is a butler or footman, and you know in some farces the butler comes pretty near being as important as the leading man.
"So while I was learning the ropes I stayed in the 'penny dreadful' kind of play, gradually working my way up. This lasted for about five years [Mr. Welford has been on the stage seventeen, being in the neighborhood of thirty], when finally I got my chance in comedy in a play from your side, 'My Friend the Prince,' done over here—some of the time by Willie Collier—as 'My Friend from India.' Yes, I was the chap disguised as the East Indian who does the trick with the mirror. I have stayed in comedy ever since."
In London, James Welch, the creator of Mr. Hopkinson, has been in quite hard luck since the long run ceased, two new ventures having turned out failures.
The sublime and the ridiculous are often so nearly related that it is difficult to class them separately. One step above the sublime makes the ridiculous, and one step above the ridiculous makes the sublime again.—Thomas Paine.
LORD BYRON'S RIDDLE.
A Curious Poetic Creation That Has Puzzled Many Readers, and a
Solution of the Mystery.
In the earlier history of man the riddle was an important intellectual test. To be able to guess hard riddles was supposed to indicate wisdom, and often a great deal was made to depend upon the issue of a guessing contest. The most famous riddle of antiquity was the one which the Sphinx is said to have proposed to Oedipus: "What is that which has four feet in the morning, two at noon, and three at night?" And it has been asserted that Homer died of vexation because he could not find an answer to the riddle: "What we caught we threw away, what we could not catch we kept."
The riddle is the result of the perception of analogies. Note your analogy and put it in the form of a question, and you have your riddle. The conundrum, which has largely replaced the riddle, is a pun concerning which a question is asked. The conundrum may be witty; the riddle may be broadly humorous—and, indeed, it is probably the earliest form of humor.
Among modern riddles, this of Lord Byron's once puzzled many people. The appended "solution" appeared years ago in the Essex (Massachusetts) Register.