Chapter XI

It is a very odd experience to go on the stage at the age of thirty-nine. It is, of course, unpractical, since at that age a man is too old to learn the business properly; but it is a great entertainment. The change was so extreme. I had always lived a very quiet life. I had few friends, few acquaintances. My life was in reading books and in writing them. All my preoccupations were literary. Every morning after breakfast I went over what I had written the night before, correcting here and there and everywhere, generally convinced that the passage which had pleased me so much as I wrote it was, after all, not magnificent. I took the bulldog for a walk from 12 to 1, and another half-hour walk in the afternoon. Then two cups of tea without milk or sugar at 4, and the rigour of the literary game till 7, and again after dinner till 11. It was a life of routine, and all its adventures, difficulties, defeats and rare triumphs were those of the written page. I did not know a single actor, and had no curiosity as to the actor’s life, circumstances, customs or manners. And then, one afternoon in February, 1901, I found myself stuck up with a number of ladies and gentlemen on a thing like a greenhouse flower-pot stand, and we were all required to express suitable and varied emotions as Shylock appealed for the fulfilment of the bond which Antonio had given him. This was the first thing I had tried to do on the stage, and I believe it was the most difficult. No doubt Mr.—afterwards Sir Frank—Benson was right in saying that it was the only way to learn how to act; but gesture, facial expression, pantomime, the knack of knowing how to be individual and yet to join in effectively with the crowd; all these things are extremely difficult, very much more difficult than the art of speaking an effective line effectively.

But—very likely because the change from my former way of living was so tremendous in every respect—I found the life an enchanting one. Of course I could not have begun under happier auspices; nay, I could not have begun under any auspices half so happy. It has been said, I think, more than once, and said by men far more qualified to speak than I, that if it had not been for the Benson Company, acting as an ordered art, with its technique and tradition, would pretty well have perished out of England. The old stock companies were gone, with their manifold opportunities for learning the actor’s craft. The young man who went on the stage probably walked on for six months or a year in a London production, and unless he were an exceptionally bright young fellow he learned very little. Perhaps, if he were lucky, he was promoted from a thinking part to a speaking one and uttered the line: “You don’t say so!” every night; but still he learned very little. If he became a good actor under this régime, it was a case of genius triumphing over circumstance. Of course good actors come from everywhere: from the academies, from melodramas travelling in the fit-ups, from the chorus of the musical play, from the ranks of the walkers-on in the long London run; but, as I say, these are cases of greatness overcoming difficulties. But under the training provided by the Benson Company it was a man’s fault if he did not learn to act; it was pretty definite proof that there was no acting in his composition. I remember Henry Ainley saying in this very year, 1901: “Well, in the last fortnight I have played twelve different parts, and if that won’t teach a man how to act, nothing will.” This, I may say, was at the end of the Festival Season at Stratford-on-Avon, a strenuous and a delightful time.

But, as I say, I could have entered on the boards under no happier auspices. There was a constant succession of small parts, so graded with due tenderness both to the beginner and the audience that not much harm could be done by uneasy awkwardness, and much good was certain to be gained by the beginner. For example, I have a suspicion that the whole pack of us on that flower-pot stand in “The Merchant,” all of us beginners, were about as bad as bad can be; but it really signified little. The people in front were looking at Shylock and Portia, not at us; and I don’t suppose that our incapacity diminished to any calculable extent the public entertainment. Then in the next piece, “As You,” I was a Forest Lord with a line. I had to say to the Banished Duke: “I’ll bring you to him straight,” and Oscar Asche took pains to show me that I must speak it as I moved up stage with my back to the audience; but the fortunes of the play hardly depended on that line, while I was beginning to grow a slight seed of confidence.

And how all this was an utterly different world from anything that I had ever conjectured; I cannot express the gulf that yawned between the old and the new. In the former years I struggled with words and phrases and sentences and shades of meaning implied by them: now I strove to understand how something like an attenuated pigtail could become a highly probable fifteenth-century beard and moustaches in a couple of minutes, when skilled hands were laid upon it. And I was occupied with R.U.E. and L.U.E. and 5 and 8, and how to stand so that you command the stage as F. R. B. instructed me, and the endeavour to take in and profit by the kindly tips and hints and cautions given by the elder members of the company: here was a holiday, indeed, for a man who had tried to tear the secret of literature from the thorn castle where it is concealed, who had torn his hands and his heart sadly enough in the endeavour.

I have mentioned the tips and hints of the Elder Brethren amongst the Bensonians. This was a great part of the discipline and instruction of the course. It was not only what Benson said at rehearsal, it was also what Asche or Rodney or Brydone or Swete said after the rehearsal or after the show, and often what they said was, quite rightly, highly uncomplimentary. I remember when Henry Herbert—“starring” in America now, I believe—was playing in “King John,” it fell to him to pronounce the lines which speak of painting the lily and gilding refined gold. He spoke them, as I thought, with great spirit; but Brydone—dead not long ago—took him apart afterwards and talked to him for half an hour or more as to the grave mistake he had committed.

“You spoke the lines as if they were beautiful poetry,” said Brydone, “and, indeed, they are. If you had been reciting them your reading would have been quite right; but not in the scene, on the stage. So-and-so—I have forgotten the name of the part—is raging against King John; he isn’t thinking of the poetic beauty of the words he is using.”

Now, I do not presume to judge whether Brydone were right or wrong in this criticism; such matters are too high for my small experience as an actor; but consider the enormous value to the beginner of living in such an atmosphere of thought and observation and consideration of the things of the theatre. Herbert may have come eventually to the conclusion that he had been right after all, and that Brydone was wrong; but, anyhow, he had worried the question out and weighed it in his mind, and looked at it and around it; and all that, it seems to me, is the very air in which good craftsmanship is born and nurtured and grows great and flourishes.

And so, apart from these after-confabulations and dressing-room counsels, a rehearsal in the Benson Company has always struck me as a liberal education in the player’s art. Benson himself—the “Pa” of the affectionate and reverent remembrance of many hundreds of his grateful sons and scholars—has always been an imaginative poet of a high order; though somehow he has never written any poetry. Instead, he has produced Shakespeare, and perhaps he has chosen the better way. He has illuminated his text admirably, and his way was not to come down to the theatre with the whole scheme of things cut and dried in his head, with every intonation, every bit of business and every position settled immutably beforehand, but rather to approach the play, scene by scene, with a liberal and open spirit. The main conception he doubtless brought with him, but any light he could find in the process of rehearsal he would welcome heartily, no matter whether it came from one of the elder brethren or from the newest member of the company. For example, during the rehearsals of “King John” we had come to the scene wherein the Legate, Pandulph, reconciles the King to Holy Church. I was talking to the Legate at the wings during some brief interval, and ventured very tentatively to describe the symbolical embrace known as the Kiss of Peace as a possibly effective bit of business in the reconciliation scene. The Legate, interested, asked me to show him how it was done, and we went through the business. But Benson, who seemed to be considering other matters down stage, had noticed what we were about, and he called out: “I like that: we’ll do it.” And done it was; and I had been a little over two months in the company and on the stage!

And another instance, taken from the same play, of a Bensonian rehearsal of those days. The scene was the discovery of the dead body of Prince Arthur. I had to say:

Whereon Hubert furiously interposed:

And then I had to draw the cloak away from the corpse and exclaim:

And thereupon a debate arose. Should the words be spoken before the removal of the cloak? Should the cloak be removed before the uttering of the line? Should word and action be simultaneous? The point was discussed with the utmost earnestness, as a matter of vital importance, and I, feeling that I was in mighty deep waters, suggested in all humility that I should speak the words with an indicative gesture and that Hubert should step forward, appalled, and remove the cloak and discover the body of the Prince. But this started another subsidiary debate, and the rehearsal breaking off at this point, Brydone (Hubert) and Frank Rodney (Faulconbridge) were left on the Stratford stage, walking up and down, and wondering, in muttered undertones, whether it would be within the limits of possibility and stage propriety for Hubert to snatch that cloak away. Their faces were grave, earnest and perplexed. Outside in the sunshine by the Avon I encountered “Pa.” He looked at me with a certain waggishness in his eye, as if he suspected bewilderment on my part, and said:

“Well, Mr. Machen, what do you think about it yourself?”

“Indeed, sir,” I replied, “I don’t venture to have any opinion.”

And I meant what I said, for I didn’t think then, and I don’t think now, that it befits the entered apprentice to express his opinion, or presume to have any opinion, in the presence of past masters.

Now it may be thought that I am “guying” the Company methods in this matter of Prince Arthur’s funeral cloak. I am not doing anything of the sort. I only wish I had gone on in the craft, and were now myself entitled to walk up and down the stage, debating just such a point. The matter in itself was, no doubt, small enough: a stage management in a hurry would have given a ruling and the scene would have proceeded; but under a stage-management in a hurry what would have become of the vivid interest taken in the smallest circumstance of the play by the whole company, from F. R. Benson downward?

And, by the way, I trust I am not giving the impression that the Bensonians of that day were a body of solemn pedants? I have not yet forgotten my admiration, my almost awestruck admiration, at seeing the manner in which the man who was to play King John drank home-brewed ale in a triangular parlour of the Windmill on the afternoon before the production. He drank in the manner of the ancient heroes, and he gave a very good performance at night.

But the Stratford Festival drew to its dose. On the last Saturday we were rehearsing in the morning, playing in the afternoon and playing again in the evening. Some time in the course of the day I was told that I was to play Nym in the “Merry Wives” on Monday night at Worcester. I bought the play and looked at the part and got the cuts from the Prompt Book—and I wonder why I didn’t drown myself in the Avon after the show as the easiest way out of the difficulty; and if anyone wants to know why, let him read the part of Nym in “The Merry Wives of Windsor,” and ask himself how he would like to learn that queer gibberish and learn how to play it in a couple of days, he having had three months’ experience of the stage. But instead of drowning myself in the Avon, I ... refreshed myself at a famous tavern of the town together with about half the company; and I think we heard the chimes at two o’clock in the morning, and it was reported that old George Weir, on being asked “to write something” in the hostess’s book had written the words: “When my cue comes call me and I will answeir.”

And that reminds me: At the Bensonian dinner in the year in which this great actor, George Weir, died, F. R. Benson began his speech. His manner commanded the cessation of applause, and he raised one hand, and held it high, and said:

“This year, one amongst us has answered the summons of the call-boy of the stars.”

But to return to my small business. On the Sunday we travelled to Worcester, and I spent the rest of the day in a desperate struggle with Nym and “the humour of bread and cheese,” and “that’s the humour of it,” in endeavouring to get into my memory phrases which are not merely old but old-fashioned, for Nym, like Touchstone, discourses for the most part Elizabethan catchwords which, three hundred years before, were “certain of a laugh,” which the process of time and fashion has made meaningless, and phrases such as these are very difficult to learn.

But I learned them somehow or other on the Sunday, and the next morning came to the one and only rehearsal. It was not on the stage, more important things were happening there, but in the travellers’ samples room of one of the Worcester inns. Of course there was no scenery, no costumes, no “props” of any kind. A few chairs indicated the set, quite sufficiently, I may say to a man of experience, but dubiously enough to a man of next to no experience. Thus, when it came to my last exit, the Assistant Stage-Manager gave his instructions somewhat as follows:

“After you have said the last words to Page, turn round and go up the flight of steps L.C., here, between these chairs. When you have got to the top, turn again and say to Page, over his shoulder: ‘My name is Nym, and Falstaff loves your wife.’ Then exit Left along the terrace.”

Simplicity itself, to an actor, but somewhat horrifying to a beginner. And then two or three of the principals were not there—they were rehearsing other scenes, very likely, on the stage, and the Prompter’s: “Mr. Rodney will come on on that cue from the right upper entrance, where that table is, and you go up to him and meet him Centre and say so and so, and then he speaks the line so and so and you cross to the Right”—with much more to the same effect. And my breath was queer and catchy, even though it was only the rehearsal, and I wondered what my voice and I would be like at night!

Well, I was paralysed with stage-fright. But I got through, somehow; and I hope the Old Woman of the Company, Miss Denvil, as admirable an actress as George Weir was an actor, meant what she said after I had made my Exit Left along the terrace. She smacked me heartily on the back, and said:

“There! I always say the nervous ones are the best!”

So the tour went on, and in the course of it I received an odd bit of promotion. I descended from the flower-pot stand in the Trial Scene of the “Merchant” and became the Clerk of the Court. I think he speaks one line and reads a letter, and that is all. It is hardly to be called a part; if the man who had to do it failed at the last moment the Business Manager or, more likely, his assistant, would be summoned and robed in the black habit and the square cap. He would be told the line and given the letter, and that would be all right. It was so small a thing that the man who “played” it was supposed not to care to do so under his own name, so I was either not in the bill at all or else I appeared as “Mr. Walter Plinge,” the Mrs. Harris of the Benson Company, who often came in useful on occasions like this, or when there was a case of “doubling.” There was such a person, but I believe he kept a tavern frequented by the Company.

And so I was the Clerk of the Court, and solemnly proceeded to consider within myself what a Compleat Clerk of the Court should be like. I determined, firstly, that the boy at the back of the gallery should hear what I said; but this is a general rule—and by no means the least important—which applies to all acting. My second resolution was that a really convincing Clerk would not take the faintest interest in the very emotional procedure which seems to have characterised the strict court of Venice. He would listen to all the pleadings and all the agonies with a stolid countenance. When the Doge spoke of “brassy bosoms” and “hearts of flint” and “gentle answer, Jew” and so forth, the Clerk would become stonier and stonier in his indifference, possibly reflecting inwardly that he had always thought that the appointment was a purely political one, and that now he was sure of it. “Ad captandum arguments,” “Old Bailey rhetoric,” “Buzfuz on the Bench,” “Trying to throw dust in the eyes of the Jew,” such phrases, translated, of course, into choice Venetian dialect, might be supposed to flit through the purely legal and formalistic mind of the Clerk. As for the young advocate, whose credentials the Clerk had been obliged to proclaim, well, frankly, the Clerk could not understand how the Doge, politician as he was, could permit such unprofessional rubbish as the “Quality of mercy” speech to be uttered in court at all. “Mountain pines,” “wag their high tops,” “twice blest,” “crowned monarch better than his throne”: really, really! What was the Bar coming to? The Clerk’s face and attitude have become perfectly stony in their supreme indifference; he might be a thousand miles away.

But! What is that? The Bond bad in law? The plaintiff debarred from recovering, and not only that, but, ipso facto, liable to criminal proceedings of a highly penal character? Now, indeed, the Clerk of the Court is interested. Not that he cares twopence for Antonio or for Shylock either; but there does seem distinctly to be a flaw. The young Advocate must have a technical mind, that greatest of all blessings. The Clerk pricks up his ears, as if he were a terrier advised of the presence of a rat; he is intensely awake; he consults his authorities on the table before him; he is really inclined to think that a highly important point is at issue; he believes that the question, or something very much like it, was raised in the Dogeship of Bragadin, c. 1150. At length the Clerk of the Court is all alive.

I thought of all that, and I tried to render it as best I could. And I only mention this trivial nonsense because, to the best of my belief, it is the only instance in which I have found that doing my best and sparing no pains brought me the faintest sort of reward. As a rule, in my experience, the mere fact of taking pains has been rewarded with the malignity of scoundrels and the insults of fools.

But in this extraordinary and, as I must say, miraculous affair it was otherwise. The tour of the Benson Company drew to its close. It was now hot summer and we were playing a matinée, I think on the Whitsuntide Bank Holiday, in some theatre on the south side of the river; some theatre which in all probability is now devoted to “the pictures.” It was glorious weather, there were few people in the house, and as one of the ladies of the company observed cheerfully in the wings, “People who come to see Shakespeare on an afternoon like this ought to have their noses rubbed in it.” Ah, the good, gross gaiety: how few people have as this lady had, and has, the true art of it! Her remark did me a lot of good that languid, heated afternoon in the half-empty theatre; and I believe that the Clerk of the Court—we were playing the “Merchant”—was a shade wearier than usual in his utter boredom and contempt of the whole proceedings: till his moment came.

And a few days later Henry Ainley was saying to me in our dressing-room: “I am engaged by Alexander to play Paolo next year. And, do you know, Alexander said to me: ‘You’ve got a remarkably good actor in your Company; and I couldn’t even find his name in the cast. He was playing the Clerk of the Court that afternoon: he was very good indeed.’”

The great George Alexander to speak thus of the little beginner in his little shadow of a part! Well, I suppose all such taps are vanities; but there was a very happy man that night in the dressing-room, and he plied the spirit-gum and fixed on his beard for the part of the Major-Domo in the “Shrew”—two lines—with trembling, unsteady, rapturous fingers.

A few weeks later I was engaged to play a small part in “Paolo and Francesca,” but that was for the early spring of 1902, and I had to fill in. So I joined a pastoral or open-air company (almost all of whom were Bensonians), and played with them for three weeks. Then I met a friend in the Strand and said “I want a shop,” and found myself rehearsing next day the part of a comic Irish servant in a sketch called “The Just Punishment”—an entirely preposterous playlet. We did a fortnight of it—two houses a night—at the Hoxton Varieties and another East-End hall, the name of which I have forgotten. At the Varieties I dressed with a very pleasant black man; the rats ran about the dressing-rooms and passages like kittens. And the audience! There was no question of their being all right till you began to bore them. You made your entrance as the curtain went up, and found the whole house in an uproar. Most of it was lighthearted hilarity, some of it was argument, and they argue very forcibly in Hoxton, occasionally with broken bottles. The actor’s business was to drown them, and get them to listen, and amuse them—if he could—and very capital training it was. But the sketch was not booked on—and no wonder—so I went to Mr. Denton’s in Maiden Lane. He sent me to Mr. Charles Terry, who was taking out a melodrama called “The Silent Vengeance,” written by Mr. Harry Grattan round the personality of Mr. Silward, that wonderful animal impersonator. From first to last I played three parts in “The Silent Vengeance”—a solicitor, a doctor and a barber—and it only ran six weeks. But for the last week of the run I had been rehearsing the part of an old actor in the farcical comedy of “The Varsity Belle.” Then at the end of a fortnight, for one reason or another, I had to change this rôle for that of a University Don; and there were over two hundred cues in the first act, and I had only a week for study! The manager was an entirely honest but boorish fellow, and I gave him my notice; “bunged in my notice” would be more idiomatic. The day I left “The Varsity Belle” company I got an engagement from an old Bensonian friend to play for a fortnight or so in Old Comedy down in the western country, and a delightful engagement it turned out. We all knew each other, or very soon got to know each other, and we drank beer and played skittles in tumbledown alleys behind old inns, and brewed bowls of punch, and in spite of these wild practices acted, I think, decently. Poor Ernest Cosham was the Comedian and Mr. Leon Quartermaine played the juvenile leads; and I hope he has not forgotten a famous game of Blind Hookey in a little inn at Westbury-on-Avon, the only card game that I ever enjoyed. And the morning after our last performance I went up from Andover to town and listened to Stephen Phillips reading his play, “Paolo and Francesca,” to the assembled company. I had been a year on the stage, and I think I had had as varied an experience as falls to the lot of most beginners.

And here there is a great gap. There were other adventures on the stage; but enough, I think, has been said of these things. I have just told of that happy moment of June, 1901, when Henry Ainley repeated to me George Alexander’s kindly praise of my acting. And, indeed, that was bliss, but I believe that I received the promise of a happiness that should be deeper and more lasting one morning towards the end of August, 1921. For that morning brought a letter ending my career as a journalist.

Poor George Sampson got into grievous trouble over his innocent speculations as to so innocent a thing as an underpetticoat. I propose, therefore to say nothing about the craft of journalism, which I followed for many years.

Save only this: Eduxit me de lacu miseriæ, et de luto fæcis. Et statuit super petram pedes meos: et direxit gressus meos.

THE END

Printed in Great Britain at The Mayflower Press, Plymouth. William Brendon & Son, Ltd.