New Albion (23 page)

With the ferocity of wild animals, the rioters punched and kicked the stage flats to shreds. Some fighting broke out, as well, between patrons in the first gallery. The great Mr. Dickens had presumably escorted his female companions clear of the theatre by that time. I tried to locate him during the tumult, but I could not see his yellow and black waistcoat anywhere. Mr. Manning had been prescient enough to extinguish the gas lights as soon as the rioting began, throwing the theatre into semidarkness. The middle-aged dock worker was in the process of trying to set fire to the curtains with a match when a man in an undistinguished great coat approached him down the stage right aisle. “I am a detective in Sir Robert Peel’s police force,” he shouted, “and I order you to cease and desist from this willful damage.”

The dock worker cast a surly glance at his young nemesis through the gloom of the largely unlit theatre. “I spit upon the sodding police force of Sir Robert Peel,” he said, “and I spit upon you.” At which point the young man drew a pistol from the pocket of his great coat and fired. I watched breathlessly as the dock worker was spun on to his back by the force of the bullet. I watched through the gloom as he writhed on the stage floor, clutching at some unclutchable place on his belly. Not at all like the idealized melodramatic deaths, the almost balletic and beautiful deaths, which had graced this stage almost every evening since my tenure in the theatre had begun. I heard the call go out for a doctor, heard the final rattling of the dock worker’s breath, heard his last expletive hurled upon the insane world. And then I knew that he was dead, and that it was no use trying to sanitize the event or to pretend that it hadn’t happened.

Friday, 27 December 1850

Having arrived at the theatre early this morning, I found a note on my desk in Mr. Wilton’s scrawl, craving my presence in his office at my earliest convenience. I proceeded upstairs with some trepidation, fearing that I might somehow be held culpable for defending Mr. Farquhar Pratt’s conception until it was too late
to make changes. Mr. Wilton was seated behind his desk, gawk
ing vacantly at the wall, still dressed in his evening frock coat and starched collar. I tapped quietly on his doorjamb.

“Yes, come in, Phillips,” was his preoccupied response. “Sit down.” His eyes, when they settled upon me, were red with fatigue.

I sat down with my hands clasped in my lap. “You wished to speak with me?”

There was an utter despondency in his manner. In his fine evening clothes, he looked like the corpse of a man who had died in an upright position, perhaps whilst inking a deal with some other giant of industry. “I’m thinking of getting out of the theatrical line of business.”

Desperate to make light of the situation, I responded, “Yes, I’ve thought the same thing many a time.”

He did not smile. “My wife would be very unhappy. That is the only difficulty.”

“Yes, sir.” I have never made it my business to meddle in my employer’s personal affairs, but I do know how influential Mr. Wilton’s wife can be upon him.

It appeared as if he was about to speak again. His mouth opened and there resounded a breathy moan which could only be described as emanating from some other self hidden under the old army man’s rough exterior. His massive frame shuddered horribly, and his visage contorted into a mask I had never seen before, a mask of Greek tragedy, so primal and authentic. The sobbing began in great swooping gasps, the sobbing of a young child who has known real grief for the first time. “No worse!” Mr. Wilton wailed, grappling for a handkerchief in the pocket of his frock coat. “There is no worse than this.”

I did not know how to comfort the man, so I remained seated and immobile. “Bear up, sir,” I said, finally. “It will pass.”

His eyes grew stormy. “I’m caught in it, Phillips, caught in it. Like a man climbing an endless staircase, I’m caught in it.”

How difficult it is to console a man when one is accustomed to thinking of him as one’s superior. “You’ve been in tighter places, sir, I’m certain of it. In your army days. Or when the workers rioted in Manchester.”

“I’ve never before had blood on my hands.” He chewed the words and spat them out at me, as though they tasted like carbolic acid in his mouth. “Excepting the blood of military men who had contracted themselves to kill or be killed.”

“You do not have this man’s blood on your hands, sir,” I retorted. “What he did he did of his own free will.” I knew, as I sat there, that we all bore some degree of guilt for what had happened.

At last, Mr. Wilton was able to get hold of himself again. He wiped his tears on his handkerchief and tried to laugh. “I apologize,” he said, “I apologize, my dear Phillips. For that outburst and for the fact that I haven’t the first idea about running a theatrical enterprise.”

“Nonsense, sir,” I cooed, like a dove in a dovecot. “You are an acclaimed theatrical proprietor. No one disputes that.”

He cleared his throat and sat back in his chair, aiming at businesslike nonchalance. “I fully expect the Police Commission to shut down the theatre today,” he said. “We will proceed under the assumption that the panto will be performed again this evening, although the Parisian Phenomenon will under no circumstances be performing in it. But have your affairs in order, sir, and prepare the company for a lengthy hiatus.”

“I will, sir.”

I wanted to linger and commiserate with Mr. Wilton. In twelve years of working for him, I had never seen him under this kind of microscope before. The curtain had already come down, however, and he returned to his paper work with a dismissive wave of his knotty hand. “That will be all, Phillips,” he said.

When I returned to my desk at the edge of the proscenium, the three wise men Mr. Sharpe, Mr. Manning, and Mr. Hampton were unceremoniously mopping up the stage. The flats, which had been ripped to tatters, were unreclaimable. The curtain, which miraculously had not caught fire, was nevertheless scorched and ruined. There was no longer any sign of blood where the dock worker had fallen the night before. It had been washed away with Mr. Hampton’s mop, and it mingled now with the dirty mop-water. “God damn that bastard Pratt,” Mr. Hampton mumbled, as I walked past. “Him with his before-its-time pantomime riling up the anti-establishmentarian sentiments of the working classes.”

Mr. Hampton’s vitriolic statement was not directed at me but at the stale air of the empty theatre, and I did not bother to respond. Proceeding directly to the Green Room, I found the acting company in the midst of a discussion of the previous evening’s unhappiness. Neville Watts had brought with him the morning edition of
The Times
, which featured a brief mention of the shooting down of a working man in the New Albion Theatre. The scant paragraph appeared on the third page and was accompanied by the promise of a more fulsome report tomorrow. Mr. Watts handed me the paper, and I read:

Last night, at the New Albion theatre in Whitechapel, a riot ensued after the pantomime entitled
Yoyeyeyayomayatchu
. The pantomime was reportedly a confusion of pro-Chartist and anti-Chartist sentiments, which excited the wrath of the theatre’s working class audience to the point where various spectators took
over the stage and attempted to burn down the building. A con
stable was called to action, which resulted in the death of one Hugh Ardienne, an unemployed bricklayer of Shoreditch who leaves to mourn a wife and seven children.

The newspaper article cut me to the quick. I had played a part in ensuring that Mr. Farquhar Pratt’s pro-Chartist sentiments made their way to the stage.

“But surely,” I said, handing the newspaper back to Neville Watts, “a pantomime cannot incite a man to action who has not already been incited by the events in his own life.”

“Precisely,” agreed Mr. Watts. “The theatre is not real life and should never be conceived as such.”

“We are the brief and abstract chronicles of the age,” Mr. Hicks said, his basso profundo lending authority to his sentiments. “Ours is but to entertain.” He was smoking a rank American cigar, his chair propped against the Green Room wall.

“Nevertheless,” said Fanny Hardwick, her skin white and her eyes red, “I cannot help but think of that poor man’s family.”

“Get him out of your mind,” Hicks retorted, blowing cigar smoke almost the entire width of the Green Room. “He would not have scaled the stage but for his own unhappiness. And that, wench, is no business of yours.”

We were interrupted by a brisk constable with a close-cropped moustache, who had found his way past Mr. Hardacre and into the Green Room. He was a sturdy fellow. The blue policeman’s uniform he was wearing seemed three sizes too small. He stood before us in the doorway for some time, gaping at us as one might
gape at animals in the zoo or at condemned prisoners on the road to the gibbet at Newgate. “This building has been closed down until further notice,” he barked in an incongruous East London accent. “I must ask you to vacate the premises.”

Mr. Hicks stood up, butted his cigar, and spoke for all those present. “Is there time to collect our belongings,” he said, “or are you in the business of throwing esteemed artistes out in the street destitute?”

The constable sighed audibly and said, “I can give you one half-
hour, after which I cannot vouch for you or your belongings.”

The actors and actresses hurried out of the Green Room, past the constable, and down to their dressing rooms. I stood at the stage door with Mr. Hardacre and watched as the company departed for their respective lodgings. All carried with them their makeup cases and personal props. The ladies were loaded down under a weight of gowns and hats, which they had been required to purchase for various recent roles and which were their property.
Outside on the cobblestone, under the watchful eye of the constable, they bade a fond and tearful farewell to their compatriots and promised each other that they would overcome this somehow and that they would all be together again in the near future. All of this amidst the racket of hammering, as policemen at the front of the building remorselessly secured the public entrances with boards and with a sign that read:
keep out
.
by order of police commission.

Mr. Wilton was the last to leave the theatre, and he did so with his head held high, like a wrongfully court-martialed officer on his way to military prison.

It will be a hard New Year’s Eve this year.

Monday, 30 December 1850

As the year draws to a close, I find myself taking stock. Forty-two years old. Almost as old as the current century. And what have I accomplished? Nineteen years as actor, some of that time
spent in the rural circuits. Fourteen of those years as stage man
ager of a minor theatre in the capitol.

It is a time for resolutions. Perhaps I should give up the theatre; I am beginning to hate it in the same way that my employer does. Perhaps I should write my brother Charles: “I have decided to return to the family business. Have you a position there, in Manchester, that befits my talents?”

1850. Halfway through the century. What will the year be remembered for? The year that Wordsworth died? The year before the Prince Consort’s grand exposition? The year in which a father of seven was shot to death in the New Albion Theatre?

Emlyn Swithen Phillips. What will I be remembered for? Nothing. I’ve invented no medical procedures, created no imaginative political philosophy. Organized no new religion. Gained
no fame riding against the Sepoys in India. Made no untold for
tune as a railway magnate. What will I be remembered for? Nothing. Unless this diary has something in it which will be of interest to a wizened theatre historian two centuries hence.

Enough of this constipated, idle rumination!

* * *

Having little else to do
this afternoon, I walked to Shoreditch High Street and purchased the new number of
Household Words
, which was on sale today. The news vendor is a short Jewish fellow, who asked me, “Like Mister Dickens, do you? I grew up within earshot of the Bow Bells, governor, and I never yet met a Cockney who thought and sounded like Joe Whelks.” I assured the gentleman that I would not confuse
Household Words
with an accurate depiction of life in East London, handed him twopence and was provided with the journal.

Later, at home, I put my feet up on a footstool by the fireplace and read contentedly while children raced about the place, careening off walls and off each other until little Susan suffered a bruised leg and her elder sisters had to attend to her. Following is Mr. Dickens’ article in its entirety:

Joe Whelks about town.
Being of a mind to attend a panto which would be a hundred years ahead of its time, Joe Whelks took himself to the New Albion Theatre on Boxing Day. He sat in the front row of the gallery inside that august theatre, eating an orange and anxiously anticipating the onset of the spectacle. He was surrounded by many young women who were in the habit, unfortunately, of behaving older than
their years, by several middle-aged gentlemen wearing dustmen’s
caps and with pins where the buttons on their shirts should have been. There was one elderly gentleman seated near Joe Whelks, whose greatcoat was so humid as to be molting under Joe Whelks’ nose. There were matrons with babes in arms, and the general howling of the annoyed and very critical infants went near to competing with the sterling voices of Neville Watts and Seymour Hicks, two of the actors. There were also many known pickpockets in attendance – known to Joe Whelks, at any rate – but they were happily too involved in the spectacle
before them to be of much use in the employment of their day
time skills.