And then, while Macbeth had his faults, he was a verra accomplished pairson, and I respect and like him for that. He did a bit o' murdering, but that was largely because of his wife. I sympathize wi' any man that takes his wife's advice, and is guided by it. I've done that, ever since I was married. Tae be sure, I made a wiser choice than did Macbeth, but it was no his fault the advice his lady gied him was bad, and he should no be blamed as sair as he is for the way he followed it. He was punished, tae, before ever Macduff killed him— wasna he a victim of insomnia, and is there anything worse for a man tae suffer frae than that?
Aye, if ever the time comes when I've a chance to play in one of Wull Shakespeare's dramas, it's Macbeth I shall choose instead of Hamlet. So I gie you fair warning. But it's only richt to say that the wife tells me I'm no to think of doing any such daft thing, and that my managers agree wi' her. So I think maybe I'll have to be content just to be a music hall singer a' my days—till I succeed in retiring, that is, and I think that'll be soon, for I've a muckle tae do, what wi twa-three mair books I've promised myself to write.
Weel, I was saying, a while back, before I digressed again, that soon after that nicht at Gatti's I moved to London for a bit. It was wiser, it seemed tae me. Scotland was a lang way frae London, and it was needfu' for me to be in the city so much that I grew tired of being awa' sae much frae the wife and my son John. Sae, for quite a spell, I lived at Tooting. It was comfortable there. It wasna great hoose in size, but it was well arranged. There was some ground aboot it, and mair air than one can find, as a rule, in London. I wasna quite sae cramped for room and space to breathe as if I'd lived in the West End —in a flat, maybe, like so many of my friends of the stage. But I always missed the glen, and I was always dreaming of going back to Scotland, when the time came.
It was then I first began to play the gowf. Ye mind what I told ye o' my first game, wi' Mackenzie Murdoch? I never got tae be much more o' a hand than I was then, nae matter hoo much I played the game. I'm a gude Scot, but I'm thinkin' I didna tak' up gowf early enough in life. But I liked to play the game while I was living in London. For ane thing it reminded me of hame; for another, it gie'd me a chance to get mair exercise than I would ha done otherwise.
In London ye canna walk aboot much. You ha' to gae tae far at a time. Thanks to the custom of the halls, I was soon obliged to ha' a motor brougham o' my ain. It was no an extravagance. There's no other way of reaching four or maybe five halls in a nicht. You've just time to dash from one hall, when your last encore's given, and reach the next for your turn. If you depended upon the tube or even on taxicabs, you could never do it.
It was then that my brother-in-law, Tom Vallance, began to go aboot everywhere wi' me. I dinna ken what I'd be doing wi'oot Tom. He's been all ower the shop wi' me—America, Australia, every where I gae. He knows everything I need in ma songs, and he helps me tae dress, and looks after all sorts of things for me. He packs all ma claes and ma wigs; he keeps ma sticks in order. You've seen ma sticks? Weel, it's Tom always hands me the richt one just as I'm aboot to step on the stage. If he gied me the stick I use in "She's Ma Daisy" when I was aboot to sing "I Love a Lassie" I believe I'd have tae ha' the curtain rung doon upon me. But he never has. I can trust old Tom. Aye, I ca' trust him in great things as well as sma'.
It took me a lang time to get used to knowing I had arrived, as the saying is. Whiles I'd still be worried, sometimes, aboot the future. But soon it got so's I could scarce imagine a time when getting an engagement had seemed a great thing. In the old days I used to look in the wee book I kept, and I'd see a week's engagement marked, a long time ahead, and be thankfu' that that week, at least, there'd be siller coming in.
And noo—well, the noo it's when I look in the book and see, maybe a year ahead, a blank week, when I've no singing the do, that I'm pleased.
"Eh, Tom," I'll say. "Here's a bit o' luck! Here's the week frae
September fifteenth on next year when I've no dates!"
"Aye, Harry," he'll answer me. "D'ye no remember? We'll be on the ocean then, bound for America. That's why there's no dates that week."