Bohemian Days in Fleet Street

by William Mackay

The inauguration of the old Gaiety and the passing of it, roughly speaking, cover the period of my own experience of the London stage and its interesting entourage, which must be my excuse for according to my memories of the Gaiety what may seem to be an undue space.

If anyone were to ask me who, in my experience, was the most mirth-provoking actor I had ever seen, I should, without the least hesitation, mention a name which is quite unknown to the playgoers of this generation, and is being rapidly forgotten by those who belong to the last. And the name that I should mention would be that of John Sleeper Clarke. The house at which he originally appeared was the little Strand Theatre, merrily associated with the burlesques of the Broughs and Byron, and subsequently with the less artless productions of H. B. Farnie, in which so much laughter was made for the public by Marius and Edward Terry, and that plump, inimitable Angelina Claude. J. S. Clarke was an American, and, although he appeared with great success in some of our dramatic masterpieces—he was the finest Bob Acres and the best Dr. Pangloss of his day—he preferred to enact characters written for him in pieces of which he held the copyright.

Clarke’s favourite characters were Major Wellington De Boots and Toodles. It is always a hopeless task to attempt to convey to those who have not witnessed it the effect of a comic performance on the observer. It would not be correct to describe Clarke as an “eccentric” actor. His thoroughly artistic and masterly impersonation of Bob Acres and Dr. Pangloss quite forbid any hasty generalization of the kind. It would be more just to say that he selected eccentric characters for representation, and in the illustration of these characters he employed for all they were worth certain quaint methods of voice, expression, gesture, and gait which were quite his own. The pieces in which he introduced himself as an irresponsible eccentric were as a rule flimsy compositions, entirely negligible from a literary and dramatic point of view. But in the mouth of Clarke the inanities of the dramatist became precious gems. He would utter an author’s commonplace with such an air of comic gravity—if I may use the expression—with such an inimitable facial note of enjoyment in the delivery, that the little house in the Strand would rock with laughter over sayings which in cold print would appear to be the veriest drivel.

There must be many men about town who retain a vivid recollection of Clarke’s acting. They will bear me out as to the statement just made. They will remember how their sides shook as Clarke in “De Boots” made the entirely empty declaration: “My dear Felix, I call you Felix because you are my best friend!” What an extraordinary quality of irresistible humour he imparted to that absurdly puerile line! Again, what a weight and world of dramatic humour he imposed on the trifling sentence addressed to the pump in “Toodles”! The scene is one in which he depicts a man imperfectly sober. Stumbling about a yard, he knocks against the pump. He grasps the handle, snakes it heartily up and down, exclaiming the while, “Excuse me, my friend—er—will you take anything?” Banal to a degree, I quite admit. But Lord! how often have I roared over the words, and to how many of my own day who read this page do they not recall an ineffaceable and delightful recollection—an they would but acknowledge it.

I hate to apply the money test as a standard by which to measure the value of artistic work. In many instances it is no test at all. The artistic charlatan sometimes amasses a fortune. But this does not hold so literally with the actor who has to appeal in person to patrons drawn from all classes of society. In his case the making of a fortune must surely be a reliable test of the possession of the real sort of genius. Clarke in a very few years in London made a fortune, purchased the lease of the Haymarket, and retired from his profession into private life without any formal leave-taking. Years after I first roared over his impersonations, I was introduced to him in a little hotel in one of the streets—Surrey Street, or another—close to the old Strand Theatre. Here the merry-maker was in the habit of sitting alone. He was the most moody, melancholy, shy, and reticent person with whom I had up to that time become acquainted. There was no slightest trace of the spontaneous, irrepressible, and irresistible fun which seemed to possess him when he made his welcome entrances on the stage. I met him many times afterwards. I made a point of meeting him. The desire to understand the problem presented obsessed me. But I found him always the same—polite in a grave way, willing to converse to the extent of answering a question or passing a shy opinion when it was challenged. But he made no jokes, told no anecdotes, indulged in no reminiscence. Others who knew him told me the same tale of him. In the roaring Strand John Sleeper Clarke was as much a recluse as though he lived in a hut in the depths of a forest.

Reticence is not usually the characteristic note of the actor. Of all the companionships that I formed during my Press experiences, none were so enjoyable as those I made on the stage. There are, of course, some pompous asses among them. But you will find these in all callings. And the pompous mummer was never the most successful one. As a rule, the more distinguished and gifted the actor, the more genial and accessible he is. The players are full of amusing early experiences, which they relate with delightful candour. Actors’ stories are, as a rule, well told, and are worth telling. Nor is this extraordinary. Making points off the stage should be very good practice for making points on it. There were two classes of raconteur in my day. The one was the reminiscent or quasi-historical man; the other was the simple retailer of good stories. Of the former class the two finest examples were John Ryder and John Coleman. Of the latter were Lionel Brough and Arthur Williams. I should not have used the past tense in alluding to Arthur Williams, who, I am happy to know, is alive and well, and still entertaining a public in whose smiles he has basked for many years.

My first introduction to Lionel Brough—“Lal,” as he was always affectionately called—was at Covent Garden, where he was stage-manager during the career of that costly experiment “Babil and Bijou.” The late Lord Londesborough was a determined supporter of the stage, a great friend of actors—and actresses—and a generous contributor to theatrical charities. His lordship financed the Covent Garden Opera House when it was taken by Miss Fowler. Boucicault did the play—a sort of pantomime, we should call it to-day—with processions, and ballets, and comic relief, and popular songs, and all the rest of it. There was an army of Amazons, headed by the statuesque Helen Barry, who had started her artistic career in a cigar-shop in Piccadilly. The armour of these ladies cost no end of money, being very beautiful and substantial. A few weeks since I met a manager—a provincial manager—in the North who informed me that some of the properties and armour made for “Babil and Bijou” were being taken round the country by fifth-rate travelling companies to this day.

But to get back to “Lal” and his stories. The majority of these were, I have every reason to believe, “made up” by Brough. Everything was in the telling. One of them occurs to me now. A certain young married couple had been rendered very unhappy by the betting habits of the husband. They had an only boy of some seven summers. They were in debt all over the place. The servant had been discharged. There was little food in the house. At this tragic juncture a cheque for forty pounds arrived. The relieved and delighted husband embraced his wife and hurried off to the city to “melt” the cheque, promising to return immediately, settle all outstanding accounts, and take the family out to dinner. There was racing at Kempton that day, and the unfortunate man knew of one or two “certs.” So when he had received the proceeds of the cheque, he ran down to Kempton Park, fired with the benevolent idea of doubling, or even quadrupling, his forty pounds. The usual thing happened. Far from winning, he dropped every sou, and returned home a sad, despairing man. He hoped for sympathy from his wife; but, for the first time in their married existence, the wife rose to the occasion, and, in unmistakable terms, denounced her stricken and shamefaced spouse. He slunk from the room, and silently closed the door behind him. She heard him mount the stairs. But her heart was hardened against him. Ten minutes after the exit of the gambler her little golden-haired blue-eyed boy dashed into the room.

“Oh, mummy!” he cried, in his eager, happy way, “daddy’s cut hisself shavin’.”

“H-h-h-has he cut himself much?” asked the woman, rising.