“It’s not good for any actor to play one part too long. My old granddad was considered the finest Hamlet ever seen on the Doncaster circuit. Well, I give you my word, after you’d heard him in ‘To be or not to be,’ you didn’t know yourself if you were or if you weren’t. But he played it too often, and he thought he’d vary things a bit by playing Richard III and Macbeth on the Shakespeare nights. But it was too late. He knew he’d waited too long the very first night he played Macbeth, because instead of saying ‘Is this a dagger that I see before me?’ he started off ‘Is this a bodkin that I see before me?’ It humiliated him, poor old chap, and he gave up tragedy and took to farce, and that killed him. Yes, it’s a mistake to get into a groove.”
So one day Prince Boo Boo disappeared from the programme of Blundell’s Diorama and was succeeded by Wo Ho Wo, a Chinese philosopher. The Celestial did not prove an attraction, and Wo Ho Wo soon gave place to Carlo Marsala, the boy brigand of Sicily, a part which suited Bram to perfection, so well indeed that the Sisters Garibaldi could not bear it and were only persuaded to stay on with the Diorama by turning Bram into a young Red Indian brave, and featuring him in a dance with his two squaws before the tableau of Niagara.
In addition to the various geographical rôles he enacted with Unwin U. Blundell, Bram learnt something about theatrical publicity, and no doubt, if he had cared, he might have learnt from Mona and Clara Garibaldi a good deal about love. Although their obvious inclination to make him a bone of contention did not give Bram the least pleasure or even afford him the slightest amusement, Mr. Blundell, who had evidently been observing the pseudo-sisters becoming quite like real sisters in the fierceness of their growing rivalry, ventured to utter a few words of worldly admonition to the endangered swain.
“Don’t think I’m trying to interfere with you, laddie. But I’ve had so much of that kind of thing myself, and I’d like to give you the benefit of my experience. Never try and drive women in double harness. You might as well try and drive tigers. They’ll start in fighting with each other, but it’s your head that’ll get bit off, that’s a cinch. I wouldn’t be what I am now—Unwin U. Blundell of Blundell’s world-famous Diorama—if I’d have let myself go galloping after the ladies. Two whiskies, and a man’s a man. Two women, and he’s a miserable slave. What does Bill Shakespeare say? ‘Give me the man that is not passion’s slave.’ Take it from me, laddie, if Bill said that, he meant it. He’d had some. That’s what I like about the One and Only. He’s had some of everything.”
Bram assured Mr. Blundell that he well understood how easily a young man could make a fool of himself and thanked him for his good advice, which he followed so well during the whole of the time he was travelling round Great Britain with the Diorama, that when at the end of it he left to tread the legitimate boards he found that the Sisters Garibaldi, if not sisters to each other, were wonderful sisters to him.
“I’m sorry to lose you, Bram,” said the showman when he was told of his assistant’s engagement in a melodrama called Secrets of a Great City. “But I won’t try and persuade you to stop. You’ve got the sawdust in you, laddie. You’re likely to go far, if you stick to your work.”
“You’ve been a good friend to me, Mr. Blundell,” said Bram warmly.
“No man can wish to hear sweeter words than those,” the showman replied: “You’ve listened to me every night spouting on antiquities, old man. But the best antiquities in the whole blooming world are old friends.”
The Sisters Garibaldi wept; Mr. Blundell blew his nose very hard; the young actor passed into another sphere of theatrical life.
During the last two years Bram had written to his grandmother from time to time, and had had from her an occasional letter in return, in which he heard no news of Lebanon House beyond an occasional assurance of its eternal sameness. However, just before he left Blundell to join the melodrama company he did receive a letter, in which her large spidery handwriting crossed and sometimes recrossed was spread over several sheets of notepaper.