“Why don’t you come with us?” they asked. “You might succeed in getting an engagement as well, you know.”
In saying this, they were, of course, only kidding me. I knew this, too, quite well. But I also made up my mind that if I did go, I would not go for nothing, at all events if I could help it.
However I kept my own counsel as to this, merely remarking that as I was out of an engagement for the time being I might as well “rest” in Paris as anywhere else, and that I would be glad to accompany them; which I did.
Arrived there we took up our quarters at the Hôtel Franklin in the Rue Baulfault, off the Rue la Fayette, then a favourite rendezvous for English artistes staying in Paris. Next morning the Brothers Griffiths went to call on their agents. I went sightseeing.
That night they started kidding me again, and suggested that I should give a trial show at one of the Paris music-halls. I pretended to think they were in earnest, but at the same time I feigned reluctance, pointing out to them—what they knew full well beforehand—that I neither spoke nor understood the French language. However, I said that I would think it over, and they went off in great glee to let the other English “pro.’s” staying there into the secret of the joke they fondly imagined they were going to work off on me.
Meanwhile I got a friendly waiter at the hotel, who understood English, to translate my patter, word for word, into its French equivalent. This I wrote down phonetically, and used to practise it with him on the quiet, and by myself at night after I had retired to my room, until I was fairly perfect in it.
Well, my two friends kept kidding me, asking me how soon I was going to pluck up courage to give my trial show; and at last I said that I would give it if they could arrange the preliminaries for me. To this they promptly agreed, and presently they came to tell me that they had fixed it up through M. Marenelli’s agency for me to go on at the matinée at the Olympia Theatre, first turn, that day.
The rest of the morning they spent in going round and telling all the other English artistes then in Paris. Most of these did what are called in the profession “dumb acts,” a term which explains itself, and they were all quite sure that the joke was going to be on me, knowing that I relied upon my patter, and that I spoke no French. To tell the honest truth I thought myself that it was odds on them, but I made up my mind to do my best to try and win through, and in order to assist my memory I scribbled in pencil the tags of all my gags on the cuffs of my shirt before going down to the theatre.
Needless to say all my fellow-artistes turned up there to witness the fiasco they had made up their minds they were going to see. Not that they really wished me any harm, or wanted to see me humiliated, but it is our way in the profession to guy one another, and especially do we delight to take it out of a beginner. Well, the curtain rang up, and on I went. I was greeted with a regular tempest of cheers, mostly ironical, I thought. Still, I managed all right at the beginning, though afterwards I had to keep turning first to one shirt cuff, and then to the other, for guidance and inspiration.
This amused the kindly French people immensely, and I soon had my audience in great good humour, and I was rewarded with round after round of hearty, genuine applause. In short, my “turn” was a success, a big success indeed; and when I came off there were no fewer than three managers waiting in the wings to interview me.