It was about this period that I first began to be called “The Human Hairpin.” Standing over six feet in height, I was exceedingly thin, weighing less than nine and a half stone, and my all-black stage make-up accentuated my lankiness, which I still further increased by wearing “elevators,” and a high, padded wig, so that I looked to be over seven feet. My appearance on the stage at the Variety was the signal for so uproarious a scene as never before or since have I heard or witnessed. The whole house roared and rocked with laughter, and above the indescribable din I distinctly remember hearing a girl’s voice from the gallery shriek out; “Blimey, ain’t he a coughdrop? Look at ’is blinking legs!” It was the custom here, if the audience did not like a “turn,” to throw “fish and chips” at the unfortunate artiste, which they purchased at a shop opposite the theatre.
As for my performance, it had to be given in dumb show. I could not hear myself speak. Yells, cat-calls, shrieks filled the air. I went away disgusted, but of course I had to return and do my show again at the second house. This was the same scene over again, only more so. Never had I imagined such a pandemonium of noise.
Next day I went round to Macdermott’s Agency, told the manager there I was a ghastly failure at the Variety, that the audience simply wouldn’t listen to me, and asked to be released from my engagement. “Oh, nonsense!” he cried. “I can’t believe it.” And he rang up the manager of the hall. That gentleman telephoned back to say that so far from my having been a failure, he had never heard such laughter in his life, and that I had made a big hit—presumably, I suppose, from the standpoint of the Variety, Hoxton. Anyhow, it wasn’t so from my standpoint; and I again asked to be released from my contract. “The audience was laughing at me, not with me,” I explained; “I couldn’t hear myself speak.”
“My lad,” cried the manager angrily, “you’re too big for your boots. Because you’re appearing at the Alhambra you’ve got a swelled head on you.”
Then it was my turn to get angry. “Look here,” I answered, “I’ll not go on again at the Variety, and that’s the long and short of it. I wouldn’t go through again what I went through last night for fifty pounds. I never was so insulted in all my life.”
The manager thereupon pointed to a clause in my contract, by which it was stipulated that if for any reason I declined to fulfil my engagement I was to pay him £4 in place of his paying me £4. This meant, of course, a dead loss to me of £8. Nevertheless, I paid the money, and I never went back to the Variety.
Next week was a record. My fame spread among the music-hall managers, and I was offered, and accepted, engagements at the Alhambra, Palace, Middlesex, Metropolitan, and Cambridge, the latter a two-houses-a-night hall. This meant my doing six turns a night, and with a brougham, there being of course no motor-cars in those days. It was a sufficiently arduous task, but I managed it all right, and was, I need hardly say, quite pleased with myself.
It was about this time, too, that I began to taste the joys of life. One evening just as I had finished a late turn at the Palace Theatre, a friend gave me a ticket for a Covent Garden Fancy Dress Ball. There was not time to change into a costume, even if I had had one, so I went just as I was in my stage make-up, and signed the book “Arthur Philps [my real name] as ‘Carlton.’”
As a result, and greatly to my surprise, I was awarded first prize for the best comic costume. People came up and congratulated me on what they regarded as my “wonderful impersonation.” Others I heard passing such remarks as, “Isn’t it like him?” “What a marvellous resemblance!” and so on.
Only Mr. (now Sir Alfred) Butt, the Manager of the Palace, who chanced to be present, was not deceived. “By gad, Carlton,” he whispered to me, “you have got a nerve!”