"Why, yes, sir, I shall be glad to listen to any advice from you," earnestly protested the infatuated one.
"Well," snapped the star, rather sharply, "I want you to follow it as well as to listen to it. Now you take some money—you have some money saved, I suppose?"
"Oh, yes, sir!" answered John.
"Well, then," he turned his queer eye on him, he took a long, full breath, "well, then, you just get some of that money, and you go to a hardware store," his rage was rising visibly, "and you buy a good sharp hatchet, and then I want you to take it home and chop your d——d fool head off!" and ripping off his vest he made a furious charge upon the almost paralyzed Ogden, clouting him from the room, while roaring like a bull.
He had played one set of plays so long he had lost the power to study quickly, and he was so ill-advised once as to attempt a new part, on rather short notice. The play was a miserable jumble of impossible situations and strained, high-flown language; and, of all absurd things, Mr. Couldock attempted to play a young Irish hero, with a love-scene—in fact he was supposed to represent the young Emmet. Dear heaven! what a sight he was, in those buckskin riding breeches (his legs were not beyond suspicion as to their straightness), that cutaway green coat, and the dinky little conical hat, looking so maliciously "larky," perched over his fiercest eye. He forgot all his lines, but he never forgot his profanity, and that night it took on a wild originality that was simply convulsing. In one scene he had to promise to save his beloved Ireland. He quite forgot the speech, and being reminded of it by the prompter, he roared at the top of his voice: "I don't care! what the devil's Ireland to me! d——n Ireland! I wish it and the man that wrote this play were both at the bottom of the sea, with cock-eyed sharks eatin' 'em!" Then he suddenly pulled out his part and began to search wildly for his next scene, that he might try to recall his lines; at this he continued till he was called to go upon the stage, then he made a rush, and in a moment the house was laughing.
"Oh, dear! what was it?" Everyone ran to peep on the stage. Mr. Couldock had discovered they were laughing at him, and was becoming recklessly furious. Mr. Ellsler, fearing he would insult the people, hastily rang down the curtain. Then Mr. Couldock, as Emmet, faced round to us, and the laughter was explained. When he was reading over his part he had put on a big pair of spectacles, and when he hurried on he simply pushed them up and left them there. A young lover with big, old-fashioned spectacles on his forehead and a perky little conical hat looking down on them was certainly an unusual sight and an amusing one.
One of Mr. Couldock's most marked characteristics was the amazingly high pitch of his voice in speaking. Anyone who has heard two men trying to converse across a large open field has had a good illustration of his style of intonation, which anger raised to a perfect shriek. The most shocking exhibition of rage I ever saw came from him during a performance of "Louis XI." Annie and I, as pages, were standing each side of the throne, holding large red cushions against our stomachs. My cushion supported a big gilded key, until, in my fright, I actually shook it off, for when Mr. Couldock's passion came upon him on the stage his violence created sad havoc in the memories of the actors. The audience, too, could hear many of his jibes and oaths, and Mr. Ellsler was very angry about it, for in spite of his affection for the man, he drew the line at the insulting of the audience; therefore, when the curtain fell, Mr. Ellsler said: "Charley, this won't do! you must control yourself in the presence of the public!"
The interference seemed to drive him mad. A volley of oaths, inconceivably blasphemous, came from his lips, and then, with a bound, he seized the manuscript (it was not a published play then, and the manuscript was valuable) and tore it right down the centre. Mr. Ellsler and the prompter caught his right hand, trying to save the play, but while they held that he lifted the rest of the manuscript and tore it to pieces with his teeth, growling and snarling like a savage animal. Then he broke away and rushed frantically up-stairs to Mr. Ellsler's dressing-room, where he locked himself in. When it was time to call the next act he gave no answer to their knocking, though he could be heard swearing and raving within. Mr. Ellsler finally burst open the door, and there stood Louis XI. in his under-garments, and his clothing—where? It was a tiny room, nevertheless no velvet costume could be found. The window, a long French one, was nailed up for winter—the clothes had not been thrown out. There was no stove yet, they had not been burned; where then were they? Another overture was played. Some of Mr. Ellsler's clothes were hastily brought—a nondescript covering for his royal nakedness was found, and he went on to finish the performance somehow, while the prompter guessed at the ringing down of the curtain, for there was no manuscript to guide him.
Truly it had been a most humiliating spectacle. Many weeks later, when stoves were going up, the men discovered that someone had torn away the tin protector from the stove-pipe hole in Mr. Ellsler's room, and when they were replacing it they found, crammed tightly into a narrow space between the lath and plastering of the two rooms, the velvet garments of Louis XI., even to the cap with the leaden images. How he had discovered the place no one knows, and when his rage had passed he could not remember what he had done, but he could play Louis no more that season.
We were always pleased when Mr. Couldock was accompanied by his daughter. Eliza Couldock, bearing an absurdly marked resemblance to her father, of course could not be pretty. The thin, curly hair, the fixed frown, the deep lines of nose and mouth, the square, flat figure, all made of her a slightly softened replica of the old gentleman. Her teeth were pretty, though, and her hazel eyes were very brilliant. She was well read, clever, and witty, and her affectionate devotion to her father knew no bounds; yet as she had a keen sense of the ridiculous, no eccentricity, no grotesquerie of his escaped her laughing, hawk-keen eye, and sometimes when talking to old friends, like Mr. and Mrs. Ellsler, she would tell tales of "poor pa" that were exceedingly funny.