People on the stage have warm hearts and generous purses, but to give gracefully requires as much tact as to receive graciously.
It is a curious thing how few actors have died rich men. Many have made fortunes, but they have generally contrived to lose them again. Money easily made is readily lost. He who buys what he does not want ends in wanting what he cannot buy. Style and show begun in flourishing times are hard to relinquish. Capital soon runs away when drawn upon because salary has ceased, even temporarily. Many an actor, once a rich man, has died poor. Kate Vaughan, once a wealthy woman, died in penury, and so on ad infinitum.
Actors, like other people, have to learn there is no disgrace in being poor—it is merely inconvenient.
Theatrical salaries are sometimes enormous, although George Edwardes has informed the public that £100 a week is the highest he ever gives, because he finds to go beyond that sum does not pay him.
It seems a great deal for a pretty woman, not highly born, nor highly educated, nor highly gifted—merely a pretty woman who has been well drilled by author, stage manager, and conductor, to be able to command £100 a week in a comic opera, but after all it is not for long. It is never for fifty-two weeks in the year, and only for a few years at most. Beauty fades, flesh increases, the attraction goes, and she is relegated to the shelf, a poorer, wiser woman than before. But meanwhile her scintillating success, the glamour around her, have acted as a bait to induce others to rush upon the stage.
The largest salary ever earned by a man was probably that paid to Charles Kean, who once had a short engagement at Drury Lane for £50 a night, and on one occasion he made £2,000 by a benefit. Madame Vestris, however, beat him, for she had a long engagement at the Haymarket at £40 a night, or £240 a week, a sum unheard of to-day.
It may be here mentioned that salaries are doled out according to an old and curious custom.
“Treasury day” is a great event; theatrical folk never speak of “pay”: it is always “salaries” and “treasury day.” Each “house” has its own methods of procedure, but at a great national theatre like Drury Lane the “chiefs” are paid by cheque, while every Friday night the treasurer and his assistants with trays full of “salary” go round the theatre and distribute packets in batches to the endless persons who combine to make a successful performance. The money is sealed up in an envelope which bears the name of the receiver, so no one knows what his neighbour gets. It takes five or six hours for the treasurer and his two assistants to pay off a thousand people at a pantomime, and check each salary paid.
There is no field where that little colt imagination scampers more wildly than in the matter of salaries. For instance, a girl started as “leading lady” in a well-known play on a provincial tour. Her name, in letters nearly as big as herself, met her on the hoardings of every town the company visited. She was given the star dressing-room, and a dresser to herself. This all meant extra tips and extra expenses everywhere, for she was the “leading lady”! Wonderful notices appeared in all the provincial papers and this girl was the draw. The manager knew that, and advertised her and pushed her forward in every way. All the company thought she began at a salary of £10 a week, and rumour said this sum had been doubled after her success. Such was the story. Now for the truth. She was engaged for the tour at £3 a week, and £3 a week she received without an additional penny, although the tour of weeks extended into months. She was poor, others were dependent on her, and she dared not throw up that weekly sixty shillings for fear she might lose everything in her endeavour to get more.
This is only one instance: there are many such upon the stage.