the library.
Of course there are certain people who are thoroughly entitled to orders, and I am only too glad to give them in such cases, but I draw the line at giving them to any one who chooses to ask me. I can’t go into a restaurant and get a dinner for nothing—I wish I could; a tailor won’t make me a coat for nothing—why should I play to people for nothing? They cannot have any idea how much it costs to keep up a theatre, or perhaps they’d have a little more consideration for one. It’s a rotten, bad system, and it ought to be done away with.” Later on in the evening Mr. Toole and I drove down to the theatre together, and we resumed our conversation in his very interesting little dressing-room. I congratulated him on the long run which “Walker London” was having; “but don’t long runs tend to artificiality?” I asked.
it's a rotten system.
“No,” said Mr. Toole; “a new audience every evening saves you from that, to a great extent, especially with an earnest man. Earnestness is everything in an actor, but if you’re apathetic you’re lost. Still, I sometimes look at Paul Pry’s umbrella,” continued Mr. Toole, pointing to the quaint, queer, green old article that answered to that description, and which stood by itself in a corner of the room, “and wish I could play Paul Pry again, but I don’t see much chance of that at present. Why, it will soon be ‘Walker’s’ first birthday. I suppose they’ll want me to make a speech. And speech-making always bothers me, for I am very nervous.
mr. toole in his dressing room.
But I daresay I shall ‘gammon’ through somehow.” I observed, “Well, I must say you ‘gammon’ through very well, for I always think you are one of the easiest speakers of the day.” To which Mr. Toole replied, “Well, for my part, I think repose is everything. Quiet humour is always much more telling than noisy fun, and to feel your part deeply is far more than mere elocution.” “Do you think that the training that young people on the stage get, now-a-days, is as thorough as it was in your early days, Mr. Toole?” “Well,” he said, “I don’t think that young actors get so much practice as they did in the old days when Irving and I used to be for years together on a stock company in Edinburgh. He and I and Helen Faucit have played all the parts in Shakespeare together. But travelling companies have altered all that now-a-days. Still I think I must say that I’ve got a very fairly good répertoire for my people. Did you ever hear how I took to the stage?” he continued. “I used to be clerk in a wine merchant’s office, and I was also a member of the City Histrionic Club.
Well, one night I went to the Pavilion; one of the actors who used to give imitations of popular favourites didn’t turn up, and so I was persuaded by a man, who knew that I had been in the habit of giving imitations myself to our little club, to take his place. It was then that I first tasted the sweets of an actor’s life. It was then I resolved to quit the merchant’s desk for the stage. Do you see that playbill?” he continued, pointing up to an old time-stained paper which hung upon the wall.