“With an auspicious and a dropping eye,” as Shakespeare says, I returned in due course to the Parent Office of the Apollo. I was glad to go back to Mr. Blades and Travers and other friends; but I was exceedingly sorry to leave Mr. Walter and Mr. Bright. In fact, I missed them a great deal, and wrote to them once or twice; and they answered without hesitation, and hoped to see me again at some future time.
And now I was faced with my first great critical task for Mr. Bulger, and secretly I viewed it with great nervousness, though openly to Brightwin I approached the test in a jaunty spirit. Needless to say I had taken preliminary steps, and the greatest of these was to hire a dress suit. At this stage in my career, unfortunately, to buy a dress suit presented insuperable difficulties; but I found from fellow-pupils at the Dramatic School that one might hire for a merely nominal sum. So I hired, and had a dress rehearsal of the part I was to play at Clapham Assembly Room, in which my Aunt Augusta and her servant, Jane, constituted the audience.
Then came the important night. I returned home direct from the office, partook of a slight repast, and reached the Clapham Assembly Room three-quarters of an hour before the doors opened. This was rather feeble in a way, and not worthy of Mr. Bulger, or Thespis, because we all know that professional critics dash up at the last moment in their private broughams and sink into a sumptuous stall just as the curtain rises on new productions. But I had come, as a matter of fact, in a tram and was far too early. A sense of propriety, however, told me that I ought not to be there—skulking about at least an hour before I need be; and so, with a fair amount of presence of mind, I started off to take a look at Clapham, which was a district quite unknown to me. I decided with myself that nothing would make me return to the Assembly Room until ten minutes before the curtain actually rose. I should then lounge in, present my ticket, and appear with a bored and weary air among my fellow-critics.
But as all roads were said by the ancients to lead to Rome, so all roads at Clapham appear to lead to the Assembly Room. I walked away again and again and kept going in directions that seemed to point exactly opposite from the Assembly Room, yet, sooner or later, I invariably found myself back in the same old spot. The exterior of this edifice was of an unattractive architecture, and not until two minutes before the doors opened did people begin to collect in front of it. After being, as it were, the hero of a hundred first nights in London, this audience at Clapham appeared piffling; but as the performance was for a charitable institution, many came actuated by philanthropic emotions and, of course, in a perfectly uncritical spirit. I, however, being there in the course of business, felt that I must not let any considerations of the charitable institution come between me and my duty.
The moment arrived, and I entered and presented my ticket with an air of patient and long-suffering indifference.
“Press!” said the man in the ticket-office, and marked a number on my ticket and handed it to another man. It was distinctly a moment to remember, and I forgot my hired clothes and everything, but just felt that I stood there as a representative of that glorious institution—the London Press!
My seat was in the second row and comfortable enough, without being sumptuous. I had a good view of the stage and I leisurely divested myself of my overcoat, saw that my dress shirt and tie were all right, pulled down my cuffs, and cast my eyes round the house. An amateur band, consisting chiefly of ladies, was playing, and a certain amount of verve and vivacity, though not much, filled the auditorium. Clapham had by no means turned out in its thousands; in fact, it was quite easy to count the house, and I should be exaggerating if I suggested that there were more than two hundred and fifty persons in it. Subtract fifty for biased friends of the performers and take off another fifty for pure philanthropists, and that left not more than a hundred and fifty at the outside who could be supposed to have come in a critical or artistic spirit.
The critics did not reveal their personality or sun themselves in the front of the stalls, as I had seen them do in proper theatres on a first night. They may have been there by stealth and in disguise; but more likely they had sent substitutes.
An official in evening dress came to speak to me presently. He evidently knew that I wielded my pen for Thespis, and I could see that knowledge inspired his friendship. He hoped I was comfortable, and said that, after the second act, there would be whisky and soda and sandwiches going in the gentlemen’s cloak-room. He added that they had all been in fear that the leading lady would lose her mother and be unable to act. But by good chance her mother was spared and she was going to play.
“Of course we had an understudy,” explained the official, who proved to be the assistant acting manager; “but no doubt you know, better than I do, what a bore it is for everybody concerned to have to fall back upon the understudies.”