He wept privately and then put on an armor of contempt. He sailed shortly after, leaving the Americans marooned on their desert continent.
The actors were treated with little mercy by most of the critics, except to be used as bludgeons to whack the author with. Sheila’s notices were of the “however” sort. “Miss Sheila Kemble is a promising young actress; the part she played, however, was so irritating—” or, “In spite of all the cleverness of—” or, “Sheila Kemble exhausted her resources in vain to give a semblance of life to—”
Sheila sent the clippings to Mrs. Vining, and added: “Every bouquet had a brickbat in it. We are not long for this world, I fear.”
Reben fought valiantly for the play. He squandered money on extra spaces in the papers and on the bill-boards. He quoted from the critics who praise everything and he emphasized lines about the scenery. The play simply did not endure the sea change. People who came would not enjoy it, and would not recommend it. It was hard even to give away complimentary seats, and the result was one that would have been more amazing if it were less common; a successful play by a famous author produced with a famous cast at a leading theater in the largest city of the New World was played to a theater that could not be filled at any or no price. The receipts fell to forty dollars one night.
A newspaper wit wrote, “Last night the crowds on Broadway were so dense that a man was accidentally pushed into the Odeon Theater.” On another day he said, “Last night during a performance of Sir Ralph Incledon’s masterpiece some miscreant entered the Odeon Theater and stole all the orchestra chairs.”
The slow death of a play is a miserable process. The actors began to see the nobilities of the work once the author was removed from in front of it. They regretted its passing, but plays cannot live in a vacuum. Novels and paintings can wait patiently and calmly in suspended animation till their understanders grow up, but plays, like infants, must be nourished at once or they die and stay dead.
Sheila and all the company had fought valiantly for the drama. Once Sir Ralph’s back was turned, they fell to playing their rôles their own way, and they at least enjoyed their work more. But the audiences never came.
Sheila was plunged into deeps of gloom. She felt that she must suffer part of the blame or at least the punishment of the play’s non-success. She wished she had stayed with “A Friend in Need.”
But Reben had always been known as a good sport, a plucky taker of whatever medicine the public gave him. After a bastinado from the critics he had waited to see what the people would do. There was never any telling. Sometimes the critics would write pæans of rapture and the lobby would be as deserted as a graveyard, leaving the box-office man nothing to do but manicure his nails. Sometimes the critics would unanimously condemn, and there would be a queue at the door the next morning. Sometimes the critics would praise and the mob would storm the window. Sometimes they would blame and audiences would stay away as if by conspiracy. In any case, “the box-office tells the story.”