The Secrets of a Savoyard

by Henry A. Lytton

One day he went out for a match with a bishop. The club officials, knowing how exuberant his language could be, were on tenter-hooks of anxiety all the time they were out, and on their return the secretary hastened to take the episcopal visitor apart. "Mr. Billington, the actor, you know, my lord," he explained. "I hope his language didn't shock you." "Oh, no!" responded the bishop, diplomatically, "he did once call on the Almighty, but otherwise his language was beyond reproach."

Dear old Billington! Earlier in life he had been with the company on a South African tour, and the wide spaces, the ample life and the boundless opportunities of that vast country appealed to him irresistibly. South Africa had a "call" for him, and he had ambitions, when the time came for him to retire, to settle there. That ambition was never realised. Only the night before he died, while we were in our dressing-room, he surprised me with the question, "How would you like to die, Harry?"

From a man so little inclined to brood on the morbid the question was strange. I told him I didn't know. I had never, I told him, thought it out, and didn't intend to, either.

"But if you had to die," he insisted, "how would you prefer to go?"

"Oh! I don't know," I retorted. "Anyhow, we're not going to die just yet."

"Well," was his answer, "if I had my way, it would be a good dinner, a bottle of wine, a good cigar, a good joke, and—pop-off!"

It must have been a premonition. The very next day, while still apparently in perfect health, he left Cambridge to keep a luncheon engagement with Mr. Rupert D'Oyly Carte at the Great Eastern Hotel, London. The intention was that he should be back for the night performance. With the lunch they had a bottle of wine, and afterwards, over cigars, they talked with many a hearty joke in between. Then he went out into the foyer—and collapsed. It was at least good to think that the passing of my dear old friend was free from pain or suffering.

Fred Billington's end must have been hastened by a sequence of events during the war. Strangely enough, when we were at Sheffield, the town was visited by a Zeppelin raid, and there was another raid when we were at Hull, a third when we were at Kennington, and a fourth when we were at Wimbledon. Billington's nerves, naturally enough, were very upset. Wherever we went the Zepps seemed to be after us. "Do you know, Harry," he said, at last, "I believe that bally Kaiser has got our tour." What he meant, of course, was that our list of bookings had got into the hands of the All-Highest, and that he thought, apparently, that if he could wipe out the Gilbert and Sullivan operas he would be able to break the spirit of England. Looked at in that way, the attention paid to us, whether intentional or not, was certainly flattering.

Worse than those raids, however, was the Dublin rebellion, into which we ran at Easter 1916. We should have opened there on the Bank Holiday. In point of fact we did not play one single night. Fred and I were at the Gresham Hotel. The very first day we were not allowed out at all, for we were in the very centre of hostilities, and no one could go into the street except at his peril. Chafing under the restraint, I did at last attempt to venture out, though feeling that there were too many bullets about for things to be healthy. Opposite the Gresham, at the door of the Irish Club, I saw the well-known figure of the Dublin Coroner, Mr. Friery. I rushed across to him, and it was because I spoke to him, I believe, that I was ever able to get back alive. Mr. Friery, with his top hat and frock-coat, was an easily distinguished citizen, and neither the military nor the rebels would have been likely to fire at him deliberately. "You ought never to have come across," he told me, and as it happened, the very same thought had occurred to me.

Conditions in the hotel itself were the reverse of pleasant, what with the noise of the firing outside and bullets shooting through our own windows, though these were shuttered and protected as far as possible. Our food stocks commenced to run low—by the end of the week's siege we had only biscuits and ham—and the strain on the larder was added to by the arrival of scores of visitors who had been turned out of the Metropole Hotel. They had been told to take their valuables with them, and it was remarkable how, in the fright of such an emergency, men would grasp the first thing that came into their hands and leave their real treasures behind. One man rushed over clutching two dirty collars, while another had a bath-towel which he had picked up, it seemed, instead of a dressing-gown. English jockeys who were there for the race week hurried over holding a saddle case.