The Making Of A Novelist Part 6

I am really disposed to believe that the illusion of the scene is very little helped by the most elaborate and realistic works of scene-painter, carpenter, and upholsterer. I have seen the house drowned in tears over that lugubrious and hollow 'East Lynne' when the stage has been enclosed in green baize and there has not been a stick of respectable furniture on the boards. 'East Lynne,' by the way, is one of my puzzles. Except that it has once or twice wearied me to the point of exasperation, it has never moved me in any way; and countless thousands have cried over it. In the New Zealand back blocks people used to weep like watering-carts over its tawdry pathos; and when that awful, awful child, whose business it was to die and who would _not_ do his business, talked to his mother about his mamma, the handkerchiefs waved everywhere, and a chorus of sympathetic sniffings and throat clearings almost drowned the fustian rubbish of the dialogue. I played Lord Somebody in the piece one night. I forget the unreal wretch's name; but he will be remembered as taking money to Isabel. He appears in one scene only and has some twenty or thirty lines to speak; but he contrives to go further and oftener away from nature than any stage person whose acquaintance I have practically made. Nothing but the good old-fas.h.i.+oned 'moo-cow' style could possibly have suited him. I believe I can boast a tolerable imitation of that antiquated elocutionary method, and I certainly spared no effort.

'And you, Isabel, the daughter of an earl! how have you fallen!'

That is one of the gems of the old humbug's speech, and I mouthed it as it was made to be mouthed. The house took the burlesque with perfect seriousness and good faith--chiefly, I suppose, because it was impossible to make the vulgar rant too clap-trappy and stagy. But as I was leaving, and as the house was already in a roar of applause, I came to grief. There was a dreadful draught at the back of the stage, and one of the ladies had been so careful against it as to pin the green-baize linings of the stage together so as to leave no place for an exit; and I was compelled to grope about for a minute or two in search of a way of escape whilst the applause changed to boisterous laughter.

And the memory of that little incident helps me to a reflection on one detail of the actor's art which is more effective when fitly used, and more disastrous when neglected, than any other of the mult.i.tudinous things he has to know and to bear in mind. An exit is half the business of the most important scene ever written. You may play like an angel, you may hold the stage for half an hour and thrill your audience; but, after all, you may kill your supremest efforts by getting off clumsily.

I write, of course, for the ignorant. The actor knows these things, and more than I can teach him into the bargain. But I had a singular instance of the fact in my own experience. It came early and gave me a lesson to be laid to heart. I never played before a more friendly audience. Good reports had gone ahead, and the house was willing, and I think was even eager, to be pleased. I had settled to that bright and happy confidence which is the actor's most blissful experience in comedy.

I think I never played so well in my life as in that first act of 'Jim the Penman;' but the stage was vast in comparison with any on which I had until then appeared, and my customary business brought me only within half a dozen paces of the door-way by which I should have vanished. A sudden sense of strangeness and constraint came down upon me like a cloud. The happy feeling of confidence vanished in a whiff of chill spiritual wind. The last line was spoken before that unhappy half-dozen of paces was achieved; and I left the stage in a dead silence, which was as eloquent of failure as it had been one brief minute earlier of success. I played half as well next night, but disappeared with _aplomb_, with an effect as encouraging as the most exigent artist could demand. So painful a thing is it to learn a new trade! 'So much to learn, so much to do!'

I am ready to propound a novel theory, and I am insolent enough to believe that I ill.u.s.trate it in my own person. The time of full middle-age is that at which a man most readily adapts himself to a new art. It is at that time most a.s.suredly necessary to accept certain physical limitations. I advise no hitherto unpractised person to seek excellence as a ground and lofty tumbler after five-and-forty. No sensible person who has attained that respectable alt.i.tude of years will try to make a _debut_ as Romeo. But supposing that a lad of fifteen and a man of five-and-forty begin on the same day to study landscape-painting, which of the two do you think will get nearer Nature's secret in five years' time? Personally I shall back--_coteris paribus_--the man of middle age. Or if it come to acting, who is likely (physical limitations on both sides duly considered, of course) to offer you the better study of a bit of human nature--the matured observer or the unpractised un-regarding youth? I back the middle-aged man once more.

My friendly critics of the London press told me that a middle-aged man had taken to the stage as a duck takes to water. It was a bit of kindly nonsense. I had worked like a galley-slave for nine months, and the nine months of a man of the world is worth the nine years of a boy. And do I profess to be an actor now? Not a bit of it, my friendly critic--not a bit of it, in all honesty. But I mean to be. There is no art so difficult--granted; but there is none so enchanting, so inspiring. Night after night for a whole week, bar Sat.u.r.day, when Nature took a late revenge, I left a sick-room at Newcastle-on-Tyne; and every ache and pain fell away, and the sick treble changed to a healthy baritone, and manly strength came to pluck the halting pace of the invalid to marching time, and a feebly intermittent pulse grew full and calm at the splendid all-compelling influence of the stage. Had it been a cold lecture, now, or a speech on politics--and no man loves that kind of exercise more than I--the armchair and the warm fireside had not reached to me and beamed on me in vain. But the stage? That was another matter altogether.

It is a better stimulant than the society of old friends. It is a finer anodyne than tobacco. It is a quicker and more constant pick-me-up than champagne. Sternest duty and purest pleasure wear one smiling face. And to think that I was well into the forties before I guessed this splendid truth!

But Nature is compensatory in everything, and her balance works in this accessible fairyland as elsewhere. The stage is the natural home of petty _contretemps_. When a man has dared to play in a piece of his own writing in a city like London it would be absurd to affect modesty or a want of belief in his own power to please. If under such conditions a man had no such faith, he would be an a.s.s beyond the reach of satire.

What else but faith in himself should bring him there? 'Que diable faisait-il dans _cette_ galere?' Yet the bold amateur intruding is conscious of a resemblance in himself to the demons mentioned in Holy Writ He believes (in himself), but he trembles.

The night of the tentative production of 'Ned's Chum' at the Globe Theatre was the brightest in my earthly calendar. Yet as I waited for my first cue an irresistible, horrible cold nausea got hold of me, and I had to fly back to my dressing-room and to endure on dry land all the agonies of _mal de mer_. The call-boy's warning cry slew one keen anguish with another, and the wretch who had been physically sick with fear a minute before was, under fire, as cool as a cuc.u.mber. But there came one moment more of heroic trial before the play was over. I keep religiously the notices of that first night, and I have laughed more than once at the gentle trouncing I got at the hands of Mr. William Archer in the columns of the _World_. My critic complained, tenderly enough, that at one point I took the stage with an obvious effort, as if determined to show that thus and thus should a man behave under sudden news of irreparable ruin. I cannot quite tell, said Mr. Archer in effect, why it was not admirable acting, and yet it was not If he could have told, he went on to say, he might himself have been an excellent actor, and not a critic. But he wanted something--something was missing.

The miserable fact was this. I had never worn a wig in the part until that night, and I had forgotten for a mere instant that I wore one then.

It was a part of the stage business to dash my wideawake hat to the ground, and--the wig came with it. For two or three dreadful seconds I stood frozen, expectant of the howl of laughter which generally follows such an accident. But the fates were kind, and the thing pa.s.sed unnoticed save by two or three. My natural hair was much of the length and colour of the wig, and no derisive roar sounded in my ears. But I shall never forget the horror of those few waiting seconds; and I should like to ask Mr. Archer how far in his judgment such an occurrence might excuse an actor's momentary absence from pure nature.

I was once hit in the eye by a fragment of half-sodden turf thrown up by the explosion of a sh.e.l.l, and had time to think myself a dead man before I realised what had happened. On one occasion, his Excellency Ibrahim Pasha threatened to hang me out of hand; and I believed he meant to do it. I have been in many awkward corners in my time; but my inward forces were never more thoroughly routed than by that episode of the lost wig on the stage of the Globe Theatre.

XII

I suppose the confession I am about to make will stamp me in the minds of a great many people as an irredeemable barbarian. I care little for that, however, and I am staunch in the opinions which I have held all my lifetime. Perhaps my voice may find an echo here and there.

I am a lover of the n.o.ble art of self-defence, and to my way of thinking few greater blunders have been made by those who legislate for our well-being than was fallen into by the moral people who abolished the Prize-Ring. It should be admitted at once that the Ring was full of abuses at the time at which an end was made of it; but it was not beyond mending, and a marked deterioration has been noticeable in the character of our people since the sport of the Ring ceased to be a source of popular amus.e.m.e.nt. British fair play was a proverb amongst the roughest.

The rules of the game were recognised even in a street fight, and the man who broke them was likely to be roughly handled.

It matters little that the sense of honour was crude and rough. It was there, and all bullies and blackguards were compelled to abide by it So long as it was the fas.h.i.+on to fight with fists, the use of the knife, the bludgeon, and the brickbat was far rarer than it is now. The most ignorant crowd could be trusted to police a brace of combatants. There is no harm in a stand-up fight with the weapons of nature. Men _will_ fight, and we English people had the least harmful way of fighting of all the peoples of the world. No man was ever good for much with his hands who was not chaste and temperate in life. Excellence in this pursuit was the growth of all the more masculine virtues.

I have the kindliest memories of some of the old heroes. The very first man who helped me on with a pair of boxing-gloves was the mighty 'Slasher'--the Tipton Slasher, William Perry, who in the days of my nonage kept the Champion of England public-house in my native parish of West Bromwich, in South Staffords.h.i.+re. He it was who trained my youthful hands to guard my youthful head; and I have a foolish stupid pride and pleasure in the memory of that fact The Worcester and Birmingham Ca.n.a.l divides the parishes of Smethwick and West Bromwich, and the Slasher's house was the last on the right-hand side--a shabby, seedy place enough, smoke-encrusted on the outside and mean within, but a temple of splendour all the same to the young imagination. The Champion of England dwelt there--the unconquered, the undisputed chieftain of the fighting clan. He reigned there for years, none daring to make him afraid.

I have been soundly flogged time and time again for visiting him. I have been put on bread and water and held in solitary confinement for the same misdemeanour, but the man had a glamour for me and drew me with the attraction of a magnet. I can see him now, almost as plainly as if he stood before me. He was a Hercules of a man, with enormous shoulders, and his rough honest mid-England features had a sort of surly welcome in their look. But for an odd deformity he would have had the stature of a giant; but he was hideously knock-kneed, and his shamble when he walked was awkward to the limits of the grotesque. You have only to invert the letter V to have an image of the Slasher's legs from foot to knee.

His feet were strangers to each other; but his knees were inseparable friends, and hugged each other in a perpetual intimacy. In fighting he used to await his man, propped up in this inverted V fas.h.i.+on, and somehow he gained so solid a footing in that strange and clumsy att.i.tude that he never, in all his experience of the Ring, received a knock-down blow until he encountered Tom Sayers in that last melancholy fight which cost him the champions.h.i.+p, and the snug little property in the Champion of England public-house, and his friends and his reputation, and all he had in the world.

I earned one of the soundest thras.h.i.+ngs I ever got in my life by playing truant from school in order to follow the Slasher to a wretched little race meeting, held at a place called The Roughs, on the side of the Birmingham Road, in the parish of Hands-worth. My hero was there in glory, followed about by an innumerable tag-rag and bobtail, and I am afraid that on two occasions at least he was tempted to swagger and 'show off,' as children say. He shambled up to one of the 'try your strength' machines: the figure of a circus clown, with a buffer to punch at in the neighbourhood of his midriff, and a dial on his chest to indicate the weight of the blow administered. The Slasher tossed a penny to the proprietor of the machine and waved him on one side; but the man stood in front of the contrivance and besought him pathetically not to strike.

'Not you, Mr. Perry, 'he said humbly; 'oh, not you, Mr. Perry.'

The Slasher, with an 'Away, slight man' motion of the hand, said 'Gerrout!' and the fellow obeyed, seeing that there was nothing else for it. Hercules spat upon his hand, clenched his fist, and smote. Crash went the whole machine into ruin, the wooden upright splintered, and the iron supports doubled into uselessness. The destroyer rolled on rejoicing; but the crowd made a subscription, and the owner of the machine stowed away his damaged property well pleased.

Mr. Morris Roberts was a gentleman known to local fame in those days--I am writing of five-and-thirty years ago--and Mr. Morris Roberts had a boxing-booth on the ground. In front of the booth he had a little platform, and from it he addressed the congregation gathered together at the beating of a gong.

'Walk up, gentlemen; walk up, and see the n.o.ble art of self-defence practised by Englishmen, not like the cowardly Frenchman or Italian, as uses sticks, knives, pistils, and other firearms, but the wepons pervided by nature. I've got a n.i.g.g.e.r inside as won't say No to no man.

Also George Gough, as has fought fifteen knuckle fights within the last two years, and won 'em all, one man down and the next come on.

If there's any sportsman here as cares to 'ave a turn at him, there's half-a-crown and a gla.s.s of sperrits for the man as stands before George Gough five minutes, no matter wheer he comes from.'

The Slasher, in the full tide of his wicked humour, stood below, and when the oration was ended he threw his old silk hat upon the stage. Mr.

Morris Roberts was bawling that twopence did it--a first-rate sample of the n.o.ble art was to be seen for twopence--when this unexpected action froze him in mid-torrent.

'Come, come, Mr. Perry,' he said, when he had recovered himself a little, 'you can't expect George to stand up again the Champion of all England. That doesn't stand to reason, that doesn't. Now, does it, Mr.

Perry?'

The Slasher smiled. 'All right Hand down half a crown and that there gla.s.s o' sperrits.'

'You don't mean it, Mr. Perry,' said Mr. Morris Roberts.

'Don't I?' cried the Slasher.

A sudden inspiration illumined Mr. Morris's mind. 'All right Come up, Mr. Perry. Sixpence--sixpence--sixpence does it!'

It was no sooner known that the Champion was really resolved on business than the entrance to the booth was besieged. I was borne in breathless, all the wind being squeezed out of my small body by the pressure of the crowd, and bang went sixpence, the one coin which was to see me through the expenses of the day. It turned out that Mr. Gough had been impertinent to the Slasher, and the offended dignitary punched him, as I thought, a little unmercifully. At the close of the first round the man of the booth said--truthfully enough, no doubt--that he had had enough of it, and the entertainment came to a premature end.

That was the last I saw of the Slasher for years. He was the cynosure of all eyes then, and observed of all observers. But there is no wolf so strong but he may find another to make wolves' meat of him; and Tom Sayers, who had fought his first fight--so tradition tells--on the ca.n.a.l bank within a mile of the Slasher's public-house, sent in his challenge, and poor old Tipton's colours were lowered for once and for ever. He mortgaged the stock and goodwill of the house and backed himself for every penny he was worth, and he was beaten. He was grey and over-fat, and his fighting days were over. I forget now for how many years he had held the Champions.h.i.+p Belt, but he ought to have been left to rest upon his laurels, surely.

He was dying when I saw him again, and his vast chest and shoulders were shrunken and bowed, so that one wondered where the very framework of the giant man had fallen to. He was despised and forgotten and left alone, and he sat on the side of his bed with an aspect altogether dejected and heartless. In his better days he had liked what he used to call 'a stripe of white satin,' which was the poetic for a gla.s.s of Old Tom gin.

I carried a bottle of that liquor with me as a peace-offering, and a quarter of a pound of bird's-eye. He did not know me, and there was no speculation in his look; but after a drink he brightened. When I entered the room he sat in he was twirling an empty clay with a weary listless thumb and finger, and the tobacco was welcome.

'They mought ha' let me aloon,' he told me, when his wits grew clear, 'I'd held the belt for seventeen 'ear,' (I think he said seventeen, but 'Fistiana' is not at hand, and I can but make a guess at memory.) 'They mought ha' let me aloon. Turn's a good un. I've sin 'em all, an' I've niver sin a better. But he owed to ha' let me be. Theer was no credit to be got in hommerin' a man at my time o' life. All the same, mind ye, I thowt I should ha' trounced him. So I should if I could ha' got at him; but he fled hither an' he fled thither, and he was about me like a cooper a-walkin' round a cask. An' I was fule enough to lose temper, an' the crowd begun to laugh an' gibe at me, an' I took to raacin'

round after him, an' my wind went, an' wheer was I then? He knocked me down--fair an' square he did it. Th' on'y time it iver chanced to me. I put everythin' I had o' that fight, an' here I bin.'

It will be within the memory of such as care for these things that, after the last great battle which brought the fistic history of England to a glorious close, Tom Sayers and the Benicia Boy, his late opponent, enlisted with Messrs. Howes and Cus.h.i.+ng, proprietors of a circus in those days, and travelled the country, sparring nightly in amity together. My father, who had naturally about as much sympathy with the Prize-Ring as with the atrocities of the King of Dahomey, was nevertheless fired with admiration for the hero of Farnborough, and must needs go to see him. He astonished everybody who knew him by showing his silver head and whiskers in the bar parlour of the hotel at which Mr.

Sayers was quartered for the night I suppose that the wors.h.i.+ppers at Tom's shrine were of another sort as a rule; but he was evidently and mightily impressed by the old gentleman's interest in his career. He told a story which, in its main lines, I remember as well as if I had heard it yesterday, though I rack my brains in vain for the names of the two people concerned in it.

'I suppose, sir,' said Tom, 'as you never heard how I come to fight'--let me call him Jones.

No, my father never had heard.

'Well, it was like this. Lord ---- comes to me a week or two before the Derby, and "Tom," he says, "I've got a notion. You and me," he says, "is goin' down to the Derby together," he says. "I've got a pair of snow-white mokes," he says, "and I've bought a coster's shallow. I'm having it painted white and picked out in gold," he says, "and it's going to be upholstered in white satin. Now, you and me, Tom," says his lords.h.i.+p--"you and me's going to get up in white shoes, white kickseys, white westcuts, white hats, white coats, white ties, and white gloves,"

he says. "We'll go down a reg'lar pair of bloomin' lilies!" Well, we did, and it was agreed to be the best turn-out of the day. We was walkin' in the ring when up comes Jones, and, without with your leave or by your leave, he hits me on the nose. Well, I was that soft and out of condition the clarrit was all over me in no time. I was goin' for Jones like a shot; but his lords.h.i.+p he stops me and he says, "Tom," he says, "you shall fight him," he says, "for two hundred pound." I did, and you may believe as I paid him out for that.'

We were greatly impressed with this narrative, and I have always thought the regular pair of blooming lilies delicious. I told Tom that I had known the poor old Slasher, and he spoke of him with respectful sympathy.

'He was the right sort, the Tipton was, and I was sorry to take him down. Perhaps somebody 'll come one of these days and lower my colours.

It's my turn to-day and somebody else's to-morrow.'

I vex the shades no more. Their form of valour is no longer known amongst us; but there are some who regret. I find pathetics among them, and quaint humours, in my memory.

The End