Tales from "Blackwood," Volume 2

by Various

“It’s such a horrid bore learning one’s part,” lisped the elegant Horace Leicester, half awake on the sofa.

“Oh, stuff!” said Savile, “it’s the very thing to keep us alive! We could make a capital theatre out of the hall; don’t you think the little vice-principal would give us leave?”

“You had better ask for the chapel at once. Why, don’t you know, my dear fellow, the college hall, in the opinion of the dean and the vice, is held rather more sacred of the two? Newcome, poor devil, attempted to cut a joke at the high table one of the times he dined there after he was elected, and he told me that they all stared at him as if he had insulted them; and the vice (in confidence) explained to him that such ‘levity’ was treason against the ‘reverentia loci!’”

“Ay, I remember when that old villain Solomon, the porter, fined me ten shillings for walking in there with spurs one day when I was late for dinner; he said the dean always took off his cap when he went in there by himself, and threatened to turn off old Higgs, when he had been scout forty years, because he heard him whistling one day while he was sweeping it out! Well,” continued Savile, “you shall have my rooms; I shan’t trouble them much now. I am going to pack all my books down to old Wise’s[A] next week, to turn them into ready tin; so you may turn the study into a carpenter’s shop, if you like. Oh, it can be managed famously!”

So, after a few pros and cons, it was finally settled that Mr Savile’s rooms should become the Theatre Royal, —— College; and I was honoured with the responsible office of stage-manager. What the play was to be, was a more difficult point to settle. Savile proposed Romeo and Juliet, and volunteered for the hero; but it passed the united strength of the company to get up a decent Juliet. Richard the Third was suggested; we had “six Richards in the field” at once. We soon gave up the heroics, and decided on comedy; for since our audience would be sure to laugh, we should at least have a chance of getting the laugh in the right place. So, after long discussion, we fixed on She Stoops to Conquer. There were a good many reasons for this selection. First, it was a piece possessing that grand desideratum in all amateur performances, that there were several parts in it of equal calibre, and none which implied decided superiority of talent in its representative; secondly, there was not much love in it—a material point where, as an Irishman might say, all the ladies were gentlemen; thirdly, the scenery, dresses, properties, and decorations, were of the very simplest description: it was easily “put upon the stage.” We found little difficulty in casting the male characters: old Mrs Hardcastle, not requiring any great share of personal attractions, and being considered a part that would tell, soon found a representative; but when we came to the “donnas”—prima and seconda—then it was that the manager’s troubles began. It was really necessary, to insure the most moderate degree of success to the comedy, that Miss Hardcastle should have at least a lady-like deportment. The public voice, first in whispers, then audibly, at last vociferously, called upon Leicester. Slightly formed, handsome, clever, and accomplished, with naturally graceful manners, and a fair share of vanity and affectation, there was no doubt of his making a respectable heroine if he would consent to be made love to. In vain did he protest against the petticoats, and urge with affecting earnestness the claims of the whiskers which for the last six months he had so diligently been cultivating; the chorus of entreaty and expostulation had its effect, aided by a well-timed compliment to the aristocratically small hand and foot, of which Horace was pardonably vain. Shaving was pronounced indispensable to the due growth of the whiskers; and the importance of the character, and the point of the situations, so strongly dwelt upon, that he became gradually reconciled to his fate, and began seriously to discuss the question whether Miss Hardcastle should wear her hair in curls or bands. A freshman of seventeen, who had no pretensions in the way of whiskers, and who was too happy to be admitted on any terms to a share in such a “fast idea” as the getting up a play, was to be the Miss Neville; and before the hall bell rang for dinner, an order had been despatched for a dozen acting copies of She Stoops to Conquer.

Times have materially changed since Queen Elizabeth’s visit to Christ-Church; the University, one of the earliest nurses of the infant drama, has long since turned it out of doors for a naughty child, and forbid it, under pain of worse than whipping, to come any nearer than Abingdon or Bicester. Taking into consideration the style of some of the performances in which undergraduates of some three hundred years ago were the actors, the “Oxford Theatre” of those days, if it had more wit in it than the present, had somewhat less decency. The ancient “moralities” were not over moral, and the “mysteries” rather Babylonish. So far we have had no great loss. Whether the judicious getting up of a tragedy of Sophocles or Æschylus, or even a comedy of Terence—classically managed, as it could be done in Oxford, and well acted—would be more unbecoming the gravity of our collected wisdom, or more derogatory to the dignity of our noble “theatre,” than the squalling of Italian singers, masculine, feminine, and neuter, is a question which, when I have a seat in the Hebdomadal Council, I shall certainly propose. Thus much I am sure of,—if a classical playbill were duly announced for the next grand commemoration, it would “draw” almost as well as any lion of the day: the dresses might be quite as showy, the action could hardly be less graceful, than those of the odd-looking gentlemen who are dubbed doctors of civil law on such occasions; and the speeches of Prometheus, Œdipus, or Antigone, would be more intelligible to the learned, and more amusing to the ladies, than those Latin essays or the Creweian oration.

However, until I am vice-chancellor, the legitimate drama, Greek, Roman, or English, seems little likely to revive in Oxford. Our branch of that great family, I confess, bore the bar-sinister. The offspring of our theatrical affections was unrecognised by college authority. The fellows of —— would have done anything but “smile upon its birth.” The dean especially would have burked it at once had he suspected its existence. Nor was it fostered, like the former Oxford theatricals to which we have alluded, by royal patronage; we could not, consistently with decorum, request her Majesty to encourage an illegitimate. Nevertheless—spite of its being thus born under the rose, it grew and prospered. Our plan of rehearsal was original. We used to adjourn from dinner to the rooms of one or other of the company; and there, over our wine and dessert, instead of quizzing freshmen and abusing tutors, open each our acting copy, and, with all due emphasis and intonation, go regularly through the scenes of She Stoops to Conquer. This was all the study we ever gave to our parts; and even thus it was difficult to get a muster of all the performers, and we had generally to play dummy for some one or more of the characters, or “double” them, as the professionals call it. The excuses for absenteeism were various. Mrs Hardcastle and Tony were gone to Woodstock with a team, and were not to be waited for; Diggory had a command to dine with the Principal; and once an interesting dialogue was cut short by the untoward event of Miss Neville’s being “confined”—in consequence of some indiscretion or other—“to chapel.” It was necessary in our management, as much as in Mr Bunn’s or Mr Macready’s, to humour the caprices of the stars of the company; but the lesser lights, if they became eccentric at all in their orbits, were extinguished without mercy. Their place was easily supplied; for the moment it became known that a play was in contemplation, there were plenty of candidates for dramatic fame, especially among the freshmen; and though we mortally offended one or two aspiring geniuses, by proffering them the vacant situations of Ralph, Roger, and Co., in Mr Hardcastle’s household, on condition of having their respective blue dress-coats turned up with yellow to represent the family livery, there were others to whom the being admitted behind the scenes, even in these humble characters, was a subject of laudable ambition. Nay, unimportant as were some parts in themselves, they were quite enough for the histrionic talent of some of our friends. Till I became a manager myself, I always used to lose patience at the wretched manner in which some of the underlings on the stage went through the little they had to say and do: there seemed no reason why the “sticks” should be so provokingly sticky; and it surprised me that a man who could accost one fluently enough at the stage-door, should make such a bungle as some of them did in a message of some half-dozen words “in character.” But when I first became initiated into the mysteries of amateur performances, and saw how entirely destitute some men were of any notion of natural acting, and how they made a point of repeating two lines of familiar dialogue with the tone and manner, but without the correctness, of a schoolboy going through a task—then it ceased to be any matter of wonder that those to whom acting was no joke, but an unhappily earnest mode of getting bread, should so often make their performance appear the uneasy effort which it is. There was one man in particular, a good-humoured, gentlemanly fellow, a favourite with us all,—not remarkable for talent, but a pleasant companion enough, with plenty of common-sense. Well, “he would be an actor”—it was his own fancy to have a part, and, as he was “one of us,” we could not well refuse him. We give him an easy one, for he was not vain of his own powers, or ambitious of theatrical distinction; so he was to be “second fellow”—one of Tony’s pot-companions. He had but two lines to speak; but from the very first time I heard him read them, I set him down as a hopeless case. He read them as if he had just learned to spell the words; when he repeated them without the book, it was like a clergyman giving out a text. And so it was with a good many of the rank and file of the company; we had more labour to drill them into something like a natural intonation than to learn our own longest speeches twice over. So we made their attendance at rehearsals a sine qua non. We dismissed a promising “Mat Muggins” because he went to the “Union” two nights successively, when he ought to have been at “The Three Pigeons.” We superseded a very respectable “landlord” (though he had actually been measured for a corporation and a pair of calves) for inattention to business. The only one of the supernumeraries whom it was at all necessary to conciliate, was the gentleman who was to sing the comic song instead of Tony (Savile, the representative of the said Tony, not having music in his soul beyond a view-holloa). He was allowed to go and come at our readings ad libitum, upon condition of being very careful not to take cold.

When we had become tolerably perfect in the words of our parts, it was deemed expedient to have a “dress rehearsal”—especially for the ladies. It is not very easy to move safely—let alone gracefully—in petticoats, for those who are accustomed to move their legs somewhat more independently. And it would not have been civil in Messrs Marlow and Hastings to laugh outright at their lady-loves before company, as they were sure to do upon their first appearance. A dress rehearsal, therefore, was a very necessary precaution. But if it was difficult to get the company together at six o’clock under the friendly disguise of a wine-party, doubly difficult was it to expect them to muster at eleven in the morning. The first day that we fixed for it, there came a not very lady-like note, evidently written in bed, from Miss Hardcastle, stating, that having been at a supper-party the night before, and there partaken of brandy-punch to an extent to which she was wholly unaccustomed, it was quite impossible, in the present state of her nervous system, for her to make her appearance in character at any price. There was no alternative but to put off the rehearsal; and that very week occurred a circumstance which was very near being the cause of its adjournment sine die.

“Mr Hawthorne,” said the dean to me one morning, when I was leaving his rooms, rejoicing in the termination of lecture, “I wish to speak with you, if you please.” The dean’s communications were seldom of a very pleasing kind, and on this particular morning his countenance gave token that he had hit upon something more than usually piquant. The rest of the men filed out of the door as slowly as they conveniently could, in the hope, I suppose, of hearing the dean’s fire open upon me; but he waited patiently till my particular friend, Bob Thornhill, had picked up carefully, one by one, his miscellaneous collection of note-book, pencil, pen-knife, and other small wares, and had been obliged at length to make an unwilling exit; when, seeing the door finally closed, he commenced with his usual—“Have the goodness to sit down, sir.”

Experience had taught me, that it was as well to make one’s-self as comfortable as might be upon these occasions; so I took the easy-chair, and tried to look as if I thought the dean merely wanted to have a pleasant half-hour’s chat. He marched into a little back-room that he called his study, and I began to speculate upon the probable subject of our conference. Strange! that week had been a more than usually quiet one. No late knocking in; no cutting lectures at chapel; positively I began to think that, for once, the dean had gone on a wrong scent, and that I should repel his accusations with all the dignity of injured innocence; or had he sent for me to offer his congratulations on my having commenced in the “steady” line, and to ask me to breakfast? I was not long left to indulge such delusive hopes. Re-enter the dean (O.P., as our stage directions would have had it), with—a pair of stays!