He did so, and an engagement followed. This piece of luck filled the unfortunate lad’s heart with delight. The pay was only a shilling a night, but he could live on it; and it was the first step in a profession of which he had dreamed as the summit of human ambition and felicity ever since he first saw a play performed “with real water” on the boards of old Sadler’s Wells. With what tremulous eagerness and delight he went to rehearsal with his dirty friend and benefactor! With what wonder and curiosity he inspected the stage-door, the wings and the dressing-room under the stage, and with what awe he eyed the mighty magician who lorded it above his fellows with such undemonstratively quiet and yet most impressive dignity!
The play was Shakespeare’s ‘King Lear,’ and in the combat scene the lists were formed on the stage by short battle-axes and long spears, the former being stuck upright in holes arranged for their reception, two of the latter placed crossways, and one on the top of them horizontally between each axe. Macready was particularly anxious that this should be done rapidly, and without hesitation; and the efforts of the supers to carry out his instructions were simply ludicrous. The men with the battle-axes couldn’t hit upon the holes, and some absolutely went down upon their knees to feel for them, while the spearmen either were awfully slow and nervously careful, or they missed the supports and created a clatter and confusion, which appeared to plunge Macready into a furious state of anger and disgust. The new super, all eyes and ears, shared the great tragedian’s feelings; he saw at once that the entire effect depended upon the dash and spirit of the soldier’s action in eagerly and readily extemporising these warlike barriers; and he devised a plan by which his axe was thrust as it were at once into the earth, with scarcely a downward glance. He was pointing out how readily this was done, to his neighbours on either side, and telling them to pass the hint along, when he was startled by the deep strong voice of the tragedian, who had come up to him, and said abruptly, “What’s your name, my man?”
“My friend did, what I am not going to do (not having his permission), he told Macready his name, and he, after a grunt, and a quick, keen glance from under his knitted brows, repeated it aloud, saying,—
“I shall not forget it. It’s the name of the first super I ever saw with brains.”
On the night of the first performance some few days after, my friend was taken out of his ordinary soldier costume, and arrayed more carefully and picturesquely in a more costly fashion to play the part of a knight in special attendance upon the king, from whom he had the honour of receiving a message. Alas! that honour cost him a friend—the jealousy of the shoemaker broke out in spite and bitterness which accumulated and intensified to such an extent that at the end of the week he was caught in the act of hiding in the dark behind one of the beams of wood supporting the stage, for the purpose of throwing a big stone at the poor fellow with whom, under the influence of pity, he had shared his food and lodging. It was impossible to conceive a more cowardly or malignant rascal than this fellow had become under the influence of envy and jealousy.
The class of theatrical people employed as supernumeraries (commonly called “supers”) form the background figures of stage pictures, soldiers, sailors, peasants, citizens, mobs, &c., playing the dumb accessory parts; and they are as a rule neither too respectable nor too intelligent. To train and teach them is a task which sorely tries the patience of the super-master, and their lazy, poverty-stricken, and generally not too cleanly aspect is provocative of contempt and dislike amongst the actors. Their pay is not extravagant, being usually a shilling a night, but their histrionic pride is great, and their reverence for the actors profound, while for one to stand a little closer to the footlights than his fellows do, and consequently nearer the audience, or to be selected to go on alone to deliver a letter or receive a message, is the very summit of his ambition; a dangerous elevation, too, for from the time that he is so gloriously distinguished he is regarded with envy, spite, and malice, by his fellows, who try their best to oust him and take his place. This, my friend, above mentioned, soon experienced, for his life became a succession of bitter annoyances and coarse insults, varied when necessity compelled with an occasional fight, in which, despite his feeble health he generally contrived to give a fair account of his adversary, inheriting some of his father’s skill as a boxer, and having been a constant student of that art when at school. At the termination of the Macready performances he was engaged at one of the old tavern theatres of those days, now known as the Britannia Theatre, then as the Britannia Saloon, where the stage-manager, a gentle and kindly old man (Mr. Wilton) was particularly good to him, and at last, after hearing him read a Shakespearian speech, entrusted him with small parts, contrary to the conviction of Mrs. Lane, the clever wife of the then proprietor, in whose place she now reigns. She, finding that the boy blushed and stammered when she spoke to him, pronounced him unfit for the experiment.
“He has an impediment in his speech,” said she.
Some years after, my friend having in the meantime abandoned the stage for art (of which he was for years an ardent, indefatigable student), under the pressure of severe impecuniosity, became a country scene-painter and afterwards an actor, playing in the course of his theatrical career a wide range of second and third-rate parts, sometimes doubling as many as three or four in a single piece, and often both playing and painting scenery. Once, while Miss Mary Glover was manageress of the Cheltenham and Bath theatres, in consequence of the non-arrival of about half the expected company, he doubled tremendously, playing four characters in the burlesque and two in the farce, with the most rapid changes of “make up” and costume, one being a comic nigger with songs. Miss Glover had taken the theatre under the pressure of impecuniosity, trusting to the chance of success for the payment of her company. At the end of the first week she paid half salaries, at the end of the second and third weeks no salaries, or, in the parlance of the initiated, “the ghost did not walk,” and great doubtless was the trouble and suffering consequently endured. My friend was reduced to bread and butter for meals, and found even those materials none too plentiful, when one evening he was summoned into the dressing-room of Miss Glover. The lady was in tears, but they were tears of indignant rage.
“Sir!” said she, “I was never so insulted in all my life!”
“What’s wrong, madam? Who has insulted you?”