Let there be no mistake in the mind of the reader. This is not only the experience of a would-be actress, a well-trained, medal-laden aspirant from one of the good dramatic schools, but is one of the bitter and frequent experiences of the thoroughly capable, trained, and occasionally well-salaried actress, who has failed to arrive, during her eighteen to twenty years of experience, at the much coveted, and supposedly safe position at the top of the theatrical ladder.
Suppose our average actress is lucky, and her letter of introduction gains her a small part in the London production. Into her three lines she tries to crowd all she can of what she has learned from teachers and experience. It is her opportunity. She has stepped forward amongst those fortunate ones whose names are mentioned in the programme. She starts for rehearsal happily enough from the little room in Bloomsbury, passes the door-keeper without question, and takes up her stand in the wings. There she stays three hours. She has companionship in hushed whispers, and the right to exist. At two o'clock her act has not yet been reached, and the artists are allowed to leave the theatre for half an hour to get lunch. As she is not paid for rehearsals, she cannot afford more than sixpence for a meal; so her repast is necessarily a light one. At five, rehearsal is dismissed, and she has gone through her part twice. Five minutes would cover her actual acting for the day; and having stood about for nearly six hours she walks back home to her room.
As the play nears production, the rehearsal hours lengthen, and the lunch times shorten. Her own hoard of savings offer her less and less to spend on food, and when finally the play is produced—let us face the worst—it not infrequently occurs that the run of the piece may end in three weeks. She has rehearsed for four weeks, has been glad to accept £2 for her tiny part, and out of that short run, which represents £6, she must save enough to tide her over the next few weeks, or perhaps months, until she gets her next engagement, more unpaid rehearsals, and perhaps another short run. There is always wearing anxiety, and the unpleasing, thankless, humiliating searching for work, under the most distasteful conditions possible.
There is now an effort being made by a few of the London managers to pay a percentage on salaries for rehearsing. The movement, I think, is partially due to the Insurance Act, which, of course, touches all the low paid labour in the theatre. This effort, though obviously of importance, can hardly as yet be considered as quite satisfactory. The payments for five weeks' rehearsals are 6s. on the £1, 1s. salaries, which include dancers, walkers-on, etc.: and 12s. 6d. a week on salaries of £3. In each case, of course, the threepence insurance has to be deducted, and it must be quite clear that no woman can live on 5s. 9d., much less make a good appearance, unless she has other means of support.
She may get an engagement to tour for a limited number of weeks. If so, she gazes in despair at her small wardrobe, trying to puzzle out three costumes to be used in the play, for actresses going on tour have usually to provide their own dresses.
A friend of mine played the leading part on the tour of a West End production. She had to find all her own dresses, hats, shoes, stockings, etc., and her salary was £3, 10s. a week. In a "boiled-down" version she played twice nightly for £5 a week, and found four dresses, two hats, an evening cloak, besides the shoes, stockings, gloves, etc., incidental to a well dressed part. Another soubrette on a salary of £2, 5s. paid her fare both on joining and leaving the company, and was obliged to provide two dresses, one evening dress and cloak, shoes, stockings, etc.
The average salaries in melodrama are £4 a week, out of which must be provided many dresses. The "heavy lead" or "adventuress" type, generally magnificently attired, gets about £3 a week. In London, of course, in the West End productions, dresses are provided, but the engagement is not for a definite period as it would be on a tour, and a curious difficulty arises through this arrangement, since the actress who has once been beautifully dressed has a natural and very comprehensible predilection thenceforward to continue to be so delightfully gowned. Her own opinion as to what a dress should cost almost invariably, after a London engagement, ceases to be on a level with what her yearly income should permit. Clothes assume a horrible importance not known in other trades, since her appearance may mean her livelihood as a worker; for do we not know of engagements which have been made when the angle of a hat has exactly coincided with the mood of the manager who is engaging his company?
So our little average actress, starting off on tour, patches and manoeuvres to have a satisfactory appearance, and is painfully self-conscious of deficiencies when the eyes of the manager, or the more well-to-do sharers of the dressing-room, appear to enquire too closely into details. One of my first successes was a triumphant one for my sister; since an evening blouse, ingeniously concocted from a table-centre, received some long notices in the Press.
Theatrical lodgings, when one's salary is 25s. a week, are not always the most pleasing in the town. Rheumatic fever and other unpleasant illnesses have been contracted from damp beds, when the landlady, in her desire to live up to the degree of cleanliness expected of her, returns the sheets too quickly to the so-lately vacated bed; because, with one company leaving in the morning, and another arriving at tea-time, there are not many hours to clean out a room, and wash and iron the only pair.
The lodgings are usually extremely bad and dirty, and generally in the least attractive and most unsavoury quarters of the town. The food is generally unappetising and cooked with very little intelligence. There have been many cases of women finding themselves in disreputable houses; and even recommended lodgings have been found empty on arrival, the police having raided them. I feel very strongly that the only comfortable and dignified way to meet this difficulty is to have a regular chain of clubs, on the principle of the Three Arts Club.