The Secrets of a Savoyard

by Henry A. Lytton

Eventually, I saw a tiny yellow spike creeping out of the earth, but the colour and nature of it were not "according to plan." At last I called in a gardener. "Oh," he declared, doing his best to soften the blow, "you've planted the bulbs upside down." And so I had! The poor little shoots had to dig down into the soil before they could curve round and creep into the light. Nearly everything in that unfortunate garden had been planted upside down.

Friends of mine chaffed me unmercifully over that topsy-turvy exploit. When they came to my house they would turn all the ornaments upside down. Before I entered the room they would reverse the chairs, the settee and anything they could lay their hands upon, and then they would explain themselves by saying, "We thought you liked things like that, old man. The bulbs you know. We've just heard about the bulbs."

Well, after the failure with the hens, the ducks, and the flowers, there seemed only one other diversion to try, and that was photography. Even that did not survive very long, nor yet did my attempt to cultivate mushrooms in my cellar, a craze that threatened very literally to get the place into bad odour. But there are two recreations to which I still remain faithful, and they, after all, are worth all the rest put together. One is golf and the other painting. Golf is a great game for keeping the actor fit, and his mind clear for his work, and it is very popular in our profession. Now and then, too, a day with the palette and easel is a wonderful pleasure to me, and seldom do I take up the brush without a thought of poor old Trood and his studio at Chelsea.

One diversion at least in which I have had my share of success has been in the fancy dress balls at Covent Garden. Once I took the first prize with a representation of Nelson, the costume of which was copied in every detail from the uniform of the great seaman preserved in Greenwich Museum, and I remember that my entry was signalised by Dan Godfrey's orchestra striking up "'Twas in Trafalgar Bay." Then I took the chief honours with a wonderful bust of Nero, in connection with which I received enormous help from my old friend, the celebrated sculptor, Albert Toft. From my waist downward I was encased in what appeared to be a blood-marble pedestal. My face was whitened, my eyes were closed, and my brow was adorned with the laurel leaf, and when the lights were focussed on my rigid figure and the plaster frame it was acclaimed as a marvellously clever imitation of the statue of the great Roman Emperor. Once again I took the first prize at Covent Garden with the subject of the Knave of Clubs. The costume was a silk one, half black and half white, and on it were fastened the names of all the well-known clubs in London. Even the members of the Beef Steak Club found that their institution had not been overlooked—and that this title appeared on the costume in an appropriate place!

Nowadays, when we are on tour, it is very pleasant to be able to travel by motor-car instead of by train. With my Austin-20 car I have now covered well over 42,000 miles, and probably the only occasion when I deliberately exceeded the speed limit was once outside Plymouth. A doctor with a troublesome car was held up in the roadway. When I drew up and asked whether I could help him, he told me he had been a quarter-of-an-hour trying to get the engine to go, though he was due at a very critical operation some miles away. It was, indeed, a matter of life and death, and in my own car he was very speedily taken to the hospital. It was in the same district, I think, that I gave a "lift" to a man who was footsore and weary, and who said at the end of the journey, "I suppose you won't tell the gov'nor about this, will you?" Evidently he had mistaken me for somebody's chauffeur!

Some years ago, when I was setting out from my home at Chiswick, I was held up by a 'bus bound for Twickenham. It was crowded already, and the conductor had to refuse a poor old woman who wanted to board it, and who was very distressed, because she had a job at Twickenham, "and if I don't get there," she told me, "they'll think I'm too old for work and they won't want me again." The problem was easily solved. I offered to take her where she was going. She had never been in a motor-car before, and in trying to stammer her thanks, she asked me to tell her my name "so that I shall never forget you." So I handed her my card—she certainly did not know anything about me or what was my profession—and went on my way. Judge of my surprise when, soon after the end of the war, I found that that old lady had bequeathed to me the two little rooms and all the furniture that had been her poor, but neat and cosy, home at Hammersmith. Luckily, I heard of a demobilised soldier who, with his wife and child, was urgently in need of a shelter, and it was a great pleasure to me to be able to turn this touching legacy to such good account.

Speaking of hobbies, I don't think I knew a more curious taste than that of an old friend of mine who was a big-game shot and traveller, and who had a miniature zoo of his own at his home at Derby. Once, when the company was playing in that town, he invited me to go and stay the night with him after the performance, and in his library we sat chatting until the early hours of the morning. He told me many graphic stories about his expeditions into strange lands, about the tigers and elephants he had shot, and about his marvellous escapes. One story was about a faithful servant of his, a powerfully-built black, who stood right in front of an infuriated wounded elephant, which trampled on him and killed him, as the poor fellow doubtless knew would be the case, though he was ready to chance all so that his master might be protected. I remember that my friend, having told me this incident, added, "They are the greatest men on God's earth, are these blacks."

"Just half-a-minute," then said the explorer. Listening to those strange adventures in the jungle had already set my nerves on edge, and to be left alone in that dimly-lit room, with everything outside and inside it silent and still, was really uncanny. I heard my host walk along the corridor, open one or two doors, and apparently enter the garden. He had left me alone in that house! In a few moments I heard an unnatural tread in the corridor. Pit-pat, pit-pat! My eyes almost sprang out of my head. Pit-pat, pit-pat. Nearer and nearer it came until at last into the room there sauntered a—tiger! My friend walked in behind it.

"For God's sake take it away," I screamed, drawing my feet up into the chair and expecting every second the beast would pounce, "Take it away!" The tiger was really only a cub, but coming like an apparition into that room, it seemed to be the biggest and most ferocious and most ghastly sight on earth. Large beads of perspiration were on my forehead, my heart was beating itself out of my body, and through my mind flashed the countless sins of my youth. My last hours had come. "Take it away," I yelled, again and again, "it will tear us to pieces."

Now I think of it, the tiger did not really look as if it had much of an appetite, or if it had, the idea of making a tough meal of an actor did not appeal to its palate. The hunter tried to assure me that the beast was "quite all right." It flopped down by his side, and as he stroked it, the cub purred in a manner which, to me at all events, was not at all pleasant. "I know just how long you can keep them," my host explained. "This one will be harmless for another month. Then it will be dangerous. It is quite all right to-night. Come and stroke it!"