Part 9
DEAR SIR: I am an actor; a follower of Thespis, an interpreter of men and emotions. To become such was the dream of my boyhood’s ambition. At an early age (I shall not state when, since you would probably be incredulous) I used, Sir, to act plays for my own amusement and afterward for the amusement of my elders. Where other children were content to play in careless fashion, without attempting anything like an exact reproduction or imitation of Nature, I was most particular in this respect. If I played Julius Cæsar, I had, to satisfy my artistic instinct, to carry a short sword and not a long one; I must needs wrap myself in a sheet and swear by the heathen gods. Nothing short of this satisfied me. I could not, as so many children do, thrust a feather duster down the neck of my jacket and play at being an Indian chief; on the contrary, I must have the feathers in my hair and my complexion darkened until I bore some actual resemblance to the aborigine. Without these aids to illusion I could not enjoy myself or get any manner of amusement from the sport. I was so close a student of details, even at that age, that in playing Indian I acquired a habit of toeing-in which caused my mother much distress and which clung to me for many months.
Nor was I less particular in the matter of my speech. I was forever mouthing sentiments and speeches culled from my father’s library, some of them, I dare say, weird and bizarre enough upon my youthful and innocent lips. However this may be, I had an abiding horror of all sorts of anachronisms, and I preferred Ben Jonson to Shakespeare for the reason that he was less frequently guilty of offending my artistic sense in this respect.
It was not long before my parents were impressed with my natural bent in this direction and encouraged me in my favorite diversion by taking the part of an audience, while my younger brother was pressed into service with his harmonica and rendered the overtures and the interludes to the best of his somewhat limited ability; for I could no more act without an orchestra than I could act without a make-up. Incidentally I came to practise the art of elocution, and it was said in our neighborhood that I could interpret _Horatio at the Bridge_ in a most telling fashion, and that not Riley himself could improve upon my rendition of _The Raggedy Man_.
With such a wealth of youthful experience, it was not surprising that I found myself at the age of twenty-one a supernumerary in a theater, nor that soon afterward I was given a speaking part and rose, before long, to the dignity of “leads” in a stock company of the first class. It was at this time that I was given my first opportunity really to distinguish myself. A prominent manager, who shall be nameless, sent for me and told me that he had chosen me to play Falstaff in a production of _Henry the Fourth_ which he intended putting on the following winter.
Elated as I was at this splendid opportunity for a display of my genius for acting, I could not forbear voicing certain conscientious scruples as to my ability to do the part justice.
“I can undoubtedly interpret the character to your most complete satisfaction,” said I to the manager, “but there is an obstacle, which, while by no means unsurmountable, must, nevertheless, be overcome at once or not at all.”
“And what is that?” he inquired.
“Why,” said I, “I am not fat enough.”
“What odds?” he answered; “while there are pads and pillows, this should be no matter for despair. You have only to stuff your doublet and pad your hose until you are as swollen as you like.”
“That,” I protested, “may do very well for your merely commercial actors who have no concern in their acting beyond the matter of drawing a salary; but I, Sir, am an _actor_, not a mere buffoon, not a vulgar clown to waddle about a stage wagging a hypocritical belly and passing off feathers for fat. If I am to play Falstaff, I will be Falstaff, in the flesh as well as in the spirit. My corporosity shall be sincere, my puffing and grunting shall be genuine; I will eat real food and drink real liquor upon your stage, and when I waddle I shall waddle as Nature intended fat men to waddle--because I can not help it. My calves shall be as natural as Sir John’s own, so that if I am pricked with the point of a rapier, I shall give utterance to a howl which is not mere mockery, but as real as a howl may well be, and which will delight the audience as no feigned howl ever could do.
“No, no! I shall not play Falstaff like a clown in a pantomime, but like that very knight himself. My performance shall be as real as the performance of Nature. I will be Sir John redivivus. Falstaff shall live again in me. He shall be I and I will be he, and there is an end of it.”
Well, Sir, to be brief, the manager was so struck with my unusual and, I may say, unaffected, sincerity, that he voluntarily advanced me a portion of my salary and agreed to my proposal that, instead of wasting valuable time in rehearsing a part in which I was already practically letter-perfect, my part in the rehearsals should be taken by a substitute, while I retired to the country and devoted myself to my labor of love--to the task of putting on so much flesh as would be necessary to act with fidelity the pursy knight errant. And this I did to so good purpose that from my normal weight of about one hundred and ninety pounds, I soon came to weigh upward of two hundred and eighty, and was as fat as any one could wish when we opened in _Henry the Fourth_ in the Autumn.
To say, Sir, that my performance was a success is to do scant justice to the literary ability of William Shakespeare and to my own histrionic powers. It was not merely a success--it was a triumph! Ah, Sir, if I could but whisper in your ear the name by which I was known in those days of superlative glory, you would recall in the flash of an eye the days when the whole of the English-speaking world was convulsed with merriment at my performance and when press and public were vying with each other to do me honor! Never was such a performance of Falstaff given before, and never, I fear, will such a performance be given again. I was Falstaff to the very life! Falstaff in person and not to be mistaken for any one else. You could have sworn that I had stepped bodily out of the pages of the folio edition and thrust my way into the theater of my own volition, usurping the place of the actor.
Four whole seasons we played to crowded houses--New York, Chicago, San Francisco and London--and everywhere the critics all agreed that never had such a perfect Falstaff been seen before. This we followed with _The Merry Wives of Windsor_, repeating our success for two seasons, so that for six years I was known to every actor and patron of the theater as the greatest Falstaff that ever was.
But Fate, alas! however prodigal she may appear for a time, is not constant in her favors. All things come to an end sooner or later, and our production of _The Merry Wives_ ran its course in time. How well do I remember that last night of all--the glitter of the electrics overhead, the glare of the footlights, the music of the orchestra, and, oh, above all else, the thunderous applause that greeted me when I appeared before the curtain, clad in trunks and doublet, to make my farewell speech! There ended our production, and there ended my greatness and my life. My grossness I have still, but my greatness has fled forever! Disconsolate I wander through the haunts of stageland, a fat pale ghost of my former self; a Falstaff out of place and out of time; a Falstaff without jollity or joy. I, Sir, have become that thing which I hate above all other things in the world, I have become an Anachronism!
Conceive, if you can, my consternation when I discovered my dilemma. Having no further need for my excessive flesh, I sought to reduce my weight only to find that I could not lose it! Six years of playing Falstaff had made me Falstaff for good or ill. No fighter of the prize-ring, no beauty of the court, ever labored as I labored to struggle back to slimness. No Hamlet ever cried more earnestly than I,
“Oh, that this too, too solid flesh would melt!”
Like Sisyphus, I toiled for months with my burden, rolling off flesh only to have it roll on again, until at last I gave up in despair.
No manager would employ me to play for him--I was too fat. Too fat to act, too fat to play at any part but one. Once only since that time have I tried to obtain an engagement and that was when I saw an advertisement of a revival of my own great play, _Henry the Fourth_. But would you believe it, Sir, the manager had the impudence to laugh in my face, to deny the truth of my story and scoff at my insistence upon my identity. He called me, Sir, _a fat slob_! In desperation I tried a Dime Museum, only to be told that no “fat freaks” were employed who weighed less than three hundred and fifty pounds. At last I fell into my present disgraceful situation; I was employed by a restaurant-keeper as a decoy. In the window of one of the cheapest and vilest cafés in this city I sit for eight hours daily drawing a crowd about the place while I toy with a knife and fork and pretend to eat of a meal that I would not feed my most bitter enemy. I do not eat it. I can not eat it. And so, Sir, here I sit each day, a mere husk of my former self, a hulk, a wrecked Leviathan! A fraud and a freak; a delusion and a snare. This have I suffered in consequence of my devotion to an ideal--I who was for six years the greatest Falstaff the world has ever known!
T. P.
THE REWARD OF MERIT
_To the Editor of The Idler._
DEAR SIR: I am an ashman, or, as they call me nowadays, a scavenger. It may appear to you, Sir, a queer thing that a man in my station in life should address a letter to an editor and upon such a subject, but when I have made you acquainted with the facts of my case, I think it will not seem so strange.
It is true that I am now employed as a scavenger, but I was formerly the occupant of a very different station in life; I was formerly a physician. I wish to lay before you what I consider the causes of my descent in the social scale. When a man who has once been a member of an honored profession is reduced to manual labor of a peculiarly disagreeable sort, the common opinion is like to be that he is in some way responsible for his own downfall; that he has fallen a victim to drink or drugs, to a passion for gambling, or to some other injurious habit. In my own case, I will not deny that the change in my circumstances is probably due to my own conduct, though I do assure you that it was not caused by my indulgence in the habits which I have mentioned above. To be brief, Sir, I am of the opinion that my present poverty and obscurity is nothing more nor less than the reward of merit.
It has been my observation that most of the favorite theories of the human race are erroneous. They come into being as mere suggestions, they grow into convictions, they thrive as platitudes, and they die as superstitions. There have been millions of them since the world began, and I have no doubt there will be millions of others before the last man has vanished from the face of the earth. Some of these theories live on long after they have been clearly demonstrated to be without foundation in fact, and sometimes they work great harm to the innocent persons who accept and act upon them in good faith. Such has been my sad experience, and the theory which was responsible for my present unpleasant situation was the theory that merit is always rewarded.
As a boy I was of a confiding and trusting nature. I believed all that was told me, and I put especial faith in the admonitions and advice of those who were set to instruct me in manners and morals. One of the first lessons I learned was that merit is always rewarded; and another, that industry is the certain road to success and advancement. These things I firmly believed to be true. Sundays, when other boys of my acquaintance stole away to go fishing or swimming, I went to Sunday-school, firm in the conviction that my virtue and self-denial would be amply rewarded, though I was a bit hazy as to the manner in which this would come about. It was often a severe temptation to hear the truants boasting of the pleasures they had enjoyed at the swimming-pool or at the fork of the creek where they went to angle. At the end of my first summer of Sunday-school, I was given a crude picture card showing two cows of peculiar construction who appeared to be enjoying themselves immensely in the very river I had shunned so religiously. Upon this card there was printed a conspicuous legend: “The Reward of Merit.”
While this result of my season of piety was not what I had expected, I continued to hope on until I had acquired quite a collection of similar cards, some of them varied a little as to subject, but all of the same order of art, and all bearing the familiar legend. Being of a naturally optimistic and sanguine disposition, I soon convinced myself that my mistake lay in looking for material rewards in return for spiritual industry.
When I entered the profession of medicine, I still clung to my theory of the reward of merit, and no sooner did I get a patient than I set to work to cure him as quickly as possible. If a patient really had nothing the matter with him, I sent him about his business. I was not a nerve specialist and I did not care to be bothered with hypochondriacs. Though I started with an unusually good practise for a young physician, the result of this course of conduct was that I found myself in two years’ time sitting idle in my office with my waiting-room absolutely empty. I had cured all my patients who were really ill and I had offended all who only thought they were ill. It seems that one can not offend a man more than by telling him he is well when he prefers to think that he is unwell. My patients who had been cured had no further need of me, and those whom I had refused to treat had no further use for me, so that the tongue of malice completed the work which my own energy had begun. And thus, for the second time, my theory of the reward of merit had failed to work out. Having made one failure as a doctor, I could never again establish myself in the practise of medicine. Wherever I went, the story of my failure had preceded me, so that presently I found myself dropping down and down in the social scale until finally I awoke one morning to find myself a scavenger.
“Now,” said I to myself, “I have touched bottom and I must presently go up again like a man who sinks in the water.” But my hopes were not realized. I remained a collector and remover of garbage. My study of hygiene had taught me the evils of filth and I could not, therefore, neglect my work as a less intelligent scavenger might have done. I knew that my clients were depending upon me, in a great degree, to protect them from typhoid and kindred evils, and even though I realized that this dependence was more or less unconscious upon their part, I could no more have shirked my responsibility than I could have gone into their houses and killed them in cold blood. So I went to work earnestly and I flatter myself that there is no more thoroughgoing workman in the whole body of scavengers than myself.
Since I have been engaged in this work I have made another discovery. I have discovered that industry is by no means a sure road to advancement. When my work is well done I am paid, but I am not complimented. The thoroughness of my methods does not attract the attention of my clients. Nobody seeks me out with a proffer of more congenial employment. Everybody appears to take it for granted that I like to collect garbage. I do not. I have never been a collector of anything from choice. I used to think that any man who collected stamps must be lacking in intelligence, but I see now that one may be engaged in collecting worse things than stamps. Nobody says anything at all about my work unless something goes wrong. And this, I believe, is usually the case.
I recently read a copy of the _Memoirs of Lieutenant-Colonel Paul von Pulitz_, which I retrieved from the ash-can of one of my clients who is of a literary turn, and it was through his receptacle for discarded matter, by the way, that I first made the acquaintance of your excellent publication.
In these _Memoirs_, which are unusually interesting in many respects, I came upon an anecdote which seems to have a direct bearing upon the question which we are now considering. It appears that Colonel von Pulitz was discussing with a number of other officers the chances and mischances of a military career. Several of the officers had volunteered the causes to which they attributed their success. Colonel von Pulitz then related this anecdote, the truth of which he indorses elsewhere, and in this he is borne out by the editor of the autobiography, Professor Rudolph Ubermann, of Berlin University.
“When a young man,” writes Colonel von Pulitz, “I fell into disgrace with my family because of a certain youthful escapade--no matter what--and so forfeited my opportunity for entering the Prussian Army as an officer. I therefore determined to gain by my wits what I had lost by my folly. I was, as you who know me can testify, an unusually tall and fine-looking young man. Now it occurred to me that if I could once attract the attention of the king (he is here referring to Frederick the Great) he would undoubtedly desire me as a recruit for his ‘tall’ regiment, and if I had an opportunity to explain to him my situation, I might, after all, secure my coveted commission. I therefore secured a situation as a servant in the king’s own household, under a fictitious name, of course; and I was highly delighted when I found that I had been delegated as one of the waiters at table, for, thought I, now is my great opportunity certainly at hand. But alas for my hopes! The king bestowed upon me no notice whatever, and for all the attention my height secured from his majesty, I might have been a dwarf.
“So it went on for weeks, and I had nearly despaired of my commission when I hit upon the audacious scheme which solved the problem. I determined to attract the king’s notice at any cost, and when next I waited upon him, I deliberately pretended to stumble, and with an air of awkwardness I emptied down the neck of his majesty a plate of exceedingly hot soup. In a moment there was an uproar. The king was in a fury of temper and the majordomo was in a fair way to die of fright and chagrin, but my purpose was accomplished. The king had looked at me. He observed my height and my aristocratic bearing. He questioned me, and I told him my whole story frankly, omitting nothing but the ruse whereby I had brought myself to his notice. I secured my commission in his regiment, and from that time on I advanced steadily. The king never forgot me, but kept a friendly eye upon me. He once said in my presence: ‘Gentlemen, I never see a plate of hot soup that I do not think of my good friend the Lieutenant-Colonel Paul von Pulitz.’”
Now, Mr. _Idler_, I have no opportunity for spilling hot soup down the necks of my clients and my conscience will not permit me to attract their notice by gross neglect of duty. My effective work has failed to bring upon me their favorable regard. Finding myself so situated, and being, even yet, hopeful of some opportunity for bettering myself, I have written you this letter. I have done so in the hope that it may meet the eye of some one of my clients, perhaps that of the literary gentleman through whose barrel I first made your acquaintance and the acquaintance of the ingenious Lieutenant-Colonel Paul von Pulitz.
I, am, Sir, Your humble servant, CHARLES CLINKER.
THE BLESSINGS OF THE BLIND
_To the Editor of The Idler._
DEAR SIR: Those who are blessed, as the saying is, with two eyes and the gift of sight, are much given to expressing sympathy with, and sorrow for, the blind. It would be churlish to quarrel with so unselfish a sentiment, for it is, indeed, very good-natured of those who are busily engaged in seeing the sights of the world to spare the time and the thought which they give to the sightless. Yet I often wonder if the blind do not sometimes question, as I do, if a great deal of this sympathy is not wasted?
I, Sir, am blind. Totally and irretrievably blind. I have been blind all my life, having been, as the Irish say, “dark” from my birth. Born blind, in fact. My “affliction,” as it is called, being natural, I was born with no blemish to betray my infirmity, and it has so happened upon several occasions that, being thrown into the company of those who had not previously been warned of my condition, I have been compelled to make them acquainted with it myself. This information has invariably been the signal for apology and sympathetic pity. From which I infer that men generally feel that the blind are to be pitied and consoled. Also I have read a great deal of the hardship of being blind, though I have never, I confess, been quite able to see wherein that hardship lay. You are surprised, perhaps, to hear me say that I have “read” of this, but I assure you there is no reason to be surprised. If you are at all acquainted with the progress of science, as I suppose you are, you must have heard of raised type. Oh, yes, I read quite as naturally as you, yourself, though I accomplish with my fingers what you do with your eyes.
The result of my reading has been that I have come seriously to question the theory that sight is necessary to human happiness and efficiency. It has been borne in upon me that men possessed of two good eyes are often apparently unable to make use of them. I read that men often fall in love with women who seem, to all others, extremely ugly; and that women as often do the same by men. And not only that, but that they are quite frequently completely deceived in the characters of the persons whom they marry, women discovering their husbands to be bullies, and men finding their wives to be viragoes and shrews; and all this when the nuptial knot is tied hard and fast and the damage is beyond repair.
If eyes are really of as much use as those who see seem to think them, how is it possible that people should make such mistakes? Blind as I am, such a thing could never happen to me, nor do I think it could befall any sightless person; certainly not one who has been, as I have, blind from birth. I know the voice of a shrew the moment she opens her mouth, no matter how pleasantly she may speak at the moment. I can point out to you the drunkard, the hypocrite and the boor the moment I have heard them speak. In the tone of his voice every man carries his true certificate of character, be it good or bad. An ill-tempered man may conceal his vice from you, who look only at his face and judge his speech by his words, but he can not deceive me, for I know him by his voice. I have been engaged in business for the last thirty years and I have never once been taken in by a swindler. I have never yet been mistaken in the character of a man with whom I dealt. How many _seeing_ men can say as much?