In vain the poor chap protested. Nobody would believe him; and to make matters worse, a few minutes later another telegram arrived, from Manchester this time. It read: “Are you going to desert me like this after faithfully promising to marry me? Beware! Jennie.”
Other similar wires came to hand at intervals, and the bride insisted, on arriving at the church, on showing the whole batch to the clergyman who was to perform the ceremony. He, good man, insisted on postponing the marriage for an hour in order to see if anybody turned up to forbid it. Naturally, however, and of course, nobody did; but in order I suppose to make assurance doubly sure, when he came to the part where any person desirous of forbidding the ceremony is invited to come forward, he repeated the words slowly three times before finally uniting the couple.
I may say that I never really thought that my little joke would have been taken so seriously by all concerned, or I would most certainly never have perpetrated it.
Another practical joke in which a “dud” telegram played a part rather misfired towards the end. The affair happened at Brighton, where, as it chanced, a famous theatrical star (whom I will call Estelle), a well-known mimic (who shall be Smith), and myself were performing.
Each of us was putting up at a different hotel, Estelle (I think) at the Grand, and Smith at the Metropole, where he had engaged rooms for himself and wife, who was devoted to him, and who was also very, very jealous of him.
Knowing this, I got my assistant, a man named McMillan, to disguise his handwriting, and dispatch to Smith a fake telegram as if from Estelle, couched in imitation French, and asking him (Smith) to come round and see her at her hotel that evening. The wire, I may add, ran something like this: “Voulez vous mi sheri sus soir? respondez tuts weet.—Estelle.”
I got McMillan to send the wire off from the Brighton Post Office early in the morning, and it was delivered to Smith, as I had foreseen, while the couple were in bed.
Smith read it, and tried to smuggle it on one side, but his wife snatched it away and read it also. Then, of course, the fat was in the fire. The good lady was out of bed in an instant, and throwing on some clothes, rushed round to Estelle’s hotel.
“You try to steal my husband!” she screamed indignantly to the astonished and but half-awake actress. “You wicked woman!”
In vain did poor Estelle protest, and that with almost equal indignation. “I no want your husband. Your husband—pouf! I can have kings! Kings, I tell you!”