My Autobiography (12 page)

Although the sum was a windfall I never batted an eye. ‘I must consult my brother about the terms,’ I said solemnly.

Mr Hamilton laughed and seemed highly amused, then brought out the whole office staff to have a look at me. ‘This is our Billie! What do you think of him?’

Everyone was delighted and smiled beamingly at me. What had happened? It seemed the world had suddenly changed, had taken me into its fond embrace and adopted me. Then Mr Hamilton gave me a note to Mr Saintsbury, whom he said I would find at the Green Room Club in Leicester Square, and I left, walking on clouds.

The same thing happened at the Green Room Club, Mr Saintsbury calling out other members to have a look at me. Then and there he handed me the part of Sammy, saying that it was one of the important characters in his play. I was a little nervous for fear he might ask me to read it on the spot, which would have
been embarrassing as I was almost unable to read; fortunately he told me to take it home and read it at leisure, as they would not be starting rehearsals for another week.

I went home on the bus dazed with happiness and began to get the full realization of what had happened to me. I had suddenly left behind a life of poverty and was entering a long-desired dream – a dream my mother had often spoken about, had revelled in. I was to become an actor! It had all come so suddenly, so unexpectedly. I kept thumbing the pages of my part – it had a new brown paper cover – the most important document I have ever held in my life. During the ride on the bus I realized I had crossed an important threshold. No longer was I a nondescript of the slums; now I was a personage of the theatre, I wanted to weep.

Sydney’s eyes were filmy when I told him what had happened. He sat crouched on the bed, thoughtfully looking out of the window, shaking and nodding his head; then said gravely: ‘This is the turning point of our lives. If only Mother was here to enjoy it with us.’

‘Think of it,’ I continued, enthusiastically. ‘Forty weeks at two pounds ten. I told Mr Hamilton you attended to all business matters, so,’ I added eagerly, ‘we might even get more. Anyway, we can save sixty pounds this year!’

After our enthusiasm had simmered down we reasoned that two pounds ten was hardly enough for such a big part. Sydney went to see if he could raise the ante – ‘there’s no harm in trying,’ I said – but Mr Hamilton was adamant. ‘Two pounds ten is the maximum,’ he said – and we were happy to get it.

Sydney read the part to me and helped me to memorize the lines. It was a big part, about thirty-five sides, but I knew it all by heart in three days.

The rehearsals of
Jim
took place in the upstairs foyer of the Drury Lane Theatre. Sydney had so zealously coached me that I was almost word-perfect. Only one word bothered me. The line was: ‘Who do you think you are – Mr Pierpont Morgan?’ and I would say: ‘Putterpint Morgan’. Mr Saintsbury made me keep it in. Those first rehearsals were a revelation. They opened up a new world of technique. I had no idea that there was such a thing as stage-craft, timing, pausing, a cue to turn, to sit, but it came
naturally to me. Only one fault Mr Saintsbury corrected: I moved my head and ‘mugged’ too much when I talked.

After rehearsing a few scenes he was astonished and wanted to know if I had acted before. What a glow of satisfaction, pleasing Mr Saintsbury and the rest of the cast! However, I accepted their enthusiasm as though it were my natural birthright.

Jim
was to be a try-out for one week at the Kingston Theatre and for another week at the Fulham. It was a melodrama patterned on Henry Arthur Jones’s
Silver King
: the story of an aristocrat suffering from amnesia, who finds himself living in a garret with a young flower-girl and a newspaper boy, Sammy – my part. Morally, it was all on the up and up: the girl slept in the cupboard of the garret, while the Duke, as we called him, enjoyed the couch, and I slept on the floor.

The first act was at No. 7
A
Devereux Court, the Temple, the chambers of James Seaton Gatlock, a wealthy lawyer. The tattered Duke, having called on his rival of a past love affair, begs for alms to help his sick benefactor, the flower-girl who had supported him during his amnesia.

In an altercation, the villain says to the Duke: ‘Get out! Go and starve, you and your coster mistress!’

The Duke, though frail and weak, picks up a paper-knife from the desk as if to strike the villain, but it drops from his hands on to the desk as he is stricken with epilepsy, falling unconscious at the villain’s feet. At this juncture, the villain’s ex-wife, with whom the tattered Duke was once in love, enters the room. She also pleads for the tattered Duke, saying: ‘He failed with me; he failed at the Bar! At least you can help him!’

But the villain refuses. The scene rises to a climax, in which he accuses his ex-wife of infidelity with the derelict and denounces her also. In a frenzy she picks up the paper-knife that fell from the derelict’s hand and stabs the villain, who falls dead in his armchair, while the derelict still lies unconscious at his feet. The woman disappears from the scene, and the Duke, regaining consciousness, discovers his rival dead. ‘God, what have I done?’ says he.

Then business follows. He searches the dead man’s pockets, finds a wallet in which he fingers several pounds, a diamond ring and jewellery, all of which he takes, and as he leaves by the window
he turns, saying: ‘Goodbye, Gatlock; you did help me, after all.’ Curtain.

The next act was the garret in which the Duke lived. The scene opened with a lone detective looking into a cupboard. I enter whistling, then stop, seeing the detective.

NEWSBOY
: Oi, you. Do you know that’s a lady’s bedroom?

DETECTIVE
: What! That cupboard? Come here!

BOY
: The cool cheek of him!

DETECTIVE
: you stow that. come in and shut the door.

BOY
[
walking towards him
]: Polite, ain’t you, inviting blokes into their own drawing-room?

DETECTIVE
: I’m a detective.

BOY
: What, a cop? I’m off!

DETECTIVE
: I’m not going to hurt you. All I want is a little information that will help to do someone a good turn.

BOY
: A good turn indeed! If a bit of luck comes to anyone here, it won’t be through the cops!

DETECTIVE
: Don’t be a fool. Would I have started by telling you I was in the Force?

BOY: Thanks for nothing. I can see your boots.

DETECTIVE: Who lives here?

BOY: The Duke.

DETECTIVE: Yes, but what’s his real name?

BOY: I don’t know. The duke is a ‘nom de guerre’ as he calls it, though blow me if I know what it means.

DETECTIVE: And what does he look like?

BOY: As thin as a lath. Grey hair, clean shaven, wears a top hat and an eye-glass. And blimey, the way he looks at you through it!

DETECTIVE: And Jim – who’s he?

BOY: He? You mean she!

DETECTIVE: Ah, then she’s the lady who –

BOY
[interrupting]
: Who sleeps in the cupboard – this here room’s ours, mine and the Duke’s, etc. etc.

There was much more to the part, and, believe it or not, it was highly amusing to the audience, due, I think, to my looking much younger than I was. Every line I spoke got a laugh. Only mechanics bothered me: the business of making real tea on the stage. I would get confused about whether to put the tea in the pot first or the
hot water. Paradoxically enough, it was easier for me to talk lines than to carry out stage business.

Jim
was not a success. The reviewers panned the play unmercifully. Nevertheless, I received favourable notices. One, which Mr Charles Rock, a member of our company, showed me, was exceptionally good. He was an old Adelphi actor of considerable reputation, and I played most of my scenes with him. ‘Young man,’ said he solemnly, ‘don’t get a swollen head when you read this.’ And after lecturing me about modesty and graciousness he read the review of the
London Topical Times
, which I remember word for word. After writing disparagingly of the play it continued: ‘But there is one redeeming feature, the part of Sammy, a newspaper boy, a smart London street Arab, much responsible for the comic part. Although hackneyed and old-fashioned, Sammy was made vastly amusing by Master Charles Chaplin, a bright and vigorous child actor. I have never heard of the boy before, but I hope to hear great things of him in the near future.’ Sydney bought a dozen copies.

After completing the two week’s run of
Jim
, we started rehearsals for
Sherlock Holmes
. During this time Sydney and I were still living at Pownall Terrace, because economically we were not too sure of our footing.

During rehearsals Sydney and I went to Cane Hill to see Mother. At first the nurses told us that she could not be seen as she was not well that day. They took Sydney aside out of my hearing, but I heard him say: ‘No, I don’t think he would.’ Then turning to me sadly: ‘You don’t want to see Mother in a padded room?’

‘No, no! I couldn’t bear it!’ I said, recoiling.

But Sidney saw her, and Mother recognized him and became rational. A few minutes later a nurse told me that Mother was well enough, if I wished to see her, and we sat together in her padded room. Before leaving she took me aside and whispered forlornly: ‘Don’t lose your way, because they might keep you here.’ She remained eighteen months at Cane Hill before regaining her health. But Sydney saw her regularly while I was on tour.

*

Mr H. A. Saintsbury, who played Holmes on tour, was a living
replica of the illustrations in the
Strand Magazine
. He had a long, sensitive face and an inspired forehead. Of all those who played Holmes he was considered the best, even better than William Gillette, the original Holmes and author of the play.

On my first tour, the management decided that I should live with Mr and Mrs Green, the carpenter of the company, and his wife, the wardrobe lady. This was not very glamorous. Besides, Mr and Mrs Green drank occasionally. Moreover, I did not always want to eat when they did, or eat what they ate. I am sure my living with the Greens was more irksome to them than to me. So after three weeks we mutually agreed to part, and being too young to live with other members of the cast, I lived alone. I was alone in strange towns, alone in back rooms, rarely meeting anyone until the evening performance, only hearing my own voice when I talked to myself. Occasionally, I would go to the saloons where members of the company gathered, and watch them play billiards; but I always felt that my presence cramped their conversation, and they were quite obvious in making me feel so. I could not smile at their levity without being frowned upon.

I began to grow melancholy. Arriving in northern towns on a Sunday night, hearing the doleful clanging of church bells as I walked the darkened main street, added little comfort to my loneliness. On week-day I would scan the local markets and do my shopping, buying groceries and meat for the landlady to cook. Sometimes I would get board and lodging, and eat in the kitchen with the family. I liked this, for north-country kitchens were clean and wholesome, with polished fire-grates and blue hearths. When the landlady baked bread, it was cheerful to come out of a cold dark day into the red glow of a Lancashire kitchen fire, and see tins of unbaked loaves around the hearth, and sit down to tea with the family – the taste of hot bread just out of the oven with fresh butter was relished with grave solemnity.

I had been in the provinces for six months. Meanwhile Sydney had had little success in getting a job in the theatre, so he was obliged to descend from his Thespian ambition and apply for a job as a bartender at the Coal Hole in the Strand. Out of one hundred and fifty applicants he got the job. But he had fallen ignominiously from his own graces, as it were.

He wrote to me regularly and kept me posted about Mother,
but I seldom answered his letters; for one reason, I could not spell very well. One letter touched me deeply and drew me very close to him; he reproached me for not answering his letters and recalled the misery we had endured together which should unite us even closer. ‘Since Mother’s illness,’ wrote Sydney, ‘all we have in the world is each other. So you must write regularly and let me know that I have a brother.’ His letter was so moving that I replied immediately. Now I saw Sydney in another light. His letter cemented a brotherly love that has lasted throughout my life.

I got accustomed to living alone. But I got so much out of the habit of talking that when I suddenly met a member of the company I suffered intense embarrassment. I could not collect myself quickly enough to answer questions intelligently and they would leave me, I am sure, with alarm and concern for my reason. Miss Greta Hahn, for instance, our leading lady, was beautiful, charming and most kindly; yet when I saw her crossing the road to-towards me, I would quickly turn and look into a shop window or go down another street in order to avoid her.

I began to neglect myself and became desultory in my habits. When travelling with the company, I was always late at the railway station, arriving at the last moment, dishevelled and without a collar, and was continually reprimanded for it.

For company, I bought a rabbit and wherever I stayed I would smuggle it into my room unknown to the landlady. It was an endearing little thing, though not house-broken. Its fur looked so white and clean that it belied its pungent odour. I kept it in a wooden cage hidden under the bed. The landlady would cheerfully enter the room with my breakfast, until she contacted the odour, then she would leave, looking worried and confused. The moment she was gone I would release the rabbit and it would lope about the room.

Before long I had it trained to run to its box every time there was a knock at the door. If the landlady discovered my secret I would have the rabbit perform this trick, which usually won her heart, and she would put up with us for the week.

But in Tonypandy, Wales, after I showed my trick, the landlady smiled cryptically and made no comment; but when I returned from the theatre that night my pet had gone. When I inquired about it, the landlady merely shook her head. ‘It must
have run away or someone must have stolen it.’ She had in her own way handled the problem efficaciously.