The Secrets of a Savoyard Part 2

The company included, besides my wife and myself, a young actress named Emmeline Huxley, who after these hard times with us went to America and there undoubtedly "made good." Then there was a "character" whom we called "'Oppy." He was the general utility man who acted as conductor and orchestra rolled into one, and then went behind the scenes to play the cornet, to act as stage adviser, or at a pinch to take a small part.

He was an enthusiast who was here, there and everywhere. "'Oppy," in addition to having a wall eye and a club foot, had a decided impediment in his speech, but, strangely enough, he was entirely unconscious of this disability. For that reason we often used to induce him to tell his story of the lady who sang "Home, Sweet Home."

This story is bound to lose some of its effect when put into cold print.

As "'Oppy" told it the humour was irresistible. "Sh-sh-she wan-wan-ted to go on the sta-sta-sta-stage," he used to say, "and the man-an-an-ager he sa-a-a-aid to her, 'Wh-wh-wh-what can you sing?' And she said, 'Ho-ho-ho-home, Sw-we-we-we-weet Ho-ho-home,' And he told her to sing-sing-sing it. And (here he could not keep a straight face over the poor lady's misfortunes) she-she-she couldn't sing-sing-sing it for-for-for stam-stam-stam-stam-stam-mering."

Never did "'Oppy" tell this story, of the ridiculousness of the telling of which he seemed entirely unconscious, without his hearers exploding with laughter. "Wh-what makes you all lau-lau-laugh so?" he used to ask, incredulously. "You lau-lau-lau-lau-laugh altogether to-to-to-too hearty. It's a good-good-good yarn, but I'm dam-dam-dam-d.a.m.ned if it's as fun-fun-fun-funny as that."

Once he received an unexpected windfall in the shape of a postal order from a relative for two or three shillings. "Come and have a little dinner with me to morrow," he said to me and my wife. "I know you're hungry." When we arrived we found his plate was already on the table and empty. He apologised profoundly. He had been too hungry to wait for us and had already eaten his dinner. So while my wife and I each enjoyed a chop--the first square meal we had had for many a day--he sat by and kept us entertained. Splendid fellow! Little did we guess that as he did so he was suffering the pangs of hunger accentuated by the sight of our satisfaction. Next day the landlady confided to us the fact that as our friend's windfall had been insufficient to provide chops and vegetables for three, he had smeared his plate with the gravy from the chops we were to have, and then made us believe that he had satisfied his hunger already.

What became of him later on I have never discovered. I only know that I have tried hard to find him in order that that n.o.ble act of self-denial might be in some generous manner repaid. Neither inquiries nor advertis.e.m.e.nts, however, have ever revealed his whereabouts to me, and it may be that already this honest fellow has gone to receive his reward. G.o.d rest his soul!

Then there was Arthur Hendon. If ever a Christian lived it was that sterling fellow. Time after time in those heart-aching days we were on the verge of despair. Luck was dead out. Life was a misery. But Hendon, though he was as sore of heart and as hungry as the rest of us, was always ready with some cheery word, some act of kindness, some "goodness done by stealth." Louie and I were rather small in size, and often as we tramped from one place to another he carried one of us in turn in his arms. For we had little food, and were tired, footsore and "beat." And he, too, was "done." Only his great heart sustained him in those terrible times as our "captain courageous."

The Commonwealth venture lasted for about three months altogether. As I have shown it was one continual struggle against adversity and poverty.

For some time we were located at Aldershot. Our show ran as a rule from six to eleven o'clock, and for want of better amus.e.m.e.nt the soldiers gave us a fair amount of patronage at threepence a head. If we did not please them they did not hesitate to fling the dregs of their pint pots on to the stage. One night we felt ourselves highly honoured by the presence of a number of military officers at our performance. "All for Her," I am glad to say, went without a hitch on that gala occasion. Our "theatre" was an outhouse owned by a publican, who was very considerate towards us in the matter of rent, because he found that our presence meant good business for his bar-parlour receipts.

From Aldershot we went on to Farnham, and from there to other hamlets where we believed there was an audience, however uncouth and untutored, to be gathered together. Eventually we reached Guildford. By then matters were getting desperate. The Mayor or some other local public man heard of our plight. He drove out to where we were playing, witnessed part of our performance, and engaged us to sing at a garden-party. I remember that, exhausted as we were, grat.i.tude enabled us to give of our very best as the only return we could make for his kindness. He told us it was a great pity that such clever people should be living a precarious existence in the country villages, and offered to pay our train fares to London in addition to the fee for the engagement we had fulfilled. This generosity we accepted with alacrity. The next morning we were back in town again--each to follow his or her different way. So ended the vagabondage of the Commonwealth. It was an experience which none of us was ever likely to forget.

Once more in London it would be idle to say that our troubles had disappeared. It meant the dreary search again for employment. Mr. D'Oyly Carte had no immediate vacancies. Other managers had nothing more to offer than promises. Lucky is the actor--if he ever exists--who throughout his career has been free from this compulsory idleness.

During this period I had to turn my hand to all sorts of things. Once I called at a draper's shop and secured casual work as a bill distributor.

I had to go from door to door in a certain select part of Kensington. I remember I looked at those gilded walls and those red-carpeted stairs with a good deal of envy. Later on I was destined to visit some of those very houses and walk up those same red-carpeted stairs as a guest--those very houses at which to earn an odd shilling or so to buy bread I had delivered those bills! Yes; and there was one house at which I called in those humble days where they abruptly opened the door, showed me a ferocious-looking dog with the most business-like teeth, and significantly commanded me to "get off--and quick!" I had done nothing wrong, and my body and my heart were aching. Years afterwards I became a breeder of bulldogs--about that you shall hear later on--and sold one of them to those very people. And, as if in poetic justice, that bulldog bit them!

My training under Trood was turned to advantage during these empty days.

A fashion had just set in for plaques. I painted some scores of these terra-cotta miniatures, and although it was not remunerative work, it served to put bare necessities into the pantry. We were living about that time in Stamford Street, off the Waterloo Road, and in those days it was a terrible neighbourhood where one's sleep was often disturbed by cries of "murder" and "police." Our baby's cradle was a travelling basket--we could not afford anything better. I remember, in connection with those plaques, that in after years I was dining at the house of a well-known writer and critic, and he showed me with keen admiration two beautiful plaques, which, he said, had been won by Miss Jessie Bond in a raffle at the Savoy. She had made a present of them to him. "Yes," I commented, "and I painted them." He was kind enough to say that that enhanced their value to him considerably.

For a time I went into a works where they made dies for armorial bearings. Here I had to do a good deal of tracing, and the work was fairly interesting. I drew five shillings the first week--hardly an imposing stipend for a family man--but the second week it was ten shillings and the third twenty shillings. Singing at occasional smoking concerts and running errands supplemented this money very acceptably.

The job at the die-sinkers might have continued, but the foreman wanted me to clean the floors in addition to doing my artistic work, and at that my dignity revolted. I left.

Some months went by in this flitting from one job into another, but it is useless to attempt a full catalogue of my versatility, for it is neither impressive nor very inspiring. During all this hand-to-mouth existence I was calling on theatrical managers. Slender as the rewards which the stage had thus far given me were--just a meagre livelihood and precious little encouragement--the call to return to it remained insistent and strong. Sooner or later I was bound to return, and whether it were to be to good fortune or ill, the very hope buoyed me up. I had worried Mr. Carte with ceaseless importunity. Every week at least I went round to try and see him on the off-chance of an engagement. And at last there came the turn of the tide.

It happened on the eve of the first London production of "Ruddigore."

Concerning this new opera, the producers had for good reasons maintained an air of secrecy, and the unfolding of the mystery was thus awaited with more than usual public curiosity. It was the talk of the town and the subject of many skittish references in the newspapers. Calling once again at Mr. Carte's office, I caught him, after a long wait, just leaving his room and hurrying along a corridor. Without more ado I b.u.t.ton-holed him and asked him once again for an engagement. Mr. Carte was not a man who liked that sort of conduct. "You should not interrupt me like this," he said, in a tone that betrayed his annoyance. "You ought to send up your name." Explaining that I had done so and had been told he was out of town, I repeated my plea for an engagement. Hurrying on his way Mr. Carte told me to go down to the stage. Success had come at last! When Mr. Carte sent a man to the stage that man became _ipso facto_ a member of the company. Later the news came through that Mr.

Carte had chosen me as understudy to Mr. George Grossmith as _Robin Oakapple_. This was indeed a slice of good fortune. Understudy to Mr.

George Grossmith!

"Ruddigore" was produced for the first time on Tuesday, the 22nd January, 1887, at the Savoy. Towards the end of that week Grossmith was taken seriously ill with peritonitis. By an effort he was able to continue playing until the Sat.u.r.day. Then he collapsed and was taken home for a serious operation. Upon the Monday morning I was told I was to play his part--and play it that very night.

Chosen to step into the shoes of the great George Grossmith! Faced with such an ordeal to-day I verily believe I should shirk it. But then, the audacity of youth was to carry me through. The supreme chance had come.

At all costs it had to be grasped.

III.

CLIMBING THE LADDER.

_The "Ruddigore" Success--Congratulations from everyone--My First Meeting with Grossmith--Gilbert's Advice to a beginner--Irving's wonderful Acting and its Effect--Speaking to the Man in the Gallery--The Mystery of Jack Point--How My Tragic Ending Was Introduced--Gilbert's Approval--A Memorable Hanley Compliment--Laughter I ought not to have had--Bunthorne's Fall--Accidents, Happy and Otherwise--Ko-Ko's Mobile Toe--Not a Mechanical Trick--The Myth of the Poor Old Man of Seventy--Still Youthful in Spirit and Years._

The Savoy Theatre had its usual large and fashionable audience on that Monday night when I was to play my first big princ.i.p.al part either in or out of London. What my sensations were it would be hard to describe.

Nervous I certainly was, and in the front of the house my wife was sitting wondering, wondering whether the stage-fright fiasco in "All for Her" was going to be repeated in this critical performance of "Ruddigore." Both of us knew that here was my great opportunity. If I won the future was a.s.sured. If I lost----! I knew the dialogue, and I knew the songs, but during the previous week there had been all too little chance for me to study Grossmith's conception of the part from the "wings."

Then my cue came and I went on. The silence of the audience was deathly.

They gave me not the slightest welcome. The great Grossmith, the lion comique of his day, was not playing! _Oakapple_ was being taken by an unknown stripling! No wonder they were disappointed and chilling. First I had a few lines to speak, and then I had a beautiful little duet with Miss Leonora Braham, who was playing _Rose Maybud_. And when that duet, "Poor Little Man" was over, and we had responded to the calls for an encore, all my tremors and hesitation had gone. I knew things were all right. With every number the audience grew more and more hearty. The applause when the curtain fell was to me unforgettable. It betokened a triumph.

Behind the scenes the princ.i.p.als and the choristers almost mobbed me with congratulations. Up in my dressing-room there were many further compliments. Sir (then Mr.) William Gilbert and Sir Arthur Sullivan came to see me together. I heard afterwards that they had been very anxious about the performance. Gilbert, as he shook me by the hand, declared "To-night there is no need for the Lyttons to turn in their graves." Mr.

Carte, though always a man of few words, gave me to understand that he realised that his confidence in me had not been misplaced. Cellier, who had occupied the conductor's seat, told me that "From to-night you will never look back." He and I remained fast friends for life.

The second act was no less successful. Since then I have come to know how wonderful receptions can be, but never did applause fall more gratefully than when as a young man under the first ordeal of a terrible test, I was making that first appearance at the Savoy. Late as it is, I should like to thank any who were there and who read these lines for that sympathy and encouragement. It gave me confidence in myself and helped me along. For every young artist who comes for the first time before the footlights, may I bespeak always the same kindly feeling? It does mean so much. The Press, to whom my debt has always been great, also said many nice things about that performance. "Carte and Company, it must be admitted," said one leading paper, "are wonderful people for finding out hitherto unexploited talent."

Although George Grossmith was at first not expected to live, he made an amazingly rapid recovery, and in about three weeks he was able to resume his part in "Ruddigore." One of the first things he did was to send for me. "Gee-Gee," as the older generation remembers, was in his day a veritable prince of comedians, and in the theatre he was always paid the deference due to a prince. Outside his dressing-room a factotum was always on duty. None dare think of entering without permission. Thus, when I, a mere member of the chorus, was summoned there into the great man's presence, it was regarded by the company as an event, and everyone wanted to know what it was like! Grossmith told me he had heard of my success, gave me a signed copy of his photograph as a memento, and thus laid the foundation of a friendship that was destined to grow very intimate during the coming years.

Grossmith was a man of brilliant accomplishments, and as an artiste in facial expression and in wistful fancy, perhaps we have not seen his equal. Shortly after he left the Gilbert and Sullivan operas, he went on tour with a repertory of charming songs he had himself composed, and in that venture he made a good deal of money. For a reason theatre-goers will understand--the desire to avoid becoming a pale imitation of a man playing the same part as oneself--I was never a spectator "in front"

when he was in the cast at the Savoy.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE LATE SIR WILLIAM S. GILBERT.]

Connected with my "Ruddigore" success I was proud to become the recipient from Gilbert of a gold-mounted walking-stick that is still one of my most treasured possessions, and the letter accompanying this gift it may be well to reproduce:--

39, Harrington Gardens, South Kensington, 22nd February, '87.

MY DEAR SIR,--

Will you do me the favour to accept the accompanying walking-stick as a token of my appreciation of your excellent performance of the part of _Robin Oakapple_, undertaken, as it was, at a very few hours' notice, and without any adequate rehearsal.

Faithfully yours, W. S. GILBERT.

H. A. Henri, Esq.

Let me explain here that, in consequence of the "brother and sister"

deception, when I joined the D'Oyly Carte organisation just after my marriage, I adopted my wife's name and was known as H. A. Henri during the early part of my career. It was on Gilbert's own suggestion that I made the change.

It was true, as Gilbert said, that I had no adequate rehearsal when I was bidden to step at short notice into George Grossmith's shoes, but during the next few weeks it was my good fortune to be under the playwright's personal coaching. Subsequently I shall have to tell many reminiscences of Gilbert, who in after years gave me the privilege of being both his friend and confidant, but at this moment I want to refer to advice he gave me while "putting me through my paces" in "Ruddigore."

In my anxiety I was rather hurrying the speech I was supposed to address to the picture gallery of my ancestors. He pulled me up.

"Let me tell you something, young man," he began. "That speech, 'Oh! my forefathers!' is now a short speech, but originally it consisted of three pages of closely-written ma.n.u.script. I condensed and condensed.

Every word I could I removed until it was of the length you find it to-day. Each word that is left serves some purpose--there is not one word too many. So when you know that it took me three months to perfect that one speech, I am sure you will not hurry it. Try to remember that throughout your career in these operas." Later on he also gave me this sound counsel, "Always leave a little to the audience's imagination.

Leave it to them to see and enjoy the point of a joke. I am sure you are intelligent," he went on to say, "but believe me, there are many in the audience who are more intelligent than you!"

Now, if an actor in these operas has to be careful of one thing above everything else, it is that of avoiding forcing a point. Gilbert's wit is so neat and so beautifully phrased that it would be utterly spoilt by buffoonery. The lines must be declaimed in deadly seriousness just as if the actor believes absolutely in the fanciful and extravagant thing he is saying. I can think of no better ill.u.s.tration of this than the scene in "Iolanthe" where _Strephon_ rejects recourse to the Chancery Court and says his code of conduct is regulated only by "Nature's Acts of Parliament." _The Lord Chancellor_ then talks about the absurdity of "an affidavit from a thunderstorm or a few words on oath from a heavy shower." What a typical Gilbertian fancy! Well, you know how the "comic"

man would say that, how he would whip up his coat collar and shiver at the suggestion of rain, and how he would do his poor best to make it sound and look "funny." And the result would be that he would kill the wittiness of the lines by burlesque. The _Lord Chancellor_ says the words as if he believed an affidavit from a thunderstorm was at least a possibility, and the suggestion that he does think it possible makes the very idea, in the audience's mind, more whimsical still. Imagine, again, in "Patience" how the entire point would be lost if _Bunthorne_ acted as if he himself saw the absurdity of his poem "Oh! Hollow, Hollow, Hollow!" _Grosvenor_, in the same opera, is intensely serious when he laments sadly that his fatal beauty stands between him and happiness. If he were not, the delightful drollery of the piece would, of course, be destroyed.

Gilbert, by the way, gave me two other hints which should be useful to those just beginning their careers in the theatre, and they are hints which even older actors may study with profit. He held that it was most important that the artiste who was speaking and the artiste who was being addressed should always be well to the front of the stage. "If you are too far back," he said to me, "you not only lose grip over the audience, but you also lose the power of clear and effective speech."

Then there is that old trouble--nearly every novice is conscious of it--as to what one should do with one's hands when on the stage. Somehow they do seem so much in the way, and one does feel one ought to do something with them, though what that something should be is always a problem. I mentioned this matter to Gilbert. "Cut them off at the wrists, Lytton," was his quick reply, "and forget you've got any hands!"

Every young professional and young amateur should remember this. So long as one worries about one's hands or one's fingers, one is very liable to be nervous and to do something wrong, and so the only sound rule to follow is to forget them entirely.

For a good reason I am going to digress here to tell a story of Sir Henry Irving. It was my good fortune once to be in the wings at the Lyceum when he was playing _Shylock_ in the "Merchant of Venice." The power of his acting upon me that day was extraordinary. Every word I listened to intently until at last, in the trial scene, he had taken out his knife to cut the pound of flesh. I knew, of course, that he was never really going to cut that pound of flesh, but the sharpening of the knife, the dramatic gleam in the great tragedian's eyes, the tenseness of the whole situation, was all too vivid and all too like reality. I hated the sight of bloodshed, and in the shock of antic.i.p.ation, I fainted.