Chapter 13

At one stage of his career, Lackaye's chief claim to distinction was his refusal, while a member of Daly's company, to accept a part to which Mr. Daly had assigned him. The part was _Oliver_ in "As You Like It," given to him after he had made a hit as _O'Donnell Don_ in "The Great Unknown."

It was the joking remark made at the time, that for the _Oliver_ Mr. Daly offered him, Lackaye handed him a _Roland_ in the shape of his resignation.

ROYLE TOOK MANY BUFFETS.

Author of "The Squaw Man" Has a Run of Ill-Luck to Thank for His Success as a Playwright.

Edwin Milton Royle, author of "The Squaw Man," is another of that countless army brought up to the law and who sidetracked themselves to the stage. He spent his youth in a place that seems to breed actors so freely--Salt Lake City--where he attended the same Presbyterian school as Maude Adams. He is now on the sunny side of fifty, having graduated from Princeton in 1883.

Amateur theatricals at college are responsible for the lure that drew him to the professional footlights. After Princeton he went to continue his studies in Edinburgh, and there he took prominent part in a great performance of the students that had among its spectators some of the most prominent men in Great Britain.

On his return to America he set about studying law in New York, but he did not really settle down to it. The inclination toward the stage had by this time become too strong to be resisted. He began to make a tour of the manager's offices in search of an opening.

In this he had no better luck than usually falls to the lot of the unknown. Men in power along the Rialto did not know what he could do, and it was not to be expected that many of them would take the time to let him prove his abilities. At last, however, he secured, through Eugene W. Presbrey, an interview with the late A.M. Palmer, who gave him the small part of the boy in "Young Mrs. Winthrop," at the Madison Square Theater. From that he drifted to other small parts in the company of Edwin Booth, while the latter was at the Fifth Avenue Theater, and the next season he was with Booth and Barrett during their engagement at the Broadway.

Short on Words.

"You can imagine the nature of my rôles," said Mr. Royle, in relating to me this portion of his career, "by the following incident: At the end of the season it was decided to bring out a souvenir of the engagement, with signatures by all the people in the company. Each signature was to be accompanied by a line from his or her part. When it came my turn to write, my part was so short that all I had to say in the piece went down as my contribution, in the shape of--

"'Oh, Cæsar! No, by no means!'"

And here began the apparent strokes of ill luck which in the end have proved blessings in disguise. The first one was the failure of Mrs. Potter to come to this country for a tour on one occasion when Royle had been engaged in her support. He did not know that he was free until September, when it was too late to seek other positions.

Thrown out of a job, he turned his attention to playwriting, having at one time thought seriously of taking up literature as a profession. He wrote "Friends," and brought it out in New York the next summer, with a capital furnished by a Western uncle.

The play made a hit after a rather slow start, and he played it on the road for some seasons, following it with another, "Captain Impudence," and later by a farce, "My Wife's Husbands." The latter made a decided hit, but Mr. Royle was unable to obtain road bookings for it owing to a glut of attractions kept out of New York by the unfinished condition of two theaters which should have been ready for them. Shows booked for them, with companies all engaged, had to be placed somewhere pending the completion of the Lyceum and the Hudson, so that the dates were all filled by the time it was known that "My Wife's Husbands" had caught on. In this crisis, Nat Goodwin, who had just come a cropper with a new offering of his own, rose up and bought the rights to the play, but failed to make good in the part himself and shelved it after two weeks' trial.

Meanwhile, one night when he couldn't sleep, Royle got to thinking about the Indians he used to see when a boy at the Indian reservation not far from Salt Lake. And then there formed in his mind the germ idea of "The Squaw Man"--the Englishman tied to the Indian wife when the way was clear for him otherwise to go back home.

The next morning he told his wife--Selena Fetter--of the scheme, adding that he thought of making a play out of it.

"Oh, don't," she begged him. "Can't you think of something pleasanter? You know 'Friends' gained all its success out of the comedy there was in it."

So he did nothing in the matter then, but later, when he was asked to write a skit for the Lambs' Gambol, he used this idea for a short piece, which went so well that it was used afterward at the annual public gambol, where it repeated its hit.

Royle was now in vaudeville, having cut down "Captain Impudence" to the required time limits. He decided to follow this with "The Squaw Man," and here is where once more his good luck in the guise of bad stepped upon the scene.

A Fortunate Rejection.

The vaudeville managers refused positively to consider a sketch containing more than four people; Royle could not cut "The Squaw Man" to fewer than ten. Had either he or they given way, the four-act play that has proved one of the big New York hits of the season might have remained a sketch and spent its life on the road, instead of tarrying for six months on Broadway.

In this deadlock it occurred to Royle that he would expand the play and try it in a new field, but even after this was done he failed to find a purchaser. Nat Goodwin, to whom he sent it first, turned it down, and Charles Frohman could not read it within the time limit set.

But Royle had active agents in his brother actors, who had seen the thing in its Lambs' Club performance, and who were all anxious to play the leading part. Whenever they got the chance they spoke of the piece to their respective managers, and in this way Royle finally got four of these gentlemen to consent to listen to a reading of the play. The result was the purchase of the rights by Mr. Tyler, of the Liebler Company, on terms which have netted Mr. Royle royalties amounting close to a thousand dollars a week.

HOPPER WAS AN "ANGEL."

The Tall Comedian Exchanged His Inheritance for a Bowl of Thespian Pottage, but Doesn't Regret It.

De Wolf Hopper's father was a Philadelphia lawyer, and it was intended that Will (his real name) should follow in the paternal footsteps so far as his career was concerned. And, by the way, more men have turned away from the sheepskin to the footlights than from any other one vocation. Reckon them up and you would have a sufficiency of leading men to outfit plays for every theater in New York, oversupplied as that city is with them.

But to return to Hopper.

At the crucial period, the elder Hopper died and the son inherited some money. As there were no automobiles in those days for him to blow it in on, he invested in a much more foolish and infinitely more hazardous luxury--a dramatic company of his own. He had the itch to act, and, being unable to get on the stages controlled by others, he decided that now was his chance to manage a stage of his own.

And what do you suppose he sent himself out in? Nothing less than Robertson's "Caste," with "little Willie" as _Eccles_! Of course the troupe went to smash, but young Hopper had tasted of the life, and there was no staying him now, not even the Quaker blood in his veins. As a matter of fact, the gulf that was dug between himself and his family in those days has never been bridged, a rare exception nowadays, when even the most austere stand ready to forgive theatrical connection--provided the prodigal has sown success along with his wild oats.

The boy--he was scarcely out of his 'teens--contrived to obtain a job as _Pittacus Green_ in "Hazel Kirke," and a song he sang off stage inspired Annie Louise Cary with the belief that he might do well in opera. He actually studied for some time with the Metropolitan in view, and then compromised by taking the barytone part with McCaull in the Sousa opera, "Desirée." Mark Smith fell ill at a critical moment, and, as it is easier to replace a singer than a comedian, Hopper was put in his place, and has worked his legs and his antics in excess of his singing voice ever since.

He began his career as a star in "Castles in the Air," not much of a success, but followed it with "Wang," which set him on his feet good and hard.

"Wang" lasted him two seasons, and he followed it with "Panjandrums," to my mind a far more entertaining hodge-podge of music and nonsense. In that view the public did not agree with me, for Hopper lost several thousand dollars in pushing the thing to a long run in New York. After that he became _Dr. Syntax_ in a musical version of "Cinderella at School," which he soon exchanged for the biggest hit in his career--"El Capitan."

MISS ALLEN BEGAN AT TOP.

Essayed Rôle of Leading Woman at Sixteen in a Play in Which Her Real and Stage Father Were One.

In one sense of the term, Viola Allen never began at all. She plunged right into the midst of her career. To put it differently, she has been a leading woman from the first time she set foot upon the stage.

Her father and mother were both in the profession. Her father, C. Leslie Allen, is acting yet, being with his daughter in "The Toast of the Town." He was doing the father--a specialty of his--in "Esmeralda" at the Madison Square Theater, when Annie Russell, the leading woman, fell ill.

Viola Allen was at that time barely sixteen--just the age of the character. She had been about the theater a good deal with her father, and in the sudden emergency it was suggested that she should play the part.

"They came to me with the proposition," said Miss Allen, in describing the incident, "and I was so absorbed in the story that I began with all eagerness to study the part, without seeming to realize all that it meant to play it. I shall never forget my sensations on that first night when I walked out on the stage in response to the cue, which, as it happens, was given to me by my own father.

"At rehearsals, of course, the auditorium had been dark and empty. Now it was a glow of light and a sea of faces. This is what I should have expected, but somehow I had failed to do so, and now, being confronted with the thing, my wits seemed to fail me.

"My lines went from my memory, but luckily I did not have to speak them until I was close to my father. He, realizing that I must have stage fright, whispered the words to me, and as soon as I heard them I was all right again. I plunged back into my absorption in the story I was helping to depict, and went through to the end without any further trouble."

With "Joe" Jefferson.

After her term in "Esmeralda," Miss Allen played Shakespeare leads with John McCullough and the elder Salvini, and then became first assistant to Joseph Jefferson in "The Rivals" and "The Heir at Law." From this she passed under the management of Charles Frohman, and helped lay the foundations of his fortunes, along with Henry Miller, in "Shenandoah," and from its second season and for many years thereafter these two were closely identified with the conspicuous position won for the stock company at the Empire, where Miss Allen's _Rosamund_ in "Sowing the Wind" took the town by storm.

In this connection, it is an odd circumstance that the part Miss Allen most enjoyed playing in the whole Empire list was that of _Audrie Lisden_ in Henry Arthus Jones's "Michael and his Lost Angel," a play that ran for only twelve nights in New York, and had been no more successful in London.

Miss Allen handed in her resignation from the company after the production of "The Conquerors," a play of which she wholly disapproved, and she was then starred by the Lieblers in "The Christian," the dramatizing of which was her own suggestion, and from which several people reaped fortunes. When, three years ago, she deliberately cut loose from the Hall Caine type of drama in order to follow her own personal inclinations and take up Shakespeare, she was looked upon almost as a martyr to the cause of art.

Monotony the Bane of the Footlights.

And yet the outcome would seem to prove that she was only a shrewd woman of good common sense, after all. Her managers followed "The Eternal City" with Hall Caine's "Prodigal Son," and lost mighty sums upon it.

It is interesting to recall that before Miss Allen finally decided on "The Christian" with which to inaugurate her stellar career she was minded to use a version of Longfellow's "Courtship of Miles Standish". She is very bookishly inclined, and has said that there are two things she prefers to acting--to be an author or to serve as a trained nurse.

Nine years ago, when she was at the height of her success at the Empire, she was asked by a certain paper to state what in her opinion was the one drawback to the full enjoyment of life on the stage, and her prompt answer was "Monotony, the deadly routine engendered by the long run."

WILSON CAME WITH CLOGS.

Comedian Might Have Gone in for Tragedy Had the Wind Not Blown His Credentials Into a River.

According to a story current some years since, which may or may not be a press-agent yarn, the only reason Francis Wilson is not a tragedian is because a gust of wind blew into the Schuylkill his letter of introduction to the late E.L. Davenport. Like Hopper, Wilson is a native of Philadelphia, where he was born in 1854. The nimbleness of his legs sent him to the stage, where he began as a clog-dancer with a minstrel troupe in the farce, "The Virginia Mummy."

It was during this engagement that he conceived the ambition for the legitimate and obtained from his manager the letter to Davenport, which blew out of his hand as he was reading it on a bridge in Fairmount Park. He claims he hadn't the courage to ask for another one, but struck out for better things later on in a different direction. But this was after he had formed a partnership with James Mackin, with whom he toured the country as one of a song-and-dance team. The two played a long engagement in New York with the San Francisco Minstrels at their "opera house," now the Princess Theater.

Instructor in Fencing.

Around the Centennial year he returned to Philadelphia and set about realizing his aspirations by obtaining an engagement in very small parts at Mrs. John Drew's Arch Street Theater. This brought him in only ten dollars a week against the fifty he had been getting for clog work. But he made himself popular with the members of the company, and eked out his pay by giving them lessons in fencing and boxing, arts in which he was specially proficient. Indeed, he had just won in a contest, at what is now Madison Square Garden, the title of amateur champion swordsman of America.

These friends in the Drew company aided him in obtaining better parts, and the next year he was engaged as utility man at the Chestnut Street Theater, which then had a stock company. A year with Annie Pixley and another as the _Baron_ in "Our Goblins" brought him up to his engagement as comedian by McCaull for the Casino troupe, where he made his notable hit as _Cadeaux_, one of the two thieves in "Erminie."

It was but natural that his prodigious success should suggest the idea to Wilson of striking out for himself. He had saved a great deal of money, and the year after Hopper became a star Wilson launched out at the same theater--the Broadway--in "The Oolah."

Snatched Victory from Defeat.

The curtain fell on what even the actors were forced to admit to themselves and one another was a failure. Gloom thick as night pervaded the region behind. For a while Wilson sat there with his head in his hands; then his indomitable courage asserted itself, and he sprang up with the exclamation:

"We have got to make this go. Let's get to work at it."

His company stood nobly by him. His leading woman, Marie Jansen, and the other principals, begged him not to consider them in the alterations, but to give the public more of himself. With much cutting and slashing of the book and innumerable rehearsals, the thing was whipped into shape, and turned out one of the successes of the season. It was followed the next year by "The Merry Monarch," which placed Wilson securely on the throne he continued to occupy until last year, when he decided to step down--or rather up, as no doubt he would prefer to put it, from musical to straight comedy.

Apropos of Wilson's beginnings, a well-known writer on dramatic topics was "reminiscing" some time since, and recalled the wigging he had received in his early days--along in '72 or '73--when he was a very young city editor of the Buffalo _Evening Post_. He had gone to Dan Shelby's Terrace Theater, and devoted considerable space the next day to praising the work of two men who took part in the variety show there current, and it was for this eulogy he had been called down by his chief. One of the men was Denman Thompson, who was using "Uncle Josh" in its crude, one-act form; the other was Francis Wilson, who was doubling song and dance with Jimmie Mackin.

TWO IMMORTAL HYMNS.

Interesting Stories of the Origin of World-famous Sacred Lyrics Which Have Been Sung in Every Country on the Globe.

The two favorite hymns, "Lead, Kindly Light," and "Abide With Me," were each written in circumstances which lend them peculiar significance. In 1833 John Henry Newman, afterward Cardinal Newman, left England in extreme ill-health. "My servant thought I was dying," he relates, "and begged for my last directions. I gave them as he wished; but I said: 'I shall not die, for I have not sinned against light, I have not sinned against light!' I never have been able to make out at all what I meant." This was just before he started upon his journey. He was still in a very feeble state, suffering from bodily weakness and mental depression, when one June evening he was becalmed in an orange-boat on the Mediterranean, in sight of Garibaldi's home on the island of Caprera. As he lay there he composed the beautiful hymn "Lead, Kindly Light."

Did the language of his fevered mind flash back upon him as he saw the shore lights on Caprera? The lights led the boat safely to harbor, and he returned to England. The mental darkness with which he had been struggling also cleared for him, for it was just after his return that the Oxford Movement began. He was a leader in that movement until he went over to the Church of Rome in 1845.

Henry Francis Lyte, curate of Brixham, in Devonshire, England, from 1823 until his death, in 1847, wrote many "hymns for his little ones, and hymns for his hardy fishermen, and hymns for sufferers like himself." His health declined as the years passed, and it was seen that the climate of the Devon coast was too harsh for his frail constitution. But he was loath to leave his parishioners, and, lingering at his post, could not be persuaded to go to Italy until it was too late for the change to save him.

He held a last communion service and delivered his solemn, pathetic parting words. Then, dragging himself wearily to his room, he wrote the hymn "Abide With Me," a most affecting expression of the faith of a dying man. Not long afterward he died at Nice, France. Of all his hymns, "Abide With Me" is best remembered. Like "Lead, Kindly Light," it is a hymn of comfort and help. Always the most helpful words have come from those who have themselves most felt the need of help.

LEAD, KINDLY LIGHT.

BY CARDINAL NEWMAN.

Lead, kindly light, amid the encircling gloom; Lead thou me on! The night is dark and I am far from home; Lead thou me on! Keep thou my feet! I do not ask to see The distant scene--one step's enough for me.

I was not ever thus, nor prayed that thou Shouldst lead me on. I loved to choose and see my path, but now Lead thou me on! I loved the garish day, and, spite of fears, Pride ruled my will. Remember not past years.

So long thy power has blest me, sure it still Will lead me on O'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent, till The night is gone. And with the morn those angel faces smile Which I have loved long since and lost awhile.

ABIDE WITH ME.

BY HENRY FRANCIS LYTE.

Abide with me! Fast falls the eventide; The darkness deepens: Lord, with me abide! When other helpers fail, and comforts flee, Help of the helpless, oh, abide with me!

Swift to its close ebbs out life's little day; Earth's joys grow dim, its glories pass away; Change and decay in all around I see: O thou, who changest not, abide with me!

Not a brief glance I beg, a passing word, But as thou dwell'st with thy disciples, Lord, Familiar, condescending, patient, free-- Come, not to sojourn, but abide, with me!

Come not in terrors, as the King of kings; But kind and good, with healing in thy wings, Tears for all woes, a heart for every plea: Come, Friend of sinners, and thus bide with me!

Thou on my head in early youth didst smile; And, though rebellious and perverse meanwhile, Thou hast not left me, oft as I left thee: On to the close, O Lord, abide with me!

I need thy presence every passing hour. What but thy grace can foil the Tempter's power? Who like thyself my guide and stay can be? Through cloud and sunshine, oh, abide with me!

I fear no foe with thee at hand to bless: Ills have no weight, and tears no bitterness. Where is death's sting? where, grave, thy victory? I triumph still, if thou abide with me.

Hold thou thy cross before my closing eyes; Shine through the gloom, and point me to the skies. Heaven's morning breaks, and earth's vain shadows flee: In life and death, O Lord, abide with me!

FROM THE LIPS OF ANANIAS.

A Collection of Tales for Which Belief is Respectfully Solicited, But Which Sophisticated Readers are Likely to Cite as Evidence of the Fact That Truth Has Lost Much of Her Youthful Charm and Many Admirers.

SPEAKING OF FLOODS.

An old soldier, whose cherished name was that of two of our presidents, died here in Washington recently, and his passing reminds me of a story I once heard him tell. Veteran of '61 as he was, he had listened patiently to the very long story a youthful veteran of the Spanish War told. The account of hardships left him unmoved.

"Just after the Johnstown flood, my boy," said he, "there was a man in the next world who went about telling everybody how that Johnstown affair had sent him where he was.

"His listeners hung on his words--all of them, that is, except a quiet looking little man who seemed so little impressed that every time the Johnstown man got through he merely looked bored and said, 'Oh, shucks!'

"The Johnstown man got tired of it after a while. It got on his nerves to have anybody act as if what happened at Johnstown wasn't of any importance. No matter how he told his story, the quiet looking little man merely said, 'Oh, shucks.'

"At last the Johnstown man spoke to a fellow who had been there a long time about it.

"'Say,' said he, 'who is that little man who keeps saying "shucks?"'

"'Who?' said the man who had been there a long time. 'Do you mean the fellow over there? Why his name's Noah.'"--_Washington Post._

STRONG WATER.

Mr. Edison was once asked to send a phonographic cylinder to a fair. He sent this reply: