Part 6
I told Nat Perry that I hoped to put on some flesh and that I was prepared to follow his advice in everything. We came out on to the track presently, and I ran and Perry watched. But he kept very calm about it and I had a sort of feeling he wasn’t much interested. Presently he said:
“You don’t begin running till you’ve gone fifty yards. Start running from the jump off.”
He asked another man, who was training, to show me how to start; because his own athletic days were, of course, at an end, and he could not show me in person. But the other man most kindly came over and showed me how to get set and how to start like an arrow from a bow, which is half the art of sprinting.
After the trial was over Nat Perry said that it was impossible to prophesy anything until I had shaken down and found my feet on the cinders. “You may be a runner or you may not,” he told me. “I’ve seen bigger duffers than you shape into runners. You work hard for a month and get up your appetite and eat all you can pack away. Running or no running, the exercise in the open air’s what you want, and plenty of it.”
He rubbed me down after I had had a shower bath and gave me a locker for my things. He was a good man besides being so famous, and everybody thought a great deal of him at the L.A.C. His son was also an exceedingly clever trainer.
In course of time I was introduced to a few of the stars of the club, with whom, of course, Travers mixed on terms of perfect equality. They were all brilliant men, and their knowledge of athletics and times and great feats of the past filled me with interest and respect.
I enjoyed the evenings at the L.A.C. very much indeed, and I gradually improved till Perry decided that I had better enter for one of the evening handicaps.
“It will accustom you to the feel of it,” he said. “You’ll have to get over the strangeness before you do anything; and there’s your handicap to be thought on. As an unknown you won’t have your fair start at first; but after you’ve lost your heat for a month of Sundays, then you’ll be on your proper mark and may get on. You’re not a flyer and very like never will be—you ain’t got the physic; but you’ll do a bit, I dare say. And there’s hope for a mile, if you come on next year. No good for a quarter nor yet a half—too punishing. Your ’eart wouldn’t stand it.”
Thus this able and honest man encouraged me cautiously and I obeyed him, and in due time appeared to contest my heat in a hundred yards’ handicap.
It was exciting, but it didn’t last long. I took a preliminary spin and then, curiously enough, a thing happened that quite put me off for the moment. You must know the L.A.C. ground ran along one side of a railway cutting and on the other side, running, in fact, parallel with the athletic grounds, was a cemetery. And now, just as I was going to have a second preliminary spin, there came across the railway cutting the exceedingly mournful sound of a funeral bell tolling. Somehow I felt that while on one side of the line was a crowd of excited and eager men full of life and hope and joy, and others, like myself, also full of life and hope and joy, going to run in a competition and exert their wonderful energies to the utmost—while this was happening upon one side of the railway cutting, a scene of a very different nature was going on upon the other. And I got a sort of fancy they were burying a young man in his eighteenth year, like myself—a man who only a few days before was full of fight, and enjoying life and hoping no doubt some day to be somebody worth talking about. And now, instead of taking the world by storm and getting knighted even, or other honours, here was the unfortunate chap being tolled into the earth under the weeping eyes of a heartbroken mother and other relations. The reality of the thing was fearful, and it was rather sad in a way, too, because it did me no good to have my mind distracted in this manner just before I was called upon to battle against four other men, all considerably older than I was myself.
In fact they had to rouse me and call me to the starting-post, where the other competitors had already assembled. There was no man at scratch in my heat, but a great and powerful athlete called Muspratt, who received four yards from scratch, was the best runner of the five. I got eight yards, which was only four from Muspratt and not enough; and of the other three men in the race, one, who was startlingly fat to be a sprinter, had nine yards and one had ten.
At the sound of the pistol we all dashed off and I started fairly well. The sensation in a sprint of this kind is most interesting, because at first your position with respect to the other runners is unchanged. Though you are all flying along at a terrific pace, you appear to be all hardly moving at all. But then, after about half the distance had been run, I found, much to my astonishment, that I had caught the man who had one yard start from me, and both he and I were almost dead level with the front man. Now, of course, was the time for me to make my supreme effort; but just as I was about to do so, I became conscious of something white on my left and found, to my great interest, that Muspratt was only a yard behind me. In fact he was already making his effort, and when I made mine it proved useless against Muspratt, who was an old warhorse of the cinder path and a magnificent judge of pace. Twenty yards from the tape I honestly believe the whole five of us were in a dead line; but Muspratt really had us in the hollow of his hand, though we little knew it and all strained every nerve for victory. He slid past us, however, and broke the tape a yard ahead of myself and the fat man. And I was honestly more amazed by the splendid running of the fat man than anything else in the heat; because it showed what pluck and training and the genius of Nat Perry could do, even for such an unpromising sprinter.
Travers, who most kindly consented to come down that evening and encourage me, though he was not doing anything himself, figured it all out very correctly on paper afterwards. The heat was run in ten and three-fifths of a second by Muspratt with four yards start, and he beat me by a yard and a half. Therefore Travers considered that I had done what would have amounted to a shade worse than eleven seconds from scratch.
Muspratt, who ran in an eyeglass, by the way, which was interesting in itself, though spectacles were common enough with sprinters, got second in the final heat, which was won by a man with nine yards start, who had never before won as much as a salt-cellar, though he had been competing for two years unavailingly.
But though of great interest to me, I cannot say any more about my doings at the London Athletic Club, because other more important matters have to be told. What with running and cricket matches against other Fire and Life Insurance Offices, I now got plenty of exercise and felt exceedingly well and keen to proceed with the most important business of my life—which was, of course, to become a tragic actor and play in the greatest dramatic achievements of the human mind.
VIII
At last there came the solemn evening when I arrived at the Dramatic School.
It was in a quiet sort of corner off the top of Regent Street, and I got there at six o’clock for my first lesson in the Thespian art. No less than four other youngish men had already assembled, and with them was an old or, at any rate, distinctly oldish man of rather corpulent appearance, with a clean-shaved face and grey hair. I thought at first he was the famous actor and elocutionist, Mr. Montgomery Merridew, of universal fame, who was to be my instructor in elocution and stage deportment; but judge of my surprise when I discovered that the distinctly oldish man was a pupil like myself! He gazed with rather an envious look at the other pupils, and no doubt wished that he had turned to the art earlier in life; and I felt he was a fatherly and a kindly sort of man, and certainly added weight and dignity to the class.
He was called Henry Smith, but proposed to change this name for something more attractive when he got his first engagement; and the other men were named respectively Leonard Brightwin, Wilford Gooding, Harold Crowe, and George Arthur Dexter.
Naturally, I scanned their faces eagerly to see if any were destined to the highest tragical walks of the drama; and I found that two were evidently going to be low comedians. These were Harold Crowe and Wilford Gooding. Crowe was a fair man with rather prominent eyes, and he concealed his nervousness under a cloak of humour of a trivial character; and Gooding was thin, with a very small head and a comic face, which he could move about in a most grotesque manner. He and Crowe already knew each other. George Arthur Dexter had a keen and knowing face, and was exceedingly stylishly dressed in a check suit, with an ivory skeleton’s head in his tie, a carnation in his buttonhole, and several rings, which appeared to have genuine precious stones in them, on his hands. He had an assertive presence and seemed inclined to take the lead among us. He might easily have been mistaken for an actor already, and indeed told us that he was an old hand on the amateur boards.
He explained to us that he had only come for polish, and wasn’t really sure if Mr. Merridew would be able to teach him anything that he didn’t know already.
This man, curiously enough, was the first man I didn’t like in London. Of course I didn’t like the shady customer who pretended to be Mr. Martin Tupper, but I only hated him afterwards; whereas, in the case of Dexter, I felt a feeling of dislike from the start. He was so fearfully contented with himself, and his clothes, and his skeleton’s head and his great histrionic gifts.
But Leonard Brightwin was a very different sort of man. Genius blazed out of his black eyes; he wore his raven locks long, and from time to time tossed them back from his forehead in a very artistic manner. In fact, I felt in the presence of a future leader of the stage. He was of medium height and of shy and retiring nature; but one could not help feeling that Brightwin was born to be a great tragedian. I longed to be his friend from the first.
We all fell into conversation of a very animated sort, and Dexter, who greatly fancied his powers of imitating well-known actors, was just doing Mr. Edward Terry in _The Forty Thieves_ (as _he_ thought, though it was utterly unlike), when the door opened and no less a person than the renowned Mr. Montgomery Merridew stood before us.
One saw the graceful abandon of the old stager at a glance. The way he walked, the way he extended his hand and poised his leonine head on his sinewy neck—all showed the practised histrion. He was a shapely man of fifty, at the least; but such was the almost panther-like grace of his movements and rich auburn colour of his flowing mustache, that, but for the deep lines of thought on his brow and under his eyes, one might have imagined him many years younger.
An air of perfect assurance and the manner of one accustomed to rule, greatly distinguished Mr. Merridew. His voice was a magnificent organ, under perfect control, and every gesture and step were timed and studied to perfection. He was, in fact, an embodiment of the art that conceals art.
He bowed on entering, not in a servile manner, but with a courtly familiarity, such as doubtless one sees when kings meet kings. He appeared astonished at the smallness of the class collected to receive him; but he concealed his dismay under a nonchalant air of perfect good-breeding, which I am sure was a lesson in itself.
He greeted us each in turn and insisted on shaking hands with all of us. He wore pince-nez, while engaged in this manner, and having declared his pleasure at making our acquaintance, threw off the pince-nez with an almost regal gesture and lost no time, but bade us marshal ourselves before him, and then began an easy but most illuminating address on the art of stage deportment and elocution.
While engaged in this opening lecture, he scanned our faces in turn with such an eagle glance that only George Dexter had sufficient cheek to return his look. As for the two low comedians, they simply curled up under it, and so did I; and Brightwin, whose eyes were even more luminous than Mr. Merridew’s, let them fall to the floor before the professional’s impassioned gaze. As for poor Mr. Smith, he was, as it were, mesmerized by the lecturer and kept his eye fixed upon the great actor’s face, though evidently not wishing to do so.
Mr. Merridew said some beautiful things about art and was, in reality, a man of no little modesty, considering his fame. He certainly told us a great deal about himself; but it was only to encourage us and show us what we might do. His career had been very picturesque, and he claimed for himself such rare and brilliant powers that he said he could act anything and everything—from a billiard ball to Macbeth. I mention this startling saying to show that he allowed stray flashes of humour—you might almost say _badinage_—to enlighten his discourse.
“An actor,” he said, “ought to be as sensitive as a photographic plate. He ought to be able instantly to catch the character that he proposes to portray and allow it entirely to absorb him and soak into every corner of his soul. When, for instance, I played Iago some few years ago, I ceased to be Montgomery Merridew during the whole progress of the run! I _was_ Iago—not only when on the boards, for so thoroughly had I permitted that fiend in human shape to permeate my being, that again and again I caught myself thinking and feeling as Iago thought and felt outside the precincts of the theatre. That is an extreme case; and I instance it to show you a little of the extraordinary sensibility of the born actor. And not only can I play on the instrument ‘man’ and move to tears or laughter, with the ease of an accomplished musician playing on a musical instrument, but such is my intense feeling and emotional delicacy that I am equally moved myself when I watch another actor playing! The vibrating chords of my soul respond to him instantly; and though I may know that I could probably play the part far better myself, yet such is my sympathy and understanding, that I weep as readily as any untutored shop-boy in the audience—provided only that my colleague on the stage strives honestly to hold the mirror up to nature.”
He proceeded in this exalted strain for some time, then looked at his watch and concluded his preliminary remarks:
“Aristotle, gentlemen, has written a famous work entitled _The Poetics_, and no actor, or would-be actor, can afford to go without it. I shall ask you all to buy a copy—Bohn’s cheap edition—and ponder very carefully what you find there. Tragedy is a combination of terror and pity. Through the one you are lifted to the other, and the actor who embarks on a classic part must always remember that he is not there merely to harrow the feelings of his fellow-creatures. Far from it—far from it. By all means let him terrify them first by the presentment of fearful passions; let him freeze them to the bone and curdle their life’s blood, if he can, by his representation of rage, remorse, fear, and so forth; but behind and beneath—permeating, as it were, the very substance of the soul, we must have the direct appeal to humanity, to our fellow man and woman. We must remind them that what we do and suffer might be done and suffered by each one of them, given the dreadful circumstances; and then, gentlemen—then what have we achieved? Why, we have summoned compassion into the theatre! We have awakened in each member of the audience the most ennobling emotion of the human heart! And at such times, when playing in the greatest parts, I have felt through the silent, spellbound theatre an electric thrill for which no human creature was responsible; and I have said, ‘It is the wings of the angel of pity!’”
The noble man was much moved by this magnificent feat of eloquence. He blew his nose on a handkerchief which was obviously made of silk, and then, with a masterly touch, turned to us where we stood, deeply impressed by his spontaneous eloquence and came, as it were, to earth with a bound.
“Now we must go through our paces, gentlemen,” he said. “Upon the occasion of our next meeting, I will ask each of you to bring with him the play of _Hamlet_, and I shall cast it and rehearse a scene or two. Thus the business of elocution and deportment will go hand in hand, and, at the same time, you will be able to feel the artist’s pride in uttering words and impersonating characters that have rejoiced many generations of men. But to-night I shall ask each in turn to recite before me some brief, familiar passage that is precious to him. I shall thus learn a little about your defects and can give each of you a few preliminary hints. Lastly, if time permit, I shall myself speak a speech before you with the elocution and gesture proper to it, and explain my reasons as I proceed. I will ask Mr. Smith, as our senior student, to begin. Mount the rostrum, Mr. Smith, and forget our presence. Let the aura of your poet enfold you as with a garment, Mr. Smith. Seek to be one with him, whoever he is, and in tune with his conception—of course, to the best of your powers.”
I was greatly encouraged to find that Mr. Smith could rise to this challenge, for I’m sure I didn’t feel as if I could; but Mr. Smith, without any evasion, bowed to Mr. Merridew and climbed three steps on to a low stage at the end of the classroom, and then said that he intended to recite the poet Shelley’s “To a Skylark.”
“Not all, Mr. Smith. There will hardly be time for all,” said the preceptor. And this, I believe, secretly upset Mr. Smith and made him hurried and uneasy. For he was a retiring man of most delicate feelings, and the thought that he might be taking up too much time evidently put him bang out of his stride, as we say at the L.A.C.
Mr. Merridew settled himself in his chair, with the nonchalant attitude of the King in _Hamlet_ during the beginning of the play scene, and Mr. Smith, thrusting out his right arm in a rather unmeaning way, set off. He spoke in a hollow and mumbling voice, not suited to a skylark, and instantly the dreadful truth was forced upon us that he left out the _h’s_! He began like this:
“’Ail to thee, blithe spirit, Bird thou never wert, That from ’eaven or near it Pourest thy full ’eart In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.”
Mr. Merridew started as though a serpent had stung him, at the very first word, for, of course, to his highly strung senses it must have been simple agony; and I think Mr. Smith knew there was something wrong, too; but he went on about “’igher still and ’igher,” and gradually warmed to his work, so that when he came to “Thou dost float and run,” he actually tried to do it and stood on his toes and fluttered his arms! It might have answered fairly well for a turkey, to say it kindly, but it was utterly wrong for a skylark. One felt that Mr. Smith had thought it all out and taken immense trouble, and it was rather sad in a way when the professor stopped him and told him to come down. Mr. Smith instantly shrank up; and the fire of recitation went out of him and he sneaked down humbly.
“It’s the aspirate,” he said. “I can’t ’elp it. I’ve fought it for years; but it conquers me.”
Mr. Merridew, however, was most encouraging.
“Be of good cheer,” he answered. “You labour under a common affliction. Much may be done to cure it with patience and perseverance. I shall give you some exercises presently. And you must choose your recitations with closer regard to your voice and personality. The ethereal and the soaring don’t become you, Mr. Smith. Something in the rugged and masculine, and even grim manner we must find for you. ‘Eugene Aram,’ perhaps, or ‘Christmas Day in the Workhouse,’ or ‘The Brand of Cain.’”
So that finished off Mr. Smith for the time being, and one felt, in a curious sort of way, that Aristotle’s pity and terror were there right enough, though not, of course, as Mr. Merridew exactly meant.
“Now, Mr. Dexter, what can you do for us?” inquired our preceptor, and George Dexter, who had been sniggering rather basely at Mr. Smith, leapt lightly to the platform.
“‘Billy’s Rose,’ by G. R. Sims!” he said, and instantly plunged into that very pathetic and world-famous recitation. He accompanied it with a great deal of gesture, both of legs and arms, and at the end, when the rose is given to the angel Billy he suddenly snatched his carnation out from under his coat, where he had concealed it, and held the flower aloft with an expression of radiant and beatific excitement. He remained in this position for some moments, and I believe rather expected that Mr. Merridew was going to applaud; but he didn’t. All the great man said was:
“You don’t finish with a conjuring trick, my dear Mr. Dexter. The rose is a thing of the spirit. I have the honour to know the poet who wrote those beautiful verses and the rose is, as it were, allegorical—an essence of the soul. And your mannerisms are thoroughly bad and amateurish. You’ve walked at least a quarter of a mile since you began. You are too aggressive, too defiant, too noisy. You tear a passion to tatters, Mr. Dexter. You must learn to serve your apprenticeship in a humble and chastened spirit. You have been in a bad school and there is much to undo.”
Of course, though I still hated Dexter, I was really sorry for this, because I felt it would knock all the life out of him at the very start of his career. While he turned exceedingly pale and dropped his carnation on the floor and returned to us, as though he wished to shelter himself from the bitter criticism of the professor, he was not really crushed. In fact, he whispered to me the insulting word “fathead” as he rejoined us; and I knew that he and Mr. Merridew would be deadly enemies from that night forward.
Then Harold Crowe and Wilford Gooding asked if they might perform together, and Mr. Merridew permitted it; but when he found that they proposed to imitate those world-renowned music-hall entertainers, known as the “Two Macs,” he stopped them.
“No, gentlemen,” he said, “far be it from me to quarrel with the ‘Two Macs.’ They are genuine humourists, and their songs and dances and thoroughly English fun have often entertained me; but we are not here to emulate the vagaries of eccentric original comedians. Our purpose is to learn to walk first before we run, and we can develop our personal genius afterwards—if we have any.”
Unfortunately, Crowe and Gooding could do nothing but imitate the “Two Macs,” so they lost their chance for that evening; and then Leonard Brightwin took his place on the stage and recited Antony’s great speech from _Julius Cæsar_.
I had been very uneasy as my turn approached for various reasons, because, curiously enough, the only things I knew by heart were purely religious, and learned long ago in my schooldays. In a few minutes, however, my anxieties were drowned in the joy of listening to Leonard Brightwin, who spoke with great force and feeling and accompanied his words with most appropriate expressions of the face. I felt that here was one who would certainly make the rest of us look very small.
Mr. Merridew was pleased but guarded.
“Quite good,” he said. “A thousand faults, Mr. Brightwin, a thousand faults; but there’s ore in the mine and we shall bring it to the surface presently.”
I congratulated Brightwin at this high praise, and he was evidently much pleased. He started to explain his view of Mark Antony to Mr. Smith, when the professor, who had begun to tire and yawn several times, called upon me.
“Mr. Corkey, please; and be brief, Mr. Corkey, for the lesson has been quite long enough.”