Jack Point's song appealed to me with peculiar poignancy during that time of heavy anxiety. But to return to my wife.
Louie Henri, as the older generation well remembers, is able to count herself amongst the distinguished Savoyards. Before she retired she had probably played a greater number of parts—soprano, contralto, and soubrette—than any other lady connected with the company. I am sure it will be of interest if I enumerate here the rôles she has played:—
Mrs. Lytton, apart from her success as an actress, has always been an accomplished musician, and in that respect I owe much to her for the way in which, during the preparation of my new rôles, she has helped me, "a lame, unmusical dog, over the stile." Our pianoforte at home is the one on which Sir Arthur Sullivan first played over his music for "The Mikado." It is a handsome satinwood grand, designed for Mr. D'Oyly Carte by the late Sir Alma Tadema, R.A., and this most interesting and valuable souvenir was presented to me by Mrs. D'Oyly Carte.
It was my great privilege and pleasure, when we were at Oxford on one occasion, to be introduced to the Prince of Wales, who was then in residence at Magdalen. Nothing impressed me more than his sunny nature and the wonderful knack he had of putting everybody at their ease immediately. Since then it has been just those qualities which have made him so immensely popular in his tours of the Empire.
Our first meeting was in His Royal Highness's own rooms, where he was accompanied by his tutor, Mr. H. P. Hansell. I remember that as I was speaking to him the members of a college team were brought in to be presented. "Ah!" exclaimed the Prince, "that's the best of being a celebrity, Lytton. I could not draw a muster like this." It was just a little pleasantry, this suggestion that it was myself who was the attraction, but it was an example of his happy knack of putting everybody at their ease immediately. I recall, too, that the Prince at that time was learning the chanter, with which one proceeds to the full glory of playing the bagpipes. Greatly to his surprise, I took the chanter and proceeded to give him a lesson, to which he listened most attentively, and then played a skirl, with which he was delighted. It so happens that, although I am no musician, I do know how to handle the bagpipes, and once a group of Scottish yokels who were listening to me stood open-mouthed with astonishment that such skill should be possessed by a trousered Englishman. This was when I visited my old colleague Durward Lely's place in the Highlands. The Scotties were enjoying a homely dance in a barn, and as the piper had been hard at it and seemed tired, I volunteered to act as his deputy. I don't want to be boastful, but my performance was regarded as a tour de force, at least for a Saxon.
The Prince came to the theatre frequently during our stay, and one night he came round to our dressing-room, where once more one fell irresistibly under the spell of his lovable and attractive personality. He invariably addressed me as "Ko-Ko." The Prince told me then, as he had done on other occasions, how really delightful he thought the operas were, and he said he looked forward to seeing them again and again. Then he asked to be introduced to a member who, in more than one sense, is one of the stalwarts of the choristers, Joe Ruff. Seeing that Joe had been with us so many years, I thought this special "recognition" was particularly happy, and it was a very great pleasure to me to be allowed to introduce my colleague to the Heir-Apparent.
From time to time, both during my connection with D'Oyly Carte and when temporarily away from the company, I have played before Royalty. Especially do I recall a night when Queen Alexandra occupied a box at the Savoy. It was in the "Yeoman of the Guard" revivals and my rôle was Shadbolt. Her Majesty was kind enough to send Sir Arthur Sullivan to my dressing-room to compliment me on the clearness of my enunciation, and I need hardly say how gratifying such praise was to me.
Seldom was "H.M.S. Pinafore" staged during the 1920 season without Lord Fisher coming to chuckle over Gilbert's clever satire on the "ruler of the Queen's Navee." He revelled in that opera. It was not only, I think, that it smacked of the sea, but he loved the gibes at the politicians and the hearty loyalty of the honest salt who, "in spite of all temptation," firmly resolves to "remain an Englishman." It was after he had seen me several times as Sir Joseph Porter that he invited me to bring a few of my colleagues and spend an afternoon with him at his home in London. I reproduce his very typical letter on another page. My recollections of that afternoon are very delightful. Lord Fisher was a wonderful veteran, and it was difficult afterwards to realise that a fortnight later he was stricken down with his last illness, to which he succumbed in the following July.
I remember that we did not have to do much of the talking. Lord Fisher walked up and down, up and down the room as if it were the quarter-deck, and he was telling us all the while such capital stories that we forgot that we, too, were still standing up! Of his yarns there were two that were very typical of the man and his ways.
"One day," he began, "I was walking through Trafalgar Square, and as I always do, I looked up at the statue of the greatest man that ever lived. Then a woman who was munching a bun came along. 'Here, master,' she said, 'who's 'e?' 'That's Lord Nelson,' I answered. 'Is it?' she returned, 'and who's 'e?' Fancy! Never heard of Nelson! Such ignorance! 'Well,' I said, 'if it had not been for him, that bun would have cost you, not a halfpenny, but fourpence. Good day!' And I walked on. I suppose she thought she had been talking to a lunatic."
Then Lord Fisher spoke of the exertion needed in our dances on the stage. "Energy! Energy! That's what we want," he declared. "Why, I was fed by my mother until I was quite a big baby. I refused to be weaned—I was so determined even in those days! You must have good natural food when you are born. It means everything. It gives you stamina—it makes a man of you."
From that interview I brought away a signed portrait of the great seaman. "I'm an ugly blighter, aren't I?" he reflected, sadly, as he handed it to me, "but I'm good." Candour would have compelled one to admit that he was anything but strikingly handsome, but in that small, intensely sallow face there was, after all, something that was extraordinarily kindly and strong. In that sense his face was the faithful mirror of his character.
"Jackie Fisher's" candour reminds me of a frank admission made to me by a statesman who still wields a leading influence in present-day politics. I think I had better not mention his name, although he is numbered amongst my friends, and he has often been exceedingly kind in his appreciation of my work on the stage. He told me he once met a lady whom he had not seen for several years, and having cordially greeted her, he said, "I'm so delighted to see you, Sybil." That he should have remembered her, and still more, that he should have remembered her first name, pleased the lady immensely. She said she was charmed that he had not forgotten her name. "Oh," responded the statesman, with the best of intentions, "I've a remarkable memory for trifles." The next moment he realised he had committed an awful faux pas. What was more, he saw that he, though a politician, could not explain it away.
Not many people remember now that Mr. George Edwardes, who created the vogue for musical comedies as we now know them, and who made a fortune out of his connection with the Gaiety and Daly's, was in his early days Mr. D'Oyly Carte's manager at the Savoy. When he became a producer his flair for stage effect amounted to genius. He could decide in a moment to make the most revolutionary changes in a production. For instance, I have heard him give orders that the first act should be made the second one and the second the first, because he saw that it would better work up the interest in the play. He would transpose a certain scene from here to there because he knew instinctively that there was its proper place. "I don't like that man singing that song," he said once, just before a new comedy was due to have its first performance, and when even the dress rehearsals were almost complete, "We'll give it to a lady." "But," it was objected, "it's a man's song—a military song." "Never mind," he answered in that familiar drawling voice of his, "we'll dress her in a red coat, and we'll bring the chorus on as soldiers too." And his judgment was absolutely right. That girl's soldier song was the great hit of the piece.
George Edwardes was a generous, kindly-natured man, accessible to everybody, and a splendid companion. Keenly interested as he was in his theatrical ventures, he never made these his sole and only pre-occupation. Upon the Turf, as every sportsman knows, he was a shining light, and many horses from his stables won the biggest prizes of their year. He often invited me to join him at the races, and never failed to tell me the winners—"well, hardly ever." One day he gave me three running. Just then I was arranging to play under his management for a term of three years, and he said those three winners proved that we could make money together both on and off the stage, and that we must sign up the contract, which we did the next day.
One of my closest friends was Francois Cellier, of whom it would be literally true to say that he devoted his life, his talents and all his enthusiasm to the operas at the Savoy. For thirty-five years he served them as conductor, to the exclusion of all the fame he might have won in a wider field, for he was a musician of surpassing accomplishments. He was the younger brother of Alfred Cellier, who was the composer, amongst other delightful comedies, of "Dorothy." Both men were Bohemians, and both of them might have been the architects of their own fortunes if they had put only their own goal in front of them, and pursued it steadily.
Francois Cellier—Honest Frank they called him, and the name suited him well—was a prince of good fellows and a most charming and helpful companion. I can never tell the debt I owe to him for all the advice he gave to me regarding our performances. He knew Gilbert's and Sullivan's ideas to the minutest detail, and, with all his love of the operas, he wanted those ideas carried through exactly on the stage. Even with the audiences he had a magnetic personality. Unlike most conductors, who feel they must allow just as many encores as the audience demands, he could indicate by some strange method to those behind him that an encore would be unreasonable or inconsiderate, and immediately the applause would subside and the play would proceed.
Cellier had his heart and soul in every performance, and what that means is known only to those who work on the stage, and who do sometimes become dull and listless because of their very familiarity with the parts they are playing or because the audience cannot easily be aroused to "concert pitch." What brightness they may give to their acting is of a superficial and mechanical kind that can give them no pleasure. It is at just such times as these that a real conductor is worth his weight in gold. Notwithstanding that he may have seen the piece hundreds of times—and might with reason be more bored than the principals themselves—he comes to each new performance with an enthusiasm which shakes the company out of themselves and makes everything go with a will.
Some conductors I have known have shown so little interest in their work that they did not even attempt to conceal their boredom. This is very unfair to the players. Can anyone expect there to be any spirit in the singing of a chorus when the conductor is just listlessly waving his baton, or when he shows such little respect for the artistes that, during their dialogues, he either yawns sleepily or leans over for a chat with the strings? Cellier was never guilty of that discourtesy. From the time he picked up his baton for the first bar of the overture the "play was the thing." During a chorus you would see him alert and awake and stirring on the company to give their best, and during your own solos or dialogues you would see him listening intently so that, like a friendly critic, he could afterwards praise you for what you had done well or give you hints where there was cause for improvement. It is a great thing to the artistes to see a genial face at the conductor's desk, and the operas go with a great spirit and nerve whenever the conductor, seconded by the orchestra, is doing everything to help us along. Our company's record has been a very fortunate one in this respect.
Everybody who plays in Gilbert and Sullivan makes it a point of honour to do his or her best to preserve what we call the traditions of the Savoy. If I were asked to name the secret of the charm of these operas, I should have to answer that there was not one secret, but many, but that one of the chief is their sense of "repose." Gilbert, like the master playwright he was, would never have two situations running together. If, that is to say, the leading character was going to offer his hand to the heroine, the whole company must look on eagerly and expectantly. It would never do for them to be indifferent and uninterested. Still less would it do for subsidiary characters to do something that might attract the audience's eye to them in some other part of the stage. Everything must be focussed on the central incident, and to this end every member of the company must think first and all the time of the play, and not indulge in those hateful individual touches of "pantomime."
What I mean is best seen in what happens quite frequently in ordinary plays. Nearly every minor actor and actress seems to take, or is allowed to take, licence to put in a little bit of "business" on his or her own account, and so draw kudos to himself or herself by being supposed to be "funny." It is really only "supposed." Generally it is not funny at all, and it mars the effect of the play by making the entire atmosphere restless and perplexed. Eyes are strained here, there and everywhere, and the poor audience in trying to catch this, that and the other point, is probably missing what is the chief point of the play. Well, if refinement is not the keynote of a production, this may possibly not matter so much, but it is certainly foreign to the tranquil atmosphere of Gilbert and Sullivan.
No one, I think, could have done more by his example on the stage to encourage refinement in these operas than my good friend, Rutland Barrington. During his playing career—now at an end, unhappily—he was an artiste to his finger tips. He had also a great asset in his fine presence and personality. Our friendship has been of the closest, and I call to mind an incident when we were at Portsmouth and when there was something important occurring at the Royal Dockyard. "We can't get in without a pass," I said to him, but he only smiled and said that, at all events, we could try. "Watch me," he commanded. Straightening himself up, he walked to the gates as if in the manner born, took the salute from the sentries, and entered the yard. It looked ridiculously easy. So I decided to follow suit. The sentries would not let me through. "Can't come in without a pass," I was told, and let me through they would not on any account, however much I tried to "flatter, cajole and persuade." Barrington always did have "a way with him." I imagine the sentries were impressed by his bearing, or it may be that they had mistaken him for his brother, Admiral Fleet.
This naval reference serves to recall a most interesting story bearing on the subject of "make-up." Now, "make-up" has always been a fascinating study to me, and many kind friends tell me that I have a special gift for it, instancing how completely I transform my appearance for parts so different, for example, as the hunchback King Gama and the martial old General Stanley. Certainly I do spend more time than most actors do over the arts and deceptions of the dressing-room. For King Gama the make-up of the face alone takes an hour, apart from all the physical deformities that have to be contrived when playing this ugly, ungainly character in "Princess Ida." But all this by the way. What I was going to write about was an incident when a worried young naval lieutenant came to see me at the close of our show at the Savoy. He was at the romantic age then, a trifle oblivious to the passing of time when there was a charming lady at his side, and at the theatre he overlooked that by a certain hour he should have been back at the Naval College at Greenwich. Lieutenant X came round to see me in a terrible state. What was he to do? If he went back, he told me, he would be stopped at the gates by the sentries and he would have to give explanations, of which none he could think of would be adequate. If, on the other hand, he did not return there would be a court-martial, and he would be dismissed from the Service. Before him, whichever way he turned, was the blank ruin of his career and he disgraced in the eyes of his family. Well I don't know which of us actually suggested it, but it occurred to us that if only he could be disguised as an Admiral, he might easily get into the college! An Admiral had to keep no strict hours when absent from duty, and if only he could look and act the part, the sentries would let him pass and ask no awkward questions. So in a very few minutes I was busy treating him with all the arts of "make-up." Certainly the addition of a pointed beard made a most effective disguise, and it answered splendidly, for at Greenwich he marched boldly through the gates to the dutiful salutes of the sentries. The situation was saved. For my own part I felt that I had done something to save a career, and as it happens, the romantic young friend of those days is now a real Admiral, and a very well-known and popular one, in his Majesty's Navy.
Numerous are the stories told about my friend and colleague for so many years—Fred Billington. In temperament and character we were entirely opposites, but there was scarcely one disagreement throughout our long companionship, during which we played together almost continuously. He was a Yorkshireman, and before he joined the company, with which he remained for thirty-seven years, he was in the office of the Water Board at Huddersfield. The whole of his stage career was spent with these operas.
It was not everybody who understood Billington. Sometimes he could be uncommonly moody and gruff, and if he did not feel in the mood to talk, he would make it clear that he wanted no introductions to one's own acquaintances. But under the rugged surface he was a fine-hearted fellow, who lived life heartily and lived it well, and nothing pleased him better, apart from a game of golf, than to sit and gossip with those whose society he liked.
One day he invited three of us to a round of golf, and it being a cold morning, he told us that he was ordering "a good beef-steak and kidney pudding." Well, when we had finished the game and returned to the club-house, in came that steaming pudding. Billington looked at it long and earnestly. "It won't do for four," he reflected. Then a pause. "It would make a poor meal for three. There's scarcely enough for two. I'll tell you what. I'll have it—and you three can have chops." And that is just what we did.
Billington had a gift of robust eloquence, and unless one was accustomed to it, the freedom with which it flowed from his tongue was most embarrassing. He was playing a clergyman one day at golf. The cleric, whenever he made a bad shot, invariably relieved his feelings by exclaiming, "Oh, Pickles! Pickles!" Language of this kind in Billington's ears was exceedingly trying, and as if determined to give the parson a lesson, he came out with a string of oaths of the richest and most vivid description. "Thank you very much, Mr. Billington," said the clergyman, smilingly, "thank you very much!" Evidently those were the sort of words which, but for respect for his cloth, he wanted to say!
One day he went out for a match with a bishop. The club officials, knowing how exuberant his language could be, were on tenter-hooks of anxiety all the time they were out, and on their return the secretary hastened to take the episcopal visitor apart. "Mr. Billington, the actor, you know, my lord," he explained. "I hope his language didn't shock you." "Oh, no!" responded the bishop, diplomatically, "he did once call on the Almighty, but otherwise his language was beyond reproach."
Dear old Billington! Earlier in life he had been with the company on a South African tour, and the wide spaces, the ample life and the boundless opportunities of that vast country appealed to him irresistibly. South Africa had a "call" for him, and he had ambitions, when the time came for him to retire, to settle there. That ambition was never realised. Only the night before he died, while we were in our dressing-room, he surprised me with the question, "How would you like to die, Harry?"
From a man so little inclined to brood on the morbid the question was strange. I told him I didn't know. I had never, I told him, thought it out, and didn't intend to, either.
"But if you had to die," he insisted, "how would you prefer to go?"
"Oh! I don't know," I retorted. "Anyhow, we're not going to die just yet."
"Well," was his answer, "if I had my way, it would be a good dinner, a bottle of wine, a good cigar, a good joke, and—pop-off!"
It must have been a premonition. The very next day, while still apparently in perfect health, he left Cambridge to keep a luncheon engagement with Mr. Rupert D'Oyly Carte at the Great Eastern Hotel, London. The intention was that he should be back for the night performance. With the lunch they had a bottle of wine, and afterwards, over cigars, they talked with many a hearty joke in between. Then he went out into the foyer—and collapsed. It was at least good to think that the passing of my dear old friend was free from pain or suffering.
Fred Billington's end must have been hastened by a sequence of events during the war. Strangely enough, when we were at Sheffield, the town was visited by a Zeppelin raid, and there was another raid when we were at Hull, a third when we were at Kennington, and a fourth when we were at Wimbledon. Billington's nerves, naturally enough, were very upset. Wherever we went the Zepps seemed to be after us. "Do you know, Harry," he said, at last, "I believe that bally Kaiser has got our tour." What he meant, of course, was that our list of bookings had got into the hands of the All-Highest, and that he thought, apparently, that if he could wipe out the Gilbert and Sullivan operas he would be able to break the spirit of England. Looked at in that way, the attention paid to us, whether intentional or not, was certainly flattering.
Worse than those raids, however, was the Dublin rebellion, into which we ran at Easter 1916. We should have opened there on the Bank Holiday. In point of fact we did not play one single night. Fred and I were at the Gresham Hotel. The very first day we were not allowed out at all, for we were in the very centre of hostilities, and no one could go into the street except at his peril. Chafing under the restraint, I did at last attempt to venture out, though feeling that there were too many bullets about for things to be healthy. Opposite the Gresham, at the door of the Irish Club, I saw the well-known figure of the Dublin Coroner, Mr. Friery. I rushed across to him, and it was because I spoke to him, I believe, that I was ever able to get back alive. Mr. Friery, with his top hat and frock-coat, was an easily distinguished citizen, and neither the military nor the rebels would have been likely to fire at him deliberately. "You ought never to have come across," he told me, and as it happened, the very same thought had occurred to me.
Conditions in the hotel itself were the reverse of pleasant, what with the noise of the firing outside and bullets shooting through our own windows, though these were shuttered and protected as far as possible. Our food stocks commenced to run low—by the end of the week's siege we had only biscuits and ham—and the strain on the larder was added to by the arrival of scores of visitors who had been turned out of the Metropole Hotel. They had been told to take their valuables with them, and it was remarkable how, in the fright of such an emergency, men would grasp the first thing that came into their hands and leave their real treasures behind. One man rushed over clutching two dirty collars, while another had a bath-towel which he had picked up, it seemed, instead of a dressing-gown. English jockeys who were there for the race week hurried over holding a saddle case.
Our anxieties were increased in the meanwhile by the systematic operations of the military around Eden Quay. One by one the houses were being demolished by shellfire, and in one of the threatened houses, as we knew, were many of the ladies of the company. To get to them was impossible. Luckily for them a sergeant on signalling duty heard their cries, and at once rushed to their help. "Who are you?" he shouted. "What are you doing here?" "We're the D'Oyly Carte," they answered. The D'Oyly Carte name worked like magic. Signalling to the gunners to cease fire, the sergeant hurried them out and through the streets, where sniping was going on at every corner, and took them to a police-station for safety.
All the other members of the company had more or less miraculous escapes. Leicester Tunks, Frederick Hobbs, Leo Sheffield, and several others lost all their luggage, but fortunately none sustained any more serious mishap. From the good people of Dublin we received every possible kindness, but as you will imagine, we were thankful when we heard that there were berths on a boat to take us back to Holyhead.
I have not, of course, told all my experiences of that awful week, though in memory these still linger vividly. But one of the things I remember best of all was a quaint remark of Billington's. Outside there was still the noise of the fighting, and most persistent of all was the crack! crack! crack! of a sniper somewhere near our own building. "Oh! Harry," said poor Fred, in utter weariness, "I do wish that bally wood-pecker would chuck it!"
Like "Mr. Punch" in another connection, I have a sound piece of advice for those who may ever think of embarking on theatrical management. "Don't!" I say this after bitter experience. It was not only that my gallanty show as a boy ended disastrously. This, of course, was itself a bad omen, and it ought to have taught me that public taste is fickle and that the gamble of theatrical management is surrounded by all kinds of perils. A West-end audience may be just as capricious and as hard to please as my audience of village lads in the garden.
My first real venture, a London one, was at the Criterion Theatre, which with a few others I took on lease from Sir Charles Wyndham, in order to produce "The Wild Rabbit." It was by Mr. George Arliss, who has since given up writing plays in order to act them, and he is now a "star" in America. It was one of those rollicking farces which, one would have thought, would have filled the house every night. I was playing elsewhere at the time, but we got together a really excellent company, amongst whom were the Broughs. But fate was against us from the very beginning. The production coincided with a heat wave, which is bound to be disastrous to all but the best of shows, and one of the facetious complaints of the newspaper critics was that they had to come to the theatre when the temperature was eighty in the shade.
"The Wild Rabbit" survived three weeks only. It drew £34 the first night—and that was the high-water mark in the matter of receipts. One night the box-office took a mere £8. Seeing that the expenses were about £600 a week, it will be understood that the failure was severe and complete, and in most circumstances one lesson of the kind would have been enough. However, a number of friends of mine had secured the rights of "Melnotte," an operatic version of that good old comedy, "The Lady of Lyons." They did not ask me to invest any capital, but they invited me to let them have the use of my name in booking a tour for the provinces, as they themselves were unknown to theatrical managers. Upon that basis an eight weeks' tour was arranged. Gathering together about sixty artistes all told, they rehearsed them and bought all the scenery, and were almost on the eve of the first production of "Melnotte." Then one fine morning there came the thunderbolt. They told me that all the money they had put into the venture had gone! It had gone before the company had even left London. What was to be done? Seemingly their idea was centred in how speedily they could cut their losses and abandon the venture. Such a thing to me was impossible. With my name attached to the tour, a breach of faith with so many provincial managers would have been a serious blow to my reputation, and apart from that, the fact that sixty of my fellow artistes were in danger of being thrown out of work compelled me to take both a moral and a financial obligation on my shoulders and run the show myself. I could only hope for the best and wait patiently for the report of my manager that the tour was flourishing.
That report never came. Every week I had to post a big cheque to cover the deficit on the takings, and every week made it clearer that, although the play itself was a good one, it was a thoroughly bad speculation. Something certainly was amiss. I could not leave London myself, and the only alternative was to offer a friend his railway fare and expenses and ask him to run into the country, see the play and tell me frankly what was amiss. "Harry," said my friend very meaningly, "I've never done you a bad turn. I've seen it—once." Once was enough!
Eight weeks saw the end of "Melnotte." From the first it was a forlorn hope, and in any case it was impossible to run a company successfully unless one could be on the spot to superintend the production. The only satisfaction I had out of it—and I admit it with some feelings of pride—was that of standing by my fellow professionals, and, at whatever cost to myself, "playing the game." I have never made—and never shall be lured to make—another plunge into management. The risks are too great.
Sometimes I am inclined to contrast my bad luck in these business ventures with the good fortune of a friend who once asked me for a loan of £90. He was in humble circumstances then, but he had a little money of his own and his ambition was to buy the licence of a public-house in Holloway. I lent him the cash, and later on he came to repay me, with many thanks for thus giving him his opportunity. Years afterwards we met again. Upon the basis of that little public-house he had built a comfortable fortune, for he was a director of a brewery concern, had a big interest in various industrial undertakings, and eventually became a well-known member of Parliament. "You have been my mascot," he said—and there have been others who for various reasons have said the very same thing!
Once I met a "dear friend"—you may know the kind yourself—who was terribly anxious that I should be "in" with him in a rich gold mine in Alaska. He brought some nuggets to show me, and they were so plentiful, he told me, that he had picked these from the top of the ground. Evidently I must have been a particularly credulous person, because he got a good deal of my money, whereas all I got was experience!
Where hobbies are concerned my luck always seems to be appalling. I have had a mania for turning my hands to all sorts of things. It began, I remember, with my determination to commence breeding poultry, and having made up my mind to this, it had to be done very thoroughly. I bought quite a number of chickens and wired them within a very small space. The poor things had nothing like enough room, and they began to get bad tempered, to fight one another, and to pull out their feathers. Further, having pulled out their rivals' feathers and found the oil at the roots very tasty, they set to in earnest, and before long there was not one bird with a feather left in the place. They were all bald! A more miserable collection of freaks you could never imagine. With characteristic humour Dan Leno sent me a bottle of Tatcho for them!
From hens to ducks was not a far cry. So I bought a number of ducks' eggs, hatched them in an incubator, and at last decided that it was time the little wretches had their first swim. I accordingly carried them down to a pond to put them in. Alas! once more for my amateur enthusiasm! The ducklings were too young for that, and they got cramp and died.
Nothing daunted, I turned now to bulldogs, and in order to do things well I bought seven big kennels, complete with iron gates. They would have done credit to a big estate, where breeding is done on up-to-date lines, and were quite out-of-place in my suburban garden at Chiswick. To begin with we could not get the kennels into the garden. For hours they were on the street pavement while we cogitated just how we were going to get them round to the back of the house, and it was only after a police-officer had intervened with an order to remove them forthwith, because they were a nuisance, that we found that if there is a will, there must be a way.
"Captain Corcoran" was the name I gave to my best bulldog, and as he brought me luck, I was glad I had chosen that name from "Pinafore." He was a sturdy fellow, the winner of very many championships, and his progeny have since also carried off valuable prizes. But even my one successful hobby was doomed to be blighted. One day two crafty-looking individuals came to my house and said they wanted to see me about a dog. They were Americans, and they wanted, they told me, to buy "Captain Corcoran." I told them I would not sell him—not at any price. They found it a waste of time to try to fix up a deal. "Well," they said as their parting shot, "we're going to have him, anyhow." Within a day or two police officers called to warn me that two expert dog thieves had taken rooms in the neighbourhood, and I was forced to the conclusion, much as I disliked it, that I must dispose of "Captain Corcoran." Later on I commenced to breed dachshunds and Borzois, but somehow I did not care for the "doggy" people with whom I had to mix, and the end was that I gave up dogs altogether.
Then I determined I would venture into the more tranquil arts of floriculture. I would have my own flower garden, and what was more, everything in it should be done by myself. My wife, shrewd woman, said nothing. It was a case of "leave him alone, and he'll play for hours." From Holland I ordered an immense number of bulbs and put them into the ground. Months went by, but not a sign was there of my hyacinths. I pondered deeply over my manual of useful hints for gardening. Watered them? Yes. Raked the soil? Yes. What was wrong? Certain it was that these flowers never bloomed in the spring!
Eventually, I saw a tiny yellow spike creeping out of the earth, but the colour and nature of it were not "according to plan." At last I called in a gardener. "Oh," he declared, doing his best to soften the blow, "you've planted the bulbs upside down." And so I had! The poor little shoots had to dig down into the soil before they could curve round and creep into the light. Nearly everything in that unfortunate garden had been planted upside down.
Friends of mine chaffed me unmercifully over that topsy-turvy exploit. When they came to my house they would turn all the ornaments upside down. Before I entered the room they would reverse the chairs, the settee and anything they could lay their hands upon, and then they would explain themselves by saying, "We thought you liked things like that, old man. The bulbs you know. We've just heard about the bulbs."
Well, after the failure with the hens, the ducks, and the flowers, there seemed only one other diversion to try, and that was photography. Even that did not survive very long, nor yet did my attempt to cultivate mushrooms in my cellar, a craze that threatened very literally to get the place into bad odour. But there are two recreations to which I still remain faithful, and they, after all, are worth all the rest put together. One is golf and the other painting. Golf is a great game for keeping the actor fit, and his mind clear for his work, and it is very popular in our profession. Now and then, too, a day with the palette and easel is a wonderful pleasure to me, and seldom do I take up the brush without a thought of poor old Trood and his studio at Chelsea.
One diversion at least in which I have had my share of success has been in the fancy dress balls at Covent Garden. Once I took the first prize with a representation of Nelson, the costume of which was copied in every detail from the uniform of the great seaman preserved in Greenwich Museum, and I remember that my entry was signalised by Dan Godfrey's orchestra striking up "'Twas in Trafalgar Bay." Then I took the chief honours with a wonderful bust of Nero, in connection with which I received enormous help from my old friend, the celebrated sculptor, Albert Toft. From my waist downward I was encased in what appeared to be a blood-marble pedestal. My face was whitened, my eyes were closed, and my brow was adorned with the laurel leaf, and when the lights were focussed on my rigid figure and the plaster frame it was acclaimed as a marvellously clever imitation of the statue of the great Roman Emperor. Once again I took the first prize at Covent Garden with the subject of the Knave of Clubs. The costume was a silk one, half black and half white, and on it were fastened the names of all the well-known clubs in London. Even the members of the Beef Steak Club found that their institution had not been overlooked—and that this title appeared on the costume in an appropriate place!
Nowadays, when we are on tour, it is very pleasant to be able to travel by motor-car instead of by train. With my Austin-20 car I have now covered well over 42,000 miles, and probably the only occasion when I deliberately exceeded the speed limit was once outside Plymouth. A doctor with a troublesome car was held up in the roadway. When I drew up and asked whether I could help him, he told me he had been a quarter-of-an-hour trying to get the engine to go, though he was due at a very critical operation some miles away. It was, indeed, a matter of life and death, and in my own car he was very speedily taken to the hospital. It was in the same district, I think, that I gave a "lift" to a man who was footsore and weary, and who said at the end of the journey, "I suppose you won't tell the gov'nor about this, will you?" Evidently he had mistaken me for somebody's chauffeur!
Some years ago, when I was setting out from my home at Chiswick, I was held up by a 'bus bound for Twickenham. It was crowded already, and the conductor had to refuse a poor old woman who wanted to board it, and who was very distressed, because she had a job at Twickenham, "and if I don't get there," she told me, "they'll think I'm too old for work and they won't want me again." The problem was easily solved. I offered to take her where she was going. She had never been in a motor-car before, and in trying to stammer her thanks, she asked me to tell her my name "so that I shall never forget you." So I handed her my card—she certainly did not know anything about me or what was my profession—and went on my way. Judge of my surprise when, soon after the end of the war, I found that that old lady had bequeathed to me the two little rooms and all the furniture that had been her poor, but neat and cosy, home at Hammersmith. Luckily, I heard of a demobilised soldier who, with his wife and child, was urgently in need of a shelter, and it was a great pleasure to me to be able to turn this touching legacy to such good account.
Speaking of hobbies, I don't think I knew a more curious taste than that of an old friend of mine who was a big-game shot and traveller, and who had a miniature zoo of his own at his home at Derby. Once, when the company was playing in that town, he invited me to go and stay the night with him after the performance, and in his library we sat chatting until the early hours of the morning. He told me many graphic stories about his expeditions into strange lands, about the tigers and elephants he had shot, and about his marvellous escapes. One story was about a faithful servant of his, a powerfully-built black, who stood right in front of an infuriated wounded elephant, which trampled on him and killed him, as the poor fellow doubtless knew would be the case, though he was ready to chance all so that his master might be protected. I remember that my friend, having told me this incident, added, "They are the greatest men on God's earth, are these blacks."
"Just half-a-minute," then said the explorer. Listening to those strange adventures in the jungle had already set my nerves on edge, and to be left alone in that dimly-lit room, with everything outside and inside it silent and still, was really uncanny. I heard my host walk along the corridor, open one or two doors, and apparently enter the garden. He had left me alone in that house! In a few moments I heard an unnatural tread in the corridor. Pit-pat, pit-pat! My eyes almost sprang out of my head. Pit-pat, pit-pat. Nearer and nearer it came until at last into the room there sauntered a—tiger! My friend walked in behind it.
"For God's sake take it away," I screamed, drawing my feet up into the chair and expecting every second the beast would pounce, "Take it away!" The tiger was really only a cub, but coming like an apparition into that room, it seemed to be the biggest and most ferocious and most ghastly sight on earth. Large beads of perspiration were on my forehead, my heart was beating itself out of my body, and through my mind flashed the countless sins of my youth. My last hours had come. "Take it away," I yelled, again and again, "it will tear us to pieces."
Now I think of it, the tiger did not really look as if it had much of an appetite, or if it had, the idea of making a tough meal of an actor did not appeal to its palate. The hunter tried to assure me that the beast was "quite all right." It flopped down by his side, and as he stroked it, the cub purred in a manner which, to me at all events, was not at all pleasant. "I know just how long you can keep them," my host explained. "This one will be harmless for another month. Then it will be dangerous. It is quite all right to-night. Come and stroke it!"
Not I! So long as the tiger remained there I kept cringed up in my seat on the other side of the room, and mighty thankful I was when he had taken his strange pet away. I've an old-fashioned notion that a library is not the happiest place for a menagerie. I heard that just a month afterwards the beast did, in fact, turn on the big-game shot, and his arm was terribly ripped. He must have trusted it just a day too long.