“He had taken his wig off with his hat, and there was the ‘brave boy’s’ poor old bald head exposed to the jeers of a ribald house.
“I’d half a mind to rush up to town last week. I was out of the bill for three nights running. But the mere railway fare would have cost me nearly half a week’s salary, so I contented myself with a trip over to R———— and a look in at the show there. I met W———. He’s married little Polly ————, who was walking lady at———. She is up at Aberdeen now, and he hasn’t seen her for over three months. Rather rough on a young couple who haven’t been married a year. The old ones bear up against this sort of thing very well indeed, but poor W———— is quite upset about it.
“They kept together as long as they could, but business got so bad that they had to separate, and each take the first thing that offered.
“You remember my telling you how our prompter got me fined for not attending a rehearsal some time ago. I said I would serve him out, and so I have. Or rather we have—I and one of the others who had a score against him—for he’s a bumptious, interfering sort of fellow, and makes himself disagreeable to everybody. He is awful spoons on a Miss Pinkeen, whose father keeps an ironmonger’s shop next door to the theater. The old man knows nothing about it, and they are up to all kinds of dodges to get a word with each other. Now, one of our dressing-room windows is exactly opposite their staircase window, and he and the girl often talk across; and, once or twice, he has placed a plank between the two windows, and crawled along it into the house when her father has been away. Well, we got hold of a bit of this girl’s writing the other day, and forged a letter to him, saying that her father had gone out, and that she wanted to see him very particularly, and that he was to come over through the window and wait on the landing till she came upstairs. Then, just before rehearsal, we went out and gave a stray boy twopence to take it in to him.
“Of course no sooner did we see that he was fairly inside the house, and out of sight, than we pulled the board in and shut our window. It got quite exciting on the stage as time went by. ‘Where’s————?’ fumed the stage manager. ‘Where the devil’s———? It’s too bad of him to keep us all waiting like this.’ And then the call-boy was sent round to four public houses, and then to his lodgings; for he had got the book in his pocket, and we couldn’t begin without him. ‘Oh, it’s too bad of him to go away and stop like this,’ cried the stage manager again at the end of half an hour. I’ll fine him five shillings for this. I won’t be played the fool with.’ In about an hour, he came in looking thunder and lightning. He wouldn’t give any explanation. All we could get out of him was, that if he could find out who’d done it, he’d jolly well wring his neck.
“From what the ironmonger’s boy told our call-boy, it seems that he waited about three-quarters of an hour on the stairs, not daring to move, and that then the old man came up and wanted to know what he was doing there. There was a regular scene in the house, and the girl has sworn that she’ll never speak to him again for getting her into a row, and about four of her biggest male relatives have each expressed a firm determination to break every bone in his body; and the boy adds, that from his knowledge of them they are to be relied upon. We have thought it our duty to let him know these things.”
I find nothing further of any theatrical interest, until I come to the following, written about four months after the date of my entering the company:
“I was far too busy to write last week. It’s been something awful. We’ve got ———— * down here for a fortnight. His list consists of eighteen pieces—eight ‘legitimate,’ five dramas, four comedies, and a farce; and we only had a week in which to prepare. There have been rehearsals at ten, and rehearsal at three, and rehearsals at eleven, after the performance was over. First I took all the parts given me, and studied them straight off one after the other. Then I found I’d got them all jumbled up together in my head, and the more I tried to remember what belonged to which, the more I forgot which belonged to what. At rehearsal I talked Shakespeare in the farce, and put most of the farce and a selection from all the five dramas into one of the comedies. And then the stage manager went to put me right, and then he got mixed up, and wanted to know if anybody could oblige him by informing him what really was being rehearsed; and the Leading Lady and the First Low Comedy said it was one of the dramas, but the Second Low Comedy, the Soubrette, and the Leader of the Orchestra would have it was a comedy, while the rest of us were too bewildered to be capable of forming any opinion on any subject.
*A “Star” from London,
“The strain has so upset me, that I don’t even now know whether I’m standing on my head or my heels; and, our First Old Man—but I’ll come to him later on. My work has been particularly heavy, for, in consequence of a serious accident that has happened to our Walking Gentleman, I’ve had to take his place. He was playing a part in which somebody—the Heavy Man—tries to stab him while he’s asleep. But just when the would-be murderer has finished soliloquizing, and the blow is about to fall, he starts up, and a grand struggle ensues. I think the other fellow must have been drunk on the last occasion..Anyhow, the business was most clumsily managed, and R————, our Walking Gent, got his eye cut out, and is disfigured for life. It is quite impossible for him now to play his old line, and he has to do heavies or low comedy, or anything where appearance is of no importance. The poor fellow is terribly cut up—don’t think I’m trying to make a ghastly joke—and he seems to be especially bitter against me for having slipped into his shoes. I’m sure he need not be; whatever good his ill wind has blown me has brought with it more work than it’s worth; and I think, on the whole, taking this star business into consideration, I would rather have stopped where I was. I knew a good many of the parts I should have had to play, but as it is, everything has been fresh study.