Exits and Entrances

by Eva Moore

The tour ended and we came back to London, where Toole was going to put on a first piece called The Broken Sixpence before The Don. The cast included Mary Brough, Charles Lowne, the authoress (Mrs. Thompson)—who was a very beautiful woman, but not a strikingly good actress—and, among the “wines and spirits,” me.

My dress was the same that I had worn in The Butler (a play we had done on tour), or, rather, it was part of the dress, for, as I was playing a young girl, with short skirts, I only used the skirt of the dress, merely adding a yoke; in addition, I wore a fair wig.

I have it on good authority that I looked “perfectly adorable”, for it was in this play, though I did not know it for a long time, that Harry Esmond first saw me, and, apparently, approved of me!

Then I began to be ill; too much work, and, looking back, I fancy not too much food, and that probably of the wrong kind for a girl who, after all, was only about 17, and who had been playing in a different play every night for weeks.

I didn’t stop working, though I did feel very ill for some weeks, but finally an incident occurred which took the matter out of my hands and forced me to take a rest.

I was walking home from the theatre, with my salary and my savings (seven pounds, which I had gathered together to pay back to my brother for the loan I mentioned before) in my bag. In those days the streets were in the state of semi-darkness to which London grew accustomed in the war—at any rate, in all but the largest streets; some one, who must have known who I was, or at any rate known that I was an actress and that Friday night was “pay night”, sprang out of the darkness, struck me a heavy blow on the head, snatched my bag, and left me lying senseless.

After that, I gave in—I went home, and was very ill for a long time with low fever; not only was I ill, I was hideously depressed. However, I went back to Mr. Toole as soon as I was better, and he told me he was going to Australia, and asked me to go too. The salary was to be £4 a week, and “provide your own clothes”. I declined, though how I had the pluck to decline an engagement in those days passes my comprehension. However, I did, and Irene Vanbrugh went to Australia in my place—though not at my salary; she was more fortunate.

I began to haunt agents’ offices, looking for work, and a dreary business it was! At last I was engaged to go to the Shaftesbury to play in The Middleman with E. S. Willard, and it was here that I first actually met my husband. He was very young, very slim, and looked as young as he was; he was, as is the manner of “the powers that be”, cast for a villain, and, in order to “look the part”, he had his shoulders padded to such an extent that he looked perfectly square. His first words in the play were “More brandy!” I don’t think he was a great success in the part, though, looking through some old press cuttings, I find the following extract from The Musical World: “But a Mr. Esmond shows, I think, very high promise, together with faults that need to be corrected. His attitudes are abominable; his voice and the heart in it could hardly be bettered”—and that in spite of the padding!

I think we were at once great friends—at any rate, I know he had to use a ring in the play, and I lent him mine. In particular I remember one evening, when I was walking down Shaftesbury Avenue with the man to whom I was engaged, and we met Harry wearing my ring; I was most disturbed, lest my own “young man” should notice. However, we broke the engagement soon after—at least I did—and after that it didn’t matter who wore or who did not wear my ring. Then Harry, who lived at Empress Gate, used to take me home after the theatre; and if he didn’t take me home, he took somebody else home, for at that time I think he loved most pretty girls. It was a little later that he wrote in his diary: “Had tea with Agnes (Agnes Verity); took Eva home; she gave me two tomatoes; nice girl. How happy could I be with either!”—which, I think, gives a very fair idea of his general attitude at the time.

The Middleman ran well; it was a good play, with a good cast—E. S. Willard, Annie Hughes, Maude Millet, and William Mackintosh—the latter a really great actor. I understudied Annie Hughes—and played for her. In The Middleman, Willard wore his hair powdered, to give him the necessary look of age, and in one scene I had to comb it. I was most anxious to do well in Annie Hughes’s part, and was so zealous that I combed all the powder out of his hair at the back, to my own confusion and his great dismay.