On the Stage—and Off/Chapter 9
Chapter IX.
BIRDS OF PREY.
I remained in London with my first manager during the whole summer season, which lasted about nine months, and I think that, altogether, it was the happiest period of my stage career. The company was a thoroughly agreeable one. It was a genial, jovial company—a "Here you are, my boy; just in time for a pull" sort of company—a "Hail fellow well met" with everybody else sort of company. Among players, there are none of those caste distinctions such as put an insurmountable barrier between the man who sells coal by the ton and the man who sells it by the hundred-weight. "The Profession" is a Republic. Lead and Utility walk about arm-in-arm, and the Star and the Singing Chambermaid drink out of the same pewter. We were all as friendly and sociable together as brothers and sisters-perhaps even more so-and the evening spent in those bare dressing-rooms was the pleasantest part of the day. There was never a dull moment, but always plenty of bustle and fun, plenty of anecdotes, plenty of good stories—ah, they could tell 'em!—plenty of flirting, and talking, and joking, and laughing.
What jolly little suppers they were, too, brought in smoking hot from the cook-shop over the way, and in the middle of which we had to be constantly rushing off with our mouths full to rescue some unfortunate female who was always getting into trouble, or to murder an uncle; and how wide we had to open our lips, when eating, lest we should rub the carmine off! How delicious a quart of six ale was after a row with the police, or a struggle with the man who had carried off the girl! How enjoyable a smoke when you had to hide your pipe in your boot each time you heard a footstep, because smoking was strictly prohibited!
I was not so contented at first as I might have been. I expected about three pounds a week salary after giving my one month gratis, and I did not get it. My agreement, it may be remembered, stipulated that I should receive a "salary according to ability" at the end of that time, but the manager said he did not think there would ever be enough money in the house to pay me at that scale, and suggested nine shillings a week instead, generously giving me the option of either taking it or leaving it. I took it.
I took it because I saw plainly enough that if I didn't I should get nothing, that he could find twenty other young fellows as good as I to come without any salary at all, and that the agreement was not worth the paper it was written on. I was wrath at the time, but, seeing that the nine shillings was soon raised to twelve, and afterwards to fifteen and eighteen, I had really, taking things as they were, nothing to grumble at; and, when I came to know a little more about professional salaries, and learnt what even the old hands were glad to get, I was very well satisfied.
The company was engaged at summer prices, which are a good deal less than winter ones, and these latter average something less than the wages of an industrious sweep. The public, who read of this actor receiving a hundred and twenty pounds a night, of that actress making eight hundred pounds a week, of a low comedian's yearly income being somewhere about six thousand pounds, and of a London manager who has actually paid his rates and taxes (so he says), can scarcely have any idea of what existence at the bottom of the stage ladder is like. It is a long ladder, and there are very few who possess a personal experience of both ends. Those who do, however, must appreciate the contrast. Mr. Henry Irving, speaking somewhere of his early days, mentions his weekly salary, I think, as having been twenty-five shillings; and, no doubt at the time, he thought that very good, and can most likely remember when he got less. In the provinces, thirty shillings is a high figure for a good all-round "responsibles," and for that amount he is expected to be equal to Othello or Sir Peter Teazle at a moment's notice, and to find his own dress. A "lead" may get three pounds in the winter, and a young "utility" thinks himself very well off indeed on a guinea. Now and again, the latter will get twenty-two or three shillings, but this only leads him into habits of extravagance, and he suffers for it afterwards. At the minor London theatres, there being no expenses connected with travelling, etc., the salaries are even less, and from eighteen shillings to two pounds are about the sums promised.
I do not believe I should ever have got even the salary I did, if it had not been for the extraordinary circumstance of a really successful season, so successful, indeed, that the fact could not be disguised, and, for the last three or four months—excess of good fortune having evidently turned the manager's head—salaries were paid regularly and in full! This is not romancing, it is plain, sober truth. Such a thing may surprise my readers, especially those who know much about the stage, but it cannot surprise them one fiftieth part so much as it surprised us. It completely bewildered the majority of the company. To have anything more than five shillings paid to them at one time seemed to confuse them, and, on treasury days, they went away from the theatre with a puzzled air of affluence and responsibility.
They had not been accustomed to receiving salaries in that way. What they had been used to was, say, two-and-sixpence one day, sixpence at the beginning of the next night, another twopence after the first act, and eightpence as they were going away.
"That makes one-and-four you've had to-night, and two-and sixpence last night makes three-and-ten, mind."
"Yes, but, hang it all, you know, there was four shillings owing from last week, and five-and-sixpence from the week before, that I've never had yet."
"My dear boy, for Heaven's sake don't talk about last week and the week before. Do let's keep to one week at a time. We can't go back to the Flood."
hour together, so as to They had been accustomed to haggle and fight for every penny they got; to dodge and trick and bully for their money in a way that a sixty-per-cent. money-lender would rather lose principal and interest than resort to; to entreat and clamour for it like Italian beggar children; to hang about after the acting manager like hungry dogs after a cat's-meat man; to come down to the theatre early in the morning and wait all day for him; to watch outside his room by the rush in the moment the door was opened, and stick there till he threw them a shilling; to lie in wait at dark corners and spring out upon him as he passed; to run after him up stairs and down stairs; to sneak after him into public-house bars; or to drive, him into a corner and threaten to punch his head unless he gave them another sixpence—this last expedient, of course, being possible only when the actor was big and the acting manager little. Fortunately acting managers mostly were little, otherwise the profession would have died of starvation.
If, as sometimes happened, they left the acting manager alone, and went for the lessee himself, the latter would always refer them to the former, assuming for himself a magnificent indifference about such trivial things as money matters; and he would even play out the farce to the length of sending for the acting manager, and begging that gentleman, as a personal favour to himself, to let Mr. So-and-So be paid without further delay, which the acting manager would gravely promise should be done.
If it had not filled one with shame for one's profession, it would have been amusing to listen to some of the comedies nightly played behind the scenes.
"Look here," says the ghost of Hamlet's father, suddenly darting out of its dressing-room, and confronting the acting manager, who, thinking the coast was clear, has made a dash down the passage; "look here, if I don't have something, I don't go on."
"My dear boy," replies the acting manager, in a tone of suppressed exasperation mingled with assumed sympathy, and glancing furtively about for a chance of escape, "I really cannot. I have not got a penny. I will see you later on, when I shall have some money. I must go now. There's somebody waiting for me in front."
"I don't care who is waiting for you in front. I've been waiting for you behind for two nights, and I mean to have some money."
"How can I give you any money, when I haven't got any!" This is the gist of what he says. The embellishments had better not be added, here. Realism is an excellent thing in its way, but a Zola must draw the line somewhere.
After this, seeing that the actor looks determined, he begins to fumble in his pocket, and at last brings out half a crown, and presents it—without compliments.
"This won't do for me," says the other, first pocketing the money; "I can't live for four days on half a crown."
Then the acting manager, with a further string of needless comments, thrusts five shillings into his hand, and rushes past, for he hears a footstep on the stairs, and fears another onslaught.
It is one of the chief characteristics of both managers and acting managers that they never do have any money. If caught holding it open in their hands, they always, from mere force of habit, say they haven't got any. A common answer to an appeal is: "I really haven't got any money at all, my boy: how much do you want?"
The women, of course, could not bully for their money, but they shewed a quiet, never-tiring persistence, more effective perhaps than all our storming. Certain it is that on the whole they were more successful than the men, and this might have been attributed to their sex's irresistible wheedling powers, if one could possibly have imagined such a thing as an acting manager open to humanizing influences.
Nobody grumbled at this state of things. The pleasure and surprise of getting any money at all was so great that the trouble of getting it was forgotten. They were too used to being robbed of all their earnings to mind being defrauded of only a part. An absconding manager was so common a thing that he did not even excite remark. He was regarded as something in the ordinary way of business, and his victims only sighed, when he was gone, and proceeded to look out for somebody else to cheat them.
And such another was by no means difficult to find in my time: the roll of theatrical managers teemed with thieves. It seemed to me that whenever a man got kicked out of everything else, he engaged as big a blackguard as himself for his acting manager and started a show. It must have been a profitable game, that played by these swindling managers, and there was no risk of any kind attending it. Nobody ever thought of interfering with them. If, by any clumsy accident on their own part, they did get within the clutches of the law, no harm came to them. County Court judges appeared to regard their frauds as mere practical jokes, and the worst they had to fear was a playful admonition of the "Ah well, you mustn't do it again, you know," kind.
In the profession itself, they were received with respect, as men of decided talent in their way. Even the most notorious of them were treated with civility, and care was taken never to mention before them such subjects as dishonesty and knavery, for fear of hurting their feelings. When actors and actresses went from London to Aberdeen to join Mr. Smith's company, and found on arriving that Mr. Smith was the same man who had already swindled them under half a dozen different names at half a dozen different times and places, what do you think they did? Shook hands cordially with the gentleman, made some pleasant observations about having met before, and hoped, in whispers among themselves, that he would not serve them the same this time! Of course, on the first Saturday night, while they were on the stage, he would run off with all the week's takings, go to the next town, and advertise for another company under the name of Jones.
It was no light matter for a man—and worse still for a poor girl—to be left without a penny or a friend in a strange town hundreds of miles from home. The poor players helped each other as well as they could, but provincial Pros. are—or, at least, were—not a wealthy class, and, after having paid their fares down, and kept themselves for a week or a fortnight, the most bloated capitalists among them rarely had more than a few shillings remaining in their pockets. Wardrobes had to be left as security with irate landladies, and, until they were redeemed or replaced, no other engagement was possible. Friends, poor enough themselves, goodness knows, had to be begged of. Every kind of valuable, even the wedding ring, had to be pawned, and the return home was made with troubled faces and empty hands.
The misery caused by these scoundrels makes one's blood boil to think of. I have known men and women forced to tramp home again half across the kingdom, seeking shelter in casual wards when the nights were too cold or wet to sleep under a haystack. I have known actors and actresses obliged to sell the clothes off their backs in order to get fresh stage wardrobes. I have known whole families, after having scraped together every penny they could get, so as to be able to join one of these companies, come back again a few days afterwards, utterly destitute, and compelled to sell the few sticks of furniture they had about the place before making another start. I knew one poor fellow, left penniless in Glasgow, with a delicate young wife near her confinement, and they had to come back to London by boat—steerage passage—for, after pledging everything, that was all they had money enough for. It was fearful weather in the middle of January, and the vessel tossed about in the Channel for over a week, landing them just in time for the woman to die at home.
Some managers saved themselves the trouble of running away, and attempted to throw an air of respectability over the proceeding, by paying their company about one-and-sixpence apiece on treasury day, stating that they were very sorry, but that the thing had been a failure; that the houses had been all paper, the expenses unusually heavy, or any other of the stock lies always on hand. And he would think to comfort them by telling them that he himself had lost money, as though that were an unanswerable reason for their losing all theirs!
As to these men losing money of their own, that was impossible. They had not any to lose. Whatever they lost was somebody else's; of that you may be sure. They were men without any capital whatever, and they made use of actors merely as cat's paws in a speculation where all the risks were with the company, and all the advantages with themselves.
The "share" system was worse even than this. It meant, in plain language, that, if the undertaking failed, the actors shared the losses amongst them, and, if it succeeded, the manager pocketed the profits.
As a matter of fact, actors were then the least considered, and the most imposed upon of any people connected with the stage. If, at that time, one of my friends had started as a theatrical manager, I might, with a view of saving him unnecessary expense, have given him the following hints:—
"You must pay your bill-poster, or he won't stick up your bills, or, if he does, it will be topsy-turvy. Pay for your advertisements, or they won't get inserted. Pay your carpenters and scene-shifters, or they'll make it decidedly uncomfortable for you. Pay your money-takers, or they'll pay themselves; your gas, or it will be cut off; your rent, or you will be turned into the street. Be careful to pay the supers, too, or you'll find when it is time for them to go on that they've all gone off. For goodness sake, don't keep your charwoman waiting for her wages; you'll not have five minutes' quiet until she is satisfied. And if you don't wish to find yourself in the County Court on Monday morning, pay your call boy on Saturday night. You must pay these people. It is not a case of choice, there is simply no help for you; if you don't, you'll have to shut up shop in a couple of days. But you needn't pay any one else. If you have a few shillings left that you really don't know what to do with, you might divide it among the actors and actresses; but you can please yourself entirely about this. They work just the same whether they are paid or not.
"Your author, by the bye, is another person you never need pay. Indeed, in his case, it would be positively dangerous to do so. There is no telling what effect such a shock might have upon him.
"Your company will, it is true, pester you a good deal for their money, and grumble and threaten, but it never comes to anything, and, after a while, you get used to it, and don't mind."
As to actors and actresses taking any actual measures for their own protection, the idea never occurred to them in their wildest dreams. If you suggested such a thing to them, it took their breath away, and you were looked upon as a young man with dangerous revolutionary tendencies that would some day get you into trouble. It was useless for one man to attempt to do anything by himself. I remember an actor summoning a manager who had cheated him out of seven pounds, and, after spending about ten pounds in costs, he got an order for payment by monthly instalments of ten shillings, not one of which, of course, he ever saw. After that, it was next to impossible for him to get a shop (this expression is not slang, it is a bit of local colour). No manager who had heard of the affair would engage him.
"A pretty pass the stage will come to," said they, "if this sort of thing is to become common."
And the newspapers observed, it was a pity that he (the actor) should wash his dirty linen in public.
I have been careful to use the past tense all through these remarks. Some of them would apply very well to the present time, but, on the whole, things have improved since I was on the stage. I am glad of it.
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