Amateur theatricals at college are responsible for the lure that drew him to the professional footlights. After Princeton he went to continue his studies in Edinburgh, and there he took prominent part in a great performance of the students that had among its spectators some of the most prominent men in Great Britain.
On his return to America he set about studying law in New York, but he did not really settle down to it. The inclination toward the stage had by this time become too strong to be resisted. He began to make a tour of the manager's offices in search of an opening.
In this he had no better luck than usually falls to the lot of the unknown. Men in power along the Rialto did not know what he could do, and it was not to be expected that many of them would take the time to let him prove his abilities. At last, however, he secured, through Eugene W. Presbrey, an interview with the late A.M. Palmer, who gave him the small part of the boy in "Young Mrs. Winthrop," at the Madison Square Theater. From that he drifted to other small parts in the company of Edwin Booth, while the latter was at the Fifth Avenue Theater, and the next season he was with Booth and Barrett during their engagement at the Broadway.
Short on Words.
"You can imagine the nature of my rôles," said Mr. Royle, in relating to me this portion of his career, "by the following incident: At the end of the season it was decided to bring out a souvenir of the engagement, with signatures by all the people in the company. Each signature was to be accompanied by a line from his or her part. When it came my turn to write, my part was so short that all I had to say in the piece went down as my contribution, in the shape of—
"'Oh, Cæsar! No, by no means!'"
And here began the apparent strokes of ill luck which in the end have proved blessings in disguise. The first one was the failure of Mrs. Potter to come to this country for a tour on one occasion when Royle had been engaged in her support. He did not know that he was free until September, when it was too late to seek other positions.
Thrown out of a job, he turned his attention to playwriting, having at one time thought seriously of taking up literature as a profession. He wrote "Friends," and brought it out in New York the next summer, with a capital furnished by a Western uncle.
The play made a hit after a rather slow start, and he played it on the road for some seasons, following it with another, "Captain Impudence," and later by a farce, "My Wife's Husbands." The latter made a decided hit, but Mr. Royle was unable to obtain road bookings for it owing to a glut of attractions kept out of New York by the unfinished condition of two theaters which should have been ready for them. Shows booked for them, with companies all engaged, had to be placed somewhere pending the completion of the Lyceum and the Hudson, so that the dates were all filled by the time it was known that "My Wife's Husbands" had caught on. In this crisis, Nat Goodwin, who had just come a cropper with a new offering of his own, rose up and bought the rights to the play, but failed to make good in the part himself and shelved it after two weeks' trial.
Meanwhile, one night when he couldn't sleep, Royle got to thinking about the Indians he used to see when a boy at the Indian reservation not far from Salt Lake. And then there formed in his mind the germ idea of "The Squaw Man"—the Englishman tied to the Indian wife when the way was clear for him otherwise to go back home.