Delphi Complete Works of Jerome K. Jerome (Illustrated) (Series Four) (479 page)

With the drink I had yet greater difficulty. I commenced, perhaps ill-advisedly, with claret. It cost twopence-halfpenny the glass at a “Cave” near to the Adelphi arches. I used to sip it with my eyes shut: the after results suggesting to me that the wine St. Paul recommended to Timothy for his stomach’s sake must have been of another vintage. Later on, silencing my conscience with the plea of economy, I substituted porter at three halfpence the half-pint. It was nastier, if anything, than the claret; but one gulped it down, and so got it over quicker. A fellow clerk at Euston, who had passed through similar ordeals, recommended me to try port. At Shortt’s in the Strand, one got a large glass for threepence with a bun thrown in. But for Mr. Shortt, I might have been a teetotaller to this day. I would advise any boy of mine to disregard Doctor Johnson’s dictum, and start straight away with port. He will save himself much suffering. From port I worked up through cider to bottled beer. Eventually, I came to drink even whisky without a shudder. The Chancellor of the Exchequer tells me that drinking during the last fifty years has increased. I feel sure there must be something he has overlooked. When I was a youngster, every corner house in London was a pub. Omnibuses did not go east or west: they went from one public-house to another. After closing time, one stopped to stare at a sober man, and drunken children were common. For recreation, young bloods of an evening would gather together in groups and do a mouch “round the houses.” To be on a footing of familiarity with a barmaid was the height of most young clerks’ ambition. Failing that, to be entitled to address the pot-boy by his Christian name conferred distinction.

For the more sentimentally inclined, there was Oxford Street after the shops were closed. You caught her eye; and if she smiled you raised your hat and felt sure you had met her the summer before at Eastbourne — Eastbourne, then, was the haunt of the
haut ton
. All going well, you walked by her side to the Marble Arch; and maybe on a seat in the park you held her hand. Sometimes trouble came of it: and sometimes wedding-bells and — let us hope — happiness ever after. Most often, nothing further; just a passing of shiplets in the night. Myself, I had but poor success. My shyness handicapped me. I would take the lady’s preliminary rebuff, her icy suggestion that I had made a mistake, as final dismissal; and would shrink back scarlet into the shadows.

Of vice that does not have to be acquired, I would speak if I thought that to any it would be of use. But, I take it, there is nothing to be done. Each lad must “dree his own wierd.” Nature and civilization are here, as elsewhere, at cross purposes: and not all the problems are soluble. Evolution may work cure. A thousand generations hence, the years between puberty and marriage may not be the fearsome thing they are to the young men of this day. The only suggestion I can make is that the writers of our stories should harp less upon sexuality: though at present there appears no sign of their doing so: and that among older men there should be less lewdness of talk and jest. In my schooltime, quite little boys would whisper to each other “smutty” stories: they must have heard them from their elders. I do not speak as a prude. Some of the best and kindest men I have met have been grave sinners in this respect. But knowing how hard put to it a young man is to keep his thoughts from being obsessed by sexual lust, to the detriment of his body and his mind, I would that all men of good-feeling treated this deep mystery of our nature with more reverence. I think it would help.

A youngster whose acquaintance I had made, a clerk in the city, had gone upon the stage. He made his first appearance at the old Camden Town Theatre, opposite the Britannia. It was burnt down the following year. I was lodging off the Maiden Road, at the time, and was awakened by the glare upon my window. I dressed and hastened out. Each street was pouring forth its throng. It was the first time the inhabitants of Camden Town had shown any interest in the place. His example had inspired me. Literature was still my goal, but, of course, I should write plays; and stage experience would be useful. Charley (I forget his surname) introduced me to “agents,” some of them fat and not too clean. One of them, I suppose, must eventually have done the trick. I remember selling a ring that had been my father’s, and wandering through endless corridors in Somerset House, trying to find the room where they stamped agreements. After the first two months, I was to be paid a salary “according to ability.” I remember the phrase because, when the time came and I showed the manager my contract to remind him, he said it was absurd — that no theatre in London could afford it; but that if half a quid a week would be of any use to me I could have it. He wasn’t a bad sort. His name was Murray Wood. He was the husband of Virginia Blackwood, a minor star who specialized in Dickens. We had opened at Astley’s, just over Westminster Bridge, a huge barn of a place, used during the winter as a circus. I had not left Euston. I was in the advertising department, and my work was mainly going about London, seeing that bills and time-tables were properly exhibited. I could take time off for rehearsals and make it up without anybody knowing or caring. “Dolly Varden” and “Little Nell” were our first two productions; and then came “Lost in London.” I played a wicked swell, which necessitated a dress suit. I bought one in Petticoat Lane on a Sunday morning for ten shillings. For years, Petticoat Lane “turned me out,” as the phrase goes; and at no period of my life have I been so well dressed. I always dealt at the same stall; and I think the old Sheeny took a liking to me. If I hadn’t the price about me, he would take five shillings down and trust me for the balance. “And if anybody wanth to know your tailor,” he said to me on one occasion, “you can tell ’em that ith Mr. Poole of Thavile Row.” And I believe it was. Later, we produced an Irish play by Manville Fenn. I played a policeman. We came across a gentleman lying in a wood. My superior officer — who was also the hero — wanted to know whether it was alive or dead. I ought to have knelt down, and after careful scrutiny pronounced that life was extinct, and had in my opinion been so for some considerable time. Instead of all which, on the second night, it came to me to just lean forward, take one satisfying sniff, and answer laconically, “Dead.” It got the laugh of the evening. The stage manager was furious; but Fenn, who was watching from the wings, said it didn’t matter; and wrote me in some extra lines. We finished our season with “Mazeppa.” I played three parts — a soldier, a shepherd, and a priest, and they talked so much alike that I had to look at my clothes to make sure which I was. Lisa Weber played Mazeppa. She was a magnificent creature, and in her riding costume was the nearest thing to nature that up till then had been seen upon the London stage. Nowadays she would have attracted no attention. Our ninepenny pit was converted into six shilling stalls, and money was turned away every night. Murray Wood, good soul, raised my salary to thirty shillings a week.

Our season at Astley’s came to an end in November: to make room for Lord George Sanger and his circus. I chucked the North-western Railway, and joined a touring company. My sisters were much troubled. At Euston, I was earning seventy pounds a year, and I might become general manager. I pointed out to them that, instead, I might become London’s leading actor with a theatre of my own. But they only cried. We opened at Torquay on Boxing day with a farce, a two-act drama and a pantomime. I had assumed the name of Harold Crichton, and our chief comedian turned out to be Haldane Crichton, who afterwards became a lessee of theatres; and had for daughter Madge Crichton. I think she is now in America. We were assumed to be brothers, and he took an interest in me, and taught me dancing and tumbling. I had to leap through flaps, and sometimes there was a mattress on the other side to catch me, and sometimes there wasn’t; and arriving on the stage by way of a star trap calls for nerve and a thick skull. Haldane thought I had the makings of a clown in me, but my own ambition was rather towards the legitimate. After Torquay, we travelled round the south with what would now be termed repertory. Often, during the evening’s performance, I would be handed my part in a piece to be played the next night. For one play I remember we had three rehearsals.

“What do they think we are,” grumbled our first old man, “a pack of sanguinary amateurs?”

Altogether, I was on the stage three years. Occasionally, I obtained a short London engagement: at the old Surrey under the Conquests; at the Brit, and the Pav. Then, as now, the West End, to those without money or influence, lay behind a closed door. Most of my time I spent in the provinces. The bogus manager was our haunting fear. So long as he was making money, salaries were paid: they varied from a pound to fifty shillings. If the luck changed, the manager would disappear — generally on a Friday evening during the performance. Leaving their baskets with their landladies, the company would get back to their homes as best they could. Often they would have to tramp, begging their way by the roadside. Nobody complained: everybody was used to it. Sometimes a woman would cry. But even that was rare. There were one-night companies that played in Town halls, Institutes, Assembly Rooms and such like. Here thirty shillings a week would be the maximum salary — when you got it. “The shilling a nighters,” we were called. If one could not secure a night’s lodging for a shilling, paid in advance, one went without. In summer, one hunted for an out-of-the-way corner, or climbed the railings and slept in the church porch. In winter time, we would club together and, bribing the door-keeper, would sleep in the dressing-rooms, when there were any; and if not, upon the stage. Now and then, of course, one struck a decent company and then one lived bravely, sleeping in beds, and eating rabbit pie on Saturday.

Though I say it myself, I think I would have made a good actor. Could I have lived on laughter and applause, I would have gone on. I certainly got plenty of experience. I have played every part in “Hamlet” except Ophelia. I have doubled the parts of Sairey Gamp and Martin Chuzzlewit on the same evening. I forget how the end came. I remember selling my wardrobe in some town up north, and reaching London with thirty shillings in my pocket. Fortunately the weather was mild and I was used to “sleeping rough,” as they call it in the country. The difficulty, of course, in London was to dodge the police. On wet nights I would have to fork out ninepence for a doss-house. The best I ever struck was one half-way up Pentonville Hill, where they gave you two blankets; but one had to be early for that. Literary gents have always been much given to writing of the underworld. I quite agree there must be humour and pathos and even romance to be found there; but you need to be outside it to discover its attractions. It was a jungle sort of existence. Always we slept with everything belonging to us, even to our leaky boots, underneath our pillows; and would start up with our hands clenched if a mouse crept across the floor. Round the common frying-pan, where we cooked our breakfast, when it ran to it, we stood on guard, ready to defend our skimpy rasher or our half-starved-looking bloater, if need be, with our lives. The old and feeble fared badly. The janitor was supposed to keep order; but among the outcast there is one law for the strong and another for the weak; and always there would be some hefty bully with whom it was best to make terms. By luck I came across a chum, one with whom I had gone poaching when a boy. He, too, had fallen upon evil days, and had taken to journalism. He was now a penny-a-liner — or to be exact, a three-half-penny-a-liner. He took me round with him to police courts and coroners’ inquests. I soon picked it up. Often I earned as much as ten shillings a week, and life came back to me. I had my own apartment, furnished with a bed, a table and a chair, which also served for washstand, together with a jug and basin. But after the doss-house it was luxury. Sometimes a theatre order came my way. I remember Charles Matthews and Madame Vestris at the Royalty; and Irving’s first appearance in “The Bells,” at the old Lyceum under Mrs. Bateman’s management. Phelps was playing at Sadler’s Wells, and “Madam Angot,” at the Philharmonic, opposite the Angel, was being whistled all over the town. There were hangings in the courtyard at Newgate. You could see them over the wall from the windows of the houses opposite. There was a coffee shop in the Old Bailey, where, for half a crown, they let you climb up on the roof. I found out how to make “flimsy” more saleable by grafting humour on to it: so that sub-editors would give to mine a preference over more sober, and possibly more truthful records. There was a place in Fleet Street called “The Codgers’ Hall,” where over pipes and pewter pots we discussed Home Rule, Female Suffrage, Socialism and the coming Revolution. Gladstone had raised the Income Tax to eight-pence and those of us who took things seriously foresaw the ruin of the country. Forster brought in compulsory education, and the danger was that England would become too intellectual. One evening, an Irishman threw a water-bottle at my head: what it was doing there still remains to me unexplainable. I ducked just in time, and it caught a Nihilistic gentleman on the side of the head. For the next ten minutes it was anybody’s fight; but eventually we all made friends, and joining hands, sang “Auld Lang Syne.” I took up shorthand at this period. Dickens had started his career as a Parliamentary reporter. It seemed to me I could not do better than follow in his footsteps. I attended public meetings, and on Sundays took down sermons. Spurgeon was a good man. You could hear every word he said. I remember the Sunday morning when he began by mopping his brow, and remarking that it was “damned hot.”

I grew tired of penny-a-lining. Had I been of a saving disposition it might have worked out better. One week, I would earn two pounds — another week three. And then, by some peculiar economic law I could never understand, my expenditure would be precisely that same sum. The following week, my takings might total only a few shillings. How could a gentleman live! The work necessitated constant running about — hurrying here and there. I recall the idea I formed of what would constitute competence, beyond which a man need take no thought: it was, whenever one was tired or bored, to be able to jump upon a ‘bus, indifferent as what the fare might be.