The Sunny Side of the Street

Every class of people on earth contains a pleasing number of cheery folk, but far the greatest proportion is found in the theatrical profession. Get together, if you can, all the companionable, hospitable souls of all other classes and the stage people by themselves can make almost as good a showing. When talking of them I never know where to begin or how to stop, for they have loaded me with kindnesses, and began it when I was on the extreme outer edge of a profession which they regarded as a mere side show to their own.

Years ago when I was on the lecture platform I used to have some cloudy hours, in spite of my efforts to be sunny, for, unlike theatrical people, lecturers are usually their own only traveling companions, the railway runs are long, the engagements are what the dramatic agents call “one night stands,” so the stops are so short that the lecturer has no chance to adapt his digestive apparatus to the surprises that unknown chefs of unknown hotels delight in springing upon him. Years ago—as I said a moment ago, I was thinking of all these miseries, as I left a train at Utica on a snowy, stormy afternoon of the Christmas holidays, when I specially longed to be with some friends in New York. I had four blank hours before me, for I was not to appear on the platform until evening, and it was one of the days when I was too tired to study or read and too shaken up to sleep. Suddenly a negro porter in drawing-room car uniform accosted me with:

“Mr. Wilder, Mr. Jefferson would like to see you.”

He pointed to the right, and there in the window of a parlor car, sidetracked for the day only, stood “Joe” Jefferson. When I got into the car and looked about me I saw the great “all-star” cast of “The Rivals”—dear Mme. Ponisi, Mr. John Drew, Viola Allen, W. J. Florence, Otis Skinner, Frederic Paulding, Frank Bangs, George Dunham, Elsie C. Lombard (now Mrs. John T. Brush), and Mr. Jefferson’s sons, Tom, Charlie, Joe, Jr., and Willie.

These good people were all seated around the dining-table of the special car that I entered, and the cordial greeting I received, combined with the contrast with “all-outdoors” and all else that had been depressing me, made me the happiest man on the continent. I remained there two or three hours, partly because, when manners suggested I should go, I was forcibly detained. I told stories whenever I could, but I was more entertained than entertaining. The time came when I was really obliged to go and I said:

“Mr. Jefferson, I am booked here to-night at a church, and I must begin my hour-long entertainment at seven o’clock.”

“Well, Marshall,” was the reply, “that will give you a chance to see our performance, so we’ll reserve a box for you.”

I thanked him, seized my bag, hurried to a hotel and prepared for my work. The church in which I appeared was crowded—packed, in fact; I afterward learned that, although I was well and properly paid, there had been no charge for admission. When I reached the theatre the house was only half full, but the performance of “The Rivals” was of full size. After the curtain fell I went to my hotel, packed my bag and hurried to the station; I had almost two hours to spare, but there are times when the station is more interesting than the hotel. Soon Charlie Jefferson stumbled over me and took me back to the company’s car, where I had supper with the entire cast.

My train was due about an hour after midnight and as I rose to make my adieux, Mr. Jefferson looked kindly down on me, took me by the ear and said, in his own inimitable plaintive manner,

“Friends, I want you to look at this little scoundrel. He comes up here from New York; we entertain him; we dine him for three hours, he queers our house, yet gets a big fee for his own work. We again entertain him for hours by giving a “Rival” show, and yet he is not satisfied without taking my life”—with this he handed me a beautifully bound book, “Memoirs of Joseph Jefferson,” with the inscription in the fly-leaf, “Presented to my little friend, Marshall P. Wilder.”

Everybody tells stories of Jefferson’s absent-mindedness, and he sometimes tells them himself. I can venture to repeat two which he himself has told. A friend of young Joe was making a long visit at Mr. Jefferson’s house, so the comedian saw him at the table every day for a fortnight. One evening young Joe took his friend to the Player’s Club, in New York. The elder Jefferson was there, and on being reminded of the young man’s presence he said cordially,

“My boy, I’m very glad to meet you. Why don’t you come up and see us? Do come and make me a visit.”

But here is Jefferson’s star story against himself.

“I was in a down-town office building in New York, a few years ago, and when I entered the elevator a short stout gentleman with a cigar in his fingers spoke to me, saying,

“‘How do you do, Mr. Jefferson?’

“‘I am very glad to see you,’ I replied. He continued,

“‘You don’t know me, do you, Mr. Jefferson?’

“‘Well, really, you must pardon me, but your face is quite familiar but your name has escaped my memory.’

“‘My name is Grant,’ he said quietly, with a twinkle in his eye. I got out at the next floor; I was so afraid I might ask him if he had been in the war.”

But there is no accounting for absent-mindedness. Charles Wyndham, the English comedian, tells of an enthusiastic hunter, a man who thought of nothing else. One morning his wife saw him leaving the house and asked:

“Where are you going?”

“Hunting,” was the reply.

“But where is your gun?”

“Bless me! I was sure I had left something behind.”

Regarding sunny-hearted actors, it is well to remember that they too have troubles peculiarly their own, and one of the worst is to have an impulse where only solemnity is in order. Nat Goodwin who has been making audiences laugh for the last thirty years and I “took” a certain degree of masonry together, and as all masons know, the proceedings were quite as solemn as a church ceremony. Taking the degree with us was a worthy German, whose hold on the English language was both weak and spasmodic, as was manifested when it became our duty to repeat certain obligations, sentence or sentences after an officer of the lodge. Both Goodwin and I were fully impressed by the gravity of the occasion, yet we could not help hearing that German; he had a dialectic utterance that would have driven a Philadelphia vaudeville audience wild with delight and although he caught the sense of all the responses required of us, he unconsciously repeated many of them backward according to the constructive forms of the German language.

Goodwin and I knew it would be an unpardonable breach of decorum, as bad as laughing aloud in church in prayer time, if we gave way to our feelings. I bit my lips till they bled. Nat, less conventional, tried to stow his entire handkerchief in one side of his mouth, while he voiced the responses from the other. We had almost got full control of ourselves; the beautiful and impressive service was almost over, but when the oath was required, that engaging German repeated it backward. I yelled; Goodwin had a spasm—almost a fit.

To square ourselves, required a dinner for the entire lodge, and Goodwin and I were the hosts.

This was not the only scrape I was in with Nat Goodwin. During the bicycle craze of a few years ago, when wheels were as numerous at any good road-house as free-ticket beggars at a theatre, Nat and I met at the Casino, in McGowan’s Pass, Central Park, and he asked me to wait for him, so that we might ride home together. We found many acquaintances about the tables, remained till after dark and then started homeward on bicycles without lamps. We had not expected to be out after sunset. At that time the law was very stringent and rightly so, about lights on bicycles, so I urged haste. Luckily I had many friends among the Park Police; they knew I was not a “scorcher” and that I had proper respect for my own life, so they kindly looked aside as we passed. But Nat—well they probably had seen him on the stage again and again and been the better for it, but actors don’t wear their stage clothes and wigs and paint when they go bicycling, so none of the officers recognized him. At a turn of the road we came upon a policeman who didn’t know me either, and he shouted—“Here you fellows—stop!” I don’t believe I am a slippery chap, but I slipped past that officer before he could touch my wheel, but alas for poor Nat! he didn’t. I did not remain to hear the conversation, for I knew I could not make any useful addition to it. Goodwin was to play the next night in Boston, so I expected to see a “scare head” story in the morning paper about his arrest. But fortunately while he was reasoning with the policeman, a friend came along in a carriage and succeeded in rescuing Nat and his bicycle from the clutches of the law.

I wish the carriage had been mine for Nat Goodwin has come to my rescue more than once. I recall one of the (London) Green-room Club’s annual dinners, which Nat and I attended. It was given at the Crystal Palace; Mr. Bancroft—“Squire” Bancroft, “Squire” being his name and not a title—Mr. Bancroft was in the chair. About the middle of the evening a four cornered discussion between Sir Augustus Harris, Henry Arthur Jones, Henry Pettit and Comyns-Carr, all good fellows, became so heated that something had to be done to restore quiet, so Chairman Bancroft in a suave, diplomatic manner of which he has a mastery, arose and said,

“Gentlemen, we’re here to-night for a good time. Let’s quarrel to-morrow. I take great pleasure in calling upon our American friend, Mr. Marshall P. Wilder.”

I arose, but the excitement had got all around the tables; my job was too big for me, and I could not raise a laugh.

As I dropped into my chair, the chairman called upon Mr. Goodwin. Nat got up; he began gently to spray oil on the troubled waters; then he drizzled it; showered it and finally poured it on by the tub full until he got the entire assemblage laughing and saved the day. I mean the night.

Some actors produce sunshine, that is, laughter, by direct means, others indirectly and by inversion. George Leslie and Wilton Lackaye are to the point, for Leslie is an optimist and “jollier,” while Lackaye is sarcastic. One day Lackaye said to Leslie: “The only difference between you and me is that you bless people and things and I damn them—and neither of us is on the level.”

At a dinner at the Lambs’ Club, Lackaye bet Burr McIntosh that Burr would “make a break” nine times out of ten in whatever he did, and he added, “McIntosh, I’ll let you select the times.” It was amusing to hear Lackaye say, at the beginning of every dinner,—“Burr, that bet still goes.” I believe it has not yet been decided.

But Lackaye is best when telling a joke against himself. While he was a member of the Daly Company, he said:

“Miss Ada Rehan is a charming lady, and I’ve always considered her a great comedienne—a creative one. At rehearsal one day we were standing aside and chatting, the scene not being ours and I asked off-hand,

“‘Are you a quick study?’

“‘Oh, yes, very,’ she replied. I looked at her doubtingly and asked,

“‘How long do you think it would take you to like me?’

“‘Present?—or absent?’ she asked. That floored me.”