The lads laughed.
“Growl,” said Mr. Collins—so they turned their laugh into a growl, followed round the stage by Dan, and the performance went on.
It was all very funny—funny, not because of any humour, for that was entirely lacking, but because of the simplicity and hopelessness of every one. Talk about a rehearsal at private theatricals—why, it is no more disturbing than an early stage rehearsal; but the seasoned actor knows how to pull himself out of the tangle, whereas the amateur does not.
About a fortnight after the pantomime began I chanced one afternoon to be at Drury Lane again, and while stopping for a moment in the wings, the great Dan Leno came and stood beside me, waiting for his cue. He was dressed as Mother Goose, and leant against the endless ropes that seemed to frame every stage entrance; some one spoke to him, but he barely answered, he appeared preoccupied. All at once his turn came. On he went, hugging a goose beneath which walked a small boy. Roars of applause greeted his entrance, he said his lines, and a few moments later came out amid laughter and clapping. “This will have cheered him up,” thought I—but no. There I left him waiting for his next cue, but I had not gone far before renewed roars of applause from the house told me Dan Leno was again on the stage. What a power to be able to amuse thousands of people every week, to be able to bring mirth and joy into many a heart, to take people out of themselves and make the saddest merry—and Dan can do all this.
The object of my second visit was to have a little chat with Miss Madge Lessing, the “principal girl,” who exclaimed as I entered her dressing-room:
“I spend eleven hours in the theatre every day during the run of the pantomime.”
After that who can say a pantomime part is a sinecure? Eleven hours every day dressing, singing, dancing, acting, or—more wearisome of all—waiting. No one unaccustomed to the stage can realise the strain of such work, for it is only those who live at such high pressure, who always have to be on the alert for the “call-boy,” who know what it is to be kept at constant tension for so many consecutive hours.
Matinée days are bad enough in ordinary theatres, but the pantomime is a long series of matinée days extending over three months or more. Of course it is not compulsory to stay in the theatre between the performances; but it is more tiring, for the leading-lady, to dress and go out for a meal than to stay in and have it brought to the dressing-room.
Miss Lessing was particularly fortunate in her room; the best I have ever seen in any theatre. Formerly it was Sir Augustus Harris’s office. It was large and lofty, and so near the stage—on a level with which it actually stood—that one could hear what was going on in front. This was convenient in many ways, although it had its drawbacks. Many of our leading theatrical lights have to traverse long flights of stairs between every act; while Miss Lessing was so close to the stage she need not leave her room until it was actually time to step upon the boards.
It was a matinée when the pantomime was in full swing that I bearded the lion in her den, and a pretty, dainty little lion I found her. It was a perilous journey to reach her room, but I bravely followed the “dresser” from the stage door. We passed a lilliputian pony about the size of a St. Bernard dog, we bobbed under the heads and tails of horses so closely packed together there was barely room for us to get between. The huntsmen were already mounted, for they were just going on, and I marvelled at the good behaviour of those steeds; they must have known they could not move without doing harm to some one, and so considerately remained still. We squeezed past fairies, our faces tickled by their wings, our dresses caught by their spangles, so closely packed was humanity “behind.” There were about two hundred scene-shifters incessantly at work moving “cloths,” and “flies,” and “drops,” and properties of all kinds. Miss Lessing was just coming off the stage, dressed becomingly in white muslin, with a blue Red Riding Hood cape and poppy-trimmed straw hat.