Toole was a constant guest at those pleasant little suppers in the Beefsteak Room of the Lyceum Theatre over which Irving so gracefully presided; and if one had the good fortune to be his neighbour it was always delightful to watch the expression of his swiftly-glancing, laughing eyes and mobile mouth, as they mirrored, in hardly-restrained amusement, his inward enjoyment of the changing humours of the scene. Nothing characteristic escaped him, however widely divergent the personalities that came within the range of his vision; but his quickness of perception, ever ready to register and record the little foibles of each member of the company, bred in him no feeling of resentment, but seemed rather to add to the rich store of enjoyment which, in his happier moods, life always afforded him. I say in his happier moods, because even in the earlier days of our friendship, when his vitality was unimpaired, his exuberant high spirits were subject to sudden clouds of deep depression that seemed for the time to banish all laughter from his life.
Like Irving, he was an inveterately late sitter, and the many occasions that found them together—either at the theatre or at the Garrick Club—rarely witnessed their parting till the morning hours were far spent. In Toole’s case, I know, this reluctance to break in upon the long duration of these social hours sprang in part out of a haunting terror of the sadder thoughts that might overtake him when he was driven back upon himself. He would often confess to me, as we drove home, his constant dread of these night fears, that were chiefly dominated at that time by the recurring image of his only son, whose early death remained with him to the end as an ineffaceable source of sorrow. And yet, while we talked of these sadder things, it was sometimes irresistibly comic to notice, as we drew towards his house, how this deeper grief would then be exchanged for a terror of a nearer kind, for he was always at these moments very conscious that his persistently late habits—so often repented of, but never reformed—would surely draw down upon him severe domestic rebuke. And even when the cab had reached his door, he would hold me prisoner in whispered converse in order to postpone, as long as he could, the dread moment when he would have to face the salutary lecture that was in store for him.
But for the most part he was the gayest and most light-hearted of companions, forcing out of the most unhopeful material a rich yield of fun and frolic. At home or abroad he was never at a loss for the means of filling an empty day. Sometimes, in his ceaseless tendency towards practical joking, he would place himself in positions that other men might have found embarrassing and even dangerous. But there was something so infectious in his humour, and in his good humour, that even on the Continent, where he could speak no language but his own, he was always able to extricate himself with success from difficulties that would have left many graver men without resource.
He dearly loved the excitement of the gaming table, whether at Monte Carlo or elsewhere; and I remember, during a holiday that we passed together at Aix-les-Bains, that he did his best to imperil the good effects of his cure by his constant attendance at the Cercle and the Villa des Fleurs. It was difficult to drag him from the table, however late the hour, for his pathetic reply to every remonstrance took the form of a solemn promise that he would absolutely go to bed as soon as the little pile before him was exhausted; a reply, the humour of which he was himself only half-conscious, for it pointed to the inevitable loss that was the final result of all his gambling transactions. After a night wherein he had been more than usually successful in exhausting the ready cash he carried about him, we made our way in the morning to the little bank in the main street of Aix-les-Bains, in order that he might make a fresh draft upon his letter of credit.
But he did not at once reveal to the clerk in charge his serious intent. Tapping lightly at the closed window of the guichet, he inquired, in broken English, which he appeared strangely to believe would be somehow comprehensible to his foreign interlocutor, whether the bank would be prepared to make him a small advance upon a gold-headed cane which he carried in his hand. The request, as might be supposed, was somewhat briskly dismissed, and the little window was abruptly closed in his face. Toole retired apparently deeply dejected by the refusal of his prayer; but in a few minutes he returned to the attack, having in the meantime provided himself with fresh material for a new financial proposition. Hastening out into the little market that lay near the bank, he hurriedly purchased from one of the fish-stalls a small pike that had been caught in the lake, and, having added to this a bunch of carrots, he returned to the bank, where he carefully arranged these proffered securities on the counter, enforced by the addition of his watch and chain, a three-penny bit, and a penknife. When all was ready he again tapped softly at the window, and, in a voice that was broken by sobs, implored the clerk, in view of his unfortunate position, to accept these ill-assorted articles in pledge for the small sum which was needed to save him from starvation. The clerk, by this time grown indignant, requested him to leave the establishment, explaining to him in emphatic terms, and in such English as he could command, that they only made advances upon circular notes or letters of credit. At the last-named word Toole’s saddened face suddenly broke into smiles, and, producing his letter of credit, he handed it to the astonished clerk, with the added explanation that he would have offered that at first if he had thought the bank cared about it, but that the porter at the hotel had told him the bankers of Aix liked fish better.
This is only a sample of the kind of adventure that Toole loved to create for himself and which he carried through with the keenest zest and enjoyment. His invention in such matters never flagged, and I have often been his companion through the whole of an idle day, during which he would keep us both fully employed in the prosecution of these boyish frolics, that may seem foolish enough in narration, but were irresistible in their appeal, owing to the unalloyed pleasure they brought him in their progress. I have known many men who deem themselves adepts at this kind of sport, but none who were so convincing in their methods—none, certainly, who took such an honest pleasure in their work, or who used such infinite pains in carrying the projected little plot to a successful issue.
Once at Ramsgate he contrived to relieve the tedium of a Sunday afternoon by calling at nearly every house in a long and respectable terrace, charged with a mission that was foredoomed to failure. As each door was opened Toole stood on the step, his face distorted by signs of emotion, that for the moment deprived him of all powers of speech, and when at last, in response to the angry inquiry of a maid-servant, he contrived to regain a measure of self-control, it was only to beg, in tearful accents, for the loan of “a small piece of groundsel for a sick bird.” As door after door was slammed in his face, his high spirits correspondingly increased, his only fear being, as he afterwards explained to me, lest some one of the peaceful inhabitants whose Sabbath repose he had so ruthlessly disturbed should, by an evil chance, have possessed the remedy he so persistently sought.
SITTING AT A PLAY
The child’s love of the drama begins long before there is any thought of a playhouse. To escape from life in order to rediscover it in mimic form, would seem to rank among the earliest of human impulses. We are all born actors, though some of us—and this is true even of those who adopt the stage as a profession—would seem occasionally to part with this primitive instinct in later life. But an average child has no sooner entered this world than he finds himself pursued by the longing to create another: he has scarcely had time to recognise his own identity before he seeks to hide it beneath the mask of an alien personality. How far the youthful histrion believes himself to be a lion when he crawls across the drawing-room carpet on all fours, and roars from behind the sofa, is perhaps open to argument. My own belief is that he is already so much of an artist as to be in no way deceived, but of his desire to impose upon the credulity of others there can, I think, be no question. But the limits of histrionic enjoyment are even here sometimes overstepped, as, for example, when a maturer rival in the art, boasting a louder roar, approaches too closely to the confines of absolute illusion. The enjoyment of the art as an art is then rudely disturbed, and, shaken with sudden terror, the infant Roscius is once more driven back upon that actual world from which it had been his pride and desire to escape.
This may be cited as an early instance of the intemperate employment of the resources of realism, which in later life, when sitting at a play, we have so often just reason to deplore. Again, the sudden assumption by a too eager elder of a woolly hearth-rug may ruin at a stroke the child’s purely imaginative vision that he is in the society of a bear. Natural terror expels in an instant that higher emotion which the drama is designed to create. The child recognises that the irrefutable laws of the art have been rudely broken, to his own discomfort; and it is always interesting to note on such occasions with what quick and easy resource he will suddenly change the whole subject and scope of the mimic performance, imperiously demanding that the bear shall be exchanged for a horse, or some other domestic animal, whose milder tendencies may be the more readily endured, even when the actor is forgetful of the proper restraints of his art.