CHAPTERS FROM THE LIFE OF A POPULAR ACTRESS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 9308, 7 August 1908, Page 4

CHAPTERS FROM THE LIFE OF A POPULAR ACTRESS.

Selected »y COSMO HAMILTON, Playwright, Novelist and Journalist. :-';■ : No. IV. • ';. V .[All Rtghts Reseevxd.] ■^TEbe^first year with Mr Sam Fleet's 014 English Comedy Company was a rery happy one. Mr Fleet himself was & benign, gentle and charming gentleman, and a splendid teacher of acting, , and in some parts, such as Sir Peter Teazle and the Vicar of Wakefield, a fine actor. ■• The members of the company were mostly very nice people, Students like myself, all keen and eager ] to get on, and imbued with high hopes and ambition. Among, us, l playing the important parts, were several actors of great' experience, who had toured the provinces for twenty years, and who, for reasons that we found difficult to understand, were unable to g.et a permanent footing on the London stage. One noticed jealousies underlying 'what Was on the surface pleasant companionship, but that was natural and to be expected. For the most part we were » very happy family with very little time on our hands for mischief. We very rarely played in one place for more than three nights. Consequently, we ." lived in our boxes." Our repertoire consisted of a dozen plays, old English comedies, such as ' ' The School for Scandal,"" "The Rivals," "The Man of the World," "The Vicar of Wakefield," " She Stoops to (Conquer," "David Garrick " and such tof Shakespeare's plays as "The Merry Wives of Windsor," "The Merchant pf Venice," "Midsummer Night's Dream," "As You Like It," and "Twelfth Night." We rehearsed from ten to one every fljorniijg; and sometimes from two to four id. the afternoon, playing every; evening. So that we were practically in the theatre from morning to night, i They ipere generally evil-smelling, poisonous 1 little places, very dirty, very , small, -with dreadful little dressingjooms and horribly drau_hty stages. But we wero.all too young and too fresh ait the work to mind these conditions. : . Nor did we complain much of our lodgings and our two railway journeys In third-class carriages every «reek. Our lodgings saw very little of us, and as they were, of course, extremely cheap — none of us 'were blessed with ninch money — they, were naturally •xireritely nasty. They were all what is known as theatrical lodgings. This does ; fto't mean that dramatic epi•odes "j jtook place in them — although in some ol them the wives took too much to drink aDd indulged in violent altercations with their husbands — but that Ifcey were occupied week after week by "theatricals,' 1 touring as we Were pouring. The cooking in all of them was so bad as to be almost amusing, tn'e beds so hard as to.be positively painful, the squalor so great as to be quite pathetic. \ Sometimes we visited small towns which did not boast of theatres. In fcheso we played in Town Ri'-lls or Corn Exchanges. The stage consisted of a platfown at the end of a square room, and we were obliged to dress and make up behind screens under or behind the platlorm. it was all very primitive, very rough and ready, very hard. Enthusiasm, high spirits and a sense of humour, tempered the wind, and there was little grumbling and few complainteC We were indeed rogues and vagabonds in the sense tVat we were looked down upon by respectable mem-

bers of society. We might better have been described as respectable gipsies ■ who picnicked and " pigged it" ifi. pjaces none of us would have gone near had wo not been on the stage. Being on the stage on tour generally lineans being on the platform and in the railway train. What my father and mother would have said if they had seen me in my pokey , lodgings, dressing behind screens, buying my meat and vegetables myself, travelling on terms of bonhomie with boys with long hair and girls in shabby finery, rl am at a loss to conjecture. But dear Mr Fleet was a father and a schoolmaster to us all, as well as a manager and a gentle martinet. Ho kept his eye constantly on ajl of us, saw that we were as comfortable as circumstances permitted, aiid that our behaviour was strictly proper. Friendship was encouraged. Sentimentality was put down at once. During the year of tour I played many parts. At first I was cast only for servants, " walking ladies," old women, peasants, gentlewomen, and parts with few lines and many entrances. ■■•; Then gradually I was promoted to small parts — tearful girls, fairies, Court ladies, and snch like, and finally, l blossomed out in p^cond parts with msny lines and good f- nnr ios, and understudied the leading laiy. It was ah excellent if somewhat happy-go-lucky training. Many of our pieces were put up insufficiently rehearsed — " Thrown *on," as tho saying goes. The prompter was always kept busy, and amusing voontretemps i occurred every ni°:ht, such as when Mr Fleet was obliaed to r>lay Shylock in the costume of Sir Peter Teazle because his Shylock clothes had been lost on the 'railway or had not been delivered in time. On another occasion out leading .1 riven ile opened an Old English comedy with a soliloquy from " Twelfth Night," as he had forgotten to ask what the particular play was that we were playing that nisht. But nothing seemed to matter very much. Our audiences were small, and easily pleased, and Mr Fleet was ready for all emergencies. Our talk was nJvrays* about the great days in the future when we should take London by storm. The present was a period of probation as pleasant or as unpleasant as our various temperaments made it. I was very happy though very uncomfortable. I got all the- excitement I needed, although very little of, the applause. Tn those days the- name of Helen. Macgregor was always mentioned as being "adequate" in the part, and if the local paper mentioned me as "promising" I was overjoyed. * . ! In tho summer months we deserted small theatres, town halls and piers, and went in for a series of pastoral performances hi d corner of the grounds «of Regent's Park. Our dreesing-rooms then dwindled into tents behind thej bushes, but I was able to live at home, and on wet evenings when we were unable to play I was able to rush off and Bee the plays at the big London theatres, with one or t*vo of my friends in, the company. We criticised the acting of famous people severely and with all the technical knowledge of old professional hands. And then the tour came to an end and the company was broken up. Mr Flset went off to America to produce a play that ho had bought, and I returned to Horsham, ami all the comforts and regularity of a refined home circle, as mother called it.. For a week or two I revelled, hi the cleanliness and the good- cooking, the early-to-bedr eve-riings, the peace, quietness imd charm of our house. I played golf with father, and tennis with tho Horsham people, paid calls with mother, and attended afternoon teas with great eon'teut. Then I began to pin© again for the theatre, for the peculiar •smell of tho footlights, for the happy-go-lucky Bohemian friendships, for the evening work. A great restlessness seized rue every evening, and I looked anxiously at. the clock at the time when, if I had be'en acting, I should have been making-up. I sat down and wrote to all the London managers, enumerating all the | goo^l parts that I had been playing with

Mt Fleet, and asking foT an engageiment, however small. Each day I j -watched anxiously for the arrival of the postman. He came regularly [enough, but I received no answers to ' my letters that were in the least satis- ! factory or encouraging. If I heard at j all it was merely a brief typewritten ■ letter, saying that there was nothing for me. Unable to stand the inaction, or hnuckle down to the duties of domesticity, I went to London and began t\ weary round of stage doori*. Utterly without influence, 1 met with curt refusals or <xvmplete indifference. If I had been depending upon the stage for a living I should have starved. No one wanted mo in London, not even for a walk-on or a small understudy . London was full. Then I sat in agents' offices day after- , «ay and saw for myself the scenes described by Mr Fleet, the crowds of men and women, most of whom had been three or four or five, even ten I or twenty years in the provinces playJ ing important parts of all sorts, shabby, hungry, despairing, trying to obtain an engagement. They all eyed me ro- ■ sent fully. They all regarded me, because, luckily, my clothes were good, ns a moneyed: amateur. Nasty remarkb were made in undertones about me, and such, as me, as "ruining the market." The agents were kind, hut had nothing for me. " Was I inclined to invest money in a short tour in the email towns of Scotland P" they asked. And when I said that I had no money of my own, but that I was an actress who wanted to get on solely on my } personal capacity, they smiled and > wished mo good-day.' Everywhere I heard the samo rej mark: "The profession, ie over-crowd-ed." For months I wrote applications and anfcwered advertisements that were frauds, watched young girls with very little capacity put into good part 3 in London theatres through the influence of the patrons of the drama — by which was meant the people who found the money to ran the theatres. ! For months I waited and longed, witft • nothing to do and no prospest of get- ! fcing anything. Then I managed to meet tho actor-manager of the Regal Theatre. After many fruitless visits to his theatre I had tho good fortune to meet him at the stage-door. He remembered me and listened with a smile to my account of my year's work in the Old English Comedy Company. Again strongly edvising me to go home, he said that he would wTite to me if an opportunity arose, and again. I went away and waited. More months went by, and mother began to hope that, -my stage craze had died a natural death. And at that very moment a letter came from the Regal Theatre offering me a four-line part in a tour of a successful London comedy by a famous playwright at twenty-five shillings a week. Would I accept? I telegraphed "Yes," and with all my hopes bright and eager - again rushed up to London, for rehearsal, j = * i