Part 5

I have traveled much in foreign countries, but Philadelphia is the only place in which I was compelled to beg the protection of the American flag. I had been engaged by Mr. John Wanamaker to “say something” to his great Sunday-school on two consecutive evenings. Being a New Yorker, I did not care to spend the intervening hours in Philadelphia, so after leaving the platform the first evening, I took the ten o’clock train for home. As haste was necessary, I merely changed my evening coat and vest for street clothes. In New York next day, I changed my black trousers for gray, attended to so much business that I had to take a late afternoon train, and did not realize until it was almost time to go on the platform, in a “swallow-tail” coat that I had no black trousers. Worse still my figure was such that I could not be fitted from any clothing store in the city. For a moment my invention was at a standstill, but the people were not, and the hall was filling rapidly. I consulted the committee hastily, and though they were greatly amused by my suggestion, they acted upon it promptly: they moved a table to the centre of the platform, draped it with the stars and stripes, and all the people on the platform arranged themselves, so that I could be unseen as I passed behind them to the table, where only my coat and vest could be seen, the objectionable trousers being hidden by my country’s flag.

Small wonder that I have a merry remembrance of Philadelphia.

VII

MY FIRST TRIP TO LONDON

Large Hopes vs. Small Means.—At the Savage Club.—My First Engagement.—Within an Ace of Losing It.—Alone in a Crowd.—A Friendly Face to the Rescue.—The New York Welcome to a Fine Fellow.—One English Way With Jokes.—People Who are Slow to Laugh.—Disturbing Elements.—Cold Audiences.—Following a Suicide.

When first I visited London I carried large hopes and a small purse and the latter became so much smaller in the course of time, that I had to live on next to nothing; to be exact, I restricted myself to fifty cents a day. For seventy-five cents a week I had a little room in Tottenham Court Road—a very narrow-minded room indeed, with furnishings to match. Cold, damp weather was the only guest or companion I had, and the room’s carpet served two purposes; it covered the floor by day and the bed at night. From the tiny window there was a long vista of chimney-pots, which, next to an array of ready-made coffins, offer as disquieting a spectacle as a homesick boy can gaze upon. The boy Chatterton came to my mind many times in those days, and although I hoped his fate would not be mine, I nevertheless learned at times how annoying hunger may be when it passes the point of anticipation of “a square meal.”

One treasure did much to sustain me; it was a card, given me by an American friend before I left home, introducing me to the Savage Club, which is similar to the Lotos Club of New York. I had the freedom of the Savage at all times, and was allowed to have my letters addressed there—a privilege which literally “saved my face,” for I would never have dared to pose as an entertainer if my address had been Tottenham Court Road. I had good clothes and I kept a stiff upper lip, so no member of the club knew of my financial straits. I was careful to refrain from forcing myself upon any of the club members who had been so kind as to notice me, yet dinner invitations from some of these good fellows were all that saved my slender bank balance from extinction.

Despite my own economy and the hospitality of others there came a day when Melancholy—with a large M,—threatened to mark me for her own, for my sole assets, excepting my clothing, were six dollars and my return ticket; the latter I could not convert into cash without burning my bridge behind me—and the Atlantic is too wide for a return trip by raft. Just as this crisis had made me as miserable as any man could be, I received the following dispatch from a club member who probably had been present at some of the volunteer entertainments I had given at the Savage.

“What are your terms? Come to-night; No. 5 Princess Gate.”

I quickly wired back: “Will come. Terms ten guineas.”

For the remainder of the day I stayed away from the club, and tormented myself with fears that I had named too high a price, though I had always believed there was wisdom in Emerson’s advice—“Hitch your wagon to a star.” I resolved to go that night to 5 Princess Gate; then, if they had canceled the engagement, I could honestly say I had not received notice.

In the evening I made a careful toilet, using my last bit of clean linen, and took a twopenny ’bus to my destination. The powdered footman who opened the door said he would bring his Lordship’s secretary to see me. The secretary came in, much embarrassed, and said he had wired me that other arrangements had been made.

“I have been so busy all day,” I replied, “that I’ve not called at the club; consequently I did not get your message. What was the trouble?—my terms?”

“We have engaged a different entertainer,” he replied evasively.

“But, you see,” I said, with my heart in my mouth, which had need of something more edible, “your telegram this morning told me to come, so my evening is lost. As I am here, suppose I go up and do what I can. As to my fee—oh, I’m quite willing to leave that to his lordship.”

Just then I heard his lordship’s voice saying, “Come in, Mr. Wilder.” He seemed to have grasped the situation, and with the tact and courtesy which is never lacking in English gentlemen, he quickly made me feel entirely at ease. He also offered me refreshments, and as I had not dined, I gladly accepted. That I might not be alone at table, he kindly waited with me. I told him many stories, hoping he would not notice my appetite, but I noticed it myself so persistently that I felt that his every glance said distinctly:

“You poor little devil, how hungry you are!”

But I persisted; I was conscious of a need to be well fortified, for I had heard all sorts of stories about entertaining at social functions in England—stories of arrays of old ladies in low-necked gowns displaying more bones than beauty,—of a subdued patter of gloved hands in place of real applause—of “the stony British stare,” which, really, is never encountered in society, so I felt like a soldier about to face fearful odds. I was so wrought upon by my fears that when I did appear it seemed to me that there was not in that great drawing-room a single sympathetic face at which I might play; all appeared to wear an expression which said:

“Now, then;—make us laugh if you can.”

I began to feel as if I was looking into the rear end of an ice wagon, but suddenly my eye found a man’s face which filled me with courage—a face full of kindness, humor and sympathy. It seemed to say:

“My poor boy, you’re in hard luck, and I’m going to give you all the help I can. If there’s an excuse for a laugh, you’re going to get it.”

My heart swelled and went out to him; although I had much to think of at the moment, business being business and I about to put my wedge into it for the first time in an English drawing-room, I mentally vowed that if ever I met that man again he should know what a tower of strength he had been to me. I “spread myself,” I “laid myself out,” and was told afterward that I had succeeded. My own view-point of success was reached next morning, when I received his lordship’s check.

Several weeks afterward, at a dinner given to Henry Irving, I saw again the kind face that had been a world of encouragement to me. At the earliest possible opportunity I went over to him and said:

“I want to thank you for helping me at a very trying moment.”

Through forgetfulness or modesty he appeared not to remember the affair, so I detailed the circumstance to him. He expressed delight at having been of any service to me, and confessed that he was a fellow professional, and could therefore imagine my feelings when first face to face with an English audience. I asked him what he was doing; he replied that he was at the Princess Theatre with Mr. Wilson Barrett. I begged him to let me knew his whereabouts whenever he came to the United States, so that I might renew my expressions of gratitude and be of any possible service to him. He promised, but just as I was taking leave of him it occurred to me that I did not even know his name, so I asked for it. He replied:

“My name is Willard—Edward S. Willard.”

We became quite close friends in the course of years, although Mr. Willard did not come to America until 1891. Soon after his arrival I gave a breakfast at Delmonico’s in his honor and ransacked the city and vicinity for fine fellows to meet him. Among the guests were Gen. W. T. Sherman, Col. Robert G. Ingersoll, George W. Childs, editor of the Philadelphia _Ledger_; Whitelaw Reid, editor-in-chief of the New York _Tribune_; Hugh J. Grant, Mayor of New York; Chauncey M. Depew, president of the New York Central Railway Company and his secretary Captain Henry Du Val; Hon. Daniel Dougherty, the most brilliant member of the Philadelphia bar; theatre managers Augustin Daly, A. M. Palmer, Frank Sanger, Henry E. Abbey, and Daniel Frohman; Joseph I. C. Clarke, editor of the _Morning Journal_; Foster Coates, editor of the _Mail and Express_; St. Clair McKelway, editor of the Brooklyn _Union_; J. M. Stoddart, manager of _Lippincott’s Magazine_; Chester A. Lord, managing editor of the New York _Sun_; Bradford Merrill, managing editor of the New York _World_; Arthur Bowers managing editor of New York _Tribune_; Joseph Howard, Jr., America’s most noted newspaper correspondent; Col. T. P. Ochiltree, the world’s most effective impromptu story teller; John Russell Young, editor, librarian of the congressional library and ex-minister to China; Major Moses P. Handy, journalist, club president and United States Commissioner to the Paris exposition; William Edgar Nye (Bill Nye, the humorist); Sam Sothern, brother of E. H. Sothern the actor; W. J. Arkell, manager of _Puck_ and _Leslie’s Weekly_; Harrison Gray Fiske, editor _Dramatic Mirror_; Col. W. F. Cody (“Buffalo Bill”); W. J. Florence, the comedian, Henry Watterson, editor of the Louisville _Courier-Journal_ and also the most quoted editor in America, and Joseph Hatton the noted English author.

Toward the end of the breakfast I said:

“Gentlemen, I should like to tell you the story of a poor boy and an actor and the kindness the actor showed the poor boy.” I then related, in the third person, the story of my first evening as an entertainer in London, and concluded with:

“Gentleman, I am that poor boy, and the actor, whose kindness I can never forget, is our guest, Mr. Edward S. Willard.” And straightway the entire company rose and let Willard know what they thought of that sort of chap.

After I had broken the ice in London by Mr. Willard’s aid, as already described, I got along quite swimmingly, and felt so at ease that I imagined I never could find myself unable to capture whatever audience I might face. But there is no accounting for audiences; occasionally they take an entertainer right to their hearts, read his stories in his face and have their applause ready for us the instant the point appears. A day or two later the entertainer may appear before a lot of men and women of intelligent appearance without eliciting a smile. These unaccountable differences are not peculiar to either England or America. Every summer when I revisit England, some old acquaintance is sure to say, “Mr. Wilder, those stories you told last year are awfully funny.” It has really taken him about a year to get at the points of the various tales; he doesn’t lack appreciation of humor, but he is so accustomed to having it served in only one way that he is puzzled when it appears in a new form. One day I told an English audience about New York’s fire department and its methods; great interest was manifested, so I ventured to tell the old story of a fire in an India rubber factory. This factory was a large, tall building, and when the alarm of fire was given one of the employees found himself on the top floor, with burning stairs under him. His only chance was to jump, but the pavement was so far below his windows that death seemed inevitable. Suddenly he bethought himself of the elastic properties of rubber, of which the room was full; could he envelop himself with it he might jump and strike the sidewalk softly! So he donned rubber coats, belts, diving suits and everything else he could find, until he made the serious mistake of putting on too much, for when he jumped he rebounded from the pavement again and again and continued to do so, for five days, when a merciful police officer came along and shot the poor fellow to save him from starving to death.

About half an hour after I told this veracious story one of my audience came to me and asked:

“Mr. Wilder, do you think that police officer was justified?”

He was no worse than the person, to be found in both England and America, who sees a joke so slowly that his laugh comes in when there is nothing to laugh at. I recall a woman of this kind whose belated laugh was so immense when it did arrive that I stopped and said:

“Madam, if you will kindly keep that laugh till a little later, it will do me lots of good.”

Some people who have been of my audience meet me afterward and proceed to “take the gilt off of the gingerbread” in an amusing fashion—if I am sensible enough to take it that way. Once I encountered one of the blundering old chaps who mean well, yet invariably make a break and he said:

“Mr. Wilder, there was one very good thing among those stories you told.”

I was disconcerted for a moment, but recovering myself I said:

“Well, that’s better than missing the point of all of them.”

At one of my private entertainments I was “making good” and was keeping my audience in continuous merriment, but my hostess begged me to cease making them laugh and say something sad and pathetic, so that they might catch their breath and rest their aching sides.

“My dear madam,” I replied, “I am never sad or pathetic—I mean, not intentionally.”

With a properly developed sense of humor one can sometimes bring a laugh out of disconcerting surroundings. While I was talking to an audience at Flint, Mich., one night, the lights suddenly went out but I succeeded in saying:

“That’s too bad. Now I’m afraid you won’t be able to see through my jokes.”

One evening in the course of an engagement I was playing at the Orpheum in Brooklyn; one of the boxes was occupied by a quartette who had evidently been drinking “not wisely, but too well.” They were giving the audience the benefit of their conversation and even sharing the honors of the entertainment with the ladies and gentlemen on the bill, much to the annoyance of these, for the disturbance was interfering seriously with good work. I had been watching from the wings and determined I would not submit to such distraction, so when I went on I said:

“Ladies and gentlemen, it is an oft-repeated remark that it takes all kinds of people to make a world. Some people in an audience are so sensitive that they are affected by any unusual conditions or surroundings. For instance, if they find themselves among ladies and gentlemen they are so elated by the fact that their conduct has every appearance of intoxication—but it really is not intoxication, though it may look that way.” My performance, which followed immediately, was not disturbed, nor was that of any one who followed me.

Every entertainer knows what terrible up-hill work it is to stand before a cold audience. Cold that affects the body is bliss in comparison with the awful atmosphere that creeps chillingly into one’s soul and the very marrow of his bones. How an audience can get into such a condition and become so appalling an influence passes comprehension, for not all the men and women present can have become dyspeptic on the same day, or had their consciences awakened at the same hour, or simultaneously “gone broke” or seen themselves as others saw them. Sometimes I’ve thought it came of the actual atmosphere of the house, for there are theatres, halls, churches and parlors that are never properly aired unless hailstorms or hoodlums chance to break the windows.

But all such speculation is getting away from the audience, whereas that is the one thing the entertainer daren’t do, much though he may wish to. He is “stuck” for a given period, and he is reminded of trying to climb slippery mountains of ice in the fairy tales of childhood’s sunny hour, and the parallel continues, for the chill—the reserve, is more often melted by some happy impromptu than by conscientious work.

I recall a time in Pittsburg when I struck the afore-mentioned Polar current through no fault of my own or of the audience. It was the custom of the house to begin the evening with a play and follow with a vaudeville performance. The play on the occasion referred to was “Captain Swift,” in which the hero was a charming rascal who always took an audience by the heart, even when he ended the play by killing himself. It was my misfortune to follow the play and find the audience in a very low state of mind which, in turn, threw a wet blanket upon me and my work. After laboring a few minutes I said:

“Ladies and gentlemen, I’ve often followed a prayer, and sometimes followed a hearse, but this is the first time I ever followed a suicide.” This touch just tipped the balance—lifted the cloud, squeezed the water out of the blanket, made the audience mine and kept it so while I held the stage.

At the Orpheum in San Francisco I was received so kindly that my stay was extended to three weeks. San Francisco audiences are very responsive, except on Sunday evenings; then, for some Frisco reason undiscoverable by the eastern man, they are usually cold and the entertainer has to cut ice. On my last Sunday evening there a section of Greenland’s Icy Mountains seemed to have come in collision with a cold-storage warehouse just before I appeared, for the audience was as unresponsive as a cart load of frozen clams. I worked over them a few moments as earnestly as a life-saver over a person rescued from drowning, but to no avail, so I stopped and said:

“Now I’ve got you nice and quiet, just have a good long sleep while I go out and leave a call for you.” Then I tiptoed off of the stage so as not to rouse the sleepers. This started a current of warm good nature; they called me back and for the rest of the performance there was perfect understanding and sympathy between them and me.

VIII

EXPERIENCES IN LONDON

Customs and Climate Very Unlike Our Own.—No Laughter in Restaurants.—Clever Cabbies.—Oddities in Fire-fighting.—The “Rogues’ Gallery” in Scotland Yard.—“Petticoat Lane.”—A Cemetery for Pet Dogs.—Dogs Who are Characters.—The Professional Toast-master.—Solemn After-dinner Speakers.—An Autograph Table-cloth.—American Brides of English Husbands.

So many London customs seem strange to an American that I venture to mention a few experiences of my own by way of preparation, for no American knows when he may be nominated for the presidency or get a chance to go to Europe.

The first thing to impress a person from this side of the Atlantic is the climate, which is generally depressing to any one accustomed to the dazzling sunshine, brilliant skies and champagne quality of our atmosphere. Everything seems heavy and solemn by comparison, and life appears to be a serious matter to all whom one meets, although the truth is that the English enjoy life heartily and give ten times as much attention to sports and amusements as we do.

I went one day into a restaurant where a great many people were dining, yet absolute silence prevailed, instead of the buzz of chatter and laughter of a French or American restaurant. I asked a waiter,

“Doesn’t any one ever laugh here?”

“Yes, sir,” he replied. “Sometimes we ’ave complaints, sir.”

But there is so much of interest in even the ordinary street sights that a visitor soon forgets smoke, dampness and gloom. The first natives to accost an American are the “cabbies,” and they are a never-failing source of amusement to me. They abound in natural wit, and are past-masters of sarcasm. One of the sharpest bits I ever heard was told about an old cabby and one of his younger fellows. The former was a master of whip and rein; he boasted that he knew every foot of London and declared that although he had been in many tight places he had never failed to drive out smoothly. One day, however, he lost control of his horse and ran into a young cabby’s outfit. The younger man looked him over condescendingly, contemptuously, and then asked,

“Well? An’ ’ow do _you_ like London?”

A friend of mine once took a cab drawn by an animal which was bony in the extreme. The driver was hailed by the Jehu of a passing cab with,

“Oi saiy, Bill, I see yer goin’ to ’ave a new ’orse.”

“’Oo told yer so?”

“W’y, I see y’ve got the framework there.”

Not all the quick-tongued cabbies are professionals. At one time it was a fad of young “bloods” in London to drive cabs, apparently for the purpose of enriching their slang vocabulary by exchanging remarks with “regulars” whom they could provoke into freedom of speech. Sometimes decently born and fairly educated young men from the rural districts, who have handled horses at home and know no one in London whom they would be ashamed to face from a driver’s seat, try cab-driving as a business. They can hire a horse and cab for five shillings a day; London fares are small and some days they are few, but many men “tip” the drivers, especially those who say smart things that appear to be impromptu, so amateur cabbies sometimes make much more than a living.

London’s fire-fighting service interests an American by its differences from our own. The fire-plugs do not resemble old-fashioned cannon, turned upside down, as ours do; they are so unnoticeable that their whereabouts must be indicated by lamp-post signs like this:—“Fire-plug four feet to the right and three feet to the rear.” Instead of using whistles, the London engines have a string of sleigh-bells on one of the horses, and by way of further warning the men on the engine keep up a constant shout of “Hoy! Hoy! Hoy!” The engines do not respond as quickly to an alarm as ours; it generally takes them two minutes to get under way, though the firemen are a “fit” looking lot. I was told they were selected entirely from ex-sailors of the naval service. To assist the engines’ crews there are many auxiliaries, who sleep and almost live in small red houses on wheels; these portable houses are numerous in the more thickly populated portions of the city, where fires are most likely to occur and extra firemen be needed.

At convenient corners are kept, also on wheels, the portable fire-escapes:—mere shafts or chutes of canvas on wooden framework. In case of fire in the upper part of an inhabited building, the top of the escape is pushed to a window, and the inmates are expected to save themselves by going head first down the inclined chute, clinging to the framework of the sides to keep from descending too rapidly. Of course in a city of lofty apartment houses and “sky-scraper” office buildings such a contrivance would be almost useless, but in London a house of more than three stories is a rarity. “Running to fires” is as popular with some Londoners as it was in New York before fire alarms reached the dozen-a-day mark. The Duke of Sutherland enjoyed attending fires; he would have his private carriage follow the engines, and frequently he was accompanied by the Prince of Wales.