The Secrets of a Savoyard

by Henry A. Lytton

Apologia—Early Misfortunes of Management—Stage Debut in Schoolboy Dramatics—St. Mark's, Chelsea—The School's Champion Pugilist—The Sale of Jam-Rolls—Student Days with W. H. Trood—An Artist of Parts—A Fateful Night at the Theatre—The Schoolboy and the Actress—A Firm Hand With a Rival—Three Months' Truancy—Our Marriage and Our Honeymoon in a Hansom—The Dominie and the Married Man—First Engagement with D'Oyly Carte—Dilemma of a Sister and Brother.

Eight-and-thirty years on the stage!

Looking back over so long a period, memory runs riot with a thousand remembrances of dark days and brighter, and of times of hardship which, in their own way, were not devoid of happiness. It has been my good fortune to own many valued friendships, and it is to my friends that the credit or the guilt, as it may happen to be, of inspiring me to begin this venture belongs. Not once, but many times, I have been asked "Why don't you write your reminiscences, Lytton?" The late Lord Fisher strongly urged me to write them when I paid my last visit to his home a few months before he passed to the Great Beyond. So great was my respect for Lord Fisher, one of the noblest Englishmen of our age, that I felt bound to adopt his suggestion, and it is thus partly in homage to his sterling qualities and gifts that I begin now to reveal these "Secrets of a Savoyard." This much let me say at the very beginning. Naught that is written here will be "set down in malice." Searchers for those too numerous chronicles of scandal will look here for spicy tit-bits in vain. For what it is worth this is the record of one who has lived a happy life, whose vocation it has been to minister to the public's enjoyment, and whose outlook has inevitably been happily coloured by such a long association with the gladsome operas of the old Savoy.

I cannot say that my love of the footlights was inherited, but at least it began to show itself at a very early age. One of my earliest recollections is concerned with a little diversion at the village home of my guardian. No doubt my older readers will remember the old gallanty shows which were in vogue some forty or fifty years ago. Explained briefly, these were contrived by use of a number of cardboard figures which, with the aid of a candle, were reflected on to a white sheet, and which could be manipulated to provide one's audience with a rather primitive form of enjoyment. Well, I do not recall where I had been to get the idea, but I decided to have a gallanty show at the bottom of the garden, and to invite the public's patronage. This ranks as my first venture in managerial responsibility. I rigged up a tent—a small and jerry-built contrivance it was—and an announcement of the forthcoming entertainment in my bold schoolboy's hand was pasted on to the outer wall of the garden. The charges for admission were original. Stalls were to be purchased with an apple, lesser seats with a handful of chocolates or nuts, while a few sweets would secure admission to the pit. The boys of the village, having read the notice, turned up and paid their nuts and sweets in accordance with the advertised tariff, but the sad fact has to be related that the show did not please them at all, and by summarily pulling up the pole they brought the tent and the entertainment to grief. In other words, I "got the bird." Nor can I say that was the end of the tragedy. Under threats I had to repay all that the box-office had taken, and as most of the lads claimed more than they had actually given, the stock of nuts and sweets was insufficient to meet the liabilities. So in the cause of art I found myself thus early in life in bankruptcy! My partner in the enterprise proved to be a broken reed, for when the roughs of the village got busy he showed a clean pair of heels and left me alone with the mob and the wreckage.

Seeing that this is an actor's narrative, I ought to place on record at once that my first appearance on any stage was in schoolboy dramatics in connection with St. Mark's College, Chelsea. Of St Mark's I shall have much to say. I played the title rôle in "Boots at the Swan." Except that I enjoyed being the cheeky little hotel "Boots" and fancied myself not a little in my striped waistcoat and green apron, I don't remember whether my performance was held to be successful or not, but unconsciously the experience did give me a mental twist towards the stage.

St. Mark's was regarded in those times—and I am glad to know is still regarded—as an excellent school for young gentlemen. But certainly my name was never numbered amongst the brightest educational products of that academy. What claim I had to fame was in an entirely different sphere. I was the school's champion pugilist! In those days I simply revelled in fighting. A day without a scrap was a day hardly worth living. Occasionally the older lads thought it good sport to tell the new-comers what an unholy terror they would be up against when they met Lytton. In most cases this was said with such vivid embellishments that the youngsters got a heart-sinking feeling. But there was one lad who was more adroit. He argued that it was all very well for the school champion to fight surrounded by and cheered on by his friends, but that this must put the challenger at a distinct disadvantage. He also considered that no harm would be done if he measured up this much-boomed light-weight before the time came for him to stand up publicly as his antagonist. Luring me, therefore, into a quiet corner one day, he commanded me in so many words to "put 'em up." Now while it is the privilege of a champion to name his own time and conditions, it really was too much to tolerate the pretensions of such an impudent upstart. So we set to in earnest, and very speedily the new boy was giving me some of his best—a straight left timed to the moment—and it needed only two such lefts to make me oblivious of time altogether. Certainly he succeeded in instilling into my mind a decided respect for his prowess.

Not being too richly endowed with pocket money, I conceived the idea that to set up in business as the school pastrycook would serve a "long-felt want." Strictly cash terms were demanded. Each day I bought a number of rolls at ½d. each and a pot of jam for 4½d. With these I retailed slices of most appetising bread and jam at a penny a time and made an excellent profit. If the truth must be told the smaller boys got no more than a smear of jam on their bread and the bigger boys rather more than their share, but on the average it worked out fairly well, and the juniors had sufficient discretion not to complain.

If I had any bent in those days—apart from fighting and selling jam rolls—it was in the direction of painting. For water-colour sketches I had a certain aptitude, and painting remains one of my hobbies, taking only second place to my enthusiasm for golf. For tuition I went to W. H. Trood at his studio in Chelsea. Trood in his time was an artist of parts. He had a fine sense of composition and painted many beautiful pictures. If he had not been deaf and dumb he would have made a great actor, for his gift of facial expression was extraordinary. Clubmen are familiar with a well-known set of five action photographs representing a convivial card-player who has gone "nap." Trood was the subject of those photographs.